Importance and Features of a Business Plan

You need both business plan and feasibility report to increase your chances of succeeding at a new business venture – but one must not be confused for the other or switched for the other, they are both important and must be well executed before you start off on operating your new business.

A business plan essentially enables you to have a comprehensive overview of what is needed for a potential business to success, while a feasibility study provides insights into the viability, practicability and profitability of a given business venture. A business plan tells you what you need to kick off your business, a feasibility report tells you what you need to sustain and profit from your business or what could go wrong in the course of running your business.

The business plan includes such things such as plans for finances, marketing, production, sales, human resource and warehousing among others – and these could be short-term or long-term plans based on operational or strategic demands. The overall aim of a business plan is to guide the entrepreneur in the management and structure of his business entity to enable profit-making in a dynamic and fast-changing market environment.

A feasibility study on the other hand details out aspects of the business that could be interesting to potential investors, what could go wrong, insights into the operational advantage of competitors, profits that could be made and losses that could be suffered. A feasibility study provides behind-the-scene insights that go beyond the purview of a regular business plan. So a feasibility report essentially covers up for the shortcomings and limitations of a normal business plan.

To prepare a business plan or proposal, you may need to open sections that will cover the background of the proposed business, overview of existing and emerging techs in the industry, situation reports on rivals, purpose for the creation of the business, investors and partners, capital outlay, management resources, and environmental or societal impacts among others.

To this extent, a good business plan must answer all relevant and imagined questions about the newly proposed business, include alternative sources of incomes and explore success potentials. A good business plan must also be presented neatly, have an index of contents, provide a summary of content or positions reached, be focused on the business under review, and include detailed information about its owners and partners.