Special thanks to Computers Unlimited (David Schaer), CM2 Incorporated (Kevin Falconer) and Norris Cylinders (Jessie Strong and Michael Rollins) for their insights and contributions.
In this ever-changing business landscape of technological advancements and regional/global disruptions, strategic planning has become essential for businesses seeking to navigate these uncertainties. While historically viewed as an inflexible, long-term process, strategic planning has evolved significantly in recent years. Several key trends have emerged in this space including more frequent review cycles, broader use of data-driven analytics, increased focus on resilience and sustainability, and tighter integration with day-to-day implementation to more effectively drive organizational success. In Deloitte’s 2026 Human Capital Trends report, the firm shared that
Successful organizations are shifting to continuous, agile (strategic) planning, as 7 in 10 leaders prioritize speed and adaptability…. and 60% of boards identify execution oversight as their top priority.
Accordingly, we will take a deeper look at the influence of technology on strategic planning trends and share best practices that have emerged from different segments of the industrial gases industry. This article was also published in Gasworld magazine’s US Edition in their July issue.
Definition
The term “strategic planning” can have a wide range of meanings, so for this article we will use the Balanced Scorecard Institute’s definition of “the ongoing, structured process of defining an organization’s long-term direction, setting priorities, and allocating resources to achieve specific goals.” The definition continues with “translating a company’s vision into actionable, measurable steps—often documented in a strategic plan—to ensure alignment across departments and to facilitate adaptation to market changes.” While planning horizons vary widely, most organizations operate on a three-to-five-year timeframe, although this window is gradually shortening due to continued market volatility.
Trends
One of the shifting trends in this space is the time horizon of the strategic plan. For many organizations, a three-to-five-year strategic plan timeline balances ambition and vision with the ability to remain agile. This time horizon has historically been used by the Industrial Gas (IG) Majors and other businesses within the industry, largely due to their capital intensity and the long-term nature of customer and business relationships. However, among smaller businesses and other segments within the IG industry, there has been a shift to shorter-term planning due to current market volatility, as well as a desire to distinguish themselves in the marketplace and be more nimble and able to shift direction quickly to meet customer needs.
Another trend is the increasing use of AI-powered research, monitoring, and analytics. Organizations are increasingly leveraging AI beyond the traditional operations, sales and marketing, and creative ideation areas of their businesses, to enhance elements of their strategic plans. By 2026, 80% of high-growth firms expect AI to be central to their strategy and transformation efforts, according to Forrester. AI enables real-time scenario planning and sophisticated risk assessment, helping leaders adapt quickly to changing conditions.
Organizational resilience and risk management are now at the forefront of strategy and transformation planning. Organizations are building resilience into their strategies to withstand shocks and disruptions, whether from global crises or industry-specific risks. Scenario planning, stress testing, and crisis simulation are becoming standard practices. The pandemic highlighted the value of supply chain diversification, prompting many companies to reexamine their vulnerabilities. According to Accenture, 68% of leaders list resilience as a top transformation goal for 2026 and beyond.
Another key trend influencing strategic planning, alongside virtually every aspect of business, is the impact of digital transformation. With the continuing rise of these technologies (i.e., AI, data/analytics, IoT, automation, e-commerce, etc.) organizations are harnessing these tools to gain deeper insights, identify emerging trends, and make data-driven decisions more quickly and frequently. Digital transformation has revolutionized the way strategic planning is approached, enabling organizations to gather real-time information and respond swiftly to market changes.
These evolving trends are reshaping how companies’ approach both strategic planning and the execution of their plans. To illustrate these shifts, we now take a deeper look at three companies across different segments of the industrial gas industry and explore how their approach to strategy has evolved.
Software & Solutions
Computers Unlimited (CU) has been operating in the North America industrial gases market for over forty-five (45) years and has grown to become one of the leading providers of ERP and related products/services to the US distributor market. It also has a strong presence in the Home Medical Equipment (HME/DME) market.
With respect to strategy, CU’s approach has historically been focused on 1–2-year timeframes but acknowledges that their strategy evolves and is not static due to market/customer feedback. Their core philosophy is one that has emphasis on making the right decisions incrementally, maintaining product/service flexibility and course correcting as needed.
Our approach is driven by a simple principle, combine deep industry expertise with practical innovation to help customers navigate change and position themselves for future success.
— David Schaer, President Computers Unlimited
Technology is an enabler of strategic planning and execution, not the strategy itself. While AI has introduced new opportunities for efficiency and insight, it has not fundamentally changed our direction. What it has done is improve clarity, accelerate execution, and help organizations focus on the initiatives that drive the greatest business value.
At CU, they see technology and AI as tools that strengthen decision-making, enhance operational visibility, and improve organizational alignment. Ultimately, technology has enabled greater velocity and cadence in how businesses plan, adapt, and execute — turning responsiveness and agility into meaningful strategic advantages.
Independent Distributor
CM2 Incorporated (CM2) is a leading independent distributor formed by the merger of two large family-owned businesses, Central MacGowan and Minneapolis Oxygen in 2025. Their geographic footprint covers ~24 locations across the upper Midwest (IA, KS, MN, MO, ND, SD, WI) making them one of the largest players in the region. Post merger and acquisition, the company has focused on unifying their brand structure (with the launch of CM2 Supply and other product lines) with a clear and aligned vision, mission, and values maintaining the focus on the customer paramount.
Strategic planning and execution are also an area that has gone through the process of alignment. CM2 Supply’s approach to strategy is one that is more of a “continuous” strategy, which is dynamic and proceeds through iterative improvement cycles. More specifically, they utilize a 90-Day Execution cadence where the annual goals are broken into quarterly (90-day) priorities that are reviewed and adjusted, enabling faster adaptation to new data and continuous course correction. And obviously this cascades down to an operational level where there is weekly operating rhythm driven by performance metrics and understanding what is working and not working, creating a real-time feedback loop between execution and strategy.
