Why Do You Need a Business Plan?

All businesses need a clear plan to define the actions required to achieve their goals, writes James Haywood, Page Kirk Partner. A defined, well-designed business plan helps you to stay on track with important tasks and ensures that you have strategic focus.

Business plans are not just for start-up businesses. Established businesses can benefit from the strategic planning and full overview that a business plan provides.

There are many valuable benefits of developing a strong business plan, including:

Obtaining funding or investment

Business plans are often required to secure funding, such as bank loans, or to secure investment from external investors. The more detailed and well-researched your business plan is, the better the chance of obtaining the funding that you are looking for.

Outlining key milestones

Business plans also serve a very important purpose in outlining the direction in which you want your business to progress. Without milestones to keep aiming for, your business can lose momentum and your enthusiasm levels may drop without that focus. Setting defined goals, with associated actions, gives you accountability.

Gaining a competitive advantage

A high-quality business plan will also enable you to identify ways to compete with your direct competitors by performing analysis to gain some competitive advantages. Alternatively, you will be able to see what is working well for the most successful businesses in your industry.

Helping to prioritise the most important tasks

Your business plan will also help you to prioritise your work to deliver the highest level of success. When you have a long list of outstanding tasks to get through, it may be impossible to get through them all as quickly as you would like, which is why it is important to know which ones to prioritise.

Supporting business growth

Having a business plan in place, which you regularly review and update, will help you to drive business growth by achieving the milestones required to expand. Creating targets to aim for will keep you on track, suggesting the next actions that are required to take your business to another level.

Accessing metrics

A business plan that includes metrics gives you a better understanding of how well your business is performing. For example, revenue targets that increase over time can keep you focus on reaching your financial targets and work on identifying ways that can help boost revenue. If you are behind your financial targets, you can review your business processes to introduce new techniques for lead generation, or fix other areas of your business that need to be improved to deliver greater success.

Managing business finances

Whether you are just starting up a business or have been operating for a long time, having an overview of your finances and upcoming costs is vital to maintain a healthy financial position. Before starting a business, researching the costs that you will face in the setting-up period will enable you to decide whether your venture is viable and how much money you will require to get it going.

Getting support for your business plan

Our experienced accountants and business planning consultants provide services to ensure your business is on track for success. Page Kirk's experienced business accountants can help you to develop the most effective bespoke business plan to prepare for the future and achieve your business targets.

If you want some expert guidance the planning process, please call us on 0115 955 5500 or email enquiries@pagekirk.co.uk