The main stages of working on a business plan are the following:
1. First of all you need to determine the sources of the necessary information. They are in plenty: management and business planning manuals; state documents; information from firms that deal with management consultation; different branch publications; strategy and other documents; information of audit firms.
2. The next stage is goal’s determination. You can be guided by problems that must be solved.
3. Then you have to determine specific addressee (future stockholders, commercial banks, venture enterprises).
4. The following stage is a document structure determination.
5. You know already what to do. Now you need to collect the necessary information for all parts of the business plan. It is Important to enlist the support of people who have experience and knowledge about working on business plans. They may be members of your own team, outside advisers (in financial forecasting and marketing investigation fields), and management advisers.
After a short characteristic of business plan general structure and business summary, you have to draw attention to the most important parts of this document. One of them is “Description of products (services) offered customers”. Future investors’ interest is not only general information on the product but also its wrapping, design, qualities, extent of protection, price ground and so on. It is expedient to describe existed defects and ways to get rid of them. Put emphasis on the difference between services which exists on the market and the ones you plan to offer. Marketing launch and sales increasing directly depends on how unique properties your product or service has.
One of the most important components of the business plan is the market research and characteristic of field’s state. You should make up a conclusion about market requirements, which will be met by your product or service. You can produce sales statistic, customers’ classification, how much products are or may be consumed annually. You can also make an overview of the international market, if your product can pretend to it. In such case you have to view sales volume of your products in the international market during the last 5 years, what factors have impact on sales (legislation, politics, and demography situation), how raise competitive capacity of your products.
Even if your enterprise is only producer and seller of such products, it can also face with competition. New producers as well as substitutes can become your business rivals. There are some specific methods and strategies applied in competition, but before you’ll take a decision which one you would like to use, answer some questions:
What is the better way of the strategy’s realization?
Is the business reorganization required?
What is the financial structure needed to realize the strategy?
Is it realistic to raise revenue without changes in current competitive capacity of your business?
At the same time you have to assess possible actions of rivals in return and its probability.
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