Planning

Business Plans are Essential!

A good business plan states clearly what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it!

The problem is that most businesses operate in real time and things change, often rapidly.

The business plan therefore drops in order of importance despite the initial enthusiasm often achieved at the point the plan is finalised and signed off.

So many organisations go through an annual cycle of producing business plans with budgets then heaving a sigh of relief and getting on with business as normal, ignoring the hard work that has produced the business plan!

Business Plans have so many uses

• Establishes common framework
• Develops goals and tactics to achieve agreed plan
• Ensures that everyone is on the same page
• Enables agreement on Business Processes, Marketing strategies, Sales targets....

But very often are inflexible and very difficult to keep in line with real actual performance and real events that happen.

I have worked with numerous businesses, large and small, on the development of business plans for different purposes, for example

• Funding
• Growth
• Turnaround
• Acquisition
• Capital Project undertaking

The best tool I have identified and made extensive use of is Sage Forecasting. KPL is a fully accredited Sage partner for Sage Forecasting

There are numerous reasons for standardising on Sage Forecasting but the ability to easily Flex any of your business parameters develop the scenarios brought about by different real time events is a powerful tool which can make the task of keeping a good strategic business plan current very easy, and therefore much more likely to be used by the business, and for the business.

Sage 50 Forecasting

is a powerful software tool that enables dynamic business plan scenarios to be tested, quickly and provides detailed financial forecasts. It provides instant snapshots of your business's financial position so that you can measure actual progress against budgets.

You can easily develop "What If" scenarios and test the effect of different conditions, allowing you to examine new business ideas, plans or strategies in a risk-free way before committing to the project.