Business plan is essential, but one thing that budding entrepreneurs may not understand is that such a plan shouldn’t lock them in. They are useful for budgeting and planning purposes, but shouldn’t be used completely as operational guidelines. Our primary purpose should be to write an outline, that includes all aspects and factors of our business, but not detailed enough that can make us much less flexible. If done properly, we will be able to gain profitability from all proposed factors in the business elements. There are many components of our business that can contribute to higher revenues and profits. There’s no perfect template for a business plan, it can be as short as one page, but can be as long as thousands of pages, separated in different volumes. However, it is likely that we are somewhere in between. Writing a plan should be something that all people should consider when they plan to go into the business world. It doesn’t really matter if we are thinking about starting small part-time business or if we are planning to open something as big as manufacturing plants.
If we are hesitant to put business plan in writing, then we should know that we are not alone. Many business owners, including successful ones, actually try to avoid doing this. However, they could miss a huge opportunity that can make their business much more organized and planned, which will translate into higher productivity and profitability. We have heard many excuses and reasons why people refrain of making written plans. They may say that they don’t have time, they aren’t paperwork kind of people or even that they don’t need a written plan at all. Another reason is that people don’t want to be held accountable for specific projections, numbers and goals. However, we should make our business plan something more like a roadmap that we can comprehend. We won’t drive across country traversing thousands miles of roads without a proper and accurate road map. Business plans will make it less likely that we will encounter detour and we would simply need to continue our journey to direct routes. Business owners may also think that plans can’t be changed, especially if it has been well thought out and well written.
However, business plan could actually help us accomplish many different business opportunities that could be invisible. Like a roadmap, business plan should show us the route to get from point A to point B. However, it should show us different alternate roads and all will be aimed to achieve our end goals. This should help us to see additional opportunities in these alternate routes and we may add more alternate routes progressively to improve our business plan. When we do business, we will see plenty of things that can go worse or better, so it is important to be quite flexible with our plans. Based on dynamic market conditions, we should make adjustments quite frequently.
