1.03 – Analysing Your Planning Objectives
To achieve your business goals, you need a clear plan—a roadmap to follow. This begins with an assessment of your current situation, followed by defining your destination and the financial, operational, marketing, and organizational strategies you’ll employ to get there. The following sections guide you through this process.
Planning for a New Business
Every new business, whether a tech start-up or a venture in a long-established industry, begins with an idea and high hopes. A business plan helps you evaluate your idea, potential market, and competition, addressing these critical questions:
- Viability: Does this new venture have a good chance of success?
- Funding: How much money will the business need to get started?
- Customer Identification: Who are your customers, and what’s the best way to reach them?
- Competition Analysis: Who are your competitors, and what’s the best way to outrun them?
- Unique Selling Proposition: Why will people choose this product or service over other options?
Planning for a Solo Business
Millions of people work for themselves in sole proprietorships, ranging from accountants and attorneys to app developers, artists, and musicians. Many never consider drafting a business plan, which is a missed opportunity. A business plan helps focus on key questions:
- Readiness: Are you prepared for running a company of one?
- Profitability: How can you turn what you love doing into a profitable business?
- Resources: What resources do you need to get your business off the ground?
- Pricing: What should you charge for your product or service?
- Affiliations: What affiliations could you explore to strengthen the business?
Planning to address changing conditions
No business today is immune to change. New technologies, disruptive innovations, and global, economic, and political turbulence prompt many established businesses to plan how to retool themselves. A business plan must address the following critical questions:
- Change Drivers: What are the drivers of change that present your business with internal or external threats or opportunities?
- Adaptation: How can you reshape your business, its technology, its products or services, and its customer interactions to better compete in a transformed environment?
- Steps for Change: What steps do you need to take to achieve your goals for change?
Planning for growth
Successful companies can’t rest on their laurels. To remain competitive and grow, they need to seize new opportunities, whether by introducing products, expanding into new locations or market segments, improving efficiencies and profitability, or embracing new innovations. For companies charting a strategy for growth, a business plan must address several key questions:
- Customer Loyalty: How are you planning to deepen customer loyalty?
- Growth Opportunities: Where do the best opportunities for growth lie?
- New Markets: If you’re aiming to reach new market areas or consumer segments, who are your competitors in these new markets?
- Technological Innovation: Can you take advantage of technological innovations?
- Scaling Operations: How can you revise operations and processes to scale into a larger business or improve profitability?
- Market Share: How can you best compete to grab new market share?
By thoroughly analyzing these objectives and crafting a detailed business plan, you position your business to navigate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, ensuring sustained growth and success.
