Business planning is one of the most critical steps to online or offline business success. It is so much easier to work from a blueprint, when running a business, than it is to work without direction. When you work without any guidance or sense of direction, you get blown with the wind. You get lost in a sea of problems.

When you have a good business plan you can follow it to achieve your life’s dreams. You can modify it as you work from it so that your plan remains relevant at all times. A business plan is the route map to your wildest financial aspirations. All the more reason why you should pay attention to its preparation.

A business plan is a strategic document that manifests the principle of thinking before acting. As a strategic document it details the long term plan to be followed, covering a period of 3-5 years. A business plan is also a tactical document in that it is best constructed at a detailed level that makes the forecasts reasonably accurate over the first year.

Many obstacles stand in the way of constructing a business plan, and this article discusses four of them… being unsure of how to implement a plan, failure to recognise the need for regular updates, ignorance of product planning, and ignorance of marketing planning. The article also proposes solutions to these and other business planning problems.

IMPLEMENTATION

What is implementation? Why must we implement a business plan? How do we implement it? Implementation is the process of acting on a plan. We follow it and apply its findings, while watching the business environment for any significant changes. When there are changes we take them into account by modifying the plan. If the changes are minor we make only tactical changes. If they are major we make strategic changes.

It is one thing to plan, but it is a completely different matter implementing the plan to achieve the desired results. To succeed we must be disciplined while remaining flexible. We must also be objective in our assessments so that we can accurately monitor progress, and we must be ruthless in correcting deviant behaviour. Sometimes this means sacking incompetent personnel and hiring better ones. We shall deal with other implementation issues later.

UPDATES

Why must we update a business plan? A plan must always be up-to-date if it is to remain relevant. You don’t want to follow an outdated plan or it will lead your business astray. An updated plan is one that responds to environmental changes by listening for such changes and using them to adjust its methods.

The necessity to keep a plan relevant means that we must conduct business planning every year. The plan must cover a 3-5 year period in order to incorporate strategic elements. But what are the details behind updating a business plan? We shall discuss this later.

PRODUCT PLAN

A business sells products to make money. As such it must engage in product development or acquisition. What is a product plan? Why do we need a product plan? How do we develop a product plan? How do we implement a product plan? We shall deal with these questions soon.

MARKETING PLAN

Marketing is about bringing customers to your business. Without customers your business can’t survive. You can’t get customers if they don’t like your products or services. Therefore product planning must be driven by marketing considerations.

First you determine what your potential customers want and then you give it to them in the form of products or services. But what is a marketing plan? Why do we need a marketing plan? And how do we develop a marketing plan? These questions will be addressed soon.

Now let us turn to the answers to this and other questions mentioned above… Unfortunately, we do not have enough space in this article to address the aforementioned questions. So we have prepared a special page with all the answers you need. Before directing you to that page let us first summarise what we have done here.

FINAL REMARKS

This article has discussed a number of key problems that you will face when you try to construct a business plan. The problems include…

1. Your lack of skill in implementing a business plan.

2. Your failure to recognise the need for regular updates.

3. Your ignorance of product planning.

4. You ignorance of marketing planning.

The article also points at the solutions you must undertake to resolve these problems. The link to these solutions is provided below.