How to write a successful business plan? Part 01

How to write a successful business plan? (Part 01)

If you are on the path of starting a new business, business expansion, attracting new investors to the company, processing a bank loan, or registration with statutory bodies, you may have requested to submit a Business Plan.

The simple meaning is there in the words. Yes! it is a plan of your business.

Then there may be several WH questions for you.

Why do we need a business plan?

What are the information need to include?

How to arrange the information?

This article is to answer all your questions and to tell you how to prepare a professional, comprehensive business plan for your requirement.

1). Why do you need a business plan?

As the entrepreneur, you have complete understanding and confidence in your future plan. So if you are a small business, you may not need documentations of your plan as you are the leading role of the business and you know your plan well.

But when there is a necessity to show your plans and their feasibility to a third party, you need proper documentation. It is your business plan.

When you grow your business to the next level, the management will become broader with different personnel in the team. There you have to guide your team and show them the way towards the company’s strategic direction.

When you are seeking finance for a business expansion, the potential investor, venture capital company or the bank may request your business plan to be confident about future growth of your business and the return on investment.

In the above circumstances, you need to prepare a professional business plan.

2). What are the information need to include?

Information requirements would be different based on the audience of your business plan. If you are developing a business plan to attract potential investors, it should support with more information on company performance, future growth, market opportunities, and the current financial position of the company. If you are developing this for a statutory requirement like registration of a business for government subsidies, facilities, etc. You need to show the future contribution from the company towards the community, the country and in meeting the agreed criteria.

However, in general, the content should be focusing the company’s current market and financial position, future plans for development, available resources and feasibility of the prospective plans with return on income.

Several qualitative and quantitative analysis can be included in supporting the feasibility of your future plans. We would like to discuss them separately in the coming episodes of the article.

3). How to arrange the information?

There is no standard basis to format your business plan. However, the commonly used report structure is as follows;

• Executive summary

• Enterprise description

• Product or service description

• Industry analysis

• Competition analysis

• SWOT analysis

• Marketing Strategy

• Human resources & operations plan

• Financial projections

• Relevant graphs and charts