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BUSINESS PLANS: FROM CONCEPT TO REALISM:

There is a famous expression, “Falling to plan is planning to fail.” In order to secure start-up financing many business plan owners write business plan. However, a business plan is far more than a document for banks and investors; it’s a roadmap for the success and growth of a business. Business plan is putting your business concepts on paper and for writing a business plan it is necessary, to think thorough and research the many factors that are helpful in taking your business on to the heights of success. A business plan not only helps you to get funds from potential investors and lenders but it also spot the potential pitfalls that might come in your way of success and can help you make decisions about your business venture before you commit yourself legally or financially. 

Following are the seven key sections that every business plan contains:

Executive summary: The first and the most important part of a business plan is an executive summary. It is the first part but always written in last. A good executive summary should be 1 or 2 pages long and provide an overview of your entire business plan.

Business overview: Business overview includes the details regarding your business history, the mission and vision of your business, concise information about the product and services you are going to offer.

Services overview: Give comprehensive overview about the services you are going to offer. What are its features and benefits and how it will compete in the industry and the market in which you are going to open your business.

Industry overview: This section discusses the size and growth of your industry. The industry overview shows the market you will be targeting and the key markets within your industry.

Market strategy: Market strategy describes your market description, market facts, market growth, target audience, marketing strategy, marketing budget, SWOT analysis and marketing mix.

Operational plan: Provide a profile of your management team, your organizational hierarchy and an overview of your day-to-day operations.

Financial plan: Financial plan is the last and the most important part of the plan. Off course, investor invests in a company in order to get good return. This section helps them to know whether you and your management team are capable enough to give them high return or not.

Above are the seven key sections that every business plan includes. If a business plan misses any of the above section there business plan will not be taken seriously by investors and lenders and it will cover under dust.

Copyright (c) 2008 Schauffler Associates LLC

The heart of any useful business plan – and any plan that attracts financing and partners, is the financial projections section. Most important to those projections are the assumptions used.

TIP 1: BE CAREFUL ON ASSUMPTIONS

The core of any usable business plan, and also any plan that is created in order to find financing or partners, are the financial projections. Then, most important to those projections are the assumptions used to create these projections.

Are the assumptions understandable? If you’ve written your business plan because you’re looking for an investor or lender, don’t assume that the reader can understand your business plan assumptions. By the time you are finished with your projections, you will be very familiar with the assumptions you used to construct your financial models. A first time reader of your business plan will not. Are you certain that you made it easy to follow your logic? It’s better to explain a little more than you have to, than not explain enough.

The best kind of projections are well-rounded ones. Telling the investor that his projected return is 52. 444% is not any more impressive projecting a return of 50%. Many entrepreneurs come down with a bad case of “spurious exactitude” when doing projections. This would be a very contagious disease.

TIP 2: BE CAREFUL WITH “WHIZ BANG” SCENARIOS

Many people think that the more complex their financial models are, and the more “what if” scenarios they concoct, the higher their chances of being funded. A variation of this is the business plan that has projections seemingly for decades. 50 pages of imaginary numbers are not better than 5. Particularly in this age when technology is evolving so quickly, it is impossible to accurately forecast 3 years out, let alone 7.

Concentrate instead on answering these questions: How fast are we going to use the investor’s money, when does the company’s cash flow turn positive, and what margins can this company earn? It is definitely better to KISS (Keep It Simple, Sam) than to try and wow your business plan reader with outlandish scenarios that they will know instantly are not realistic.

TIP 3: THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT BUSINESS PLAN SOFTWARE

There are a number of business plan software packages that sell thousands and thousands of copies. Software can be very helpful in developing financial models and preparing projections. But they are not going to write the narrative sections of the business plan for you, so you may be disappointed in the results you get from using a computer program in building your business plan. How can the programmers of “Super Duper Hot Business Plan Package” or whatever the software is called, possibly know how your plan should look since they have never met you and do not know anything about your company? Software can’t think for you.

Much better would be to learn what you need in your plan and then simply write the plan with the correct information. You can go to Small Business Tool Kit (www.toolkit.com) for an excellent outline. This site is a free Wiki site to all who use it; believe it or not, they are not selling anything! Amazing, huh?

For the average cost of these software packages you could take your family out for dinner, and at least two of them could order dessert. Why not do that instead of wasting you money on one of these software packages that will not really make things any less complicated for you anyway?!

The overall idea here is: Make sure your assumptions are simple and easy to accept, then your financial projections and the example scenarios you create will also impress and inform your business plan readers.

One of the reasons why many people are in the restaurant business is that no matter how rich or poor a person is, they need to eat out at times. Since one will invariably find a steady stream of customers if one can find one’s niche market the number of operators in this field is quite high. It has been said that the restaurant industry presently uses less technology that it should. To improve the performance of your outlets, you need a good restaurant business plan.

However, it is not easy to create a plan that will really be effective. Only qualified professionals actually know how to write a restaurant plan that will really increase profits.

If you have a good plan to launch a new business or improve an existing organization, the chances of your losing money because of the usual setbacks that affect institutions in this field can be avoided. While choosing an agency that offers restaurant business plan creation services, you must remember the following things:

Do not go to professionals who do not have first handed experience of actually running a food service institution

Do not go to professionals who formulate plans merely on the basis of industry facts and figures available through the Internet

The best consultants have teams consisting of people who have the experience of working in different sections of a restaurant. This is important because only a chef could anticipate the problems that may arise while preparing food of a certain variety.

One of the most important tasks that has to be accomplished while preparing a restaurant business plan is determining the niche market. Consultants will be able find the niche consumer base. It is rarely possible to determine which set of customers should be targeted merely on the basis of information that is available in the public domain. Unless the team that prepares the plan does its own research, it is not safe to invest money on basis of suggestions made by it.

