A business plan is an indispensable tool for an entrepreneur and not only because of its importance to the fundraising process, but because of how it helps businesspeople crystallize their strategy and evaluate their process. Establishing partnerships often requires time and capital, and companies will be more likely to partner with your venture if they can read a detailed explanation of your company. If you have not already done so, now is the time to either put together your first business plan or update an existing one.

In a more broad sense, business planning helps businesses of all sizes to deal with the day-to-day needs of the organization by forcing the owner to weed through the operations of a typical work day. These could include marketing, R&D, sales, or perhaps purchasing inventory.

Building a business plan allows you to determine the answer to some of the most critical business decisions ahead of time. Furthermore, far too often, people who should be focused on planning are drawn into firefighting because their plan and assumptions are not executed due to technology disconnects between planning horizons.

Marketing in this sense is also called ‘marketing strategy’ – or more broadly ‘business strategy’. People who read your business plan will already know a little bit about your business because they read your executive summary. These workshops are designed to support new start-ups to develop a robust, investment-ready business plan and financial forecast.

Include the context for the problem your products or services solve. If your answer is no, you may have been able to easily accomplish this goal by planning for such expenses in advance through a business plan. Our business planning is developed within the context of Ofgem’s regulatory framework, known as RIIO (Revenue=Incentives+Innovation+Outputs).