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Good planning is the pillar of building a successful business. You need a business plan when you first launch your company, often to convince lenders or investors to consider funding it. However, a good business plan fills more than just the financial purpose and should not be a one-time effort. Planning should be an ongoing process that remains critical to your business' success over its entire lifespan.

Business plan for established businesses

If you are a mature business, your business plan should:

• guide your growth
• 91香蕉黄色视频 your business strategy
• ensure that you meet key targets and goals
• help you manage business priorities
• drive efficiencies
• identify opportunities
• allow you to benchmark your business results

A business plan can play a key role in allocating resources throughout a business. It can help you attract new funds, or win over new investors and partners. See how to tailor your business plan to secure funding.

Ongoing business planning

Ongoing planning is different from writing a business plan. It can help you:

• identify where your business is now
• determine in which direction you wish your business to grow
• monitor whether you are achieving your business objectives

Ongoing business planning ensures that your business remains focused, helping you to meet certain key targets and manage business priorities. 

Importance of reviewing your business plan

Business planning takes time. Adopting a continuous business planning cycle can help you to regularly review your business plan and keep it up to date. This cycle should include regular business planning meetings which involve key people from the business.

If you regularly assess your performance against your business plan and targets, you are more likely to meet your objectives. You're also more likely to notice and take corrective action when things aren't going to plan. Many businesses choose to assess progress every three or six months.

Growth planning is similar to business planning. However, it focuses mainly on revenue generation or expansion, and the actions needed to achieve it.

What is a growth plan?

A growth plan is a granular, systematic record of ambitions for your business' future. It sets out your business goals and targets, and clear strategies and tactics for reaching them.

A growth plan considers:

• the current state of your business - including strengths, weaknesses and opportunities
• where you want your business to be in the future
• an action plan and schedule to achieve your vision

Unlike a business plan which focuses on a three to five year timeframe, a growth plan covers a shorter period, typically 12 to 24 months.

Creating a growth plan takes time, but it helps to keep your growth efforts on track and ensures that your company expands in a targeted and organised way. You should also develop a strategic plan as a key part of planning for growth. 

What to include in a growth plan?

Your growth plan should cover your strategy for improving your existing sales and processes to achieve the business growth you want. Your plan should include:

• Your marketing aims and objectives, for example how many new customers you want to gain and the anticipated size of your customer base at the end of the operating period.
• Operational information such as where your business is based, who your suppliers are, and the premises and equipment needed.
• Financial information, including profit and loss forecasts, cashflow forecasts, sales forecasts and audited accounts.
• Summary of the business objectives, including targets and target dates.

If yours is an owner-managed business, you may wish to include an exit plan. This includes planning the timing of your departure and the circumstances, eg family succession, a sale of the business, floating your business or closing it down.

Why do I need a growth plan?

There are many reasons why you may need a growth plan for your business. For example, you may have experienced:

• low sales
• loss of customers
• increased competition

Having a growth plan can help you prioritise your resources and take corrective action to address one of these problems. For example, if you are a small business, you may pursue strategies to increase sales revenue, such as selling more to existing customers. A more established business may decide to sell into new markets instead or offer new products or services.

Use your business plan to attract funding

If you intend to present your business plan to an external audience such as investors or banks, you will also need to include:

• your aims and objectives for each area of the business
• details of the history of the business, including financial records from the last three years - if this isn't possible, provide details about trading to date
• management's skills and qualifications
• information about the product or service, its distinctiveness and where it fits into the marketplace

Discover how to tailor your business plan to secure funding.

If your business has grown to contain a series of departments, each with its own targets and objectives, you may need to draw up a departmental business plan.

Department plans

A departmental manager will typically write a business plan for their department, usually under guidance from the business owner. Some people prefer to call it an operational plan. Whatever the name, such plan may:

• detail any current responsibilities or commitment of the department
• include a SWOT analysis of the department
• analyse previous performance
• collect and review historical information on income and expenses
• create financial forecasts
• determine departmental goals and initiatives
• align individual plans with wider business strategy
• draft tactical plans and propose budget, resource, timescales, etc

The manager will then have to agree on how their plan fits with other departments, solicit feedback, negotiate - if needed - with senior management, and secure approval. It's important for each department to feel that they are a stakeholder in the plan.

