7/10/2026 | 12 Minute Read
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This is a quarterly newsletter courtesy of Service Leadership Inc.®, a ConnectWise company.
Many businesses reach a point in their existence when there is a realization that stagnation as a result of missed growth goals requires completely overhauling how business planning and operations have been approached. A common and effective solution is adopting a strategic planning system to help:
These systems are designed to ensure strategy isn’t just discussed, but is executed. While going through this process, it is invaluable to have good data, relevant guidance, and tools available that help ensure each step in the process is as successful as possible. Service Leadership offerings such as the Service Leadership Index® benchmarking, Solution Provider Value Creation Planner, and SLIQ™ tools offer unparalleled insight into objectively measuring performance, operational maturity, as well as professional guidance on the improvements that will make the biggest impact on your business. But these tools in and of themselves are not strategic planning frameworks; they are designed to be complementary. Together with a strategic planning system framework, the Service Leadership toolset forms a powerful combination that fuels the performance of best-in-class IT solution providers through faster, more profitable business growth and, most importantly, value creation.
We’ll outline how the Service Leadership toolset can be used alongside a strategic planning system. By aligning a strategic planning system with Service Leadership’s tools, organizations can maximize the value of both.
Strategic planning methodologies have been around for decades and generally share a high-level model. There are many examples of strategic planning systems, such as Gazelles (now rebranded as Scaling Up), StratOp®, and, currently, the most popular one used by MSPs is the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS). The proliferation of business consultants in the industry using these systems in their coaching and consulting practices is a strong illustration of how beneficial strategic planning systems have been for providing structure and accountability to business owners and executives.
Although the landscape of strategic planning systems is wide and varied, there is a rough outline that informs the elements of each and serves as a helpful model for broadly illustrating how they come together to form the whole. We have identified eight elements that underlie just about every strategic planning system, and within each of these elements are key activities that are found in some form across the various models.
| Phase | Key Activities |
| 1. Environmental Analysis |
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| 2. Vision and Mission Clarification |
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| 3. Goal Setting |
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| 4. Strategy Formulation |
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| 5. Operational Planning |
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| 6. Implementation |
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| 7. Monitoring and Control |
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| 8. Evaluation and Adjustment |
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Phases 5-8 in the table above are typically operationalized in 90-day cycles, and align to SLIQ and Service Leadership Index, as follows:
| Service Leadership Tool | Planning System Phase Alignment | 90 Day Key Activities |
| SLIQ |
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| S-L Index |
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Phases 1 and 4 generally are re-evaluated on longer cycles, often annually or biannually, and have a downstream impact on the subsequent phases. Collectively, the phases and the capabilities of the Service Leadership toolset form a powerful combination that is invaluable for helping IT solution provider owners, leadership teams, and stakeholders overcome their growth and scaling challenges through a strong alignment of strategic planning and operational execution.
The Service Leadership Index® benchmark and SLIQ™ are the core tool offerings in the Service Leadership toolset. Additionally, we will explore the Solution Provider Value Creation Planner, a tool provided within SLIQ.
1 SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. PESTLE stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental.
The Solution Provider Value Creation Planner (VCP) tool is an implementation asset associated with the Value Creation Strategy OML trait, within SLIQ. The Value Creation Strategy OML trait is foundational for providing the clarity and alignment needed for effective business planning. An effective value creation strategy should answer three questions:
The VCP tool is designed to help IT solution provider shareholders (owners) streamline answering those three questions by providing some definition of how large (in revenue and number of customers) the business must be to meet the value creation goals of the shareholders.
In relation to the strategic planning phases outlined above, the VCP tool aligns closely with
For many entrepreneurs, the genesis of starting a business often is the desire to have the economic freedom of “being one’s own boss.” The reality of being a business owner is that being your own boss is almost always a tougher, more complex proposition than initially thought, and compounds over time as the business grows and scales. The daily grind of running a business can easily lead to a loss of focus on the initial vision and mission that birthed the business, creating a misalignment between those founding principles and ongoing business operations. Virtually all business planning system frameworks begin with vision and mission, goal setting, and strategy formulation as their initial focus areas because aligning those three elements provides the clarity from which all the remaining planning elements cascade and greatly increases the likelihood of success.
The VCP tool is a powerful starting point for validating growth goals and projections. By using this tool, ownership and leadership teams are better-equipped to have more realistic planning conversations, increasing the likelihood of achieving their desired operational and financial outcomes. The VCP tool acts as a scenario analysis tool that focuses on three key elements:
With minimal data inputs, the VCP tool acts as a lightweight scenario analysis tool that is a powerful starting point for IT solution provider owners and leadership teams to validate growth goals and projections. The result is better, more realistic planning conversations that inform and influence the subsequent phases in the chosen strategic planning system framework and ultimately an increase in the probability of achieving their desired operational and financial outcomes.
