How to Write a Business Plan

What this course is about?

This course extends the thinking done in Introduction to Business Planning, to explain what a full blown business plan ought to look like. We look at the reasons for drafting a business plan and the standard format of such a plan. Subsections of the plan include: infrastructure, marketing, operations, management, and finance. Thereafter we look at some of the practical problems associated with drawing up business plans – and how best to deal with these.

Who should be doing this course?

This course would be open to people interested in starting a business. You might be unemployed, or currently employed but looking to start something on the side. Alternatively, you might want to cash in your pension and invest in a business full time. Lack of education is no issue. Many great business leaders are university drop-outs because the pull of a business opportunity is too strong.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this course, you should be able to:

• Understand the basics concepts of the course –how businesses create value and why finance is often required in order to develop a business such that it can create value for the customer. Recapping the Business Canvas and extrapolating it to a full blown Business Plan.
• An overview of what a typical business plan looks like.
• Examining the Products and/or Services Plan.
• Examining the Marketing Plan.
• Examining the Operations Plan.
• Examining the Management Plan.
• Examining the Financial Plan
• Identifying key problems when drafting plans – and how we can solve these.