The Business Planning Process: 6 Steps To Creating a New Plan
In this article, we will define and explain the basic business planning process to help your business move in the right direction.
What is Business Planning?
Business planning is the process whereby an organization’s leaders figure out the best roadmap for growth and document their plan for success.
The business planning process includes diagnosing the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses, improving its efficiency, working out how it will compete against rival firms in the future, and setting milestones for progress so they can be measured.
The process includes writing a new business plan. What is a business plan? It is a written document that provides an outline and resources needed to achieve success. Whether you are writing your plan from scratch, from a simple business plan template , or working with an experienced business plan consultant or writer, business planning for startups, small businesses, and existing companies is the same.
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The Better Business Planning Process
The business plan process includes 6 steps as follows:
- Do Your Research
- Calculate Your Financial Forecast
- Draft Your Plan
- Revise & Proofread
- Nail the Business Plan Presentation
We’ve provided more detail for each of these key business plan steps below.
1. Do Your Research
Conduct detailed research into the industry, target market, existing customer base, competitors, and costs of the business begins the process. Consider each new step a new project that requires project planning and execution. You may ask yourself the following questions:
- What are your business goals?
- What is the current state of your business?
- What are the current industry trends?
- What is your competition doing?
There are a variety of resources needed, ranging from databases and articles to direct interviews with other entrepreneurs, potential customers, or industry experts. The information gathered during this process should be documented and organized carefully, including the source as there is a need to cite sources within your business plan.
You may also want to complete a SWOT Analysis for your own business to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential risks as this will help you develop your strategies to highlight your competitive advantage.
2. Strategize
Now, you will use the research to determine the best strategy for your business. You may choose to develop new strategies or refine existing strategies that have demonstrated success in the industry. Pulling the best practices of the industry provides a foundation, but then you should expand on the different activities that focus on your competitive advantage.
This step of the planning process may include formulating a vision for the company’s future, which can be done by conducting intensive customer interviews and understanding their motivations for purchasing goods and services of interest. Dig deeper into decisions on an appropriate marketing plan, operational processes to execute your plan, and human resources required for the first five years of the company’s life.
3. Calculate Your Financial Forecast
All of the activities you choose for your strategy come at some cost and, hopefully, lead to some revenues. Sketch out the financial situation by looking at whether you can expect revenues to cover all costs and leave room for profit in the long run.
Begin to insert your financial assumptions and startup costs into a financial model which can produce a first-year cash flow statement for you, giving you the best sense of the cash you will need on hand to fund your early operations.
A full set of financial statements provides the details about the company’s operations and performance, including its expenses and profits by accounting period (quarterly or year-to-date). Financial statements also provide a snapshot of the company’s current financial position, including its assets and liabilities.
This is one of the most valued aspects of any business plan as it provides a straightforward summary of what a company does with its money, or how it grows from initial investment to become profitable.
4. Draft Your Plan
With financials more or less settled and a strategy decided, it is time to draft through the narrative of each component of your business plan . With the background work you have completed, the drafting itself should be a relatively painless process.
If you have trouble writing convincing prose, this is a time to seek the help of an experienced business plan writer who can put together the plan from this point.
5. Revise & Proofread
Revisit the entire plan to look for any ideas or wording that may be confusing, redundant, or irrelevant to the points you are making within the plan. You may want to work with other management team members in your business who are familiar with the company’s operations or marketing plan in order to fine-tune the plan.
Finally, proofread thoroughly for spelling, grammar, and formatting, enlisting the help of others to act as additional sets of eyes. You may begin to experience burnout from working on the plan for so long and have a need to set it aside for a bit to look at it again with fresh eyes.
6. Nail the Business Plan Presentation
The presentation of the business plan should succinctly highlight the key points outlined above and include additional material that would be helpful to potential investors such as financial information, resumes of key employees, or samples of marketing materials. It can also be beneficial to provide a report on past sales or financial performance and what the business has done to bring it back into positive territory.
Business Planning Process Conclusion
Every entrepreneur dreams of the day their business becomes wildly successful.
But what does that really mean? How do you know whether your idea is worth pursuing?
And how do you stay motivated when things are not going as planned? The answers to these questions can be found in your business plan. This document helps entrepreneurs make better decisions and avoid common pitfalls along the way.
Business plans are dynamic documents that can be revised and presented to different audiences throughout the course of a company’s life. For example, a business may have one plan for its initial investment proposal, another which focuses more on milestones and objectives for the first several years in existence, and yet one more which is used specifically when raising funds.
Business plans are a critical first step for any company looking to attract investors or receive grant money, as they allow a new organization to better convey its potential and business goals to those able to provide financial resources.
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COMMENTS
Chapter 2: The Three-Step Planning Process presents an introduction to the three steps you will use to develop and manage your own business plan—identifying the issues, develop-ing the plan, and managing the plan. Perform-ing these three steps avoids the planning pitfalls described in Chapter 1, thereby helping you suc-cessfully achieve your ...
