Business Plan Cookbook: A Recipe for a new business

Most business executives and entrepreneurs find themselves time and time again chasing around to managing their businesses. They create state-of-the-art innovations, push the most creative marketing campaigns, organize their businesses to order and strive to manage their cash flows. However, most business executives hardly find enough time or anyone to actually sit down to revise what really brings value or drives their businesses..

Running a business, whether an existing or a start-up, without a clear business or strategic plan is like sailing off into a stormy sea without a sturdy boat. Even though business executives cannot avoid those external factors, having a solid business plan makes managing, monitoring, adjusting the business and communicating to everyone on board possible.

Well written business plan incorporate all the elements of a business and guidelines in monitoring business progress. Business plan allows executives and all the business stakeholders with the right information for decision-making. Most externally communicated business plans also lay out future financing needs and feasibilities.

Similar to most arts in the world, business plans are just convincing groups of carefully designed words and goals, there is no fixed content for a business plan. The content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audiences. A business plan represents all aspects of business planning process declaring vision and strategy alongside sub-plans to cover marketing, finance, operations, human resources as well as a legal plan, when required.

Unfortunately, many people think of business plan only for starting new business, applying for business loan or venture capital financing. But business plans are also vital for running an existing business as market conditions change and as new opportunities arise. Many well-organized business executives use strategic plan, a form of business plan, to navigate their business consistently.

In this fast-moving ever-changing world, business plans are essentially crucial to guiding business success. The cookbook (cookbook?) would provide business executives and entrepreneurs with the right tools to building a precise business plan in achieving their objective.