Question

Outline the duties and responsibilities for getting a new business venture through fruition.

Answer 1

In its rawest and simplest of forms, a business plan is a guide; a roadmap of sorts that allows entrepreneurs to clearly outline their business goals and how they intend to achieve them. When you think about it that way, you will quickly realize that every entrepreneur has a business plan in one form or another.

Not every business needs to have a business plan, although, it is recommended that every business has a roadmap to guide its progression. If you are a freelance writer who has a copywriting business that makes a little extra cash on the side, then you can probably skip that whole business-plan-writing debacle without suffering too much damage.

Startup businesses need this strict structure to ensure that everything is in place before breaking ground. From sales projections to management hierarchy and an expense budget, without all these things being broken down into achievable milestones and tasks, a startup can very easily become rudderless and mismanaged.

There are several good reasons why you should strive to write a business plan, even if you think you do not need funding or you are not inclined to bring on more partners. Some of these benefits include:

1. OBTAINING CAPITAL AND FUNDING FOR DEVELOPMENT MEASURES

Having a business plan in place is a surefire way to convince investors to align their interests – and funding – with your enterprise. A well-crafted business plan gives the appearance of seriousness, professionalism, and a dedication to hard work in the years to come – all of the things that investors want to hear and see before they invest their precious dollars in your company.

Serving as a tool to clearly outline and delineate your company and its objectives, having a business plan benefits your employees and partners while also creating confidence with investors by showing them that they will definitely see a return on their investment with you.

2. PORTRAYING A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF THE BUSINESS

When business planning is performed correctly, the constellation of dots that comprise your venture come together in a cohesive fashion that ultimately paints a picture of your company, its goals, and its pathway to success.

3. SHARPENING FOCUS TO IMPLEMENT STRATEGIES

A business plan is an excellent tool for entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses. It helps them focus on their distinctive identities within a competitive market, sharpen their focus on their intended audience, and strategically tailor their product and service offerings to match this audience.

4. ALIGNING PRIORITIES APPROPRIATELY

Many new businesses make the mistake of jumping into all tasks with vigor and enthusiasm but without planning and strategic prioritizing. This often results is a haphazard slew of unfinished tasks, a chaotic view of goals and priorities, and a confusing, stressful business environment that is difficult to straighten out.

A business plan clearly delineates and characterizes goals, priorities, strategies, and safeguards to ensure your venture gets off the ground and into fruition. By clearly indicating (via a business plan) where your time, resources, and energy are allocated, you have an easy protocol to follow for guaranteed success.

How to perform a comprehensive business environment analysis:

The easiest way to go about this is to break it down into smaller individual yet interrelated tasks:

• Analyze the market forces: Assess the dynamics and challenges that affect your niche and market. There are several questions that you will need to answer here (market issues, market segments, needs and demands that your customers have, switching costs – basically, how easy it is for your customers to find similar products; your revenue attractiveness).
• Industry forces that shape your niche: This involves studying your competitors, new entrants into the market, other products (similar or otherwise), and any other stakeholders who could shape and shake your niche.
• Key trends: This is where you study the past, current, and future trends to try and predict how the market will behave. You need to study technology trends, regulatory trends, social economic trends, and societal and cultural trends.
• Macroeconomic forces: This is where you try to consider all the large-scale economic factors that could affect your business in the future. These include global market conditions, the capital markets, commodities, and other resources.

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS

An analysis of the specific industry you are operating in should be performed prior to drafting your business plan. Conducting an industry analysis provides crucial data that can be incorporated into a business plan to describe the strategies and methods your company will be undertaking to successfully perform in the market, and how it ultimately conducts its business to succeed in this industry.

The important data provided by an industry analysis serves to provide an in-depth look into the various opportunities and risks present in the current and future markets. This is of particular value for a burgeoning company preparing to enter their products and/or services into the marketplace.

Through an industry analysis, businesses are given the ability to develop optimum strategies that take full advantage of the multitude of opportunities they are presented with, while also minimizing or mitigating identifiable risks.

MARKETING PLAN

A company’s marketing plan is, in essence, the way in which the business is going to attract and keep customers to build a sustainable and loyal base. The marketing plan is paramount in alluring customers to purchase your company’s line of products and/or services.

Crafting a snapshot of the products and/or services your company sells begins in the business environmental analysis section and is continued through the creation and development of your specific marketing strategies.

It’s important to note that marketing strategies must always be inherently flexible, as they will require continual and periodic evaluation to determine if any improvements, reworking, or overhauls are required to stay in line with a shifting marketplace.