More on Business Planning

Recently, I was asked to assist a local company with cost estimates for an upcoming company wide special event and while doing some quick research I ran adrift of my mission. As is sometimes typical with my digging for facts, I ran across an excellent article and now, one of my newly bookmarked websites. I wanted to take a few minutes and share a great new resource with you.

What drew me to the article in the first place was that it is based in the published by a company named Smarta.com and is based in the United Kingdom. Here’s how their website describes their services;  “Smarta is the ultimate advice and networking resource for anyone starting and running a small business. Smarta provides independent, entrepreneur-led support and is backed by some of the UK's top entrepreneurs.” This is only the tip of the iceberg! What started with a quick scan of the article, “Why you need a business plan”, ended several hours later with a whole new respect for the team that developed this wealth of information. In the interest of full disclosure, Smarta.com's site is published in association with Natwest, a major UK based bank. 

According to a recent article published by printed.com, “This year, the Smarta 100 winners will be decided by an all-star line-up of judges comprising some of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs including Theo Paphitis from Ryman and star of Dragons’ Den; Rowan Gormley, founder of Naked Wines and winner of the Smarta 100 in 2011; Mike Soutar, founder of Shortlist and Stylist magazines; Thea Green MBE, founder of Nails Inc; and several other big hitters”. This is a very impressive line-up regardless of what country your business is based. 

Briefly stated, Smarta.com is a one stop, complete step-by-step guide to writing your own business plan. Smarta.com contains an extensive resource database and includes templates for both the text and financial portions of your business plan. This is a great resource to use when developing your plan for the first time, or updating one already in use. To enhance the motivation to create a successful business plan and therefore, a better chance at a success business, Smarta.com offers an annual ten thousand British Pound grand prize to the “most exciting and disruptive small businessesin the UK”. 

After a couple of hours of browsing through the easily navigated site, I had to think about business planning from an international standpoint after all, Smarta.com is based in the UK, not the US. I continue to be impressed to see that the concept of and the desire for formal business planning are universal. Being “just a kid with a dream” is only a start. Being “just a kid with a dream and a plan” is a better road to success.

Business Planning is Important

The importance of formal business planning cannot be over emphasized in today’s business environment. It’s usually after several failures or near failures that entrepreneurs discover the importance of having a formal business plan. Recently I had the opportunity to do some research on business planning and came upon some great resources that will help business owners with developing a formal business plan.

One of the first resources I discovered was an article written by Terry Berry and published at entrepreneur.com. Berry discusses in detail the 15 Reasons You Need a Business Plan. This article alone should convince every business owner to seriously consider the time and investment involved in preparing a formal plan. Berry is the president of Palo Alto Software Inc., based in Eugene, Ore., which produces business planning software. He is also the author of 3Weeks to Startup and ThePlan-As-You-Go Business Plan, published by Entrepreneur Press. In addition to this resource, entrepreneur.com has numerous resources including business plan templates to help business owners get started. All of these resources are free of charge.

Another great resource to get started with the planning process is the Small Business Administration (SBA). The SBA produces training courses and videos on numerous topics to assist entrepreneurs in being successful with their businesses. One such resource is a thirty-eight slide, narrated, self-paced, course titled, Howto Write a Business Plan that takes business owners from research and composition to editing and presentation of a individualized business plan. Similar to the vast resources available at entrepreneur.com, all of the reference and resource material on the SBA.gov website is free.

In a recent article, 10Top Reasons Why First-Time Entrepreneurs Fail by Martin Zwilling from Young Entrepreneur and published at entrepreneur.com, “statistics also suggest that the failure rate for new startups within the first five years is as high as 50 percent”. Of the top ten reasons Zwilling points out that the number one reason new startups fail is, “No written plan”.

Whenever you consider starting a new business or managing an existing one, the first step in a successful business journey is writing a business plan.