COURSE OVERVIEW:

A business plan is a written document that describes in detail how a business is going to achieve its goals. A business plan lays out a written plan from a marketing, financial and operational viewpoint.

Business plans are important to allow a company to lay out its goals and attract investment. They are also a way for companies to keep themselves on track going forward.

Although they're especially useful for new companies, every company should have a business plan. Ideally, a company would revisit the plan periodically to see if goals have been met or have changed and evolved. Sometimes, a new business plan is prepared for an established business that is moving in a new direction.

Why should you use your valuable time creating a document that tries to look into the future while the world is changing around you? How can you decide now what you will be doing in one year’s time, or three years’ time, or even five years’ time? And, if you can’t predict these things, what value would a plan have anyway?

The usual, perhaps trite, answer to these questions is, if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?

But there is far more than that to business planning, and particularly in making your business plan work. Whether you are a business owner, or a manager, you will know that doing business is a complex operation. It is a matter of trying to juggle a number of different factors, and arranging for those factors to be in the right place at the right time.

Creating a business plan means not only identifying all the factors in your area of operation, it also means developing a deep understanding of each of those factors individually, and the way they combine to create your unique business situation.

This course is primarily concerned with how to create a business plan for your business or department, in the most effective way for your organisation. It is also about making sure that the factors contained in the business plan are correlated in such a way as to ensure that you have a blue-print for sound business management, and that using that blue-print your plan will work!

The first part of this course discusses what goes into a business plan and where to get the information needed for your plan. Then explains how each business factor complements and reinforces the other factors in the plan. Also discusses how a plan can be presented for external uses. The second part explains how to monitor and manage your plan. Then discusses what to do when things change. Finally, examines how to extend your plan for a longer period.

By the time you reach the end of this course, you will have prepared a sound plan for your business after undertaking the many exercises included.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

By the end of this course, you will be able to understand:

• What is a business plan?
• The importance of having a business plan
• What does a business plan contain?
• Where are you now?
• The SWOT Analysis
• How to create a more effective analysis?
• The objective information provided from a good SWOT analysis
• Where are you going?
• The importance of effective organisation objectives
• The balanced view of organisation objectives
• The important questions to address when developing the business plan
• Where to get the information needed for your plan?
• The importance of the market research report
• Customers and the customer analysis
• The customer risk factors and loyalty factors
• How to review of your products or services in order to meet current or future market demands?
• How each business factor complements and reinforces the other factors in the plan?
• Competitors and the competitor analysis
• How to promote the business and sell the products/services?
• The internal promotion activities
• The external promotion activities
• The issues that you need to take into account
• Distribution and the characteristics of distribution channels
• The importance of involving staff in business decisions
• How to get the right person in a job?
• How to keep the right people?
• The cost of losing a key member of staff
• The financial analysis of the business
• Money from sales and absorption costing
• The competitive cost analysis for your products or services
• Cost apportionment
• Budgeting and the areas covered by the budget
• The incremental budgeting technique
• The zero-based budgeting technique
• What the size of a contingency allowance should be related to?
• How a plan can be presented for external uses?
• The flexed budgeting technique
• How to make it happen?
• How to monitor and manage the plan?
• The seasonalised financial budget
• How to extend your plan for a longer period?
• What to do when things change?
• How to change the plan?

COURSE DURATION:

The typical duration of this course is approximately 2-3 hours to complete. Your enrolment is Valid for 12 Months. Start anytime and study at your own pace.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

You must have access to a computer or any mobile device with Adobe Acrobat Reader (free PDF Viewer) installed, to complete this course.

COURSE DELIVERY:

Purchase and download course content.

ASSESSMENT:

A simple 10-question true or false quiz with Unlimited Submission Attempts.

CERTIFICATION:

Upon course completion, you will receive a customised digital “Certificate of Completion”.