Product Description: An example of how to make a detailed description, drawing up a business plan

If you are unable to find a business plan (BP) with a description, characteristics of the product that you plan to promote, then you need to start its independent preparation. What sections does the business plan include? What are the stages in its preparation known? And finally, how to arouse genuine interest among investors? We will analyze all these and other equally interesting questions in the article.

Project product description or business plan

A business plan should be understood as the company's strategy regarding management, marketing and financial activities. It is issued as an official document. BP allows you to highlight all aspects of the future business, take into account existing risks, calculate investments and the timing of the return of funds. It is advisable to consider in more detail how to correctly write a product description. It should be understood how important it is to draw up a document on paper. This is the first thing an investor will look at at a presentation of a project. As an example, consider the description of a software product below.

Business Plan: Functionality

Perhaps the main requirement in the preparation of the document is the opportunity to demonstrate the idea so that investors clearly understand where to invest or not to invest money. If the description of products and services is compiled correctly, surely there will be interest in different funds, banks and other structures. Business planning helps to structure and organize all the information about the project. With it, you can create the settings for the planned expansion of future infrastructure, as well as correctly identify the time suitable for investing money in the development of the project.

Today, many novice entrepreneurs can only write a brief description of the products. They only in general terms represent what functions a priori a business plan performs. Below we consider its varieties that exist today.

Drafting Tips

To give investors a decent description of the product, it’s worth using a number of tips for preparing a business plan:

1. The text should have simple and readable formulations, concepts: two-digit interpretations are prohibited.
2. A business plan should contain no more than 25 pages.
3. The product description file is compiled in accordance with generally accepted standards.
4. It is important to provide the potential investor with complete information about the project.
5. All calculations and conclusions in the project must be confirmed by specific figures, facts or studies conducted in advance.
6. All sections of the product description must be interconnected. Each of them supplements the general positive opinion of the audience about the project.
7. Having studied the business plan, the investor should see the potential of the project, so it’s worthwhile to work on this issue separately.
8. It is important to maintain the flexibility of the foregoing. Explanation: if your business plan does not exclude the introduction of additions, changes or clarifications, then it can already be considered better than the competitive one.
9. It is imperative to indicate methods for monitoring future activities.

Principles of compiling BP

It is not difficult to draw up a business plan, the main thing is to think through the main idea of ​​a startup in detail. It is advisable to consider a step-by-step algorithm that allows you to develop a document yourself. First you need to identify the "strengths" and "weaknesses" of the business idea. Do not stop working on the project in the early stages, if suddenly there are more negative aspects than positive ones, because every minus is a unique growth point for the business. A detailed analysis is also needed for the sales market.

Product Description. Example

If after carrying out the studies mentioned above and calculating the initial monetary indicators, you did not change your mind to implement the idea of ​​a startup, it is advisable to proceed with the formation of a business plan. Full BP contains 12 sections. Consider them on the example of a description of software product development.

BP sections

The business plan includes the following sections:

1. The title page, which displays the name of the project and the structure where the launch and implementation of the software product project is planned. It is important to indicate the name of the director of the company, the contact information of the people responsible for writing the BP, the date the document was created.
2. A non-disclosure memorandum that will guarantee the protection of a unique idea for a business and will not allow it to be stolen. The file contains a requirement to keep confidential any information obtained in the process of reading the document. So, violation of the rules will be prosecuted by law.
3. A brief summary. It is important to keep in mind that you need to draw it up at the end of writing the BP. This is like an excerpt from the entire document, in which it is advisable to describe the key points associated with monetary indicators, and the business idea as a whole.

Description in summary

To correctly compose a resume, you should first describe the product. In accordance with our example, this will look as follows: the X-ray microtomograph software creation system involves studying the structure of the object of study from the inside in a non-destructive way. The mechanism consists of a photodetector and a radiation source. The software takes about 360 pictures of slices (one step = 1 degree). And after receiving the primary information, a reconstruction technique based on the Radon algorithm is used. This is how a three-dimensional model of a research object is built.

In addition to the competent characteristics of the product, the summary should contain a description of the target audience, the number of products sold in absentia, the planned revenue after launch within 1 year. It is important to indicate the total amount of necessary investments, as well as the costs of the project. Remember:

• about the organizational, legal sides of the issue;
• the labor force that will be required to implement the plan;
• list of sources of subsidies;
• deadlines for reaching the breakeven point;
• payback period.

What is an investor paying attention to first of all?

It should be borne in mind that the "Summary" section is the most important, since it is the potential investor who draws attention to it first of all. Conclusion: the fate of your idea is almost completely dependent on the resume, so you need to present the data logically and concisely. We should not forget about the total income for the year, the total amount of cash at the end of the year, NPV (purely discounted income) and the profitability of the structure.

Business Plan Sections: Part Two

In addition to the above BP sections, there are the following:

1. Project characteristics (its meaning, what is needed to achieve the main goal, what are the obstacles and risks, ideas for the development of the project, and so on). This section is approximately two pages long. Today, the SWOT analysis reflecting all the risks and opportunities of the case is relevant.
2. Characteristics of a market niche. Here, the assistant will be such a figure as the volume of sales of an analog product for a certain period.
3. Detailed information about the project, that is, its essence is in the details. Here you need to remember the degree of readiness for the start of implementation, the availability of necessary resources for this. It is necessary to indicate the primary goals of the startup, the target audience, ways to achieve success, the pros and cons of the product.
4. Marketing strategy. It is advisable to describe the essence of the strategy, the main performance indicators and means of achieving the goals outlined in one of the previous sections. It is necessary to distribute responsibilities to all employees involved in the marketing service, deadlines and methods for achieving marketing goals.
5. Production plan. In this section, you need to specify information regarding the production of marketable products, taking into account the seasonality factor. There is one caveat if you plan to sell finished products, for example, a product disassembled in the example above (clothes, shoes, children's toys), then this item can be omitted. The section should contain the following aspects: the necessary production mechanisms, the process features, a list of equipment with its technical characteristics and cost, information about the areas for the production process, the necessary raw materials, costs in accordance with each stage of production.
6. An organizational plan where it is important to disclose the features of hiring personnel, monitoring their activities and the distribution of professional tasks. It is very harmful to neglect this section, because it is with its help that you can understand the correspondence of the existing organizational structure to the main objectives of the project. This section should contain the actual and legal address, the name of the legal norm (for example, LLC or OJSC), the current management scheme.
7. A financial plan that characterizes all the monetary nuances of a business idea: profitability, payback period, and so on. It is important to make a calculation of tax payments, the composition of the capital structure, a plan for reports on income and expenses of the enterprise, cash flow and balance sheet structure. Break-even point and net present value should also be calculated.
8. Risk management. In the section it is important to describe all the risks that are possible in the process of organizing and conducting the proposed activity. It should be remembered that a special role is played by those factors on which the profit of the enterprise directly depends.