Strategic Business Plan

ANDY PULLEN

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 100

EXAMINATION NUMBER TWO

Lars this is how you create a business plan. First you have to set the vision, goals, and objectives of your business. The most important driver for almost any business plan is return on investment (ROI). Commonly, when someone starts to write a business plan for the first time you need to determine what is your objective?

The essential planning elements are identifying your objectives. What you are going to sell to whom, when and how you are going to sell it, how much contribution the sales will produce, what the marketing and selling cost will be, and what will be the ROI.

Research would be your next step. Your market research should focus on the information you need, to help you to formulate a strategic plan and make business decisions. Market information potentially covers a vast range of data, from global macro-trends and statistics, to very specific and detailed local or technical information, so it's important to decide what is actually relevant and necessary to know. However there's no point spending time researching global statistical economic and demographic data if you are developing a strategy for a relatively small or local business. It would be far more useful to carry out your own primary research about the local target market, buying patterns and preferences, local competitors, their prices and service offerings.

First establish or confirm the aims of the business. Then state the objectives of the business unit you are planning to develop. Determine what is the business aiming to do over the next one, three, and five years?

Next define your mission statement. All businesses need a mission statement. It announces clearly to your staff, shareholders and customers what you are in business to do. You can involve staff in defining and refining the business's mission statement, which helps develop a sense of ownership and responsibility. Producing and announcing the mission statement, is also an excellent process for focusing attention on the business's priorities, and particularly the emphasis on customer service.

After your mission statement you must understand and define clearly what you are providing to your customers. This description should normally go beyond your products or services, and must include the way you do business, and what business benefits your customers derive from your products and services, and from doing business with you. Develop offerings or propositions for each main area of your business activity. Under normal circumstances competitive advantage is increased the more you can offer things that your competitors cannot. The important process in developing a proposition is translating your view of these services into an offer that means something to your customer. The definition of your service offer must make sense to your customer in terms that are advantageous and beneficial to the customer, not what is technically good, or scientifically sound to you. Think about what your service, and the manner by which you deliver it, means to your customer. The important thing is to understand your services and proposition in terms that your customer will recognize as being relevant and beneficial to them.

Customers value these benefits more than all others by making money, saving money, and saving time. If your propositions cannot be seen as leading to any of these then customers will not be very interested in you.

When you write your business plan ensure that it shows what your business can do. Essentially your plan is a spreadsheet of numbers with supporting narrative, explaining how the numbers are to be achieved. A plan should show all the activities and resources in terms of revenues and costs, which together hopefully produce a profit at the end of the trading year. Your business plan, which deals with all aspects of the resource and management of the business, will include many variables in from the marketing process. The business plan will state sales and profitability targets by activity. Above all a plan needs to be based on actions. These actions need to lead to cost-effective and profitable causes and effects. Inputs required to achieved required outputs, analyzed, identified and quantified separately wherever necessary to be able to manage and measure the relevant activities and resources.

Your marketing plan is actually a statement, supported by relevant financial data, of how you are going to develop your business. Plans should be based on actions, not masses of historical data. The historical and market information should be sufficient just to explain and justify the opportunities, direction, strategy, and, the marketing actions, methods and measures.

The business plan should have the following: title page, contents page, introduction page, executive summary page, main body of plan, acknowledgments and bibliography/reference sources, and last an appendices. The main body should include the following:

1. Define your market- sectors and segments

2. Quantify your market- size, segmentation, relevant statistics, values, and numbers.

3. Explain your market- sector trends, growth, legislation, pest factors, show the strategic business drivers within sector and segments, purchasing mechanisms, processes, restrictions- what are the factors that determine customers' priorities and needs

4. Explain your existing business- your current business according to sector, products/services, quantities, value's and distributor.

5. Analyze your existing customer spread by customer type, values and products/services including major accounts.

6. Explain your products and services

7. Explain your routes to market, gatekeepers, influencers and strategic partners.

8. Case studies and track record- the credibility, evidence and proof that your propositions and strategic partnerships work.

9. Competitor analysis

10. Sales/marketing/business plan showing sales and margins by product/service stream, mix, values, segment, distributors, whatever is relevant.

11. List your strategic actions that will