Topic 5: Developing an Intervention or Business Plan
Whilst a detailed financial plan is required in order to prepare an investor pack or secure a bank or other loan or investment, often these are far too detailed and time consuming for general day to day management of the business.
Whilst it is important to consider as many variables and in as much detail as possible, for many of us this can be overwhelming especially when we are trying to conduct a quick analysis of an ever changing environment.
With this in mind we have developed a simple pictorial model which will help you quickly review your business and develop a short term business plan ensuring you can consider the main factors affecting your business in a quick and concise way
Disclaimer – This model is only to be used to create a snapshot overview of your business, and allow you to quickly and effectively monitor and review the key elements of your business routinely. Once created it should then be reinformed with the support of a full financial plan and business analysis including but not limited to market research.
Step 1. Imagine you are at the centre of the web , as you move out from the centre you move through time , the further out the more in the future you are
Step 2. Decide on the key elements important to your business , i.e. is marketing key to your business, how about research and development, only include the KEY elements upon which your business relies and draw these as lines coming out of the centre i.e. if you don’t require any employees don’t include Human Resources on your plan ( TIP: don’t apply more than 8 key elements)
Step 3. Now work out where you want the business to be in 2 years, how much turnover do you want, how many people will you need to achieve this, plot out for each leg of the spiders web what you will need in 2 years to achieve your plan i.e. 6 members of staff, £100k of R+D
Step 4. Now using the figures you have put for year 2 work back to year 1, in order to achieve year 2 targets what will you need in year one i.e. turnover, staff , marketing spend.
Step 5 Finally working back from year 1 what does this mean you need NOW in order to get to year 1 and achieve the targets you have set, are these achievable in 1 year?
Step 6 . If the process shows that your year 1 targets are not realistic then its likely your year 2 targets are also at risk, as such reassess your year 2 targets, working back to the centre until you have a realistic plan .
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Activity
Create your own Strategic Spiders WEB
As best as you can create your own Strategic Spider web to create the basis for your business plan.
Ask yourself
- What are the KEY essential components to make my business a success – Marketing, Staff, R+D, No of Shops…..?
- Do you know what targets you want to achieve in the next 2 years?
- What will your key components need to be i.e. number of sales, number of products , in order to achieve this in year 1?
- What will be your year 1 requirements?
- Am I being realistic?
- Am I being challenging enough ?