Charge Up Your Business! (eBook)

27 Ways to Boost Profits

Giorgio Bicego (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-77277-145-9 (ISBN)

Infos

'Charge Up Your Business!: 27 Ways to Boost Profits' is chock-full with numerous proven and real-life strategies to increase your business profits resulting from Giorgio's 30+ years experience helping his clients and employers achieve and exceed their business objectives. This book is written for you who currently leads or plans to lead / run, improve and work within a successful business focusing on your finances, operations, and continuous improvements. You will discover and may be reminded of ideas and strategies such as business plans, budgets, cash flow activities, safety, quality, business systems, production, maintenance, security, and continuous improvements to maximize the chances of your business's long-term success.

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"e;Charge Up Your Business!: 27 Ways to Boost Profits"e; is chock-full with numerous proven and real-life strategies to increase your business profits resulting from Giorgio's 30+ years experience helping his clients and employers achieve and exceed their business objectives. This book is written for you who currently leads or plans to lead / run, improve and work within a successful business focusing on your finances, operations, and continuous improvements. You will discover and may be reminded of ideas and strategies such as business plans, budgets, cash flow activities, safety, quality, business systems, production, maintenance, security, and continuous improvements to maximize the chances of your business's long-term success.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1

YOUR FINANCIALS

Business Plan

Congratulations! You have decided to start your own business! Or perhaps you’ve been asked to start a new venture with an existing company, or take charge of a division(s) within your current organization! That’s fantastic! After your initial euphoria and excitement, the questions start: “How do I start?” “When do I start?” “Do I need new employees or keep the current employees?” “Where do I do my business?” “Do I need any start-up or more funds?” “What are my start-up or current expenses?” “How long will it take to get going?” You may consider avoiding these questions and jump right in and develop your business plan on the fly—you won’t be the first or the last person to try this strategy. And you may hear stories of the odd time when such a shot gun approach turned out well for a now well-known business leader. But I suggest a well thought out and documented business plan is a prudent way to start developing or taking over a business without assuming too many unnecessary risks.

Starting your new business, or taking over a current business, is risky— you know that. Risk is not bad, of course, but why not minimize your risks as much as you can by completing your business plan? I suggest that’s one of the most important purposes for your business plan: mitigating your risks. You may find that the process of developing a documented business plan compels you to clarify your business ideas and acts as an important feasibility test of those ideas. Who knows, perhaps you may find a fundamental flaw(s) with your assessment— which I think is fantastic at this stage – before you’ve invested significant time and financial resources. Perhaps as you progress through your business plan process, you will identify other challenges and their solutions that you may not have thought of earlier. Again, this is a great opportunity to identify any and all potential issues and design plans to meet those challenges before investing any significant time and financial resources.

Your business plan is most likely the first or one of the first few documents you complete when starting your new business or taking over an existing business, especially if you are planning to ask people to invest their money and time into your company. I’ve seen the beginnings of business plans take shape from notes on restaurant napkins, miscellaneous pieces of paper, easels, white boards, post it notes, all the way to extensive documents with appendices and graphs. Your business plan is unique to you and your business, and should serve you and any other parties as required. Therefore, I recommend you use a business plan format that meets your own and your audience’s needs.

Despite of what form your business plan takes, I suggest it should include most or all of these sections: an executive summary (especially if you’re presenting your business plan to an audience), your goals, a SWOT analysis, a marketing and sales plan, financial plan, business structure, operations plans, and timelines. I briefly describe each of your business plan sections below.

I recommend that you must include an executive summary in your business plan if you are submitting it to anyone for financing purposes. Your executive summary is typically a brief description of your business, its purpose and goals, structure, and projected cash flow. Typically, your executive summary is less than a page long and should recap your financing requirements.

Your next business plan section describes your goals and how you plan to achieve those objectives. This section is critical as it summarizes why you are in business. Typically, you include how your product and/or service will fill a market niche(s) in their own unique manner(s). Your sales, income, and other financial goals are also normally included in this section.

