The CIMA World Conference is now about to start and I am pleased to say that it will see the official launch of a report that I have blogged about a few times already this year.  It's on the theme of long-term business sustainability.

Adopting a long-term approach is critical to creating sustainable businesses that are successful and that contribute more to society overall. An excessively short-term approach is considered to have been a contributing factor to the financial crisis.A long-term approach is a common thread that applies to companies around the world that have found ways to thrive despite experiencing constant change in the conditions in which they operate.

The report Building world-class businesses for the long-term: challenges and opportunities focuses on the issue that for most businesses there is a tension between being able to juggle the long-term and the short-term effectively. A company’s actions must always have the long-term in mind, but the difficulty lies in articulating this approach in a practical way so that organisations can be sure that what they are doing in the here and now is helping and not hindering long-term success.

To start with, companies should differentiate between what is known as the long-term perspective and a long-term planning horizon. The long-term perspective provides a view of the future that guides the company many years ahead. A planning horizon is practical and while it should allow for radical thinking, it should not be so long-term as to be abstract. This is where traditional strategic thinking can prove invaluable; as it can create a hierarchy of ideas to support an organisation’s thinking from high-level purpose or perspective to five to 10 year strategic goals through to short-term operational actions.

In addition, companies need to be factoring in a wide-range of issues that will have a real impact on future prosperity– climate change, population growth and loss of biodiversity, for example. Companies that can adapt to future uncertainty and plan for this type of change will undoubtedly have an edge over their competitors.

There are a range of tools that can be used to facilitate the creation of sustainable business models and to help ensure that key performance indicators are properly aligned with long-term goals.  These include the balanced scorecard and the CIMA Strategic Scorecard™. The report also highlights key aspects of the business model on which the organisation should focus:

 ·         attracting and retaining customers;

·         a motivated and skilled workforce;

 ·         durability of the supply chain;

·         innovation;

·         cost leadership.

The report features a series of case studies to illustrate how a number of companies have tackled these five areas. These include: InterfaceFLOR, Li & Fung, Tesco, SABMiller and Tata.  To provide practical guidance, the CIMA Workshop section provides some ideas for action based on the themes of the report. This is supplemented with a downloadable checklist that we are just finalising with a view to putting it on the CIMA website (my fault for the delay - preparing for the launch of the joint venture with the AICPA is taking up a lot of time at the moment!) We also signpost readers to the large range of CIMA CPD resources available to explore some of the topics covered.