Business planning is important. A bad business plan is important for what it does not do! If you have purchased or downloaded a Business plan and filled in a questionnaire type document you may have arrived at the finish and wondered what it was for.

The truth is you have answered someone else’s questions. Many of these plans end up in a drawer and are never looked at again.

The point of a Business Plan is the Planning. There are 3 functions of a good business plan.

1. To organise and prioritise your resources
2. To show someone else that you know what you are doing
3. To act as a blueprint for running the business

The organisation and prioritisation of your resources is the most obvious. But let us decide now, at the planning stage, just who is needed to make it work. Let us have all the contacts in place so that come the day of the launch it is all prepared.

Showing off to someone else is important. No Bank will go with you unless it is confident the money is in safe hands. The same applies to an investor, or a grant authority. None of them will run your business for you and they all have a reputational risk to consider.

The third function is often ignored to the peril of the business. Any business should sit back and take stock every so often. The largest companies do that with a board meeting. ‘What have we done? Where are we going? What have we forgotten?’ In essence these are the questions raised at every board meeting.

Parts of the business plan will need rewriting. It is a Plan after all, and your best assessment at the beginning. As time progresses some of it will be overtaken by events. If it has been done well and fortune has smiled it will need revising upwards. If not so much then new strategies need to be put in place.

Whatever the case Business Planning needs to be done and needs to be done well.

Past cases

A community arts project wanted to set up a gallery in a run down area and the committee had little experience in Business. Bob Shepherd Associates produced a plan that was able to justify the investment as long as a necessary commercial edge was introduced with arts classes and workshops to supplement income.

A local Council wanted to offload a loss making Leisure Centre to the community so that Grants could be obtained by a Trust organisation set up to run it. Bob Shepherd Associates advised the supporters group on setting up a Company limited by Guarantee and ran several short workshop presentations to include everyone in the Business Planning. A substantial plan was produced that incorporated all the functions of the Leisure Centre, developed some corporate training, some Special Events, some links with Sporting Associations and produced a recommended cash flow that would save £100k per year. Additionally we went with the Trustees to a number of meetings to the Council to argue the case.