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What is a business plan?

A business plan is any plan that works for a business to look ahead, allocate resources, focus on key points, and prepare for problems and opportunities. Unfortunately, many people think of business plans only for starting a new business or applying for business loans. But they are also vital for running a business, whether or not the business needs new loans or new investments. Businesses need plans to optimize growth and development according to priorities.

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When preparing a business plan, one first needs to think through

the idea and then commit it to paper in a structured manner. The

plan should be self-speaking, i.e. there should be minimum

requirement for clarification. Attention should be paid to providing

explanations for the abbreviations and technical terms used, if any.

Different aspects of business should be covered in different

sections. The pages, graphs, tables and figures used should be

numbered. These sound very basic, but you will be surprised at the

number of times business plans are submitted without page

numbers! By paying insufficient attention to details, entrepreneurs

send out wrong signals to the discerning reader, who may get the

impression that the entrepreneur may not pay attention to details

in the business. An illustrative list of the contents is given below.

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Introduction

Table of content

Executive summary

Business concepts

Market

Operations

Financials

SWOT

Organizations

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When doing a business plan one should consider

structuring it accordingly in its chronological order.

Each aspect should be clearly explained and

detailed so that the marker can see clearly what

are the aspects and their importance in the

business plan. The business plan should be realistic

and show its weaknesses and strengths so that

financial assistors can provide start capital.

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