Identification

• Planning comes in several forms: Meetings, contracts, budgets and written and oral reports are a few. In each form, the economic concerns of the project are raised and discussed.
  
  

Features

• Economic concerns of planning include one or more features, among them the project's feasibility and the company's expected short- and long-term growth, given variables such as cost and how to allocate precious resources including labor and capital. Alvin S. Goodman and Makarand Hastak, authors of the book, "Infrastructure Planning Handbook," state that legal and regulatory aspects are other economic considerations of planning.
  
  Economic planning reports, either written or oral, typically outline the present situation, expected changes and the long-term viability of the company. The reports sometimes address the departments' different economic concerns in the planning process. For example, accounting will include markedly different concerns than the research and development department will.
  
  

Benefits

• Outlining the economic issues during the planning process helps governments and organizations preempt any hurdles that might need overcoming. For instance, a store purveying luxurious purses engages in economic planning to assess how much cash must be on hand to weather an economic downturn. Similarly, a planning report also assists departments with making better decisions.
  
  Different departments yield benefits from thorough economic planning as well. For example, the finance department of a car company may draft an economic planning report predicting a rise in the price of rubber. The purchasing department can then use this economic consideration to purchase a less expensive alternative while design personnel can limit the amount of rubber used in the production of newer models.
  
  

Considerations: Risk

• A primary economic consideration in planning is preempting the level of risk of engaging in a certain business activity. Some businesses such as those in the medical, transportation, natural gas or oil industries are more sensitive to risk than others. These concerns and others use economic modeling and statistical tools to determine if the potential gains are worth the level of risk.
  
  

Considerations: Cost

• Cost is another economic consideration of the planning process. Though every business wishes for unlimited resources, the reality is that the planning process includes sacrifice. Departments typically draft proposals outlining the needs of the group and wait for the delegation of the resources.
  
  Planning typically includes listing best-case and worst-case scenarios. A best-case scenario might be getting financed from a bank and a large number of investors, whereas a worst-case occurrence might be a hard-hitting recession.