Business plan – loved, demanded, hated, but how to succeed?
The most common reason for an entrepreneur to deal with the ie of business plan (engl. business plan) is probably the Raising capital.
If you need a loan to start up a business, for expansion or if you want to make investments, the lending institution usually expects a solid and comprehensible business plan.
Even when launching a new product or taking over a family business, creating a business plan is recommended. Not to forget that a business plan serves the own success control. On the basis of these figures you can see whether your business will be successful and profitable.
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Are there rules or even DIN standards for a business plan??
There are no official guidelines for a business plan. In principle, every entrepreneur can create the plan as he sees fit. Some points should always be consid.
– brief summary of the project – what are your goals for the company, how should the company look like? – how the product/service will look like or be designed? – how you would like to put your idea into practice? – what form of business you choose and why? – what risks do you see, what opportunities? – Solid financial plan:liquidity planning and capital requirements
How important are the bare figures of a business plan??
In order to be able to develop a successful product, it is advisable to also deal with business models. business models) and not to limit oneself exclusively to the bare figures.
"Simple ideas are usually only at the end, not at the beginning of a thought process" (Gunter Faltin, founder of the tea campaign)
Prominent entrepreneurs such as Gunter Faltin (Professor of Economics at the Free University of Berlin, Entrepreneurship Department) or Thomas Jakel (CEO of the Berlin startup Strandschicht and co-initiator of the Idea Camp) are of the opinion that business plans are completely dead and that only business models are purposeful. For the success of a business start-up, a creative, idea-driven concept is more important than large amounts of available capital.
However, in most cases it does not work completely without capital. The lending institutes attach importance above all to facts and figures and have little to do with visionary ideas. So, to get a loan, it is almost inevitable to write a plan that will be read and evaluated by the banks.
Often, however, young companies have to realize after some time that the business plan they have worked out cannot be adhered to. customers react differently than planned or the product is not accepted as expected. Some founders then make the mistake of trying to adapt reality to the plan. The business plan must be adhered to. The goal stated there must be achieved.
The better option is to research why customer behavior deviates so much from the expectation. The plan must be adapted to reality, not the other way around. The business model offers creative. A variety of possibilities.
What does a business model look like??
"It is not at all about ideas, about ingenious flashes of inspiration, but about hard work of thought. As long as you think you have to wait for brilliant ideas, you will get nowhere." (Gunter Faltin)
With the help of the business model, a founder can work out what benefits and values his products or services have for the customers. It is mainly geared to the needs of the customers. Since the prerequisite for this is to know these needs, the entrepreneur must find out what the customers really want (Hintergrungartikel: Die Bedurfnispyramide von Kunden und Mitarbeitern). This in turn results in greater involvement with their own product, which has a positive effect on product development.
This so-called value proposition (engl. Value proposition) is aimed not only at customers but also at potential business partners needed for the production process. Their concerns must also not be ignored under any circumstances. For example, your suppliers should benefit from becoming part of the business model.
In addition, the business model deals with the question of the value chain. How is the previously defined benefit generated for the customer or business partner? Where are these services offered, what are the markets for them? Whether an idea can be realized can be determined by tests alone, which is why a prototype should be created and tested in practice as soon as possible.
At the same time, it represents a revenue model. The business model describes what revenues the company should generate and where they come from. With the breakdown into costs and revenues, the expected earnings of the company are shown.
Visualization is often used in the development of business models. This has the advantage that processes can be represented pictorially and can thus be grasped more quickly.
Business Plan versus Business Model
In the literature, opinions differ widely as to which model is the right one or the better one. Both versions have their advantages:
Business plan
– the business plan can help to convince others of one's own project – it is almost indispensable as a means of raising capital, hardly any investor or bank would get involved in financing without showing the economic viability of the project – a good business plan shows that the entrepreneur has dealt with the project or idea in detail and can back it up with figures – the business plan can be a good reference point for a later check: The figures can be used to check whether the goals have been achieved or whether the company has run into difficulties and new paths need to be taken – The creation of such a plan forces a systematic approach, which means that possible gaps in knowledge or problems can be identified in advance. These can be remedied by appropriate countermeasures – a business plan illustrates dependencies. The idea or the project must be coherent in itself, in the end everything must fit together. Here too, deficiencies can be identified and remedied in good time – a business plan can be used to identify and assess risks. Risks cannot be avoided, but if you recognize them in time, you can protect yourself in advance, for example, with a financial reserve – through all these advantages, a business plan increases the chances of success of a project
Business model
– the business model is based on the benefits of the product or service. Both the business model and the business plan have their advantages. Are not to be considered separately from each other. The conventional business plan is certainly important and correct in its function. The business model, however, looks at an idea from a completely different angle. Therefore represents an excellent supplement.