How to Build a Lean and Efficient Business Plan

In business, it is the continuous planning process that matters. Business plan, just like the business, is a living, evolving, flexible thing. It requires rapid changes and fact-based decision-making. Here are five ways to that help make business plan leaner:

Your strategy statement

1. The strategy should be the heart of the business plan.
The strategy is the focus, focus on specific target markets using specific products or services. The strategy used is based on some strength or characteristic that links product/service to the preferred customers and the solutions offered to them. The strategy defines how to set the business apart from the crowd. The strategy isn't text, its concepts. The strategy can be summarized in bullet points, using charts or even with a series of images.
To test the strategy statement, read it and ask whether it describes the uniqueness of the business or could be applied to many others. Is it specific enough to be applied? Does it define a market, product and branding focus? Despite the fact that everything in a business plan is subject to change, the strategy changes more slowly than the rest of the plan in response to altering conditions.

2. Less elaboration and more summary
The business plan is held up by eight key core idea, market, product or services, production, marketing, sales, distribution, administration, and finance. A wide business plan describes each of these key areas in detail. Lean business planning implies the use of more bullets and less text. It refers to trends and ongoing expectations as economically as possible, elaborating them in detail only where the detail isn’t already understood.

3. Regularly track the progress and manage course corrections.
The progress is tracked with lists and tables full of numbers that can be used to course correct. This is lean to the extent that it's specific, concrete and assessable. The most important part of this is a list of milestones. These are scheduled accomplishments and activities, each of which ought to have dates, budgets, routine measurements, expectations for spending and sales and specific assignments for task responsibilities.
Apart from these milestones, the good organization also needs regularly updated projections of sales, costs, expenses, and cash. The projections should be just detailed enough to offer good plan-verses-actual analysis for better administration. For instance, monthly projections are probably essential for at least the subsequent six months, and usually, 12 months is better; but monthly projections beyond a year are most often a waste of time.

4. Design the plan with descriptions.
Explanations use to dress up the plan depending on the targets might include market details, technical or scientific background, company history, bios of the management team, generic market research, proof of concept and competitive analysis. Like clothes, the descriptions are made appropriate to the occasion. For example, a market might need to prove to assure investor or to prove financial stability to assure bankers.

5. Be consistent about updates.
Preparation for a startup is a lot like diet and exercise. Business planning is a process, not an event. The strategy to maintaining lean is regular repetition over a long time to generate real positive benefits. It is not done once, or even once in a while but the plan is reviewed and revised regularly.

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