Business Planning – Part 1
Over the coming week’s we will post a series of Blogs looking at Business Plans: the importance of a business plan, preparing a business plan and reviewing and updating your Business Plan.
A Business Plan, is it important? Why prepare one? Should you have one? Yes is the answer to all! No matter how big or small you are it is important to have a business plan. You can sum up a business plan in a number of different words, but one is focus. A business plan can give you focus for your business and help in reaching your goals – short and long term.
Planning is an integral part of achieving any goals, especially in business, and a business plan is a statement by your business on the goals you wish to achieve and how you will achieve them. It is said that businesses who do not have a business plan do not know what to do when they reach their goals – or think they have!
The business plan is the blueprint of how your business works: the history, the staff, the product, the customer and how you are going o reach them and supply them. It should be a live working document and one which is constantly reviewed and updated. It is not something that will just sit on a shelf just so you can tick the box – yes I have a business plan.
Since a business plan is a live working document which is regularly reviewed, it should be easy to setup short term or specific goals, say for one year. Just think what you would like to achieve over the coming 12 months. Grow, expand, establish new products or reach new markets? Write down these goals, then what you need to do to achieve them, what possible obstacles might be in your way and how you will overcome these.
This is a brief introduction to help you get started and we will continue next week.
Small Business Advice
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