Introduction to Business Plan Guide:
Preparing a Basic/Short Plan
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By design, this Guide is aimed
at helping new and established businesses to produce comprehensive business
plans, most probably, for raising external finance or for guiding
management or securing internal approvals within a largish organization.
However, it can also be
used to help produce (1) a basic/short plan for a very small or "home-based" business
or (2) a "long" executive summary for a larger business as
follows:
- Write a maximum of one page for each main section as defined in
the Table of Contents except possibly
for 6. Profiles of Target
Markets and 11. Financial
Projections which could run to 2-3 pages.
- Use sub-headings in this Guide to
determine matters to be addressed within each main section. For
example, aim to cover each of the sub-headings within 2-3 paragraphs,
along with simple tables and charts. It is better to cover all key
topics briefly rather than omit them.
Using this approach, it should be possible to draft a plan of under
15-20 pages. See Length of a Plan for
more guidance.
If planning to use Exl-Plan to
help generate financial projections for this plan, look at one of the
more basic versions such as Basic, Micro or Lite.
Get more detailed information and
free trial downloads for
these versions.
For further discussion on different types of plans and their lengths,
see the white paper on Insights
into Business Planning.
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