BM564 Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

Business sustainable growth plan

Name:

Bucks ID:

Lecturer: Shahbaz Mustafa

Submission deadline: 17^th December 2020

Word count:1500

Weightage: 60%

Executive summary

The overall purpose of this report, the research undertaken and a brief summary of your conclusion.

Table of contents

Executive summary 2

Introduction 4

Your Proposed Future Business 4

Customers 5

Competitors 6

Skills analysis 6

Projected 2 year profit and loss account and proposed 2 years cash flow forecasts including break-even 7

Finding, evaluating and selecting suitable sources of funding to grow the business opportunity 7

Your plans for obtaining your resources, both tangible and intangible between now and either 1-2 year ahead 8

The type of organisation and the management information systems required to effectively control the business 9

Vision for your Business Idea 9

Conclusion 9

References 10

Appendices 10

Introduction

What is the purpose of this report and what is the business you are discussing, is it a product or service and what will you cover within this report?

Your Proposed Future Business

What is the product/service (i.e. provide a clear description)?
What does it do?
What innovations does your idea bring to the market?
Appropriate intellectual property rights (IPR) in order to protect your business idea/enterprise, if applicable.
Small innovative firms are 16 times more productive than larger innovative firms in terms of patents (Patents are rights given to inventors normally for a limited period and could be product or process) per employee.
Trends create opportunities for entrepreneurs to pursue, the most important trends are: Economic forces, Social forces, Technological advances and Political and regulatory change
IPR – Intellectual property is something unique that you physically create.
Types of IP with Automatic protection (If applicable which one applies to your business):

Copyright: Writing and literary works, art, photography, films, TV, music etc.
Design rights: Shapes of objects
Types of IP that requires application
Trademarks : product names, logos, jingles
Registered designs: Appearance of a product like patterns, colours, decoration
Patents: inventions and products, eg machines and machine parts, tools, medicines.

Intellectual property protection could help businesses to become more profitable.

Customers

Identify your target customers. B2B or B2C? Who are the end-users?
Who will buy your product/service?
What is the USP of product/service?
What customer needs does the product/service meet?
The underpinning research for the target market and an evaluation of the businesses’ position in the market.
Groups defined by common factors such as demographics, psychographics, age, or geography that are of primary interest to a business.

Markets can be segmented in a number of different ways, including: Product type, Geography (city, region) and Demographic variables.
By focusing on a clearly defined market, a firm can become an expert in that market and then be able to provide customers a high level of service.
After selecting a target market, the firm’s next step is to establish a “position” within the market that differentiates it from its rivals.
Discuss how you will market your consumers: viral marketing, social media etc.
Segmentation and a justification for choice of customers.

Competitors

Who are your competitors for the product/service?
What market share do your competitors have?
Why might your customers buy your product/service rather than that of the competitors?

Research that compares an organization with several direct and indirect competitors by name in a manner that is meaningful to targeted customers.
Look at week 8 slides for more information and guidance
Do an industry analysis?
Discuss the five forces model by Porter and discuss how this applies to your business – please look at week 8 slides for guidance.
Why customers may buy your product/service rather than that of your competitors

Skills analysis

What skills do you have for developing and taking your business idea forward?
As per learning outcomes ensure you analyse the people required for your business and the skills?
Do research on the skills required in your industry?
What skills do you need?
How will you address any skills gaps that you might have?

The management team is often the deciding factor for a potential investor’s decision to financially support a business.
The team must be composed of an effective balance of members with technical expertise (e.g., engineering, marketing, accounting, and operations), experience in the field, and life experience.
Recruiting new employees – see slides 11
Do a skills profile in a chart format see week 11 slide page14 as an example, this depicts the most important skills that are needed and where skills gaps exist in a new firm.
Discuss the primary elements that form a team and apply this to your business

Projected 2 year profit and loss account and proposed 2 years cash flow forecasts including break-even

Look at your competitors profit and loss account to get some guidance on what is required in your profit and loss.
Look at your competitor’s cash flow including break-even for an idea on how to do yours.
You can access other company’s financial statements on company’s house or on the website.
Week 13 slides will help you with this section
Please make sure you put the project 2 year profit and loss account and the proposed 2 years cash flow forecasts including break even in your appendix however you must discuss this in this section in detail.

Finding, evaluating and selecting suitable sources of funding to grow the business opportunity

Do we have the resources to develop this idea?
Excellent explanation and justification of how you will fund the business
Week 9 slides will help you with this section
What are the most important non-financial resources that we need? How many of them do we have?
- Personal funds, friends or family?
- Sources of personal financing – bootstrapping?
- Equity funding – Means exchanging partial ownership in a firm, usually in the form of stock, for funding.
- Debt financing – is getting a loan from banks
- Preparing a evaluator speech
- Crowd funding
- Strategic partners are another source of capital for new ventures.
- Venture Capital, IPO, Business Angels
- Leasing

Your plans for obtaining your resources, both tangible and intangible between now and either 1-2 year ahead

This should include a breakdown of your start-up costs.
Excellent plans for obtaining your resources and breakdown of your start-up costs.

The first issue refers to the total cash needed to prepare the business to make its first sale.
An actual budget should be prepared that lists all the anticipated capital purchases and operating expenses needed to generate the first £1 in revenues.
The point of this exercise is to determine if the proposed venture is realistic given the total start-up cash needed.
Estimate the proposed start-up’s financial performance by comparing it to similar, already established businesses.
You can do this by looking at annual statements and reports.

“First Screen” because is a tool that can be used in the initial stages in determining the feasibility of a business idea.
Affordable office space, Lab space, manufacturing space, or space to launch a service business, Availability of contract manufacturers or service providers, Key management employees (now and in the future), Key support personnel (now and in the future), Ability to obtain intellectual property protection and Ability to form favorable business partnerships.

The type of organisation and the management information systems required to effectively control the business

Look at week 14 slides
Excellent explanation of the systems needed in order to run the business effectively.
How will you standardize systems; control, standardize, productivity etc
Make sure you discuss CRM systems, management information systems (MIS), decision support systems and business information systems and how some of these are required by businesses to effectively control the business and which system applies to your business.

Vision for your Business Idea

What future does your business have?
A broader and more comprehensive perspective on an organization than its mission; built on the core values and belief systems of the organization.

Conclusion

Critically conclude and summarise the content of the report, overall summary.
Never offer new statements in your conclusion.
Link your conclusion back to your introduction.
Demonstrate the opportunities you identified for advancing the idea so that it meets a market gap or requirement and allows the enterprise to grow into a growth sustainable business proposition and conclude how you have achieve this in your growth plan.

References

Your references must be on a separate page.
Make sure your references are on a separate page
Must be in the correct Harvard referencing format
Alphabetical order
Use a range of different sources such as peer reviewed journals, books etc.
You must have atleast 11 references
Use Google scholar and EBSCO to find resources

Appendices

Please put financial statements in the appendices
Pie charts, graphs showing market size etc can go in this section