Ahmed Business Consultants

12/09/2012

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/01/0107_businessplan/index_01.htm

We asked 10 startup gurus to each name a favorite resource, excluding their own books or Web sites, to help readers create a winning business plan

11/09/2012

11/09/2012

The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning:

When strategic planning arrived on the scene in the mid-1960s, corporate leaders embraced it as “the one best way” to devise and implement strategies that would enhance the competitiveness of each business unit. True to the scientific management pioneered by Frederick Taylor, this one best way involved separating thinking from doing and creating a new function staffed by specialists: strategic planners. Planning systems were expected to produce the best strategies as well as step-by-step instructions for carrying out those strategies so that the doers, the managers of businesses, could not get them wrong. As we now know, planning has not exactly worked out that way.

While certainly not dead, strategic planning has long since fallen from its pedestal. But even now, few people fully understand the reason: strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers. And this confusion lies at the heart of the issue: the most successful strategies are visions, not plans.

Strategic planning isn’t strategic thinking. One is analysis, and the other is synthesis.

Strategic planning, as it has been practiced, has really been strategic programming, the articulation and elaboration of strategies, or visions, that already exist. When companies understand the difference between planning and strategic thinking, they can get back to what the strategy-making process should be: capturing what the manager learns from all sources (both the soft insights from his or her personal experiences and the experiences of others throughout the organization and the hard data from market research and the like) and then synthesizing that learning into a vision of the direction that the business should pursue.

Organizations disenchanted with strategic planning should not get rid of their planners or conclude that there is no need for programming. Rather, organizations should transform the conventional planning job. Planners should make their contribution around the strategy-making process rather than inside it. They should supply the formal analyses or hard data that strategic thinking requires, as long as they do it to broaden the consideration of issues rather than to discover the one right answer. They should act as catalysts who support strategy making by aiding and encouraging managers to think strategically. And, finally, they can be programmers of a strategy, helping to specify the series of concrete steps needed to carry out the vision.

Planners should make their greatest contribution around the strategy-making process rather than inside it.

By redefining the planner’s job, companies will acknowledge the difference between planning and strategic thinking. Planning has always been about analysis—about breaking down a goal or set of intentions into steps, formalizing those steps so that they can be implemented almost automatically, and articulating the anticipated consequences or results of each step. “I favour a set of analytical techniques for developing strategy,” Michael Porter, probably the most widely read writer on strategy, wrote in the Economist.1

The label “strategic planning” has been applied to all kinds of activities, such as going off to an informal retreat in the mountains to talk about strategy. But call that activity “planning,” let conventional planners organize it, and watch how quickly the event becomes formalized (mission statements in the morning, assessment of corporate strengths and weaknesses in the afternoon, strategies carefully articulated by 5 p.m.).

Call an informal retreat “planning,” let conventional planners organize it, and watch how quickly the event becomes formalized.

Strategic thinking, in contrast, is about synthesis. It involves intuition and creativity. The outcome of strategic thinking is an integrated perspective of the enterprise, a not-too-precisely articulated vision of direction, such as the vision of Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, that three-dimensional visual computing is the way to make computers easier to use.

Such strategies often cannot be developed on schedule and immaculately conceived. They must be free to appear at any time and at any place in the organization, typically through messy processes of informal learning that must necessarily be carried out by people at various levels who are deeply involved with the specific issues at hand.

10/09/2012

Business advisors, experienced entrepreneurs, bankers, and investors generally agree that you should develop a business plan before you start a business. A plan can help you move forward, make decisions, and make your business successful. However, not all business plans are the same, not every business needs the same level of detail. You might develop a fairly simple plan first as you start a small business, and that might be enough for you. You can also start simple and then elaborate as you prepare to approach bankers or investors.

For a simple example, imagine a woman making jewelry at home and selling it at a local flea market on the weekend. A business plan could give her a chance to step back from the normal flow and look at ways to develop and improve the business. The planning process should help her understand her business. It should help her define what she wants from the business, understand what her customers want, and decide how to optimize her business on her own terms. She might benefit from developing a simple sales and expense forecast, maybe even a profit and loss, so she can plan how to use and develop her resources. She might not need to create detailed cash flow, balance sheet, and business ratios. A simple plan may be just what she needs to get going.

