Business Planning

The business plans provide guidance to the owners, investors and management at the start up entity and advances through some phases of success. The actual or prospective business owner of the entity creates a business plan as a means of providing clarification of every aspect of the business operation. A business plan is an imperative component that paints the bigger picture of how the business will operate, the different personnel necessitated, the costs that can be incurred and the potential income to be generated. Characteristically, a business plan comprises of the objectives to forecast and prepare for the growth and development of the business. Furthermore, a number of business owners create a business plan with the main objective of providing guidance to the management, which will be responsible for the everyday running of the entity and also with the main aim of encouraging investment of capital. Typically, there are five different kinds of business plan models, which comprise of start-up model, strategic model, internal model, growth plan model, and operations model. The purpose of this paper is to make a comparison and contrast of the aforementioned business plan models and providing the strengths and weaknesses of the models. Lastly, these business plan models will be compared to the business plan models contained in Microsoft Project.
In delineation, the start-up business plan model comprises of the comprehensive and in-depth steps of starting up a new business. The model encompasses the different sections outlining the organization, market assessment, the projected management team, and the different kind of products or services that will be offered by the business. What is more, this business plan provides a financial analysis by utilizing spreadsheets, outlining some of the key financial aspects such as revenues, incomes, expenses and also cash flow projections. There are different advantages of this particular business plan. To begin with, it makes it possible for the individuals involved in the business to undertake some financial projections, thereby facilitating the growth of their businesses. Secondly, it is simpler to make adjustments to this particular business plan model owing to the reason that such alterations do not have a significant impact to the business. However, the disadvantages of this business plan model are that it is largely applicable to small and medium sized businesses. In addition, the model can only be utilized for business forecasts for the short-term period (Cavico et al., 2014).
Internal business plans lay emphasis and target a specific audience within the businesses. Imperatively, an internal business plan is essential for the evaluation of a proposed project. The different constituent aspects of this business plan mode include delineating the prevailing state of the entity, including the operational expenses and profitability. There is also the aspect of computing the profitability and repaying any capital that is necessitated for the project. Furthermore, the project offers information regarding project marketing, employing and tech expenses. There is also the inclusion of the demographics of the target market, the market size in addition to the positive impact on the profit of the entity. The fundamental advantage of this particular business plan model is that it provides an extensive delineation of the internal operations of the business plan. However, the shortcoming of this business plan model is that it fails to take into account the external aspects of the business to an extensive manner (Pinson, 2008).
A third business plan model is the strategic business plan model. This particular model provides a comprehensive map of the entity’s goals and objectives and the manner in which they will be accomplished, laying a foundational plan for the entity as a whole. The strategic business plan model comprises of five key constituents including business vision statement, mission statement, delineation of the critical success factors, strategies for accomplishing objectives and an execution schedule. The main advantage of this particular business plan model is that it brings all the levels of the business into the big picture, providing inspiration to personnel to work in tandem to generate a successful ending to the goals and objectives of the entity. A weakness of this plan is that it is usually rigid and in the event that some issues might emanate, it might be challenging to make adaptations of the market changes (McKeever, 2016).
The growth business plan model encompasses in-depth delineations of proposed growth outlined for both internal and external purposes. If the growth of the business necessitates investment, the business growth model might consist of complete delineations of the entity, its different personal and management. The model provides all of the details of the business required by the potential investors. If the growth of the business does not necessitate capital, the owners of the business might be able to disregard apparent company delineations, but will incorporate financial sales, revenues, expenses and the projections that are in line. The key advantage of this business plan model is that it outlines the survival of the business in the long-term period. The disadvantage of this model is that it fails to take into account the short-term periods (McKeever, 2016).
Lastly, the operations business plan model takes into account internal plan, which comprises of the constituents associated to the operations of the business. This particular model identifies and lays down implementation markers in addition to particular deadlines for the forthcoming financial year. Furthermore, this model provides a clear outline of the responsibilities of the employees. One of the key advantages is that the owner of the business demonstrates to the potential investors specifically how the business will operate on an everyday basis. However, the disadvantage of this business plan model is that more often than not in the real world such operations have to change and adapt to practical aspects, and therefore some of the included aspects might not be acceptable (Ristau, 2010).
Microsoft Project is an extensive software suite that makes it possible for complete and simple project supervision by mean of the development of project plans. Imperatively, these plans make it possible for managers to create project tasks and milestones, apportion resources, ascertain task dependencies and approximate phase durations. Therefore, this makes the software a beneficial tool for numerous types of projects ranging from marketing and building projects to manufacturing initiatives. Microsoft Project makes it possible for managers to organize themselves in the right manner and expect any kind of hiccups all through the projects (Mercer, 2017). One of the major differences is that Microsoft Project aids in the division of large projects into groups of smaller tasks, therefore making the project to be significantly easier to manage and execute. For instance, with regard to a web marketing plan, the plan of Microsoft Project would split the plan into its different elements, for instance, search engine optimization, social media marketing, redesigning of the website and its different programs. Taking this into consideration, these parts of the plan could be further categorized into smaller tasks, for instance, preparation of market research on rivaling website, attaining quotation for new website and the completion of mock designs. Another key difference of Microsoft Project models is that it is possible to enable the users to indent tasks and outdent tasks to generate a pecking order of the project as a whole and refers to as the completed set of all the tasks as the work breakdown structure (Mercer, 2017).





References
Cavico, F. J., Orta, M., Muffler, S. C., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2014). Business plans as legally protected trade secrets under the uniform trade secrets act. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 6(2), 42.
McKeever, M. (2016). How to write a business plan. New York: Nolo.
Mercer, E. (2018). Examples of Microsoft Project Plans. Chron. Retrieved from: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-microsoft-project-plans-34336.html
Pinson, L. (2008). Anatomy of a Business Plan: A Step-by-step Guide to Building the Business and Securing Your Company's Future. aka associates.
Ristau, R. A. (2010). 21st Century Business: Intro to Business. New York: Springer.