Business Plan Homework Help

Business plan is a formal representation or statement of a set of the business goals. Business plan consists of the reasons they are believed to be attainable and the plan required for reaching those goals.

The business plan consists of a descriptive and several financial worksheets. The descriptive template is the main body of the business plan. Business plans targets the change in the perception and branding by the customer, taxpayer, client or the larger community. If an existing business assumes or decides for a major change or plans to start for a new venture, then a 3-5 year business plan is required since the investors will look for their annual return in that time period.

The main aim of a business plan is not in having the finished product in hand, the value lies in the process of researching and thinking about the business in a systematic way. The act of business planning helps to think things thoroughly, research and study if one is not sure of the facts and look at the critical ideas.

Business plan is a generic model which is suitable for all the types of businesses. The plan needs to be so flexible that it can be easily modify according to the particular circumstances. The business plans can be internally or externally focused. The internally focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. The internal business plan is developed in conjunction with a balanced scorecard or a list of critical success factors. The externally focused plans target goals which are important to external shareholders, specially the financial stakeholders. Typically, they have detailed information about the organization to reach the goals. For the profit organizations, the external shareholders include the investors and customers. For the non profit organizations the stakeholders include the donors and the clients of the non-profits services. For the government agencies, it includes the tax-payers, The World Bank and the development banks.

It takes several weeks to develop a good business plan. Most of the time is spent in the research and re-thinking the ideas and the assumptions to be made.

A business plan basically has three different sections.:

a) Section One: It is a written section which describes the management and marketing aspects of the business. This section is concise but thorough and to-the-point.

b) Section Two: This includes the financial projections made for the plan. Describes in numbers the outcome of the business strategies and plans.

c) Section Three: It is supplemental information and the supporting information to reinforce the first two sections.

A short Executive Summary is often added at the beginning of more complex business plans. A Business Plan helps to evaluate the feasibility of a new business idea in an objective, unemotional and conditional way.