Business Plans

Watch this video that explains eBizplan’s Business Plan Service Offering

A Business Plan to Take Control of Your Own Destiny

Answer the following questions about your current situation…

Where are you now?
Are you working, but are getting nowhere?
Are you without a work, and need desperately an income?
Do you have a great business idea that other needs to buy in?
Do you need money to start a business or to grow your business?
Are there people that you want to invest in your business?
Do you need a guide for running operations once your business has started?

Then You Need a Business Plan!

Business Plans are well-researched and written documents show what businesses are and also explains how they work. They show the things that will make businesses work. A Business Plan is also handy to have when you want to borrow money from a bank to finance your business.

How can You Get a Business Plan?

Although there are lots of templates and questionnaires and even software available online to help you constructing a business plan, you really need the input of a qualified management consultant. eBizplan does just that!

What will Your Business Plan Look Like?

eBizplan will help you analyse the environments that your business will operate in. Also will it provide proforma financial statements and will use the SWOT strategic analyses technique to help identify your strengths and weaknesses; as well as threats and opportunities that may exist outside your business. Indeed, you will know where your business is now, where it is going to, and how it will get there…

Here is an outline of a typical Business Plan:

1 Vision/Mission statement

The Vision Statement – Vision provides guidance about what core of your business to preserve and what future to stimulate progress toward. Also, a Vision statement announces your business’s core values and reason for existence.

After all, its the one thing that everyone in the company must work together for. The vision statement of eBizplan, for example, is the following: “We’re committed to deliver advanced business outcomes for everyone that wants to make a living in the digital age”

The Mission Statement – it’s about translating your company’s Vision into action. The mission is generally the purpose, the aim, and/or the intent of the business. So, when formulating your business’s mission statement, you must answer four important questions:

What function(s) does your organisation perform?
For whom does it perform this function?
How does your business go about fulfilling this function?
Why does your business perform this function?

You’re not going to do your business in isolation, but in different spheres or environments that overlaps but have a definite impact on the outcomes of your business. They are the Macro environment, the Micro (or Market) environment and your business’s internal environment.

2 Macro environment

The macro environment spans politics and legal, economics, social and cultural matters, technology, and demography factors. Remember, your organisation has little or no influence on factors in the macro environment. However, the macro environment may have a huge impact on your business. Hence you should know which factors affect your business and how to manage them.

3 Market or Micro environment

The market environment, also known as ‘the operating environment’ focuses on those which shape the immediate trading environment. For instance these ‘shapers’ include the customers with their needs and wants, the competitors, intermediaries and suppliers. Indeed, they determine the dynamics of the market and therefore you need to understand their behaviour to develop an effective market strategy.

4 Internal environment

Can your business do what it wants to do? In addition to external threats and opportunities, you need to develop a strategy based on the objectives, strengths, and capabilities of your business.

In order to succeed, you need to know your own business. Also, if you need a business plan to get capital to start or grow your business, the lender or investor wants to see where your money will be coming from. Furthermore will they want to know if you have qualified and experience personnel that can help to reach your business goals.

5 SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for:

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

Hence we use a SWOT analysis to make strategic decisions by considering the following about your business:

Internal strengths and weaknesses
External opportunities and threats

Subsequently, if we know what your strengths and weaknesses are, we can decide which strategy will work best to adapt to changes in the external environments of your business.

6 Financial Statements

The financial statements tell you about past performance or plans of your business, and help you to make decisions about the direction of the business. In fact, the financial statements of concern in a business plan are:

Income statement – the income statement is a financial document that shows sales and expenses for a particular period of time.

Balance sheet – a balance sheet consists of items that need funding (“assets”) and items that provide the funding (“liabilities and equity”).

Cash flow statement – supplies users with information detailing the actual movement of cash.

7 Plans of Action

Action plans provide links between strategy formulation and strategy implementation. Indeed, during strategic implementation action plans are converted into more detailed action programs. Therefore, we will use operations management techniques to help you understand the following:

What needs to be done?
How will it be done?
What resources do you need?
How much will it cost?
Who should do it?
When must it be completed?