Basic Business Plans - The Nuts and Bolts of a Business Idea Organized into a Plan

What do basic business plans provide? All business plans, at their core, attempt to describe a business and its approach to profitability.

People often prepare business plans as internal documents, for the purpose of guiding a business to the attainment of a specific goal or set of goals. Even departments or divisions within organizations write business business plans to achieve departmental business goals.

But as often, if not more often, small business owners prepare business plans with the aim of attracting investment or financing to their business.

The level of detail you place into your business plan will depend on the complexity of your business, and of course, the purpose of your plan.

Large corporations may need to prepare detailed business plans to strategize several aspects of their businesses.

Small businesses, on the other hand, usually have simple business structures and thus can succeed with simple business plans.

What goes into basic business plans?

Basic business plans usually provide the following information:

1. Your Business:
   What is the name of your company - who are its owners and key stakeholders?
   
2. Vision:
   What will your business look like in 3 to 5 years? What kind of revenue will it earn, how many employees will it have, how many locations or branches will exist and where?
   
3. Mission Statement:
   What does your business do? What is its main purpose? What does it offer to its customers? Why is it better and different from its competitors?
   
4. Goals:
   What specific and measurable goals do you have for your business and its products or services? How and when will you achieve them?
   
5. Success Indicators:
   How will you know if you're really achieving your goals? What signals or results will tell you that your goals are being met?
   
6. SWOTs:
   What strengths do you, your business, product and service possess that you can bring to market and build upon? What weaknesses does your business have which need to be overcome? What opportunities exist that your business can take advantage of? What threats exist that your business will need to address or avoid?
   
7. Business Strategy:
   What actions do you need to take for your business to achieve its goals? How will you carry out the company's short and long-term objectives?
   
8. Financial Plan:
   How much will your business earn as a result of your strategy? How much will it cost to run the business, execute your strategy and generate revenue? How will you manage cash flow?
   
9. Evaluation:
   What steps will you take to measure your success against your goals? Is your business achieving its goals, or does something need to be changed?

Both detailed and basic business plans almost always contain an executive summary, which summarizes and highlights key issues in the plan for the reader. However, if you're writing a business plan purely for the sake of blueprinting your small business, and plan to use it as an internal document, you can do without the executive summary.

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