There are many important elements to consider when
developing a business plan for your company, but the first step is to fully
understand the main uses of a business-plan.
A well-crafted Business Plan is a written document that:
- Drives tactical planning and management tool for
your business, often done on an annual basis - You can use in your search for external financing
- Shows the capacity of your team to control and
manage all the aspects of the company - Enables you to identify new ideas to refine your business
or take it in a new direction
Should you call in a consultant or write the Business Plan by
yourself?
The owner (in a small company) or the management
team should be the main author of a business-plan, because the Business Plan
is, so to speak, your own “baby”, it is a reflection of your
personality; it is by this means that your investors will discover the person
with whom they collaborate.
But your project may be too important and you may
want to call in a consultant for help and consultation. Even so, you should stay in control of its
development!
Tips for developing a quality business-plan
- To be credible, a business-plan must be coherent and each
parameter in the plan must be based on facts. - Define what your Mission
is. Your mission is what you’ll seek to
achieve within 12 to 18 months. You
can’t change the world in that time frame, but you can accomplish a lot. The better you define where you are going,
the better your chances of getting there will be. - Once you have your mission defined, identify the most critical
things that need to happen to get you there.
We call these Critical Goal
Categories. - For each Critical Goal Category, identify the specific Goals that need to be accomplished
during the plan period. This process
will be the heart of your plan and will logically lead to the Action Plan, a listing of concrete
steps that will be executed in order to ensure the success of the plan. You’ll need to identify both who will be
responsible for each action step as well as when it will be done. - Finally, comes the Budget which is the result of the all of the
other work embodied in the plan. The calculation of the costs of the planned
actions and the resulting revenue in your Business Plan are essential and make
overall financial projections possible. - The last point and certainly not the least significant: A
Business Plan is never ended “once and for all”. A regular follow-up
and comparison between the theoretical Business Plan and the reality of its
execution are essential. This should happen at least once a quarter. You can then modify your Business Plan and
adapt it to improve performance and achieve your goals.