Business Plan: ‘Your own company’ manual 2012 Plekhanov

Introduction

Welcome to the project Business Plan: ‘Your own company’ . The ability to work together on a project is a key skill you need to master throughout your 4-year study programme at ABS. Moreover, it is a skill that will be vital in your future career as well. For many of you this will be the first opportunity to practice cooperating together successfully.

In this project we ask you to become an entrepreneur, to write a business plan – together with your project team - for your own product! During this process you will find yourself working on a set of skills such as:

• Communication

• Project planning

• Working with people from different cultures

• The ability to lead and attend meetings

• The ability to work with people’s different levels of commitment

As you will soon notice, working on your business plan means integrating a lot of knowledge and skills gained in classes taught in the foundation year. More specifically, classes like finance, accounting, and marketing

Your group will be assisted by a tutor.

During your marketing and finance & accounting classes time has been reserved for you to ask the lecturers questions related to BSP. Therefore the tutor will not answer questions on the content of the project. Make good use of the time in classes!

In this manual you will find instructions on how to go about writing a business plan, various procedures, assessment criteria, background material and references for additional research. You are free to look for and use any additional background material via internet, the study centre or other sources (do mention them in your plan!).

We wish you a successful start of the project and great results!

The BSP team,

Marketing lecturers

Accounting & Finance lecturers

C hapter 1 - The Business Plan: general objectives and process

1. Introduction

The ultimate objective of this project is to draw up a business plan. With your group you need to decide on a product, describe its potential market, calculate both the costs for production and marketing as well as the profit, describe this in a business plan and prepare a presentation for prospective investors.

Your business idea has to appeal to an investor. It is not an advertising brochure or a technical description, it is a decision making document which answers the following three questions:

1. What is your idea and why/what/how will the customer benefit from that idea?

2. What is the market and what are the target groups?

3. How will your idea make money?

There are different ways to structure a business plan. This means you will NOT be provided with a standard format which you simply fill in. Whatever structure you follow (you are free to make your own choices), these questions must be answered in your business plan:

1. What is your product idea and what/why/how will the customer benefit from that idea?

You will have to spend some time on defining your product. You are free to choose a product. We recommend you to spend some time with your group on a brainstorm of ideas, not jumping into the choice of a product too quickly. Your product might be an innovative idea, a service, an innovation of an existing product or service, or a combination of these. Do not rush this step, make sure you evaluate alternatives together and come to an agreement that is based on wisdom, not on dominance of group members!