The structure of a business plan has a generally accepted form, despite the uniqueness of each business individually. To fully characterize the business plan, it is necessary to consider each of the items that requires a detailed decryption.
So, the structure of a comprehensive business plan is built on a certain sequence of generally accepted points. The main section, which should be the first, is the capabilities of the company, characterized by a concise, and setting goals in the future. The restraint of this section should be stated concisely, simply and clearly. Indeed, it is precisely this part of the business plan that special investors or partners pay special attention to.
Here, information should be placed that characterizes the company and its activities. At the same time, goals should be determined in each direction, ways to achieve them should be described, and responsible persons should be indicated.
This section should answer two main questions:
- What are the benefits to investors who have invested a certain amount of money in the company?
- What risks arise for investors when participating in the financing of an enterprise?
The structure of the business plan should contain in the second section a description of the types of goods or services provided. At the same time, there should be a clear distinction between the directions of the main and secondary.
The main areas include: the name of products or services with a detailed description of them and, preferably, with drawings or photographs. It also indicates: a list of needs for which the goods or services displayed in the section are intended; demand characterization; comparison of price and quality; where it is planned to sell goods or provide services; advantages of this product over analogues of other companies; list of shortcomings and ways to overcome them; the availability of copyright to the goods; cost and possible profit.
The structure of a business plan cannot but contain a section describing sales markets. This section can be attributed to a rather serious part in this document, since it is the study of the existing sales market that allows the entrepreneur to determine his own niche in the consumer market.
This requires a reflection of the answers to the following questions:
- Where is the potential sales market located?
- Which segments of this market are preferable?
- What factors influence the demand for this product?
- what has been done to study sales markets?
Also in this section it is necessary to assess the potential range of the market and the real volume of sales
Each company that cared about the results of its activities creates a business plan, the structure of which should also include, in addition to the ones listed above, other sections:
- production plan ;
- Assessment of competition in the market;
- Marketing plan ;
- Financial plan;
- The occurrence of possible risks.
Sometimes the last two sections are combined into one, since the implementation of a financial plan is sometimes fraught with risks.
The financial plan contains planning to provide the company with finances in order to effectively use available cash. As part of this section, a specific package of financial reporting documents should be developed:
- an operational plan showing the interaction of the company with target markets for each product;
- an estimate of income and expenses, which is designed to help in determining the expected profit and calculating the estimated costs of the sale of a particular product;
- Statement of cash flows (income and expense during the business);
- balance sheet, which is the final document of any activity of the enterprise for a specific period.
Thus, this article briefly describes the structure of the business plan and its role in the implementation of the company. It should be noted the confidentiality of this document containing unique ideas, best practices in marketing, etc. Therefore, it should be shown only to those people in whom the company has an interest.