Business Plan for an Established Business- kế hoạch thành lập hãng
Kế hoạch kinh doanh bao gồm một bản thuyết minh và một vài báo cáo tài chính. Mẫu bản thuyết minh là nội dung của kế hoạch kinh doanh. Nó bao gồm hơn 150 câu hỏi được phân thành mấy phần.
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Business Plan for an Established Business
The business plan consists of a narrative and several financial spreadsheets. The narrative template is
the body of the business plan. It contains over 150 questions divided into several sections. Work
through the sections in any order you like, except for the Executive Summary which should be done
last. Skip any questions that do not apply to your business. When you are through writing your first
draft, you will have a collection of small essays on the various topics of the business plan. Then you
will want to edit them into a smooth flowing narrative.
The real value of doing a business plan is not having the finished product in hand; rather, the value lies
in the process of research and thinking about your business in a systematic way. The act of planning
helps you to think things through thoroughly, study and research when you are not sure of the facts,
and look at your ideas critically. It takes time now, but avoids costly, perhaps disastrous, mistakes
later.
The business plan narrative is a generic model suitable for all types of businesses. However, you
should modify it to suit your particular circumstances. Before you begin, review the section entitled
Refining the Plan, found at the end of the business plan. It suggests emphasising certain areas
depending upon your type of business (manufacturing, retail, service, etc.). It also has tips for fine
tuning your plan to make an effective presentation to investors or bankers. If this is why you are
writing your plan, then pay particular attention to your writing style. You will be judged by the quality
and appearance of your work as well as your ideas
It typically takes several weeks to complete a good plan. Most of that time is spent in research and re
thinking your ideas and assumptions. But then, that is the value of the process. So make time to do the
job properly. Those who do, never regret the effort. And finally, be sure to keep detailed notes on your
sources of information and the assumptions underlying your financial data.
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Business Plan
OWNERS
Business name: Your Business Name
Address: Address Line 1
Address Line 2
Town, State Postal Code
Telephone: 02 3456 7890
Fax: 02 3456 7890
Email: [email protected]
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Table of contents
Table of contents
......................................................................................................................
3
Executive summary
..................................................................................................................
4
General Company Description
.................................................................................................
5
Products and services
...............................................................................................................
6
Marketing plan
.........................................................................................................................
7
Operational Plan
.....................................................................................................................
14
Management and organisation
...............................................................................................
18
Personal financial statement
..................................................................................................
19
Financial History and Analysis
..............................................................................................
20
Financial plan
.........................................................................................................................
21
Appendices
.............................................................................................................................
23
Refining the Plan
....................................................................................................................
24
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Executive summary
Write this section last!
We suggest you make it 2 pages or less.
Include everything that you would cover in a 5minute interview.
Explain the fundamentals of the business: what is your product, who are your customers, who are the
owners, what do you think the future holds for your business and your industry?
Make it enthusiastic, professional, complete and concise.
If applying for a loan, state clearly how much you want, precisely how you are going to use it, and how
the money will make your business more profitable, thereby ensuring repayment.
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General Company Description
Mission Statement: Many companies have a brief mission statement, usually in thirty words or less,
explaining their reason for being and their guiding principles. If you have a mission statement, this is a
good place to put it in the plan. Followed by: company goals and objectives, business philosophy.
What business are you in? What do you do?
To whom do you market your products? Target market? (Briefly here you will do a more thorough
explanation in the Marketing section).
Describe your industry. Is it a growth industry? What changes do you foresee in your industry, and
how is your company poised to take advantage of them?
Now give a detailed description of the business:
Form of ownership: Sole Proprietor, Partnership, Corporation, Public Limited Liability Company
(PLC)?
Company History
Years in business, previous owners, successes, failures, lessons learned, reputation in community, sales
and profit history, number of employees, and events which affected your company’s success. Discuss
significant past problems and how you solved and survived them.
Most important company strengths and core competencies:
What factors will make the company succeed? What are your major competitive strengths?
Significant challenges the company faces now and in the foreseeable future. If you are asking for
funding, go on to explain how the new capital will help you successfully meet these challenges.
