Every single business starts from a valid and thoroughly developed business plan. This plan is necessary for the entrepreneurs and investor to understand the ventures and opportunities of a startup as well as the expected revenues. Also, business plan shows a very detailed description of the ways how the business will be run along with strategy and specific tasks to work on (Hull, 2013). Successful business plan can identify the success of the whole start. Yet, it is obliged to determine the essential elements of a successful business plan. These are: the marketing, organizational, operational, and financial plans.
It all starts from choosing the market to enter and, hence, it is necessary to understand the market characteristics, determine the target customers’ profiles, expected competitors, and the most important this is to identify the product or service advantages over competitors (Ehmke and Akridge, 2007). Most of the information is at public access, so it will be quite easy to combine it with the interview and other qualitative data.
Organizational and operational plans are quite related to each other as both of them depict the internal company’s structure. The major difference is that organizational plan shows how the company will be structured and operational plan – the actual responsibilities of each department (Ehmke and Akridge, 2007). It is indeed important to specify how the business will be owned and managed.
The financial plan is probably the most important part of the business plan as it actually shows the expected return and forecasts the company’s success (Ehmke and Akridge, 2007). Even if there are minor mistakes in the first three elements described above, they will not be that crucial as mistakes in the financial plan as it evaluates the investment opportunity. It will combine the market observation along with the organizational and operational structure.
References
Ehmke, C. & Akridge, J. (2007). The Elements of a Business Plan: First Steps for New Entrepreneurs. Purdue Extension, EC(735). Retrieved from https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ec/ec-735.pdf
Hull, P. (2013). 10 Essential Business Plan Components. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickhull/2013/02/21/10-essential-business-plan-components/#265be2514d35