The companies that win in the future will be the ones that can align people, make decisions quickly, and adapt without losing sight of who they are. We believe strategy is not an event or a one-off meeting, it’s a commitment to continuous execution, learning, and improvement.
— Kevin Falconer of CM² Supply.
From a technology perspective, data-driven decision making has been the big enhancement to the process thus far. More and more data is available for these weekly/quarterly reviews, accelerating decision cycles and driving more frequent strategic adjustments. In addition to data/analytics, AI integration in planning has also begun with use cases in budgeting and forecasting with expected results of higher forecast accuracy and broader organizational trust in the data.
Cylinder Manufacturer
The Norris Cylinder Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of TriMas Corporation, is one of the last remaining – and effectively the only – domestic manufacturer of forged steel high-pressure cylinders in the United States. With more than 70 years of operational history, the company serves as a critical supplier to both the major industrial gas suppliers and independent distributors. Although steel cylinders have been around for over 125 years, they continue to be used in virtually every end-market and remain an integral component of the gas delivery system for many manufacturing processes.
Given its long history in the industry, Norris Cylinder has experienced many business cycles and recognizes the importance of strategic planning and execution in weathering those cycles. Its approach is anchored in a three-to-five-year planning horizon and supported by a strong reliance on data-driven insights. The company’s core philosophy might be best described as “Better Data = Better Strategy.” It is reflected in its use of key inputs such as CRM-driven (customer demand) data and voice-of-customer (VOC) analytics, some of which are AI-enabled. Together these capabilities have led to deeper customer insights, faster and more confident decision-making, and more structured, effective execution.
Norris Cylinder also acknowledges that their plans have become less static and are now more continuously adjusted based on real-time market data, customer demand shifts, and macroeconomic volatility.
Although our core mission remains the unchanging bedrock of everything we do, in today’s fast changing world, we have shifted our strategic planning to happen more frequently, embracing greater agility and flexibility. This allows us to respond swiftly and proactively to changing market conditions and customer needs.
— Michael Rollins, VP Sales & Marketing at Norris Cylinders
The increased availability of real-time data has enabled more granular and detailed planning across commercial, operational, and technical teams, while strengthening the integration between strategy with execution. This alignment enables faster and more confident course correction when needed, while reducing the risk of surprises and misalignment.
Best Practices
Based on these insights along with broader industry trends, several best practices emerge for companies looking to improve their planning and execution processes.
- Continuous vs Static Planning – All three organizations treated strategic planning as an ongoing operational process rather than a once-per-year (or less frequent) exercise. The specific practices were frequent reassessment of market conditions, dynamic adjustment of priorities, greater use of operational data for real-time decision-making, and cross-functional strategy reviews.
- Data First Strategy – Almost every business process and technology platform states that “data” is a critical success factor, and strategic planning and execution are no different. The quality, availability and completeness of the data extracted from “internal systems” are critical to ensuring accurate real-time operational monitoring, KPI-driven management, and data-informed decision making, that help the organizations deliver on budgets and forecasts generated by the planning process.
Good strategy depends on good information. We want to turn operational data into actionable insight, so we can make better and quicker decisions, solve problems, and adapt to changing conditions. Data only becomes valuable when it creates clarity and drives execution.
— Kevin Falconer of CM² Supply.
- Invest in Automation for Strategic Flexibility – Every business continues to invest in automation as an enabler of operational improvement and enhance its ability to meet customer expectations. It also requires investment in the “right” AI-enabled tools (for your specific business) not only to process large volumes of data, but also to help companies identify patterns, better understand market behavior, and anticipate scenarios with increasing levels of accuracy. Strategy is increasingly being tied directly to capital allocation and technology, so if there is “no clear and thought-out strategy,” there will likely be “limited or no funding” for capital investment and technology.
In operational environments, AI is most valuable when it enhances visibility, improves forecasting, and enables faster, data-driven decisions. Best practices focus on integrating AI into everyday workflows in ways that are practical, scalable, and measurable.
— David Schaer, President Computers Unlimited
We use AI to make sharper more confident decisions to support our overall capital execution strategy. This allows us to continuously pressure test strategic vision within an ever changing, dynamic market.
— Jessie Strong, CEO Norris Cylinders
- Execution Discipline – The quality and discipline of a company’s execution is viewed as more important than having overly complex strategic plans. More specifically, execution discipline matters as much as strategy itself. The focus is on establishing clear accountability structures, operational KPI tracking, and incremental operational improvements, with a regular and consistent cadence that reliably drives outcomes and results consistently.
- Resilience & Scenario Planning – It is clear that high performing businesses continue to demonstrate heightened focus on resilience due to ongoing supply chain volatility, labor constraints, and changing market conditions. Many companies excel at analyzing what has already occurred, such as last quarter’s or last years’ performance, but are less effective at anticipating what is coming next. Successful companies have flipped this, spending less time explaining the past and more time preparing for multiple possible futures. They track weak signals, leading indicators such as economic indices, shifts in competitor activities or hiring patterns and emerging regulatory discussions bolstered by AI-enhanced analytics. They see trends before they become obvious and respond.
Closing
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, strategic planning continues to play a crucial role in the success of organizations. In recent years, there has been a noticeable shift towards modern strategy planning which embraces agility, flexibility, and adaptability. Organizations are realizing the importance of continuously monitoring and adjusting their strategies to stay relevant and seize new opportunities. The companies that are able to do this effectively and faster than their peers are able to secure more than their fair share of the market. Is your business actively strengthening and upskilling its strategic planning capabilities?
