All businesses begin with a good idea, but it is execution that separates successful companies from the rest. Excellent execution only happens when a company invests the time to build a sturdy business plan and a smart strategy.
What a good business plan does for you
- Sets budgets and targets for your staff.
- Allocates resources such as capital, people and technology.
- Defines business goals and objectives, and the strategies to reach them.
- Tracks performance so you can take corrective action at regular reviews.
- Gives lenders and investors the document they expect when you raise debt or equity.
What a sound business plan contains
Knowing why a plan matters is only half of it. These are the parts every sound plan needs:
- Executive summary
- Company overview
- Products and services
- Market analysis and plan
- Management team
- Financial overview
- Specific milestones and targets
Building a new business plan
We start with a brainstorming session with you and your senior management team. We then research your company, products and services, industry and competition to build the foundation of the plan, and add detailed financials, including sensitivity scenarios and ratio analysis, to support each business statement.
We also build a version of the financial model for you to track regularly as your working budget file. From there, we help set up your budgeting system and work alongside your accounting team on the monthly variance report for one or two cycles, until they can produce it on their own.
To make that easier, we provide templates with simple data-input sheets, so your team can feed in actual figures from your accounting software and generate a detailed management dashboard.
Updating an existing business plan
If you have a basic plan but the business has grown well beyond it, we review it, propose changes and update it. We can also build a detailed financial forecast model and advise on what to add for the audience the plan is meant for.