Another important thing that determines whether the venture will be successful or not is the location of the outlet/s. The choice of the right location depends on a large number of factors and it is often not possible to figure out which will be the best location merely on the basis of a few facts.

If you are a person who enjoys working with numbers and keeping them balanced, bookkeeping may be a great thing to pick up. And if you hold the qualifications for it, starting your own small business bookkeeping services can be a great way to earn money, since you would not need to split the earnings with others. Plus, starting one does not cost much, so you can begin with it as a part time service. Here is a guide to starting your own small business bookkeeping services.

First of all, you will want to prepare the necessary supplies for your office. You would need filing cabinets for all the documents, as well as bookkeeping software to make simple the bookkeeping process. Do get other office supplies as well that would help get the job done efficiently, such as stationeries, fax machines, and photocopier. In the meantime, find out what other professional bookkeepers in the area are quoting their clients so you can get an estimate to how much you should roughly charge your clients.

When you have just begun, you should charge by hour instead of charging by month. This enables you to identify the type of accounts you tend to attract, before considering your rates based on the type of work you typically get. Bookkeepers tend to charge between and an hour, although most customers prefer paying a flat rate for a month’s worth of bookkeeping. These can range between 0 and 0 a month.

You should set certain goals that you should follow through in order to sustain your clientele. Always be meticulous and accurate in the work you do, and make sure you deliver them on time. Being in a business yourself, you would realize that other businesses rely on bookkeepers to keep track of or update their reports on important things such as invoices and profit statements. As these reports are necessary for the IRS to follow through, clients will want to have a reliable and trustworthy bookkeeper.

Where attaining clients is concerned, it would be wise to do some networking amongst other business owners. Get in touch with local organizations or trade groups like the Chamber of Commerce or Business Networking International (BNI). As you would like to make a name for your business, invest in name cards so you can easily distribute them when you meet new people. Another tactic to gain clients is to volunteer your service to some organizations where you are likely to gain abundance of contacts.

Lastly, if you want to stand out among other bookkeepers, be educated. Learn how to do more than bookkeeping, such as preparing taxes or becoming a bill collector. With such versatility offered, your clients would be happy to acquire the service from the same place.

Whether you use someone’s free online business plan, pay a high priced consultant for one or develop it yourself, some kind of a plan is an essential  tool for you, the entrepreneur, to effectively grow your business. A written business plan helps you narrow down your focus and sharpen your skills as a business person through thinking ahead, planning and checking often to make sure you are on track.

Its major advantage, however, is that it is a place where you can harness the expertise of virtually hundreds of experts in the business field of your choice and bring their best practices together in a way that is unique to your own goals . The internet has indeed become a great resource for tapping into the best of other peoples previous experience.

Aside from helping you lay down the basics such as determining your objectives, setting your financial goals and assessing your company’s potential, the online business plan allows you to access other internet-based resources that improve the quality of your plan. No matter what type of business you are interested in, the internet is the research resource of choice for the advanced thinking entrepreneur.

What you must accomplish first is find the category your business belongs to. This helps customize your business plan for your particular need. You can find software that assists with your projections for cash flow, executive summary, analysis of break-even income, mission or vision statement, expense budget estimates, and more.

The software allows you to edit and customize your business plan according to your specifications. If you’re not confident about developing a good plan then you can always opt to get help online, browsing through the various forums and sites which can lead you to a consultant who can advise you on any matter you’re sketchy about. If your budget is low, even starting with a very simple outline of your objectives and milestones that you need to pass will be very helpful for you.

Another great place to scope out various books, software and other resources without having to go out and pound the pavement for information you want is your public library. Of course if you are going into a business large enough that you want to get financing from either banks or investors, a well formulate business plan is a must. If you are under the impression that investors don’t read the stuff anyway, well you could be right but if that is the case, at least someone on their staff does! So whether you just want a simple written outline to keep yourself on track or a highly polished business plan to impress investors – either way, don’t get started with out one.

The answer to any problem is the most beautiful part of asking a question. There’s a tremendous relief when discovering that there really is a solid answer to what you want to know. Starting an Internet business is something that can be overwhelming at first, with the process conjuring up many baffling questions in the beginning. Fortunately, there are plenty of answers about this question.

The Internet is full of successful businessmen that have realized their dreams of operating an Internet business. Not everyone follows the same path, but it’s smooth sailing when you study the many paths to success. Starting an Internet business requires that you ask a lot of questions. Here are a few common questions and their surprisingly simple answers.

Q: What does starting an Internet business take?

A: To begin any business, there needs to be someone that has visualized what that business has to offer and how it can be sold to the public. It takes someone that is willing to work as hard as it takes to make this vision a reality.

Q: Do I need a lot of resources and money to start an online business?

A: No. Starting an Internet business is much easier than it was a few years ago. There are businessmen that have lined up the full process for you and that will charge only a minimal fee to let you in on a pre-formatted vision that gives you everything you need to succeed from the start.

Q: Can I succeed easily?

A: The question should be, can you succeed. The answer to that question is: yes! The easy part is knowing this. Succeeding in itself will take much more work on your part. You have to have a solid work ethic and plenty of ambition. You have to be able to handle trial and error learning and figure out ways to keep your business going.

These are only a few of the questions that anyone asks when starting an Internet business. The most important answer that you will ever hear is that starting an Internet business is possible, and for much less money than you would ever imagine. It’s surprisingly cheap to get your business of the ground and it can become profitable immediately, as long as you’re willing to work.

If you’re interested in starting an Internet business, there’s no time like the present. There are millions of people waiting to see your unique take on business and the services that you have to offer. They’ll only be able to appreciate your services and products if you get them out there. To do that, you’ve got to be willing to take a risk and begin your own path to success.