The Business Plan

The Business Plan is the most important document for your business. Indeed, it is even more important than the capital you need.

The Business Plan is the blue print or road map of your business. To some extent it could be said that the success or failure of your business depends on it.

It is therefore, necessary that you pay attention to it.

This write-up is not meant to offer a complete solution to your Business Plan requirements, but a guide. To start any business, care should be taken in the step by step development of the idea itself. First of all you must have a business concept statement.

A business concept statement must contain the following:

BUSINESS CONCEPT STATEMENT

  1. Must have a business name.

  2. Indicate what business opportunities there are for what you intend to do.

  1. What would you do?

  2. What need or needs would your business meet?

  3. How would you produce to meet the needs?

  4. Any benefits to your customers?

  5. Who are your customers and where can they be found?

  1. Competitive environment

  1. Who are your immediate competitors?

  2. Do you know of any new entrants in the market?

  3. You should know and indicate the challenges and barriers to entry in the area.

  4. Indicate how different your services or products would be from that of your competitors.

  5. Why should people change from using an existing product or service to use yours?

  1. Viability of business concept

  1. Indicate how your products or services would get to your customers.

  2. State how your customers would get access to the products or services?

  3. How many employees would you need in the first year of your operations? How many would you need in the second, third or fourth year and why?

  4. How would the business make money?

  5. When would the business start making profit?

  6. How much money would the business make in the following periods?

  • Year one

  • Year two

  • Year Three

  • Year Four

  1. At the beginning of the business, how much money would you require? How about in the second year, third and fourth years?

  2. What is the start-up capital you require? How much money would you need to raise in the second, third and fourth years?

  3. State your initial project cost and how you intend to raise it. Indicate sources and specific amounts of financing you would need from these sources. If these sources include loans, you should indicate how and when you would be paying up.

  1. Entrepreneur experience and commitment

  1. State your qualifications and work experience as well as any experience you have in the business you intend to start.

  2. Indicate how long you have been thinking about this business as well as any experts you have been in touch with on the subject of the particular business.

  3. State how you intend to make the business succeed.

  4. Indicate how much of your own resources you are willing to invest in the business.

By courtesy of Believe Begin Become (BBB), Ghana’s Business Plan Competition, a programme of TechnoServe Ghana, ghanabusinessnews.com has provided a presentation of what a Business Plan must contain.

To download a pdf version of the presentation, please click on the link below.

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