Business Plan Considerations

With a business plan there a specific parts which need important research.

Your research should be focused on a few things regarding the business, the industry and the marketplace it is in.

Different tools can be used to compile this information, some of them include;

SWOT Analysis - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of your business
Budget Forecast - Use cost and revenue outlays to calculate estimated profitability
Porter's Five Forces Model - The business, the marketplace, buyer and supplier power, competition, complements and substitutes.

With these in mind researching the marketplace will help to derive important and useful information for considerations for your business.

SWOT Analysis -

Strengths - What does your business have that will make it successful
Weaknesses - What does your business need to improve on, and what are some shortcomings it may have
Opportunities - What market conditions can the business capitalize upon
Threats - What market conditions may be detrimental to the business, ie. new competition

Budget Forecast -

By researching businesses in your industry with similar business models, you can develop estimated revenues and costs for a new business.  Also with a few months of recorded sales or business activity it is much easier to develop a forecast using a growth equation.

Using spreadsheet software create a budget with monthly outlays in specific business cost and revenue aspects.

Porter's Five Forces - This is a good tool to establish where the business stands in the marketplace;  Porter did a lot of important research on the competitiveness of firms and how they react to different forces in the marketplace.  Search the internet for Porter's Five Forces Model.  Later I will provide a detailed analysis of the model for small business owners.