Bring in your strategic plan

Hierdie inhoud is nog nie in jou taal beskikbaar nie.

You don’t type your strategic plan into VirgilTrack. You upload the plan document, and VirgilTrack’s AI reads it for you: its years, themes, objectives, KPIs, initiatives and budgets. A person then checks the result and approves it.

Before you start

Have the plan as a PDF. VirgilTrack asks for a PDF, and a PDF works best.
Set up your departments first. Every initiative must belong to one of your organisation’s departments before the plan can be approved. See Departments.
Agree who will bring the plan in. VirgilTrack shows the upload page to anyone who opens Execution while your organisation has no strategic plan. Approving the plan makes it the organisation’s active plan, so the CEO, or someone the CEO trusts with it, should do this.
Set aside some time. Reading a plan takes a few minutes. Reviewing it afterwards takes longer, because you check every objective.

Upload the plan

Open Execution from the menu on the left.

The page Strategy Execution & Management opens, with a large upload box under Get started in minutes.
Drag your PDF onto the box that says [ Drop Strategic Plan as PDF Here ], or select the box and choose the file.
Select Begin Upload. The button becomes available once you have chosen a file.

A message, “Reading your strategic plan”, tells you that this takes a few minutes and that you can keep working.

Follow the reading

While VirgilTrack reads your plan, the page shows its progress: a bar with the percentage done, the time it has taken, and what it is doing now. It works through five steps, ticking each one off as it finishes:

Open the document
List every objective, KPI and initiative
Read each objective in detail
Check the reading against the document until nothing changes
Prepare it for your review

During the reading and checking steps, a small tile appears for each objective, labelled with the plan’s own objective code where it has one. Point at a tile to see where that objective is, for example “being read”, “matches the document” or “has points left for you to decide”.

You don’t have to stay on the page. You can leave it, or work elsewhere in VirgilTrack. When you come back to Execution, you see the reading’s progress again.

What happens next

When the reading is done, the page says “Your strategic plan is ready for your review”, and the review opens. If you are elsewhere in VirgilTrack, a message, “Your strategic plan is ready for review”, offers Review it now or Later.
Nothing is saved as a plan yet. What was read waits as a draft until someone reviews and approves it. See Review and approve an imported plan.
Anyone who opens Execution before the plan is approved sees the draft’s review, ready to carry on where it was left.

What VirgilTrack takes from your plan

When the plan is approved, VirgilTrack saves:

the plan’s title, start and end dates, and its years;
its themes, and the objectives under each theme;
each objective’s KPIs, with their baselines, a target for each year, and any actual results you entered in the review;
each objective’s initiatives, with their responsible department and their budget for each year;
the strategic issues each objective addresses, and the national or global framework goals the plan links it to, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, when VirgilTrack knows that framework;
its stakeholders and their commitments, and its critical success factors;
the risks the plan describes. These go to the Risk Repository as suggestions, marked Strategic AI Suggestion, so your departments can copy them into their registers. See The risk repository.

If something goes wrong

What you see	Why	What to do
“The plan couldn’t be imported”, with Upload again	The plan couldn’t be read. The message under the title says why, for example “The strategic plan couldn’t be read. Please try again; if it keeps failing, contact your administrator.”	Select Upload again and try once more. If it keeps failing, check that the file is the plan itself as a PDF, then contact your VirgilTrack administrator.
Begin Upload stays grey	No file has been chosen yet.	Drag the PDF onto the box, or select the box and choose the file.
You see an earlier plan’s review instead of the upload box	A plan that was read earlier is still waiting for review.	Review and approve it, or select Discard to throw it away and upload again. See Review and approve an imported plan.