Your SWOT analysis is perhaps the most critical element of your business plan. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. In this exercise, you first identify your business strengths that you will use to achieve your objectives. Your business strengths can be your own personal characteristics and/or of others involved in your business, the unique capabilities of your products and/or services, etc. I suggest you do not be humble at this point—list any and all your strengths here. Next step is to identify any business weaknesses; similar to your strengths, these weaknesses can be your personal ones and any within your business product and/or service. Then, list all the opportunities that exist within your business and marketplace(s). This third step may seem easier than the others since it’s those opportunities that first grabbed your attention, causing you to think about starting your new business or taking over an existing business in the first place. Finally, document any threats to your business; these may range from competitors (both potential and current) within your marketplace(s) and/or any other local, national, or international issues that may affect your business and customers. A SWOT analysis is perhaps one of the most critical activities when developing your business plan and may take up to a day, days, or even longer to develop. I suggest you give your SWOT analysis the serious attention it deserves. As a result of your SWOT analysis process, you may want to reassess your business goals and other parts of your business plan. I have led and witnessed instances where businesses actually changed their main objectives or added other sub-businesses to their portfolio as results of a well-run SWOT exercise.

Fresh from completing your SWOT analysis, your marketing and sales plan then addresses how you will reach your target market(s) and sell to your customers. You may want to include results of your own market analyses, detailing how large your market is or will be, and how you will attract and deliver your product and/or service to your customers. You may want to emphasize some of your SWOT analysis strength and opportunities if you are submitting your business plan to convince your audience that your company truly has unique abilities to fulfill your customers’ needs. You may also want to address any weaknesses or threats you identified during your SWOT analysis in this section. Pricing points and strategies are also usually included in this section after showing the value that you will provide to your customers. You can describe how your business will reach its customers through various marketing strategies and then describe how it plans to deliver your product and/or service to your market place(s). You may describe how your business requires something as simple as a website, a small office, an industrial unit, or an entire building(s) to deliver your product and/or service.

Your financial plan should, at minimum, include your start up and operations budgets, detailing any one-time set-up and on-going expenses. Also recommended are your income and cash flow projections to give yourself, and your audience if necessary, details on what sales revenues your business will generate to cover your expenses. Normally, a projected balance sheet(s) will complete the minimum financial documents included in this section. I recommend you will need to produce very detailed financial documents for yourself, and then you may want to present summaries of these financial documents in your business plan, especially if you are submitting it to someone for financing purposes.

Your next step is to outline your business structure. In this section, I suggest you describe what your business will look like and how it will function. In the case of your new business, or if you are taking over an existing one, I suggest the following questions will help you design your new structure, or redesign your current structure: What legal form will your business take? Where will you conduct your business? Do you need an office, a building(s), or can you just run it on-line, out of your own home for now? Do you need a separate website(s), business phone number(s), separate bank accounts, etc.? Do you need any partners or any employees, and, if so, how many and when do you need them? What will their job descriptions be, to whom will they report to, and will they have anyone reporting to them? Then, I suggest you describe the process of providing your product(s) and/or service(s), and what equipment you may need, if any, to deliver them to your customers.

Following your business structure section, your business plan should outline your operations plan(s). Your overall operations plan may consist of sub-plans addressing your goals and objectives for health & safety, the environment, quality, and production. You may also consider including information detailing your maintenance, business systems, and security priorities as well.

Finally, I suggest you develop a timeline(s) detailing what will happen by when, and who will be responsible to complete each task. If you’re applying for a business loan to start your new business, or to inject additional capital into your current business, I recommend specifying how much money will be required at each major event. It is important to be realistic with your tasks and target dates.

As a final note, I advise that your business plan should be a live document, i.e. reviewed and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.3.2017
• Vorwort: Raymond Aaron
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• ISBN-10: 1-77277-145-7 / 1772771457
• ISBN-13: 978-1-77277-145-9 / 9781772771459