A business plan is a manuscript or a document comprising all the details about the strategic goals and objectives of the growing and emerging business, venture, or start. It also offers plans and strategies on how to achieve them. Today, we’ll discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a business plan example.
A business plan offers you the following information;
- Analyzing your business model
- Offered products and services
- The price you are going to charge
- Targeted customer market
- Strategies and techniques you employ to achieve success
Let’s discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a business plan; here they’re as follows;
Strengths of a Business Plan
Some of the key strengths in the “strengths and weaknesses of a business plan example” are as follows;
Brings Everyone Onboard
A business plan requires information from various people in multiple departments and units of the company. You have to cooperate and collaborate with all of them for the growth and success of your business. Other than a business plan, their views and opinions are not important. While writing the business plan, make sure that everyone is on board, and utilizes their energy for the growth of your business.
Financial Access
When launching a new business project or entering a new market, the company needs funds to get things started. Banks and other financial institutions are great sources of getting funds. Without having a proper and documented business plan, they won’t offer you the loan that you need for your business expansion. In fact, a written business plan is their primary requirement for loans and funding.
Learn Resource Allocation
A business plan guides you about the capital, budget, and resources you need for the growth of your business or the execution of your business idea. Some of the raw materials and resources that you need for your business operations are scarce. While writing the business plan; you should keep mentioning the scarcity and how you would manage them by reallocating the budget and resources.
Bird View To The Future
A well-written business plan offers you a glimpse into the future of the business and how it would look once it succeeds. You don’t have to invest in a such project that would cost you a lot of money than potential earnings and profitability. However, if a glimpse into the future comprises a lot of confusion and uncertainties, then you don’t have to invest in such projects.
Show Your Commitment
Floating and discussing a business idea is one thing, but writing a comprehensive business plan by discussing various factors shows your commitment to the business venture. It allows you to discuss your business idea more effectively, and you can also explain the worth and value of your business along with potential growth possibilities.
Recognize Target Demographic
Without identifying and recognizing the target customers, your business idea can’t succeed. Whether you are selling goods online or doing business in the service industry, you should identify your target customers where they are, and how you should approach them. Without conducting in-depth planning, you don’t know how where your target audience is and how to approach them.
Marketing & Promotional Strategy
A good business plan helps you to identify your target customer market and offers them goods and services. It allows you to create a value proposition for your brand and approach every segment effectively.
Weaknesses of a Business Plan
Some of the main weaknesses in the “strengths and weaknesses of a business plan example” are as follows;
Demand Execution Strategy
Well-designed comprehensive planning is useless if it is not delivering the required results. A good business plan comes with a lot of responsibilities; demands a great implementation strategy; develops the ground for collecting information and becomes a necessary part of the company. An ineffective execution strategy has destroyed various businesses.
Limited Liability
Usually, it is the responsibility of one person to develop a business plan, but you can’t hold him accountable for ineffective processes during the implementation stage. It is because they developed the plan based on their perception of reality and how they perceive things.
Excessive Analysis
The focus of the business plan is on excessive analysis and hypothetical scenarios in terms of how things should be rather than what they are. It accurately explains the number of things that you require and needs for launching the business in the market. However, it doesn’t tell you how you should approach your target customer market, the issues you would face, and how you should manage them.
Could be Wrong
It doesn’t go without saying the significance of including the right personnel to create a business plan that has got real-life experience and a vision of influencing others. But the problem is that many small businesses don’t have the luxury of having professional expertise at their disposal. However, they don’t have the inground business experience and belong to various other fields. Resultantly, their business plan comprises a lot of inaccurate information.
No Freedom
The business plan creates a set of boundaries and tells you how you should do things in a certain way. But some business ventures require a free hand for their creative team to experiment with new things. In other words, the company’s top management dictates the terms, conditions, mission, and vision of the company. The implementing team in the front line doesn’t have any say in it.
Outdate Facts
We are living in the fast-evolving world of the 21st century where things, facts, and figures are always changing. Your business plan comprises various facts and figures of today’s forecasting, but you aren’t sure how things would be in the future. By the time you get funds and implement the business, the facts and figures won’t be the same.
Without Guarantee
A business plan offers you a comprehensive guideline on how to start a business with all the basic and necessary details. Some of the information in it is correct, and the others are incorrect or outdated, but it doesn’t guarantee you about anything that your business would be successful if you 100% follow all the guidelines. It may or may not, depending on various factors.
Inconsistency
It is possible that you have got multiple target markets, conflicting facts and figures, and competing strategies for marketing and product planning. In the presence of such inconsistent information, it becomes highly difficult for an investor to decide whether to invest or not. Most importantly, you won’t find coherence in all of them, because different people have written various sections of the business plan.
Distribution Network Unknown
Your business plan doesn’t tell why you have to use a particular distribution channel for the delivery of your product or service. You aren’t sure whether it would reach your target audience or not; why this channel is good and others are not. However, the distribution strategy is highly significant because it delivers your product or service to the target audience.
Not Aware of Competitors
It doesn’t matter how much unique and creative your product offer is; you would always face competition in the market. There is no such thing as a free market and the market without competition. However, if the business plan focuses on the competition, then it would push away many new investors; that’s why they focus on product differentiation points rather than highlighting competition.
Unidentified Target Customers
The business plan doesn’t clearly define the target customer market in terms of age, interest, location, gender, and occupation. Without clarifying the details about your target customers, you won’t know anything about them. You can’t rightly target your customers if you don’t know about them.
Conclusion: Strengths and Weaknesses of a Business Plan Example | SWOT Analysis of Business Plan
After an in-depth study of the strengths and weaknesses of a business plan example; we have realized that a business plan is a very important document. If you’re developing a business plan swot analysis example company, then you should keep in mind the abovementioned strong and weak points impacting the business plan.
Ahsan Ali Shaw is an accomplished Business Writer, Analyst, and Public Speaker. Other than that, he’s a fun loving person.