Each department's budgets and priorities must fit in with those of the entire organisation. Department plans need to be more specific than the overall business plan. It's important that you set business performance targets that are realistic and achievable for each department.

Align department-level plans with strategy

You should aim to combine the individual departmental plans into a single strategy document for the whole organisation. This can be complex, but it's vital if each department is going to work towards the overall goals of the business.

Drawing up a business plan that unites all the departments requires coordination. Make sure all departments are using the same planning template.

Departmental planning is not just an issue for large businesses. Many small businesses consist of separate, decentralised departments working towards different strategies. 

Resource allocation is a crucial step in business planning. It involves working out exactly which resources your business is going to need to achieve its specific objectives. This may be:

• financial resources, ie cash
• equipment or fixed assets
• people, including staff, suppliers or other valuable relationships

You will want to detail your resource requirements in your business plan. Potential investors and business partners will be particularly interested in this before getting involved with your business.

What is a resource allocation plan?

As part of your business plan for growth, you should specify clearly and thoroughly how you will allocate resources to make your growth strategy work.

Describe each resource that you have or need, their position in terms of their value, and their role in helping you meet your business objectives.

If you don't already have these resources, describe how you will generate them by future activity. For example, by:

• recruiting more office staff
• spending more on marketing
• buying more supplies or equipment

Changes in the market could present increased opportunities for a certain division. Maximise on this by making sure they have enough resources to increase their activities.

How do you allocate resources in business?

You may want to provide funds through current cashflow, generating more profit or seeking external funding. It's always better to fund future growth through revenue generation.

Draw up a business budget to decide the level of resourcing for each department. It's important that you prioritise resources. Make sure that you allocate enough funding to key business areas to achieve overall goals. If funding isn't available, you may need to make cutbacks in other areas.

Review your progress regularly and identify problems with resource allocation early so you can take corrective action. See how to review your business plan.

A successful business growth plan should incorporate a clear set of targets and objectives. These will allow you to monitor and measure your business performance to get an idea of how well your business is doing.

SMART business targets

SMART objectives or targets can help you achieve the strategic goals of your overall plan. SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timely

Targets help everyone within a business understand what they need to achieve and when. Find out why you should set business performance targets.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

You can monitor the performance of employees, teams or a new product or service by using appropriate measures - these are known as KPIs.

Businesses track and measure many different types of KPIs, including:

• sales or profit figures over a given period
• milestones in new product development
• productivity benchmarks for individual team members
• market-share statistics

You will have to consider the specific circumstances of your business when deciding which key performance indicators to measure.

Employee performance

Targets make it clearer for employees to see where they fit within an organisation and how they can help the business meet its objectives. They also help to objectively address individuals' progress and should form a key part of managing staff performance.

A business plan is a critical tool - not just during the start-up phase, but for established businesses also. Reviewing your business plan and updating it regularly gives you a chance to monitor your progress and take corrective action if things aren't going to plan.

Importance of reviewing your business plan

After you write your business plan and put it into practice, you should continually monitor it to make sure that you are achieving the business objectives. You should regularly:

• assess your progress to date
• analyse the most promising ways to develop your business

Some businesses choose to review their plan and progress annually; others do it every three to six months. Find out about the benefits of ongoing business planning.

When to review your business plan

Business plan cycle, or the process of reviewing and analysing your business plan, is typically:

• continuous - with the plan regularly updated and monitored
• annual - with the plan broken down into four quarterly operating plans

Sales-driven businesses sometimes use a monthly operating plan, and weekly targets and reviews if needed.

Major events in your business' target marketplace (eg changes to competitors or customers) or in the broader environment (eg new legislation) should trigger a review of your strategic objectives. 

Regardless of whether there are fixed time intervals in your business plan, it must be part of a rolling process. Regularly assess performance against the business plan and agree a revised forecast if necessary.