Business Planning
Business planning is often conducted when:
- Starting a new venture (organization, product or service)
- Expanding a current organization, product or service
- Buying a current organization, product or service
- Working to improve the management of a current organization,
product or service
There are a wide variety of formats for a business plan. The
particular format and amount of content included in a plan depends
on the complexity of the organization, product or service and
on the demands of those who will use the business plan to make
a decision, eg, an investor, funder, management, Board of Directors,
etc.
Overall, the contents of a business plan typically aim to:
- Describe the venture (new or current organization, product
or service), often including its primary features, advantages
and benefits
- What the organization wants to do with it (buy it, expand
it, etc.)
- Justification that the plans are credible (eg, results of
research that indicate the need for what the organization wants
to do)
- Marketing plans, including research results about how the
venture will be marketed (eg, who the customers will be, any
specific groups (or targets) of customers, why they need the
venture (benefits they seek from the venture), how they will
use the venture, what they will be willing to pay, how the venture
will be advertised and promoted, etc.)
- Staffing plans, including what expertise will be needed to
build (sometimes included in business plans) and provide the
venture on an ongoing basis
- Management plans, including how the expertise will be organized,
coordinated and led
- Financial plans, including costs to build the venture (sometimes
included in business plans), costs to operate the venture, expected
revenue, budgets for each of the first several years into the
future, when the venture might break-even (begin making more
money overall than it has cost), etc.
- Appendices (there are a wide variety of materials included
in appendices, eg, description of the overall organization, its
other products and/or services, its current staff, etc.)
Development of the business plan greatly
helps to clarify the organization’s plans and ensure that key
leaders are all "on the same script". Far more important
than the plan document, is the planning process itself.
MORE ABOUT BUSINESS
Accounting
Auctions
Bankruptcy
Business
Business-loan
Business-plan
Career
Copywriting
Credit
Credit-cards
Credit-repair
Currency-trading
Data-recovery
Debt-relief
Domain
ebay
ecommerce
Finance
Home-business
investment
lawyer
legal
paid-survey
resume
self-employment
small-business
trading