What strengths do you personally bring to the business?
What are your plans for the future of the business? Growth? If so, at what rate and how will you
achieve it?
Long term:
Are you developing strategies for continued growth, increased production, diversification, or eventual
sale of business? What are your time frames for this?
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Products and services
Describe in depth your products and/or services (technical specifications, drawings, photos, sales
brochures, and other bulky items belong in the Appendix).
What factors give you competitive advantages or disadvantages? For example, level of quality or
unique or proprietary features.
What are the pricing, fee or leasing structures of your products and/or services?
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Marketing plan
Notes on preparation:
Market research: Why?
You spend so much time on marketing related matters customers, competitors, pricing, promotion
and advertising that it is natural to assume you have little to learn. However, every small business
can benefit from doing market research to make sure they are on track. Use the business planning
process as your opportunity to uncover data and question your marketing efforts. It will be time well
spent.
Market research How?
There are 2 kinds of market research: primary and secondary.
Secondary research means using published information such as industry profiles, trade journals,
newspapers, magazines, census data, and demographic profiles. This type of information is available in
public libraries, industry associations, chambers of commerce, vendors who sell to your industry, and
government agencies.
Start with your local library. Most librarians are pleased to guide you through their business data
collection. You will be amazed at what is there. There are more online sources than you could possibly
use. Your Chamber of Commerce has good information on the local area. Trade associations and trade
publications often have excellent industry specific data.
Primary market research means gathering your own data. For example, you could do your own traffic
count at a proposed location, use the yellow pages to identify competitors, and do surveys or focus
group interviews to learn about consumer preferences. Professional market research can be very costly,
but there are many books out that show small business owners how to do effective research by
themselves.
In your marketing plan, be as specific as possible; give statistics & numbers and sources. The
marketing plan will be the basis, later on, of the allimportant sales projection.
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The Marketing Plan:
Economics
Facts about your industry:
What is the total size of your market?
Do you know what percent share of the market you have? (This is important only if you are a major
factor in the market)
Current demand in target market
Growth history
Trends in target market growth trends, trends in consumer preferences, and trends in product
development.
Growth potential and opportunity for a business of your size
What barriers to entry keep potential new competitors from flooding into your market?
High capital costs
High production costs
High marketing costs
Consumer acceptance/brand recognition
Training/skills
Unique technology/patents
Unions
Transport costs
Tariff barriers/quotas
How could the following affect your company?
Change in technology
Government regulations
Changing economy
Change in your industry
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Products
In the Products/Services section, you described your products and services as you see them. Now
describe them from your customer’s point of view.
Features and Benefits
List all your major products or services
For each product/service: Describe the most important features. That is, what does the product do?
What is special about it?
Now, for each produce/service, describe its benefits. That is, what does the product do for the
customer?
Note the difference between features and benefits, and think about them. For example, a house gives
shelter and lasts a long time; those are its features. Its benefits include pride of ownership, financial
security, providing for the family, inclusion in a neighbourhood. You build features into your product
so you can sell the benefits.
What after sale services are supplied? For example: delivery, warranty, service contracts, support,
followup, or refund policy.
Customers
Identify your customers, their characteristics, and their geographic locations; i.e., demographics.
The description will be completely different depending on whether you sell to other businesses or
directly to consumers. If you sell a consumer product, but sell it through a channel of distributors,
wholesalers and retailers, then you must carefully analyse both the end user and the middlemen
businesses to which you sell.
You may well have more than one customer group. Identify the most important groups. Then, for each
consumer group, construct a demographic profile:
Age
Gender
Location
Income level
Social class/occupation
Education
Other
Other
For business customers, the demographic factors might be:
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Industry (or portion of an industry)
Location
Size of firm
Quality/technology/price preferences
Other
Other
Competition
What products and companies compete with you?
List your major competitors:
Names & addresses
Do they compete with you in across the board, or just for certain products, certain customers, or in
certain locations?
Compare your products/services with competition:
Use the table called Competitive Analysis below to compare your company with your three most
important competitors.
In the first column are key competitive factors. Since these vary with each market, you may want to
customise the list of factors.
