business plan

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A business plan is a summary of how a business owner, manager, or entrepreneur intends to organize a commercial endeavor and implement activities necessary and sufficient for the venture to succeed. It is a written explanation of the company's business model.

Business plans are used internally for management and planning and are also used to convince outsiders such as banks or venture capitalists to invest money into a venture.

Business plans are noted for often quickly becoming out of date. One common belief within business circles is that the actual plan may have little value, but what is more important is the process of planning, through which the manager gains a greater understanding of the business and of the options available.

Content of a business plan

A business plan can be seen as a collection of sub-plans including a marketing plan, financial plan, production plan, and human resource plan.
The business plan has many forms. There is however a format that is typical:
- Executive summary
-- explains the basic business model
-- gives rationale for the strategy
- Background
-- gives short history of company (unless it is a new company)
-- provides background details such as:
--- age of company
--- number of employees
--- annual sales figures
--- location of facilities
--- form of ownership including

sole proprietor

Partnership

entrepreneurial startup

private corporate startup

publicly traded corporation.

public utility

Non Profit Organization
-- background of key personnel including
--- owners
--- senior managers
--- head scientists and researchers
- Marketing
-- the macroenviroment
-- the competitive environment
-- the industry
-- the customers priorities
-- product strategy
-- pricing strategy
-- promotion strategy
-- distribution strategy
- Production and manufacturing
-- describe all processes
-- production facility requirements - size, layout, capacity, location
-- inventory requirements - raw materials inventory, finished goods inventory, warehouse space requirements
-- equipment requirements
-- supply chain requirements
-- fixed cost allocation
- Finance
-- source of funds
-- expected return
-- break even analysis
-- monthly pro-forma cash flow statement
-- existing loans and liabilities
- Human resources
-- assign responsibilities
-- training required
-- skills required
-- union issues
-- compensation
-- skills availability
-- new hiring

Specialized sections such as product research and development, legal strategies, marketing research, or inter-company collaborations, are added to deal with unique features or characteristics of the business or its markets.

Finding related topics

- list of management topics
- list of marketing topics
- list of human resource management topics
- list of economics topics
- list of finance topics
- list of accounting topics
- list of information technology management topics
- list of production topics
- list of business law topics
- (*****)
- list of business theorists
- list of economists
- list of corporate leaders
- list of companies

External links

- Writing a Business Plan
- Sample Business Plan Outline

category:Strategic management Category:Management category:Business

de:Businessplan

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "business plan".

plan

:Alternative meanings: Plan, Isère, floor plan

A Plan is a proposed or intended method of getting from one set of circumstances to another. They are often used to move from the present situation, towards the achievement of one or more objectives or goals.

Informal or ad-hoc plans are created by individuals humans in all of their pursuits. Structured and formal plans, used by multiple people, are more likey to occur in projects, diplomacy, careers, economic development, military campaigns, combat, or in the conduct of other business.

It is common for less formal plans to be created as abstract ideas, and remain in that form as they are maintained and put to use. More formal plans as used for business and military purposes, while initially created with and as an abstract thought, are likely to be written down, drawn up or otherwise stored in a form that is acessible to multiple people across time and space. This allows more reliable collaboration in the execution of the plan.

Planning

The term planning implies the working out of sub-components in some degree of detail. Broader-brush enunciations of objectives may qualify as metaphorical road maps.

Planning literally just means the creation of a plan; it can be as simple as making a list. It has acquired a technical meaning, however, to cover the area of government legislation and regulations related to the use of resources.

Planning can refer to the planned use of any and all resources (as in the succession of Five-Year Plans through which the government of the Soviet Union sought to develop the country. However, the term is most frequently used in relation to planning for the use of land and related resources, for example in urban planning, transportation planning, and so forth.

Thus, in a governmental context, "planning" without any qualification is most likely to mean the regulation of land use.

Quotation

:Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential -- Winston Churchill

:Plans are nothing; planning is everything.-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Methodology

The discipline of planning has occupied great minds and theoreticians. Concepts such as top-down planning (as opposed to bottom-up planning) reveal similiarities with the systems thinking behind the Top-Down Model.

Types of plan

In military usage, the grand structured pre-set plans of World War I became the more flexible and less pretentious limited-objective operations of World War II and later.

The tactic of violence that targets civilians, with the objective of forcing an enemy to favorable terms, by creating fear, demoralization, or political discord in the attacked population, is referred to as "Terrorism". The practices, tactics, and strategies that governments, militaries, and other groups adopt in order to fight terrorism is referred to as "Counter-terrorism".

Economic planning became an important discipline in the Soviet Union and in Japan -- in the West the word "planner" may rather evoke images of town planning.

Examples of plans

- The Schlieffen Plan
- The Five-Year Plan system in the former Soviet Union
- The Marshall Plan
- U.S. plan to invade Iraq
- marketing plan
- business plan