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.