example of business plan

example of business plan

Developing a Successful Business Plan

1. Introduction

Few companies are successfully operated or managed without a formal, written business plan. Whether an entrepreneur is seeking to secure a small business loan or attract investment capital, a plan is essential. It is considered the key to success in a new business and will be an extremely important factor when one decides to retire. After all, it is difficult to keep a job at a ripe age, so to ensure a comfortable life during retirement, a plan should be opted to earn and hold a good position. In today’s competitive environment, innovative business strategies are no longer a choice but a necessity. Services are some of the fastest growing areas. Normally, professionals prefer to start their own business instead of working under somebody. But the question is, where to start? The answer is, of course, a business plan. So, keeping in view the needs of a business plan strategy, it has become essential for everyone to have a basic understanding of a successful business plan. This essay is to provide an outline of a successful business plan, what should be considered in the beginning stages and throughout the planning stage, and at the end, briefly revising what the plan should achieve and how to achieve it. A business plan is an idea that formalizes the company’s goals and the plans to make it happen, said Sasha L, a student at Southern Florida University. It is actually a visionary strategy with tactical implementation. An effective business plan provides the long-term view of a business; it’s a detailed report on how to make a plan work. It basically revolves around two things: identifying available resources and generating new business. This essay revolves around a plan to generate new income from an existing business, targeting retired professionals. The business plan starts with the business concept and mission and extends into market analysis, marketing strategy, product design and development, resource management, and concludes with finance and the goals of the business. This article demonstrates the step-by-step process of planning a new business to meet specific goals in a systematic approach, which essentially coincides with an assignment given at UKM. It is an approach to plan a business and work through that plan in a systematic way, the idea essentially implemented from Microsoft Project Builder, a business management tool. The business in question here is a small shareware company called Cyber Software, targeting retired professionals with WinHelp tutorials for various computer software. The idea was conceived from the author’s own observation and consolidation of retired professionals at a resort condominium committee meeting. A survey was conducted with five various persons and tutorials were a good idea; all agreed that it would provide a good opportunity to learn new software. Now, this is a business concept in reality and here we move to the first step above, as referenced in PC 5601 Strategic Management: mission.

2. Executive Summary

Your executive summary should highlight the most important and impactful aspects of your business plan. In this section, we’ll focus on the business and marketing plans for your work-at-home mom business. From a business standpoint, it is important to clearly outline your vision. State what your business is and where you see it going. What are your goals and how do you plan to achieve them? Define the legal structure of your business, whether it’s a sole proprietor, partnership, or corporation. Discuss the key factors of success for your business. Who are the players in your business and what are their responsibilities? Finally, think about the conditions that will allow you to cease or continue your business operations. This is especially important for the work-at-home environment. Knowing when to pull the plug will save you time, effort, and a lot of stress if things aren’t going as planned. Now that the business framework has been set, we’ll move on to the marketing plan. The marketing plan consists of the strategies and methods you will use to advertise and promote your business. This may include selling a product, promoting a service, or providing information. The ultimate goal is to promote business growth, sales, and profitability. To begin construction of your marketing plan, conduct a formal analysis of your business. Profile the current position of your business and discuss its strengths and weaknesses. This will enable you to identify and target your desired audience. If the analysis is accurate, you will know right away if the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. It is best at this time to verify what we label the “SWOT” analysis, in which you identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Use this analysis to build a marketing objective. What are you trying to achieve through this marketing plan? Often, it revolves around the factors mentioned earlier: business growth, sales, and profitability. If we’re trying to do this for your at-home business, it’s likely that your marketing objective is fiscal in nature. If you are selling a product, aim to maintain or increase sales and revenue. If your business revolves around a service, set a goal to have a positive return on the time and money invested in the service offered.

3. Market Analysis

Sizing the market Before entering the online auction market, it is important to know how large this market actually is. A method of doing this is to use the Industry Attractiveness matrix, which gauges industry size and growth rate. In this instance, the industry is the online auction industry. The market size can also be quantified, and it has been estimated that there are over 19 million items posted for auction on eBay alone on any given day. To further ascertain the growth rate of the online auction industry, we can compare it to the entire retail industry. An increasing number of people are buying and selling online and are recognizing that the internet is another method of shopping. This is evidenced with people from all walks of life now using online auctions to buy or sell a myriad of products. The retail industry itself is a slow growth industry but is a solid indicator that online auctions are an attractive consumer activity. Since a virtual marketplace provides a method of connecting buyers and sellers to conduct a trade, it also follows that we include the entire retail industry as part of the online auction industry.

Market need The market need for the product can be identified by using several methods. The first is whether the product is a solution to an existing problem. In this case, the problem for online auction users is that current online auctions are inefficient. Approximately 1% of items listed on eBay are sold (5% for classified ads) showing that there is a mismatch between what buyers are looking for and what is being offered. Considering classified ads, there is no low-cost solution to advertise a product to a large and/or specific audience. Current methods include listing an item in a local paper, which has a limited audience and higher cost. Auctions and classifieds in newspapers and other print media have the same problems. The other method to identify market need is to offer a product that enhances an already existing successful activity. People have been buying and selling products in marketplaces for many centuries. The activity of buying and selling has translated into the information age with over 100 million online auction users alone. This clearly shows that buying and selling is an activity that is here to stay. A virtual marketplace is a product that enhances the buying and selling activity, providing an efficient solution for today’s busy consumer.

4. Business Strategy

Business strategy can be defined as a long-term plan of action that is designed to achieve a certain goal or set of objectives. The most important aspect of a business strategy is that it guides the actions and behavior of the organization; it can be considered as a “game plan.” If a clear strategy is set, it will be easier to gauge the success of a business move. For example, if a business does not have a clear strategy, it will be hard for that business to assess whether a certain business decision is a success or failure. In some cases, not having a clear strategy can result in the failure of a business due to the fact that it may not have clear goals as to what it wants to achieve or perhaps it is trying to do too many things at the same time. This is stated by Saunders who wrote, “To be effective, a small firm should select one of the generic strategies and implement it vigorously; it should not become stuck in the middle.” The generic strategies that he refers to are cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. Coming up with a good strategy and implementing that strategy requires great attention to detail as well as being aware of all internal and external factors that could affect the business.

5. Financial Projections

If you are starting a new business and do not have prior year data, your marketing expenses will be crucial. You need to make realistic estimates of your future marketing programs. You will not have detailed line-item expenses by month. Instead, you will have a total marketing budget and a list of expected marketing activities. For example, your marketing activities might include the following: attending a trade show, running ads in trade journals, pay-per-click advertising, and internet search optimization – link your keywords to your Industry and Market data. You will use your unit sales and sales price data from your Sales Forecast and the Expense data from your Industry and Market data as the basis for much of your Pro-forma Profit and Loss. Your major priorities are establishing a strong starting position and progressively capturing more market share. This approach often involves substantial initial spending on marketing expense and development funding. At some point in time, say 3-5 years after start up, your business may approach a temporary “steady state” where you are no longer trying to increase your market share. At that time, you will decrease your marketing expenses and redirect the funds to other more profitable and/or less risky investing activities. We recommend you consult the Small Business Administration guide to creating pro-forma financial statements. Here is an example of a format for the high and low estimates for the marketing expenses.