In the cell labelled "Me", state how you honestly think you stack up in customers' minds. Then check
whether you think this factor is a strength or a weakness for you. Sometimes it is hard to analyse our
own weaknesses. Try to be honest. Better yet, get some disinterested strangers to assess you. This can
be a real eyeopener.
Now analyse each major competitor. In a few words, state how you think they stack up.
In the final column, estimate how important each competitive factor is to the customer. 1 = critical; 5 =
not very important.
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Table 1: Competitive Analysis
Importance to
FACTOR Me Strength Weakness Competitor A Competitor B Competitor C
Customer
Products
Price
Quality
Selection
Service
Reliability
Stability
Expertise
Company
Reputation
Location
Appearance
Sales Method
Credit
Policies
Advertising
Image
Having done the competitive matrix, write a short paragraph stating your competitive advantages and
disadvantages.
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Niche
Now that you have systematically analysed your industry, your product, your customers and the
competition, you should have a clear picture or where your company fits into the world.
In one short paragraph, define your niche, your unique corner of the market.
Strategy
Now outline a marketing strategy that is consistent with your niche.
Promotion
How do you get the word out to customers?
Advertising: what media, why, and how often? Has your advertising been effective? How can you tell?
Do you use other methods: trade shows, catalogues, dealer incentives, word of mouth, network of
friends or professionals?
If your have identifiable repeat customers, do you have a systematic contact plan?
Why this mix and not some other?
Promotional Budget
How much will you spend on the items listed above?
Should you consider spending less on some promotional activities and more on others?
Pricing
What is your pricing strategy? For most small businesses, having the lowest prices is not a good
strategy. Usually you will do better to have average prices and compete on quality and service. Does
your pricing strategy fit with what was revealed in your competitive analysis?
Compare your prices with those of your competition. Are they higher, lower, the same? Why?
How important is price as a competitive factor?
What are your payment and customer credit policies?
Location
You will describe your physical location in the Operational section of your business plan. Here in the
marketing section, analyse your location as it affects your customers.
If customers come to your place of business:
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Is it convenient? Parking? Interior spaces? Not out of the way?
Is it consistent with your image?
Is it what customers want and expect?
Where is the competition located? Is it better for you to be near them (like car dealers or fast food
restaurants) or distant (like convenience food stores)?
Distribution Channels
How do you sell your products/services?
Retail
Direct (mail order, web, catalogue)
Wholesale
Your own sales force
Agents
Independent reps
Has your marketing strategy proven effective?
Do you need to make any changes or additions to current strategies?
Sales Forecast
Now that you have described your products, services, customers, markets, and marketing plans in
detail, it is time to attach some numbers to your plan. Use a forecast spreadsheet to prepare a month
bymonth projection. The forecast should be based upon your historical sales, the marketing strategies
that you have just described, upon your market research, and industry data, if available.
You may wish to do two forecasts: 1) a "best guess", which is what you really expect, and 2) a "worst
case" low estimate that you are confident you can reach no matter what happens.
Remember to keep notes on your research and your assumptions as you build this sales forecast, and
all subsequent spreadsheets in the plan. Relate the forecast to your sales history, explaining the major
differences between past and projected sales. This is critical if you are going to present it to funding
sources.
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Operational Plan
Explain the daily operation of the business, its location, equipment, people, processes, and surrounding
environment.
Production
How and where are your products/services produced?
Explain your methods of:
Production techniques and costs
Quality control
Customer service
Inventory control
Product development
Location
Describe locations of production, sales, storage areas, and buildings.
Are premises leased, or owned?
Describe access to buildings (walk in, parking, motorways, airports, rail, shipping)
What are your business hours?
Include a drawing or layout of your proposed facility if you are trying for an expansion loan.
Legal Environment
Describe the following
Licensing and bonding requirements
Permits
Health, workplace or environmental regulations
Special regulations covering your industry or profession
Zoning or building code requirements
Insurance coverage
Trademarks, copyrights, or patents (pending, existing, or purchased)
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Personnel
Number of employees
Type of labour (skilled, unskilled, professional)
Where do you find new employees?