A business plan is an entrepreneur's blueprint for creating the new venture. It is a bridge between an idea and reality. It is a game plan that crystallizes your business dreams and hopes that provide your motivation. It should lay out your basic idea, describe where you are now, point out where you want to go, and outline how you propose to ...
Provide projections for two to four years in the future, including: 1. Forecasted income (monthly for first two years, then by quarter or year thereafter), 2. Forecasted cash flows by month (monthly for first two years, then by quarter or year thereafter), 3. Forecasted balance sheet for all years (year-end), and 4.
Set up Your Planning Process for Success - Questions to Ask:-Are the conditions and criteria for successful planning in place at the current time? Can certain ... - Business plan - Financial records for the last few years - Marketing plan - Other information, such as last year's SWOT, sales figures and projections ...
a business plan. Part III Structure Of The Business Plan will serve the purpose of helping you construct an effective business plan. It will explain why it is important to include certain sections within a business plan, and will also describe how to write them in a manner that is easily comprehensible and gets the message across to the reader.
A business plan describes the venture that you will create to exploit a concept. It has traditionally three primary functions: Action Plan A business plan can help to move you to action. You may have been thinking for years about starting a business or engaging in some venture, but the process may seem too daunting, too large and too ...
Business planning and analysis (BP&A) teams endeavor to forecast the future so their organizations can better anticipate business needs. But this year, COVID-19 was the unexpected event that turned everyone's predictions on their head. For many companies, the initial shock period following the outbreak haspassed, and a recent KPMG survey of ...
The Better Business Planning Process. The business plan process includes 6 steps as follows: Do Your Research. Strategize. Calculate Your Financial Forecast. Draft Your Plan. Revise & Proofread. Nail the Business Plan Presentation. We've provided more detail for each of these key business plan steps below.
Integrated Business Planning is the next step for valuable insights How holistic integration… Extended planning scope of IBP Integrated Business Planning combines the three areas of Operations, Finance and Business Strategy to enable a holistic planning process that takes all relevant data into account for better planning
Overcoming Challenges and Pitfalls. Challenge of consensus over clarity. Challenge of who provides input versus who decides. Preparing a long, ambitious, 5 year plan that sits on a shelf. Finding a balance between process and a final product. Communicating and executing the plan. Lack of alignment between mission, action, and finances.
Vision, Mission & Values. Develop a process for shared agreement on mission, vision and values from key stakeholders. Mission = A statement of why the organization exists, at the most meaningful level. It is aspirational, in that it can never be fully achieved. Vision = A clear, specific, compelling picture of what the organization will look ...
Strategic business planning is creating a vision of the future, analyzing the organization and its environment as it is today, and then developing a formal program for guiding its development and success tomorrow. For most organizations, the strategic plan normally addresses a 3 or 5-year period into the future.
Start with a cogent and concise one sentence statement of the business idea. A sentence that is so clear and appealing that the reader can immediately visualise or 'see' the business. You can then go on to describe: The market at which you are aiming. The specific benefits offered by your product or service.
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Business planning is the foundation of every successful enterprise and as such, every entrepreneur must develop this useful roadmap for his or her enterprise. It is the process of developing a written formal document com-monly referred to as a Business Plan, capturing the goals of the business,
Strategic planning and target setting process •Three to five years time horizon with clear alignment to the business strategy •Includes non financial and relative metrics •Targets set with clear guidelines on how business units work to the targets Budget process •Strategic, operational and financial plans are integrated
The example business plan used in this guide is not presented as a masterpiece of business plan writing. It is a basic business plan that worked - the processor was able to convince his banker to make the loan. This business plan, however, on its own, was not the only reason the bank chose to make the loan. The processor had a solid track record
The process has been analogized to an architect creating a blueprint for a new building before construction begins—in the case of a new business or an existing business looking to expand ...
At the core of the strategic management process is the creation of goals, a mission statement, values and organisational objectives. Organisational goals, the mission statement, values and ...
Strategic planning is a tool for organizing the present on the basis of the projections of the desired future. That is, a strategic plan is a road map to lead an organization from where it is now to where it would like to be in five or ten years. It is necessary to have a strategic plan for your chapter or division.
Planning is the continuous managerial process of anticipating and forecasting the future environment of the business organization, formulating the long-term and short-term goals to be achieved ...
in the planning process; and n Identity the different types of plans. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Ch_04.indd 91 08-08-2022 09:43:21 Rationalised 2023-24. 92 Business Studies ... and prosperity of the business. (v) Planning facilitates decision making: Planning helps the manager to look into the future and make a choice from amongst various alternative
Management document from Business School Barcelona, 2 pages, The main focus in reading was on the Recruitment and Selection Process, I learnt about employment planning, and forecasting. The recruitment and selection process is very crucial and strategic for the success of an organization. I think Employment plannin
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