Please stick to the topic
This article is about what a business plan is . Please do not add links to business planning software websites, consultancies, or related online services. Wikipedia is not a business directory. Please take time to improve this article with fully-referenced and appropriate content. --SueHay 19:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Suggestions for restructuring/revision
If you'd like to discuss a section that needs revising, or even a total restructuring - here's the place...
Types of BPs
The type "Electronic Plan" shouldn't be included, because it is not type of BPs but type of media. When you divide books by types in accordance to their genres you usually do not include "Paper book" and "Electronic book" as one of genres, then why we should do it in case of BPs? Dinno 09:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I heard December is now National Write a Business Plan Month...why isn't that in here? Media is starting to pick this up, schools are starting to do projects on it, should be noted in here somewhere.(Ezbizplans (talk) 01:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC))Revert?
This article was well-developed prior to February 21st, when the references, categories and languages were deleted. Please see the article's history for the edit that occurred at 13:57 on February 21st. Can this article be restored to the version prior to that edit? --SueHay 18:40, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Minor points
The terms Cool Working Plan and Executive Smiling Summary seem a bit buzz wordish as if they are from a particular book. Are they really standard terms?
Also, the references seem very British so adding context would help. For example "Marks And Spenser" could be changed to "Marks And Spenser, a British department store," would help your poor cousins on the other side of the pond.
---205.166.76.15 16:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Proposed restructuring of business plan article (2007-03-21)
This article appears to be skeletal and missing some significant discussions.
- there is more than one way to categorize business plans. The existing categorization focuses on use, but business plans can also be categorized based on the target. There will be important differences in content depending on kind of project. For example, industrial projects have manufacturing plans. Software development projects have deployment plans.
A new product plan will need a section on intellectual property, substitute products, and research and development costs. An expansion plan for an existing business will need to focus on core competencies and a realisitic assessment of the opportunities for increased market penetration.
- the business plan content section is skeletal - it might be better to convert it into a section where each major heading in the current outline is converted to a second level topic.
- the financial plan topics are missing a discussion of different metrics used in go-no assessment - positive NPV and internal rate of return among them. Break even analysis is a very rough measure and can often be misleading since it doesn't take into account alternative investments or the time value of money.
- if the business plan will be used in fund raising, the financial section should include an estimate of market value based on forcasted EBITDA, comparables, real option analysis or some other commonly accepted methodology.
- a section on risk analysis can also be helpful and is required for plans that might fall into the definition of a prospectus.
- a top level section on business plan preparation techniques is needed.
- a top level section on business plan follow-up is needed. Titling this section "Cost overruns and revenue shortfalls" limits it to only one of many business plan follow up issues. Operational plans, in particular, are in frequent need of reassessment and rewriting.
- there is no section on presentation issues. Topics to be considered: different forms of presentation (oral, slide show, written plans); impact of presentation skills, visual communication on acceptance of business plans, fund raising etc.
- a top level section on business plan interpretation is needed. Businesses plans are interpreted by various audiences - this varies by type of plan, maturity of company, and intended audience. For instance, market estimates and financials for startup companies are usually guess work and so often are treated with a very hefty grain of salt. VC's usually are more interested in qualitative factors (such as the quality of the team). On the other hand, banks generally prefer investments that can be assessed quantitatively and take financial history very seriously. Since this topic is closely related to plan project type, it could also be a subtopic under type of plan. However, the discussion will be clearer to readers if it follows the discussion of business plan preparation and content, so I'm thinking a separate section towards the end might be helpful.
- a top level section on legal and liability issues associated with business plans. If a business plan is submitted in conjunction with requests for amounts greater than 1m(?) there are restrictions on who may be solicited. Certain legal notices might also be needed. I forget the details...
A revised table of contents might look like this:
- 1. Types of Business Plans
- 1.1. By use (Proposal, Operational, Presentation)
- 1.2. By project type (new product, expansion, continuing operations, joint venture)
- 2. Business Plan Content
- 2.1. Executive Summary
- 2.2. Marketing Plan
- 2.2.1 Market Size and Structure
- 2.2.2 Competitive analysis
- 2.2.3 Distribution plan
- 2.3 Financial Plan
- 2.3.1 Funding Plan
- 2.3.2 Valuation
- 2.3.3 Financial History
- 2.4. Production Plan
- 2.4.1 Product/project status and timetable
- 2.4.2 Research and development plan
- 2.4.3 Manufacturing/Deployment plan
- 2.5. Management Team
- 2.6. Staffing Plan
- 2.7. Risk analysis
- 3. Business Plan Preparation
- 3.1. Support services (e.g. electronic planners, consultants, SBA)
- 3.2 Background information research
- 3.2.1 Internal corporate records
- 3.2.2 Publically accessible research materials
- 3.3.3 Fee and subscription services
- 3.2. Modelling
- 3.3. Strategic analysis
- 4. Business Plan Presentation
- 4.1 Presentation Styles
- 4.2 The Elevator Pitch
- 4.3 Oral presentation
- 4.4 Written presentation
- 5. Interperation of Business Plans
- 6. Legal and Liability Issues
Since business plans potentially touch on virtually every area of business training, research, and analysis, I would further recommend that this article be treated as a summary article. It is likely that a potential entreprenuer or SME manager coming to this page for help will be using it as a gateway to other kinds of business knowledge.
I would be happy do work on this, but since this article appears to have some active editors (200.30.165.173 in particular) I don't want to do anything without some discussion. Egfrank 09:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I've got a ton of sources I can use, but I would really love feedback. I think your feedback would be especially helpful in avoiding POV - business is anything but an exact science, even if one takes a scholarly approach to the available material.
I'll follow your suggestions about external links. In any case I think free standing links generally are a sign of insufficient narrative. If the link is important enough to mention, its important enough to explain why you are mentioning it and how exactly it fits into the topic at hand.
Re: presentation. You are right - it could very quickly get out of hand - but then again so could any of the other sections. Keeping all of this down to a reasonable size is going to be as much work as the assembling of citations, if not more.
When it comes to presentation, I wasn't really thinking of listing all the different presentations - there are way too many of them. Every book on business plans has a different theory about the "best presentation".
Rather, I wanted to focus on what works and why. I want people to have the tools to judge if the latest version of "How to write a winning business plan" really does make sense or is just one person's opinion. I've noticed different authors tend to fixate on a finding and then build their whole philosophy around them. Its especially important that their readers understand that the author may not be covering all the bases.
For example, if I were to write a section on oral presentations, I might include various sources on the dynamics of oral presentations, e.g.
- cognitive studies about how much information we really can absorb from a slide, pictures vs words, attention span etc. - imporantance of focus and repetition (also supported with cog pysch citations). - social psychology finds on first impressionsThe three "presentation types" I did mention in the outline were chosen because they identify three different presentation contexts, each of which have different dynamics and priorities.
Egfrank 17:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
In terms of the outline of a business plan - I don't think there is any one source. Pick five books and you will get five o
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