The business plan is a strategic planning tool, serves to assess the future and provides several scenarios of likely developments of the company. The Business Plan is based on management-assumptions, gives an overview of measures and targets and is divided into a profit-and-loss-account, balance sheet and cash flow statement.
Implementation of the strategy is closely linked to a transformation process with organizational changes. The changes are best implemented via specific projects in a moderated change-process. In large corporations the implementation will be supported by the controlling- or process-management department, which keeps track of all running programs and assesses the success of the measures implemented.
Reservations in the organization can often be avoided through open, clear communication. Senior management should be involved in the change process right from the beginning. Management should be open to questions and understand the concerns that are linked to a change process, but be clear and focused.
A Business Plan can be used as internal planning tool or as an basis for external discussions with investors and/or banks. In both cases the plan includes a good description of the business model, the competitive advantage and unique selling position. The business plan incorporates marketing- and finance-related views and topics and normally it takes several weeks or months to prepare it.
Tools and methods of business planning are:
- Life Cycle Analysis
- Shareholder Value Analysis
- Scoring Models
- GAP Analysis
- Target Costing
- Value analysis
- Zero-Based Planning
- Success Factors Analysis
- Benchmarking
- Product / market portfolio
- Strengths / weaknesses analysis (SWOT)
- Investment calculation
- Cost comparison
- Contribution Margin Analysis
- Break-Even Analysis
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