The below video and related article should help entreprenuers, start-ups and early stage businesses better understand what is needed to write an effective business plan.
Business Plan Overview: Business plans are required for various reasons. The most common of these reasons are:
* Fund raising
* Bank require it
* Internal purposes
Would you drive to Scotland without knowing how to get there? Would you build a house without planning it? Therefore why would you engage in a business without knowing how you are going to achieve your objectives.
The business plan will not only help you to define your overall objectives, it should also help you consider in detail what is required to achieve these objectives. Or perhaps allow you to consider if the objectives are realistic.
Business Plan Structure
The starting point is always your objectives.
No two business plans will be the same, so it is impossible to prescribe exactly how each business plan should be structured but this structure should accommodate most situations. Below should give you a structure to work with.
(a) Executive Summary - outlining the main objectives and describing the key aspects from the overall plan.
(b) Customers - Who are your customers and what customers would you like to attract.
(c) Competition - who are the competition and what appears to be their strengths and weaknesses.
(d) Suppliers - who are your key suppliers and are they supporting your business adequately and can they continue to do so.
(e) Marketing - How do you intend to reach your customers and what resources you need to do this.
(f) Human Resource - who are the key management and staff and what are their skill sets. What are their weaknesses and what new recruits will be appointed to fill any gaps.
(g) Operations - Do the processes that you currently have support the changes that you are looking to implement. If not, what needs to be implemented.
(h) Financial - This section must translate all your thoughts, goals and objectives into financial terms. This needs to be in the format of a detailed profit and loss account, balance sheet and cashflow.
Do you need to consider the regulatory or legal framework?
Finalising the Business Plan
Once you have completed your business plan, you should be a lot clearer about what is required to achieve your objectives.
You should monitor your performance regularly against the financial business plan. Where you are going adrift will allow you to decide what is required to get back on track, or potentially will prompt you to consider to change your objectives and rework your plan.
Wisteria can assist you to put a plan together. For many clients we have spent quality time discussing the issues and formulating the plan together, to help our clients be very clear as to what is required to achieve their objectives.
For more immediate Business plans support go to the Business plans web page.
