Business Planning

The right planning can increase your awareness of your market, help you to understand your financial needs and make sure you stay competitive while building your skills and resources.  Writing a business and marketing plan will help you understand the factors that can affect the success or failure of your business. 

Being able to identify and exploit opportunities will improve your chances for expansion into new areas and give you an advantage over your competitors.

Writing a business plan

It's important to develop a business plan before you start a business because:

• it will be necessary if you're going to borrow money or get others to invest in the business
• if you're going to go into business with others, the business plan will ensure you and your partners are on the same wavelength when it comes to where you want the business to go and how you will work to achieve it
• it will help make sure your business will be successful and not waste your time and money

The following interactive template will provide you with a business plan you can amend to suit your businesses needs.

	Business Plan Template (DOC 780Kb)
	A generic business plan which can be adapted to suit your business's needs. Please save to your computer and ensure your macros setting is turned on.

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Get the help you need

Business and marketing plans differ greatly from business to business and can be difficult to write if you've had no experience with them. Always seek professional advice from qualified commercial, accounting and legal sources prior to making important financial or business decisions.