What does your Business Plan need to include?

Your business plan is a document that needs to be accurate and realistic. Your plan will detail everything that your business does, where is stands now, what you hope to achieve with your business, your target market, your unique selling point and all of your financial forecasts for your business. These are just a few of the aspects that you should cover within your business plan so that whoever is reading it can gain a clear understanding of everything that your business is and everything that your business focuses on.

A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about your organisation.

Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a business goal.

You also need to ensure that your business plan is up-dated on a regular basis as it is a living document, you need to make sure that when something changes within your business that it is documented within your business plan. This will allow you to keep track of your businesses development and will ensure that you know what is happening in your business from start to finish.

Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, and marketing, among others. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.

Within your business plan you should define your business position and your market. You need to outline your competitors and include any market research that you have conducted. You should be fully aware of your marketplace and understand the trends that happen within it. It is also a good idea to know what your competitor’s advantages and disadvantages are and then compare these to your own.

You need to think wisely about how to go about writing your business plan and ensure that you have covered all of the topics that you need to address within your plan. As well as this you should also consider the presentation of your business plan. You need to make sure that your plan is legible and wrote in an email friendly format so that if you do have to email your plan you can do. A cover and content page is also a good idea for your plan, which should include page numbers and section numbers. Once you have wrote your plan you should get at least two people to read through it to make sure that they understand it whilst checking the grammar and spelling.

Your business plan may seem like a complicated task but when you think about it, it is mainly common sense, just take your time with writing it and you will be fine.

Helen is the web master of Angel Start-ups, specialists in all aspects of writing and preparing Business Plans.

How to write a Business Plan

A business plan is essential to your business and must be realistic. It is a written statement of intent that describes your business, its objectives, strategies, market and financial forecasts.

Many people only see a business plan as a way of securing external finance for their business when in fact it should be used for so much more. There are so many benefits that a business plan can bring to your business, such as securing external finance but also for more personal business reasons such as helping you to spot potential pitfalls before they happen within your business, structuring the financial side of your business efficiently and focusing your development efforts as well as working as a measure of success within your business.

As well as helping you in many areas of your business your business plan is also wrote for a variety of potential audiences. There are many people that may want to look at your business plan; banks, investors, grant providers, anyone interested in buying your business and potential partners make up just a few of the people who may wish to see your business plan. It is because of this that you need to ensure that you outline everything about your business in a clear and simple manner. Remember the person who is reading your plan may not understand your business and the products, services or processes that your business is offering, due to this fact it is important to try and avoid using jargon and it is also a good idea to get someone who isn’t involved in your business, for example a friend or family member to read through sections of your business plan to make sure that they understand what your business is about and what it hopes to achieve.

Within your business plan you need to set out your vision for your new business, this includes who you are, what you do, what you have to offer and the market you want to address. You also need to include an overview of your business as well as describing your products or services. Some of the key areas of your business that you need to include are:

Your market, which includes its size, historical data about its development and key current issues
Your target customer base such as who they are and how you know they will be interested in your products or services
Your competitors including who they are, how they work and the share of the market they hold
The future, including anticipated changes in the market and how you expect your business and your competitors to react to them

Although your business plan needs to be used for more than financial forecasts, it is this area that remains the biggest within your business plan. In this section you need to translate what you’ve said about your business into numbers.

Your business plan needs to cover the next three years of your business but the first 12 months should contain the most detail.

If you are hoping to start up your own business it is essential that you start work on your business plan straight away to give yourself the best possible start.

Helen is the web master of Angel Start-ups, experts in all aspects of Business Plans.