Business Plan

The future is the most challenging view of the three. A business plan provides a blue print of our vision of the future. We look into our crystal ball and make many choices about what the world will be like, what it will need, and how we fit into that environment. The business plan we create is the embodiment of the vision and a measurement stick of our progress as the future becomes the present. A plan documents our desired outcomes and helps us measure our performance against it. Changing our business, or our business plans, to incorporate reality then eliminates deviations.

Next we look at the past. We are reviewing what has happened in our industry, the world and in other businesses similar to ours. We use this look to formulate our business future. How well we research and accurately interpret the past has a great impact on the reality our business plan will incorporate.

Finally, we have the present. This is our present operating environment. Our business plan foretold what resources our company would need and how they would be utilized to produce our marketable goods or services. A plan done correctly identifies suppliers, sources of funding, and the other resources necessary to accomplish the business vision. The present reality is the measure of our predictions and the reality of the implementation of the business plan. If our operations closely agree with the plan, all is going well. If there are substantial variations, we must address them and correct our business progress to move toward our business goals. Thus, the present represents the actualization of the theoretical business plan. The present demonstrates how well we did in planning and predicting the business circumstances.

An overlooked use for the business plan is the marketing use when approaching suppliers and those from which we need resources to be extended to the business. Our business plan can be used to show the thought process and business plan. It can be used to convince resource suppliers we are a good risk and an opportunity to establish a new and important business client. Too, employees should be familiar with the business plan in as much detail as can be useful to them in helping to accomplish the business mission.

These three perspectives are very important to all business plans. In fact, a small business needs a business plan worse than a large one because of resources. Normally, large businesses tend to have sources of financing that can bridge problems until they can be corrected. Unfortunately, small businesses usually don't have the same deep pockets so the risk of unforeseen circumstances or problems is exaggerated significantly. True too, small businesses tend to either fail to create a business plan or ignore them once they become involved in daily operations. Actually, this is when they need the plans the most because of their inherent comparison and grading of reality against the proposed. But, all businesses do much better if they have plans and follow them.