This first stage of a plan, that we call the Concept Kick-Start, focuses only on a few starter elements. The Mission Statement, Keys to Success, Market Analysis, and Break-Even Analysis give you a critical head start toward understanding your business.

However, not all startups are that simple. Many of them need product development, packaging, retail fittings and signage, office equipment, websites, and sometimes months or even years of payroll before the sales start. Unless you’re wealthy enough to finance these expenditures on your own, then you’ll need to deal with bank loans or investors or both; and for that you’ll need a more extensive business plan. Startup company or not, the plan has to meet expectations.

One suggestion for getting started is to develop your plan in stages that meet your real business needs. A few key text topics might be enough to discuss the plan with potential partners and team members, as a first phase. You may well want to add a basic sales and expense forecast, leading to profit and loss, as next phase. Adding business numbers helps you predict business flow and match spending to income.

This might be an intermediate plan, incorporating a more extensive outline and business analysis:

Outline Topic Table Chart
1.0 Executive Summary Highlights
1.1 Objectives
1.2 Mission
1.3 Keys to Success
2.0 Company Summary Startup Startup
3.0 Product Description
4.1 Market Segmentation
4.2 Target Market Segment Strategy
4.3 Market Needs
4.4
5.0 Strategy and Implementation Summary

10/09/2012

What goes into a business plan?
There is no single formula for developing a business plan, but some elements are consistent throughout all business plans. Your plan should include an executive summary, a description of the business, a plan for how you will market and manage your business, financial projections and the appropriate supporting documents.
To help you get started in writing your business plan, try the business planner. In addition, we have summarized the essential elements in the following outline.
Elements of a Business PlanCover sheet

Executive summary (statement of the business purpose)

Table of contents

Body of the document

Business

Description of business

Marketing

Competition

Operating procedures

Personnel

Business insurance

Financial data

Loan applications

Capital equipment and supply list

Balance sheet

Breakeven analysis

Profit and loss statements

Three-year summary

Detail by month, first year

Detail by quarters, second and third year

Assumptions upon which projections were based

Pro-forma cash flow

Supporting documents

Tax returns of principals (partners in the business) for last three years, personal financial statements (all banks have these forms)

Copy of franchise contract and all supporting documents provided by the franchisor (for franchise businesses)

Copy of proposed lease or purchase agreement for building space

Copy of licenses and other legal documents

Copy of resumes of all principals

Copies of letters of intent from suppliers, etc

10/09/2012

10/09/2012

Our core team.

10/09/2012

Every week we will share/discuss individual aspects of business consulting and their benifits. This week it is the "Business Plaanning , Strategy & Costing" aspet of consulting.

05/09/2012

ABC offers a list of services for business owners to choose from, depending on their particular business needs.

Start-up services include business plan preparation, marketing plan preparation, and financing search and procurement. Ongoing services include business plan updates, marketing plan updates, search and procurement of additional rounds of financing, management development, IT consulting...services, e-commerce consulting services, operational advising, and human resources advising.

ABC is flexible, working with its clients in the fashion preferred by the client, be it on-site, remotely, or a combination of both. ABC typically works on a project in a team fashion to assist the client in all areas of the business simultaneously. This allows for all parties involved to be in sync in terms of understanding the interconnections of all functional areas of the business.

We have a team of thirteen lead consultants spanning into all major parts of business. I will be introducing them shortly, on the ABC page.See More

05/09/2012

ABC offers a list of services for business owners to choose from, depending on their particular business needs.

Start-up services include business plan preparation, marketing plan preparation, and financing search and procurement. Ongoing services include business plan updates, marketing plan updates, search and procurement of additional rounds of financing, management development, IT consulting services, e-commerce consulting services, operational advising, and human resources advising.

ABC is flexible, working with its clients in the fashion preferred by the client, be it on-site, remotely, or a combination of both. ABC typically works on a project in a team fashion to assist the client in all areas of the business simultaneously. This allows for all parties involved to be in sync in terms of understanding the interconnections of all functional areas of the business.

We have a team of thirteen lead consultants spanning into all major parts of business. I will be introducing the them shortly, on the ABC page.