Business plan basics

Advantages

• time saving;
• expert approach to creating a business plan, ensuring optimum parameters for your document.

Disadvantages

• may be rather costly;
• you do not have the chance to analyze your business yourself from the complex perspective opened by a business plan;
• unless a successful communication procedure is developed, the plan may result inaccurate, not representing your business best.

10.Business Plan Software

Business plan software offers the possibility of creating professionally organized business plans. As a business owner you can use business plan software to write your own business plans. It offers the most complete variant of approaching your business, especially when you are at a start-up stage. Using software in planning your business offers the possibility of creating several different types of business plans in a straightforward, organized, and professional manner, and to include all the essential elements needed. When writing a business plan, it is the owner's business analysis that offers value from various angles, both from a general perspective and the possibility of revealing the weak aspects of the business. When using templates offered by the software, your business plan may end up looking the same as others and will not stand out from the “pile”. As they are so popular they have become very familiar to lenders and investors. The skill of the business plan writer in this case remains the way he transposes reality into a preformatted document. The originality will consist in adapting the templates to best fit your needs and adding some appealing particularities in the presentation. What could be seen as an inconvenience in the case of using a software to build a business plan, may also turn into a valuable advantage when properly customized. Namely, the standardization of the business plans. How is that? It can be easier for bankers and investors that are confronted with many requests of the kind to see at a glance what are their points of interest, in a clearly structured outline.

The Business Plan Outline

The general structure of the plan is generally similar in these types of software. Differences arise from the particularities of various areas of activity. Business plans templates can be used by an inexperienced writer, providing the so-called “wizard” forms for all the necessary sections. However, in specific sections, especially in finance, the user must have some notions of accounting.

The Wizard Creator

Software programs have a wizard creator, which takes you throughout all the fields of a business plan, and a section containing useful business plan samplesfrom various domains of activity.

The Business Plan Forms Creator

The creator formscontain text, table and chart formats that the software will generate once the data is entered.

• The convenient part is that you can successfully build a business plan, even if you are not familiar with business plan writing, on condition that you provide all your business data in detail.
• Using the software is helpful and saves time.
• The wizard creator asks you for all necessary data step by step. It does not allow for omissions. It provides instructions, formats and outlines at the same time.
• The software implements a set of formulas which perform all the basic accounting operations and automatically generate pro forma balance sheets, cash flows analysis, breakeven and profit-and-loss reports.
• It also generates personnel tables, forecast-analysis charts, sales tables and marketing plans based on your data input.
• It automatically provides professional formatting.

Business plan samples are available in a diversity of domains of activity. However, no sample will match your own business perfectly. The only purpose is strictly informative. They allow you to gather more information on your industry area and offer some guidelines for orientation. The samples must not replace the data. As business plans will vary from industry to industry, the business plan softwares will never meet all your requirements precisely.