 |
Excerpted from:
Business Plan Development: The business planning process |
A good business plan lays out what you want to do
**
A better plan details how you will do it
**
A great plan explains why
-
The market and technical feasibility studies seek to validate that you in fact have an opportunity at hand, and lays out in detail how the idea constitute an opportunity. Feasibility studies are effective reality checks to test whether or not your solution to the market demand is indeed technically possible, and if the market is willing to pay enough to make it worth your while.
-
The Market opportunity analysis is a tool that is used to verify initial findings from a market feasibility study. It can often be useful to do additional third-party market research, interviews, and formal and informal focus groups.
-
The business plan should clearly point out that you are capable of taking advantage of the opportunity at hand, and that you will succeed at it.
-
Presentations are a way to more succinctly transmit the information contained in the plan, but should not deviate from the plan in any way. Every presentation should be customized to fit the audience, but inconsistencies between the plan and the presentation can prove to be very costly. Keep presentations to about 15-20 minutes, if possible.
-
A brief is a one-page description of your business plan that you can use to develop your elevator pitch.
-
The Operational Plan is a detailed document on how to run and grow the business. This plan should include as much specifics as possible about your plans, so that you can refer to it to retrieve the background data when required. The operational plan is
normally a more comprehensive compilation of your work during the business plan development process.
Why develop a business plan? Here are some reasons for developing a plan and various ways to use it:
| Purposes of a Business Plan | Company Development Stage |
| Discover and evaluate new business opportunities | Evaluation |
| Estimate and reduce business risk Develop and coordinate business strategies Secure funding |
Planning and preparation |
| Secure lease agreements Personnel planning Committing service providers Develop marketing material |
Start-up |
| Establishing Strategic Alliances Secure lines of credit Monitor progress in sales, personnel resources, and cash Develop proposals Execute exit strategies |
Operations |
Additional uses. The following are some additional uses of the business plan for companies that update their plan regularly:
|
Additional uses of a business plan |
Provide verbiage for:
|
|
Provide structured goals to monitor progress in:
|
|
Provide in-depth knowledge of your cost structure for:
|
Keeping an eye on:
|