For far too many IT solution providers, the measuring stick for what constitutes “good” financial performance is little more than validating there is more cash in the checking account from one month to the next and/or some month-to-month or year-over-year growth in revenue (however large or small). While improvements in any of those can certainly be deemed “progress,” what is missing is validation of the strength of that progress, along with details and guidance on potential adjustments to improve the business's financial performance.
The goal of the Service Leadership Index® (S-L Index) benchmarking platform is to give IT solution provider owners and leadership teams the insights needed to understand and improve their financial performance. Moreover, S-L Index compares the individual company performance to the overall industry average and the top 25% most profitable participants, known as the best-in-class, for each of the ten predominant business models (PBM2).
2 More details on predominant business models are available here.
For each PBM, there are unique financial and operational drivers that underpin best-in-class performance. Categorizing benchmarking participants with their associated PBM provides a clearer picture of how similar companies compare and where to focus on driving financial and operational performance. Each quarter, participants can see how their individual company performance compares to the:
The red, yellow, and green “stoplighting” as shown in the above graphic visually illustrates the “health” of various ratios based on the following definitions:
The various reports and dashboards in S-L Index eliminate the guesswork and time spent finding and analyzing comparatives to measure what good looks like. Utilizing the S-L Index benchmarking, in tandem with a strategic planning system, greatly simplifies tracking, auditing financial performance against financial KPIs, and serves as a helpful influence in goal setting, enabling executives to make more informed planning decisions as they set goals and focus on execution and achieving those goals.
Service Leadership developed the concept of Operational Maturity Level™ (OML) as a powerful yet easy-to-understand means of objectively measuring the management capabilities of IT solution provider companies. Over Service Leaderships’ 20+ years of evaluating IT solution providers, OML has proven to be the strongest predictor of profitability, service quality, and enterprise valuation. Simply put, OML is a measurement that reflects the degree of skill management has in applying best practices in disciplined strategy, operational excellence, and people-first leadership in operating a company.
The core benefit of any strategic business planning system focuses mostly on “how” to drive alignment between strategy and operations through structured, iterative planning and execution cycles. Understanding the specific details of “what” needs to be done to drive alignment and results often requires domain expertise from 3rd-party consultants or coaches. For many organizations, the high dollar cost of that expertise is a high financial burden, and the guidance given is not all equally valuable. This reality is exactly what inspired the creation and development of SLIQ to democratize access to Service Leadership’s high-quality operational expertise for IT solution providers.
The OML traits within SLIQ are the fundamental components that every IT solution provider must focus on to build a strong, sustainable, and high-performing business. The OML (self) assessment covers 40 to 50 OML traits (varies by PBM), providing a point-in-time reflection of the business’s OML across six Functional Areas: Sales, Strategy, Service, Compensation, Financial, and Security and Compliance. The result of the OML assessment is a detailed, prioritized progression plan for all OML traits. Aligning the Action plan with a strategic planning system framework accelerates the timeline of moving from planning to action, delivering faster business performance improvement.
| SLIQ Function | Planning System Phase Alignment |
| OML Assessment |
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| OML Action Plan |
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Some of the clearest and most objective data you can inject into your strategic planning can come from Service Leadership tools. Do not view your strategic planning system as a single list of priorities you need to maintain, and Service Leadership as another list of priorities. Instead, the better practice is to utilize the Service Leadership tools to inform your strategy, prioritization, and measurements within your strategic planning system.
S-L Index benchmarking and SLIQ both naturally complement strategic planning systems by providing the objective data and continuous improvement engine that feeds the 90‑day operating rhythm. Most strategic planning systems create discipline through a quarterly cadence—resetting priorities, reviewing results, and translating long-term vision into short-term execution every 90 days—while S-L Index benchmarking provides the external “truth” of how you’re performing against best-in-class peers, and SLIQ translates those gaps into prioritized actions. Together, they turn strategic planning systems from a planning framework into a performance system: the system defines the process to follow each quarter, and S-L Index and SLIQ define where to improve and how to win, ensuring every quarterly check-in is grounded in data, aligned to industry benchmarks, and driving measurable gains in operational maturity and profitability.
For benchmarking, we have the long-running Service Leadership Index, and for smaller businesses, the new Benchmarking Essentials product delivers a streamlined benchmarking experience that requires fewer than 40 data inputs.
SLIQ leads you and your team through an OML assessment of your entire business. It then builds an Action Plan which prioritizes which traits you should focus on, in order of ROI, for maximum improvement. Guidance on how to proceed for each trait and each maturity level is provided as well.
The Service Leadership Profitability Bundle is a monthly subscription to the full suite of Service Leadership solutions, including:
Lastly, the Service Leadership tools are used extensively within our peer group offerings. OML groups focus primarily on OML and EBITDA improvement, and the IT Nation Evolve peer groups focus on OML and EBITDA improvement, as well as a more holistic approach to business planning and improvement. Added IT Nation Evolve components include building leaders and managers, balancing your business with family and life considerations, and more.
Beyond the value of relationships and community, peer group memberships also include the S-L Index benchmarking, SLIQ, and the Annual Profitability Report mentioned above, all of which are used to help you grow your business.
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