Quality of existing staff
Pay structure
Training methods and requirements
New hiring in the coming year?
Who does which tasks? Are schedules and procedures in place? Do you have written job descriptions
for employees? If not, take time to write some. Written job descriptions really help internal
communications with employees.
Do you use contract workers as well as employees?
Inventory
What kind of inventory is kept: raw materials, supplies, finished goods?
Average value in stock (i.e., what is your inventory investment)?
Rate of turnover and how this compares to industry averages?
Seasonal buildups?
Leadtime for ordering?
Suppliers
Who are your suppliers?
Names and addresses
Type and amount of inventory furnished
Credit and delivery policies
History and reliability
Do you expect shortages or shortterm delivery problems?
Are supply costs steady or fluctuating? If fluctuating, how do you deal with changing costs?
Should you be searching out new sources of supply, or are you satisfied with present suppliers?
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Credit Policies
Do you sell on credit? If so, do you really need to sell on credit? Is it customary in your industry and
expected by your clientele?
Do you carefully monitor your payables, what you owe to vendors, to take advantage of discounts and
to keep your credit rating good?
You need to carefully manage both the credit you extend and the credit you receive.
Managing your Accounts Receivable
If you do extend credit, what are your policies about who gets credit and how much?
How do you check the creditworthiness of new applicants?
What terms will you offer your customers; i.e., how much credit and when is payment due?
Do you offer prompt payment discounts (It is best to do this only if it is usual and customary in your
industry).
Do you know what it costs you to extend credit? This includes both the cost of capital tied up in
Receivables and the cost of bad debts.
Have you built the costs into your prices?
You should do an ageing at least monthly, to track how much of your money is tied up in credit given
to customers, and to alert you to slow payment problems. A receivables ageing looks like this:
Total Current 30 Days 60 Days 90 Days Over 90 Days
Accounts Receivable
Ageing
Collecting from delinquent customers is no fun. You need a set policy and you need to follow it.
When do you make a phone call?
When send a letter?
When get your attorney to threaten?
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Managing your Accounts Payable
You should also age your Accounts Payable, what you owe to your suppliers. Use this format:
Total Current 30 Days 60 Days 90 Days Over 90 Days
Accounts Payable
Ageing
This helps you plan who to pay and when. Paying too early depletes your cash, but paying late can cost
you valuable discounts and damage your credit. (Hint: if you know you will be late making a payment,
call the creditor before the due date. It tends to relax them.)
Are prompt payment discounts offered by your proposed vendors? Do you always take them?
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Management and organisation
Who manages the business on a daytoday basis?
What experience does that person bring to the business?
What special or distinctive competencies?
Is there a plan for continuation of the business if this person is lost or incapacitated?
If you have more than about ten employees, do an organisational chart showing the management
hierarchy and who is responsible for key functions.
Include position descriptions for key employees.
Professional and Advisory Support
List board of directors and management advisory board.
Attorney
Accountant
Insurance agent
Banker
Consultant(s)
Mentors and key advisors in addition to the above
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Personal financial statement
Owners will often have to draw on personal assets to finance the business, and these statements will
show what is available. Bankers and investors usually want this information as well. Owners will be
asked to cosign or personally guaranty any business loans.
Document your assumptions, notes, definitions, and any special financial situation. Include details of
notes, securities, contracts and others on the bottom of a personal financial spreadsheet. Include one
such spreadsheet for each principal.
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Financial History and Analysis
A solid analysis of the past must precede any serious attempt to forecast the future. A financial history
and ratios spreadsheet will allow you to put a great deal of financial information from other statements
on a single page for ease of comprehension and analysis. You may also enter industry average ratios
for comparison.
In the Appendix, put yearend balance sheets, operating statements, and business income tax returns for
the past 3 years, plus your most current balance sheet and operating statement.
Debt Schedule
This table gives indepth information that the financial statements themselves do not usually provide.
Include a debt schedule in the following format for each note payable on your most recent balance
sheet.
Table 2: Debt Schedule Table
To Whom Original Original Present Rate of Maturity Monthly
Security Current/Past Due
Payable Amt. Date Balance Interest Date Payment
