For businesses, scenario planning enables decision-makers to identify potential outcomes and impacts, evaluate responses and manage both positive and negative possibilities. Scenario planning can provide a competitive advantage by enabling leaders to react quickly and decisively — because a situation has been thought through and actions documented, no one has to scramble when in the midst of a crisis.

Want to make sure your scenarios are planned accordingly? Here are 3 steps you can take to strengthen your scenario planning:

Identify critical triggers even in the midst of uncertainty: When faced with a crisis, finance leaders quickly establish guidelines for how the organization should respond by developing multiple scenarios. These scenarios are built on a set of assumptions around events that affect the survival of the organization and should trigger a series of actions.

In times of crisis, companies need to combine historical data with plausible outcomes to determine ramifications for each part of the organization. Scenario plans can give leaders breathing room to slow down and assess economic, political and environmental factors. These prioritized factors are a critical part of crisis scenarios.

Develop multiple scenarios, but keep it simple: When building multiple scenarios, it’s easy for finance teams to feel overwhelmed by the range of potential outcomes. How can anyone properly plan for so many possibilities? Simply put, you can’t. That’s why it’s best to keep it simple. Focus on two to three major uncertainties and build scenarios from there. Finance leaders need to prioritize and develop perspectives about each of the scenarios to help the company navigate.

Build a nimble response strategy: Each scenario should contain enough detail to assess the likelihood of the success or failure of different strategic options. Once this is all in place, finance leaders can create a framework that helps the executive team make decisions. Any decisions made need to be monitored in real-time so the team can be nimble in its ongoing response.