Business Planning

Business planning defines where the business is going and how it intends to get there.

A business plan must show that the business has the means and the method to achieve its objectives.

Reasons for a business plan

There are 2 main reasons for business planning:

  1. Studies show that your business is more likely to achieve greater success if it follows a well-structured business plan. It can help prevent your business getting out of balance as you grow; and it helps to create focus, motivation, confidence and success.
  2. When your business requires access to external funding or investment you will need a robust business plan to give due confidence to the lender or investor.

How to create a business plan

Any business can be broken into just 3 elements:

  1. Winning it
  2. Doing it
  3. Getting paid for it

There’s always a lag between winning it, doing it and getting paid for it, which creates a cash requirement that needs to be funded.

If you want to grow you have to spend more on winning it and then doing it before you get paid; so you’ll have a growing cash requirement.

And the steeper your desired Growth Gradient, the deeper your Cash Requirement.

The good news is that for a given level of growth the cash requirement is predictable.

The bad news is that it’s difficult to calculate, so it often doesn’t get done.

Yet it’s one of the most significant outcomes of your business plan – the Cash Requirement needed to fund your Growth Gradient and how you intend to fund it.

If you can’t fund it, you have to scale back your Growth Gradient.

Companies can show healthy profits and still go bust – it’s cash that counts.

The right Growth Gradient is one that enables you to balance the scale of your ambition and your funding by always keeping in balance the 3 critical ‘C’s: Customers, Capacity and Cash.

A cashflow problem is actually an unforeseen cash requirement.

The business plan must show that you can cover your Cash Requirement at every point of your growth.

When it comes to business planning, there’s no right answer, because everyone’s circumstances and attitude are different.

Whatever the level of ambition you choose – to be successful – you have to keep the 3 critical ‘C’s in balance as you grow.

How does Sightpath create a business plan?

You tell us about your business (or your business idea) – i.e. your customers and your products or services and about your ambitions for the business.

We’ll model it using our unique business planning system to generate a business plan with a growth gradient that best suits your specific situation.

We use a 3-stage process for Business Planning:

  1. Model it – Create a model of the business that links the 3 critical ‘C’s: Customers, Capacity and Cash. At this stage there is no scale to the plan.
  2. Balance it – Balance the scale of your ambition and funding to specify a Strategic Objective(s) and generate a Growth Gradient
  3. Sense check it – Check the plan makes sense compared with the scale of the market and conduct a Sensitivity Analysis.

Our system will calculate the maximum Cash Requirement to reach your ambitions and we’ll help you decide how best to cover it.

We will process all the numbers you need for your business plan – from Customers through to Cash flow. Our process works on marketing and finance as part of the same process.

This is the basis of the Sightpath service. You have no obligation to take any of our other services.

However, once you’ve developed your business plan you will have to implement it.

And we all know that business isn’t static, so the ongoing Sightpath Service revolves around us spending half-a-day with you every quarter to help you progress your plan.

We’ll help you stay on track to deliver your ambition.

Success comes to those who plan for it and implement it and progress it.

Click here for an overview of our services and prices.

Please contact us for an initial consultation with one of our Business Catalysts.

Save yourself time, money and frustration with a Sightpath Business Plan. 

What do you get?

We provide 3 levels of Business Plan document:

  1. Standard document. This document provides all the numbers and projections of your plan using screen graphics captured from our Business Development System. Text can then be added to explain the numbers. There's no additional charge for this document; see the prices in the services section.
  2. Presentation document. Generated in MS PowerPoint for presentation to investors, partners and colleagues. It presents all the numbers and projections of your plan using screen graphics captured from our Business Development System and all the necessary text expected of a professional business plan. There is an additional charge for this document; see the prices in the services section.
  3. Detailed document. This is a fully researched and detailed business plan in a format suitable for analysis by potential investors or lenders. There is an additional charge for this document; see the prices in the services section.