A business plan always has the same structure. Of course, if you plan to sell coffee, not to produce it, you will skip the “production” part, but other than that – you can’t skip anything.
Writing a business plan as a student, as a part of your college or university project, the best thing you can do is just to go into too many details. You have to save the structure, but you can describe your competitors in one abstract, not in five pages, with numbers and poll data.
Basic Business Plan Structure
Mostly, students are asked to make a marketing analysis and marketing plan more professionally than other parts, so we give more details about them.
Description of your business
Here is a brief overview of the experience of the entrepreneur, the date of creation of the company, the field of business, goals, and objectives of the work, available base, and resources.
Market analysis
List of competitors and their offers, estimation of demand, options of promotion and sale.
- Evaluation of the market. It is necessary to estimate the capacity of the market, the population, the number of potential customers. It is difficult to do this without complete marketing research. Therefore, you should look for the results of this assessment for your region. As a last resort, you can predict the estimated demand.
- Competitors. Make a list of your competitors who are already working in this market. Not only direct competitors that offer similar products and services but also those companies that produce alternative services should be considered. If you do not have a specialized tea boutique in your city, this does not mean that the market is free from competitors: you have to fight for customers with those department stores and supermarkets that also sell different types of tea.
Production plan
List of products (services provided) and their volumes, technological processes, necessary equipment and materials, cost calculation.
- Business processes. Write down the list of equipment, tools, raw materials, and materials needed to create your chosen range of products and services. Calculate the optimum production volumes your equipment can handle. Specify which employees and what kind of downloads you will need.
- Products. List the products, services, and work that you will offer your customers. Costs for the organization of business processes will allow you to find out the cost and to make a price list.
- Start-up investment. Calculate how much money it will take to start a project. Sum up the cost of all assets, fixed assets, repairs, materials, and other expenses that will be required to start production.
Organizational plan
List of necessary staff, organization of work, distribution of functions and tasks in the team, involvement of third-party organizations and specialists, personnel costs — calendar of activities for launching the project.
Marketing plan
Advertising channels and costs, ways to promote a company and its products (services), estimated marketing impact – sales volume, number of customers, and transactions.
- Promotion channels. Newspaper ads, radio and TV commercials, online advertising, creating your own site and group on social networks, advertising in local publics and forums, participating in trade shows.
- Target audience. Who to focus on when organizing sales. Who your client is by age, gender, occupation, income level. Where to find them and how to reach.
- Promotion cost. How much will it cost to find and engage? How often you will have to run ads, what are the appropriate options to choose?
Financial indicators
This is where the financial side of your business is reflected, namely: future costs (product purchases, rentals, hiring, etc.), revenue, net profit, profitability, and return on the project.
Risk assessment
A list of major issues that a company may face, their potential consequences, and a plan of measures to minimize them.
Project summary
The most important part is a compact presentation of the contents of the entire document on several pages, it is important here to place the accents correctly, taking into account the addressee and the purpose of preparing the business plan.
Even though it is only a business plan for students, not the one you would present to a real investor, try to make it look realistic.