A Business Plan by any other name (10 in fact!) Part..1

There are many expressions used to describe business plans and although they seem similar they have distinct and separate meanings

 
 

It's important to know the exact meaning of terms & expressions

Something I read recently got me thinking about definitions we use to describe a ‘Business Plan’. If you ask anyone they are probably confident that they know what a business plan is?

After all, the words are simple enough and descriptive, but once the wording is slightly changed such as ‘business planning’ or ‘operations plan’ – then there’s lots of room to get ‘muddled thinking’ on the subject.

(In fact, I was surprised how often I have been guilty myself of misunderstandings and I admit it sometimes led to bewildering discussions with teams and colleagues).

So here is a definition list which I hope helps to clarify the various phrases and their meanings.

1. Business plan: An organized collection of milestones, tasks, assumptions and basic business numbers. It covers strategy and details what’s supposed to happen when, who’s in charge of what, how progress is measured, when money is to be spent and from where, and when money is expected to come in. It isn’t a document; it’s a plan. If it isn’t reviewed and revised monthly, then it won’t be very useful. So it has to be practical and just big enough to serve the business need.

2. Business planning: This is the action of steering a business through the cyclical business cycle. You plan, you review and you revise as necessary to optimize. Business planning is all about management.

A Business Plan by any other name (10 in fact!) Part..2

There are many expressions used to describe business plans and although they seem similar they have distinct and separate meanings

It's important to know the exact meaning of terms & expressions

 
 
[CONTINUED from Part ..1 -above]

5. Strategic plan: A plan that leaves out the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the business plan and concentrates on the ‘success’ objective.

6. Operations plan: A plan that leaves out the strategy and concentrates on specific day-by-day workings of the business.

7. Marketing plan: A business plan that leaves out the overall company financial strategy in order to concentrate on the marketing strategy, tasks & goals.

8. Annual plan: A business plan that leaves out plans for the second and third years in order to focus on the immediate 12-months ahead.

9. A Bank funding plan: A document created as output from a business plan, formatted for easy reading and highlighting past financial performance and current financial position. Bankers look for payment history and assets backing for their loans.

10. An Investor funding plan: A pitch to investors should highlight the management team, product-market fit, market size, potential growth, unique ‘know how’ or technology, competitive advantage, scalability, and potential return for the investors.

Note: While bankers look for payback with ‘interest’, investors look for payback with ‘profits’. This tends to make bank funding more suitable for an existing business with investors being a more appropriate funding source for a new venture.

Lastly: All of the plans (from 2. to 10. above) are derived from the overall business plan document. As you write your team’s plan keep this in mind so as to facilitate the sponsor clients to be easily able to create their own sub-set plans out of your main business plan document.
 
 

what’s your goal for JMEC – winning?

 

 

There are many reasons why someone would want to do JMEC.

 

Producing the best possible business plan for the project client or winning the JMEC competition.

 

Actually, you can focus on both – they are not mutually exclusive!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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a revised timetable for the JMEC program

 

Revised timetable issued by JMEC on 14th March 2011

 

At the best of times, doing JMEC requires dedication and a big personal time commitment. The recent disasters have impacted everyone to some degree and interfered with the ability to keep your weekly work group secessions on schedule. I’ve heard that most of the teams are now back on track, and have been able to avail of technologies like Skype to work effectively as ‘virtual teams’. This is great and it’s a testimony to your commitment and loyalty.

Recognizing the unprecedented disruptions faced by JMEC 17, Laura Loy in mid-March issued a revised timetable from now to the end of the program. The revised schedule is reproduced above. This new schedule extends by two weeks the date for delivery of your final business plans to JMEC. Although this causes a bit of an overlap with preparation for your ‘client’ and ‘oral’ presentations, in my experience as a former mentor, It should still, all be doable!

No doubt, many of you are feeling quite ‘stressed’ and indeed stretched to find time by virtue of these awful recent events.  However, it’s worth considering that these occurrences are a reminder that the flow of business can never be expected to be smooth and trouble free.  Remember SARS, remember the ‘Lehman Brothers’ shock – there are always setbacks to be faced from future unforeseen disruptions. So business contingency planning should always be factored in to your business plans.

To all the folks on JMEC 17 – Ganbatte!

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