Strategic Advice The essentials of business roadmaps

“Addressing all of these interdependent points can help prepare you for possible changes,” says Brame. “But excluding or minimizing even one could hamper your ability to maintain balance between your vision and shifts in the economy, your operations, labor availability, or your capacity for resource acquisition.”

Once you’ve ensured your existing business roadmap covers the core elements, it’s time to refine your approach in a way that makes it more adaptive to any future changes in your needs and goals. During this phase, it’s important to view the steps to achieve your long-term vision not as one-and-done tasks but as recurring considerations in a constantly evolving process. Your relationship manager can help you get started. This support may include using the Truist one team approach to engage the in-depth knowledge of an industry specialist or a treasury consultant.

“Our approach is ongoing and collaborative,” says Brame. “You dictate your vision—as well as the goal setting, performance metrics, and milestone planning that will determine its progress. Our team supports you by identifying key areas where we can help you determine strategies that align your initial vision and benchmarks with changing financial and operational realities.”

Brame provides seven potential focus areas for refining your business roadmap.

1. Financial planning and capital structure advisory can create optimal debt-to-equity ratios, help maintain liquidity during periods of growth by assessing cash flow management, and enable you to structure working capital solutions during periods of scarce liquidity.
2. Growth strategy and expansion financing may enable you to maintain productivity while contemplating mergers and acquisitions or to pursue funding options for expansion.
3. Risk management and hedging strategies can help identify financial risks like currency volatility or interest rate spikes, potentially use derivative instruments like swaps and options to hedge against financial risk, and offer consistent monitoring and guidance for regulatory compliance.
4. Cash management services often help optimize cash flows with payables and receivables management and aid in the streamlining of liquidity oversight through the use of automated treasury systems.
5. Corporate investment and asset management can facilitate your company’s vision by allowing Truist to assist with managing your pension fund, retirement, and employee benefit packages. Additional services may include providing guidance on investing any surplus cash into structured products.
6. Fintech may increase companywide efficiency through smoother financial operations, which may include API-based banking solutions, ERP integrations, or automated payment processing.
7. Industry-specific insights can help calibrate your business development strategy to changes in the economy and your industry’s competitive landscape. Your relationship manager can help you explore sector-specific customized financial services and products.

Refinements in these areas should be revisited on a regular basis because if your roadmap doesn’t evolve at the same pace as the financial or industry landscape, it loses its value as a potential guide to success.

One challenge that organizations face is that investments in creating and maintaining a responsive business roadmap can potentially be in conflict with optimizing your company’s current profits and productivity. Having a trusted banking partner increases your capacity to balance both.

If opportunities or challenges present themselves to your current business development strategy, your team can provide crucial insights and advice, as well as help you prioritize and manage those unexpected circumstances. Your relationship manager can focus on the technical details and report back with analysis and potential solutions.

“If you’re transitioning into a new stage, we can help your business by monitoring for opportunities, offering customized solutions to emerging problems, and fostering cross-functional collaboration,” says Brame. “A commitment to ongoing communication enables our relationship managers to help keep your business development strategy flexible when inevitable changes occur, which helps you stay on course to achieve your goals—no matter what obstacles you may encounter.”