A business plan is a roadmap for immigrants starting a business. It helps you assess if your idea is feasible, make right and smart decisions about various aspects of your business, attract financing if needed, set goals and monitor progress.
Creation of business plans/operational plan
It is important to create a good, realistic business plan and it should be one of the first steps in starting a new business. Making it also forces you to present the idea and have clear goals, as well as having to calculate the idea to the end, and possible save yourself from mistakes if the business is not possible.
Outline and key points
Summary
It is important that the key point from each chapter are presented separately and give a good picture of what is stated in the business plan. The summary is done at the end when all other chapters have been written.
The project/company many purpose
- Name and form
- Current status
- Location and functionality
Representative(s) and management
- Who is the representative of the company, owners, key colleagues and/or consultants.
- Management: what is the division of labor between the company’s managers. Note that this does not necessarily applicable for smaller projects.
Product and/or service and production
- What will be the the product or service? Detailed description, number of product catagories, features and/or uniqueness of each product category.
- Status of our work, is it still an idea, in design, in production, ready for sale?
- How the product/service is created (production process), main suppliers, technology, quality issues, certifications, other requirements for the activity.
Market and competition analysis
- What are the market conditions for these products today?
- What are the likely trends in the market?
- How is the competition?
- What is the specialty of the company?
- Will the company collaborate with the market players?
Costumers – the target group
- Who are the prospective customers (your scope, target group)?
- Where do the customers live?
- What are the buying habits of the main costumers?
Marketing plan
- What is the price of the product/service based on?
- How will the product be distributed to costumers?
- What will be the company’s advertising and promotion strategy?
- Publishing plan – is an organised manner, a plan for the publication of promotional material is presented.
Sales plan and goal setting
- Short term goals – less than 12 months
- Long-term goals – long-term development goals of 2-5 years
- Sales plan – assumptions must be made about the quantity sold in units in a certain period.
Implementation plan
- An implementation plan should contain an outline of what works need to be done in order for the work to start and the product/service to go to market? A realistic estimate of how long it will take to complete individual tasks must be established.
Budget
- You can set up a model at Iceland’s innovation centre. The results can be seen in the form of annual accounts.
Basic assumptions
- Explain the basic assumptions of the plan, e.g. which period was considered. Stock balance sheet.
- An account of the main components of start-up costs and their financing.
Operating plan
- In most cases, an operating plan should cover a minimum of 3 years. It shows plans for the development of the business and reflect previously presented goals and sales plans.
- The criteria for individual income and expense items must be reported.
- It is good to present numerical information in table form, but also extract key points in text.
Cash flow forecast
- Key figures from the cash flow plan are explained here in text.
SWOT analysis
- Present the strengths and weaknesses of the project/business idea.
- Keep in mind that strengths and weaknesses are factors that can be changed.
- Here you also need to account for the resolution of weaknesses and threats.
Supporting documents