Posts Tagged ‘managing your business plan’
The Importance of Managing your Business Plan
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
One of the key points in any new business is having a business plan to get your company started. This allows you to see where your finances will be used, what markets are open to your product and service, how you’ll attract customers and much more. However, once your business is established, you shouldn’t just forget about your original business plan - indeed, you should continue to refer to it and change as necessary.
Since the business world evolves continuously, it’s more important than ever to be ready to face any new challenges that you might encounter. This is where managing your business plan effectively will come into its own.
Have Regular Reviews
To ensure that your business plan is current to your particular business needs and requirements, it’s an excellent idea to set up a regular review process. This can be monthly, bi-monthly or even quarterly - however, anything over that timescale is probably leaving it too long. You can carry out the review if you’re a sole proprietor, although having an external business analyst or specialist to look over it with you is a sensible idea. If your business has numerous employees, then your Senior Management should review the business plan.
Once you decide on the frequency of the review, it’s time to ensure that you have set agendas to discuss in the review. These should include:
* Review of previous/existing business plan
* Changes in strategy to future business plan
* Agree how long reviews should last
* Set result comparisons on how well your business plan is performing
Although these are just some of the basic steps you should be looking at when reviewing your current business plan, they’re often the most used as well, so it’s a good idea to make sure you include them when planning and carrying out your review.
Why You Need a Regular Review
When you first started your business, it’s more than likely that the market was very different from how it is now. Even if you’re fortunate enough to be in a particular niche where there’s very little competition, you can never rest on your laurels - too many businesses have failed this way.
This is why reviewing your business plan regularly is so important. As an example, think about how the Internet has changed the face of business. If you just have a business plan in place that only has plans on how to compete with local businesses, then your online competitors will soon leave you behind. So you need to make sure that your business plan is updated to not only take into account your offline bricks and mortar business needs, but also any online presence you have. It’s not difficult to maintain a business plan, but it’s extremely important for any real success to happen.
Tags: advice, business plans, danny brown, management, managing your business plan, tips, updating your business plan
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Putting Together a Business Plan for Your Online Business
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
A business plan is something that should be customized to your company, rather than using any old cookie-cutter plan; however, there are basic components to build your business plan around that you should not do without.
Executive Summary. The summary should include a review of the business, the impact, risks involved, contingencies, and any issues yet to be addressed. A market analysis, strategic and development plans for your business, sales forecasting for your market and your budget should follow the executive summary.
Market Analysis. This is imperative to any business plan, and should be written with the benefits of your specific target audience in mind. Specifically, a market analysis will include the target market, research performed on your target market, and forecast of the market.
Strategy and Development. When writing your business plan, you should always include a development and marketing strategy for your company, along with the company’s focus, the mission and objectives. You have to know where you want to go with the strategies on how to get there, or success will be harder to obtain.
Sales Forecast. The next critical piece of the online business plan is to forecast the sales, or benefits, of your website. Depending on your online business model, all organizations should have some type of business benefits, such as sales. Specifically, the target benefits could include increased customer satisfaction, lead generation, or community communication. Regardless, if the business is built on benefits or sales, the target benefits should be established by numbers and forecast for the future.
The means for tracking sales or benefits should be concrete and provide proper details, complete with a plan for determining actual versus planned analyses. The forecast is a bare minimum. The greater the detail the better your company’s chances are for success because you will be able to see where you were and where you need to go.
Budget. The last piece that must be included in a business plan is your budget. Again, enough detail should be included in order to track your progress and spending, month-by-month, and actual versus planned analysis. The type of information that should be included is specific development plans, both front end and back end, cost of programs used, and promotional costs.
All of this information should be formatted so that anyone, particularly a banker, can understand what type of online business you want to operate, how the market will support this type of business and your plans for obtaining customers-in essence, how are you going to run your business. Ensure to include a SWOT analysis with your plan: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your business. This will also give the bank the indication you are serious about succeeding.
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, larry Slusser, management, managing your business plan, writing a business plan
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