The first real stage of writing your business plan concerns describing and articulating your business and what it hopes to achieve. This stage requires you to explain, as clearly as possible, what your business does.
It serves the purpose of outlining your personal vision for your business. So you will not only be explaining what it does, but also what you do and what your business is going to offer to the market.
Your first step is to put together an overview of your business. Firstly, you must be able to state when you started trading or are planning to begin trading. You also have to make sure that you include details of the progress you have made to date.
Then explain the kind of business you are running or are intending to run. This section must be as clear as possible so that your readers – whether they are potential investors or future employees or partners – can understand exactly what it is you do. If you can clarify what sector it is in – e.g. retail, manufacturing etc. – then this will make the picture clearer for the reader too.
Your next job is to outline any history that is important to the business you propose to run. For example, if you bought the business off someone else, it will obviously be important that the business plan shows some details of this transaction, as well as information on the seller of the business.
You must then outline the current legal structure of the business. This means ownership, the structure of the company as it stands in law, and so on.
Finish up the overview by articulating your vision for the future. This means thinking about the plans you have for the business as regards growth. It also means creating a picture of what your company will look like in the future.
After the overview, you then have to describe your product or service in detail. To get this section right, you must explain what makes it different to other products and services in the same sector, as well as the benefits it offers to the customer. To interest investors – or just to keep you on the right path as developments occur – you then have to outline what developments you are going to bring to your product or service. If you are going to run a cafe for example, you may plan to add another story in the future, to add value.
If you hold any patents or design rights, now is the time to declare them. And to finish up, describe the key features of your industry, in such a way that your product or service has a recognisable role in it.
At all times, make sure that you don’t throw in too much jargon, or industry specific terminology. If you are going to use the business plan as a means of acquiring investment, the last thing an investor wants is vocabulary they cannot understand.
So that is a detailed outline of the section of your business plan where you describe your business opportunity. This is often the most difficult section to complete. Be confident, follow the steps above and you will then be on your way towards completing your plan.
By: Sahail Ashraf
Posts Tagged ‘Business Growth’
The Business Plan – Describing Your Business Opportunity
March 28th, 2010IT Vital to Business Organizations
January 9th, 2010
The bottom line is that information technology plays an important role in the success of a business organization. The reality, however, is that not all companies realize this. Most business organizations see information technology only as an enabler when in fact it can be an effective business driver. They do not believe that information technology does reinforce their business goals. As a result, businesses concentrate only on their core competencies and relegate IT to a supporting role. This is a potentially costly blunder because while a company can stay in business, it needs information technology to be truly competitive.
The solution is to have a well thought-out IT vision. So what are the advantages of this to your business?
Businesses are becoming more and more competitive in their drive to be ahead of the game. Having a unique product or service is no longer enough for a company to achieve longevity. Information technology can help companies strengthen their positions in the market for it plays a key role in addressing the increasing demand for products and services.
It can also improve manufacturing capabilities significantly. Information technology also enables companies to embark into new investments and enter into business tie-ups. Furthermore, an information technology landscape plan can help companies achieve all these while lowering costs.
It is important for companies to have a clear-cut IT vision if it is to compete in an aggressive industry. A sound IT landscape strategy can mean tremendous business growth for a company. Businesses can implement their plan in stages. To begin with, a company can start putting in place improvements for domain functionalities such as R&D and F&D. They can then address transactional requirements, for example, ERP components such as payroll and accounting. Combining these into a single system makes for more efficient operations. They can then move on to content management systems. This component is important because it allows companies to maintain and organize the information exchange.
Workflow systems also need to be given due attention. An efficient workflow system makes for a productive business organization because it can bring about speedy accomplishment of tasks and it streamlines processes. Infrastructural requirements also need to be included in an IT landscape plan. For a business to realize optimum IT solutions, it must put in place the right combination of business software applications and hardware components.
Companies cannot afford to neglect their Integration Route for this is where the IT implementation plan will largely be based on. This part of the plan ensures that all aspects of the business work in proper conjunction with each other.
Businesses will soon realize the benefits of having an information technology strategy firmly rooted in their plans. For instance, they can have automated business processes, proper management of these processes and have an effective means of managing knowledge systems within the organization.
It may not be immediately recognizable but having an IT landscape plan can only mean growth for a company. This is because information technology magnifies efforts, expands capabilities and heightens effectiveness.
By: Benedict Yossarian
