Start-up Business Plan

Objective of this service

To develop an action plan to turn your idea into reality!!
It’s high time that you stop just telling people that you are going to start a business and actually make it happen. There will never be a right time to start a business. Are you in the right frame of mind now to win? If your answer is yes, you need to know how to take an idea and turn it into a start-up business. It will take much more than hard work, failure and some sleepless nights, but you can do it. The first foot-steps of a business involve a lot of moving pieces, some more exciting than the others. You will also need to create and fine-tune a business plan, assess your finances, complete all the legal paperwork, pick your partners, research apps for startups growth, choose the best tools and support systems to get your marketing and sales take off … and a lot more. To help, we’ve put together a guide on the very first action plan on how to take your business off the ground. It can do more than dream up a good idea but turn it into a reality by assisting you to prepare a foolproof business plan for a startup. Here’s what you need to know to get started:

What is a business plan?

Have you ever written an idea for a business on a napkin and thereafter jotted down a few tasks that you would need to accomplish? If so, you’ve written a basic component of a business plan. At its heart, a business plan is a plan for how your business is going to work and how you are going to make it succeed. You start ‘here’ with certain key resources and skills. You vision a point in the future (maybe three or four years later), and you want to get ‘there’ and at that point in time, you would have a different set of resources and skills, increased assets and greater profitability. Your business plan shows the roadmap of how you will get ‘here to there’. Writing a business plan is one of the very first opportunities to think through the key elements of your business. The following are the essential components of a business plan: What is the purpose of your business? Who are your target customers? What are your end goals? How do you plan to finance your start-up costs? Financial plan for a startup business? These questions are well-thought through and answered in a business plan.
Your comprehensive business plan should include the following:

• Problem your business solves
• What does your business do?
• Target audience and their demography
• SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to your business)
• Sales and Marketing strategy (how you’ll promote your business)
• Financial plan ( how you plan to finance your start up and how you plan to raise funds to keep your business going)
• Financial projections for each quarter (e.g. January to March, April to June, etc.)

Overall, a business plan will help you figure out where your company is going, how it will overcome any key challenges, and what you will need to sustain it. Though it might seem like a tedious task in the beginning, rest assured it will keep you more organized and save you lots of headaches down the road. A startup business plan service provider can guide you to prepare your business plan for your dream business.

What is the purpose of a business plan?

In today’s competitive business climate, it is highly imperative to have all the relative information available and evaluated before opening the doors. A thoughtfully prepared business plan garners you to enter the business world, ready to run your business and ready to compete. Writing a business plan for a start-up is like creating a game plan in sports. You need to scout all the information to draw a winning strategy for the game. As entrepreneurs buzzing with excitement about the great new business, you might feel reluctant to sit down and spend time writing down a business document. After all, you already know what you are looking for, right? However, doing some pre-launch homework while crafting a startup business plan might make your post-launch life so much easier. Here are the reasons why:

1. Clarity on roadmap and key objectives of the business

Budding entrepreneurs tend to focus and get excited on the ‘big idea’ and less on the execution. As you go through the process of writing a business plan you are forced to think through every aspect of how you will run the business- marketing, managing finance and more. A business plan for a start-up company is like a roadmap for its formation, its operation and success. Writing and illustrating both your understanding and plan of action will establish a course akin to a road map. As you define objectives you are trying to achieve it becomes easier to keep track and measure success while aligning your decision-making with the initiatives defined in the document. However, if you are facing any issues while creating the road map for your business, startup business plan consulting firms may help you in those situations.

2. Highlights and prepares for potential risks and challenges

Would you rather uncover a common pitfall early on in the planning phase of the business or much later when you are already invested money and are up and running? Spotlighting potential problems in the business plan gives you ample response time and increases your preparedness in the face of a hurdle. Moreover, your key investor or lender might be more concerned about trying to balance the risks inherent in the business. Outlining the nature and size of foreseen risks and clearly drawing out mitigation plans can make the job of an investor or lender much easier.

3. Increases chance of getting investment

When you approach potential sources of finance, they will most likely want to assess your profit/loss statements and business plan. The business proposal for a startup provides them with a view of your future direction and increases your chances of securing an investment. Their major focus would be on whether your business would generate ample return of investment (ROI) to both functions effectively and fulfil debt obligations. The financial plan for a startup business provides insights on the future cash inflows and outflows, the financial structure of a business, fund management etc.  Hence, a business plan for a startup will need to detail out both profit and cash flow projections. Good forecasting and planning are seen as a marker to managing income and expenditure effectively.

4. Helps remove complacency

Complacency can be a major threat to any growing business. Regularly re-visiting and updating your business plan can spotlight changing market conditions and the need to respond to them effectively. It can help you identify the actions you need to take to change your business and the way it operates. This may sometimes involve hard decisions like re-negotiating contracts with suppliers or customers you have become friends with, keeping employees redundant etc. But unless you are prepared to make these changes, you risk putting your business at a dangerous competitive disadvantage.

Why DFX to as your startup business plan consultant?

A business plan involves some tedious grunt work like market research and financial planning and strategic thinking; however, there is no excuse to avoid it. The Startup business plan consultants at DFX can guide you through the process of writing a business plan step by step. Our well-experienced startup business plan consultants can help you in every step to write down the business plan from secondary market research to product launch strategy planning. We understand your passion and commitment and look forward to working with you to success.

Visioning

In the visioning exercise, the objective is to lend clarity and comprehension to the business idea under consideration. It often leads to discovery of potential bottlenecks as well as better ideas and inputs.

The idea behind conducting a SWOT analysis is to identify the existing strengths and weaknesses in the light of the business vision for formulating effective planning and strategies later on.

Business Strategy

Startup business need to function and move ahead as one organized unit. In this module, our experts shall define the internal organisation structure of the proposed business entity. We will also map the scope of work and functioning of the external stakeholders (i.e. agencies, consultants, vendors, suppliers, etc.

IT system strategy shall also be defined which shall cover the assessment of the IT and software requirements of the business spanning across various line and staff functions. The timeline for implementation of every software application shall also be done to ensure that business operations are initiated as per schedule.

Process Strategy shall be a part of business strategy wherein you will learn about how to make your startup business enterprise more process-driven and less people-dependent. You will uncover tools and strategies critical to achieve the same. The module will cover how business processes and operations are defined and how they can be improved and improvised in a planned and systematic manner.

Sales Strategy

Marketing begins with the idea of startup business or a product/service itself. Everything that places a business enterprise in the right spot at the right time is mostly about marketing decisions and strategies. DFX experts shall work closely with your business and devise “Go-to-Market” and “Business Launch” marketing budgets and strategies so that your business starts off with the right note.

Your advertising and promotional efforts would be meaningless if you fail to generate the targeted sales levels, consistently and efficiently. Managing and controlling sales can cover a wide range of factors including data analysis, goal-setting, feedback and reporting, skill training, defining workflow, leaderships and monitoring, time management, incentives, etc. In this model, you will learn about formulating a robust sales operations strategy for your business.

Financial Strategy

It is important to let the ‘numbers’ validate your business model before taking a deep dive into it. In this section, DFX experts shall help you assess the financial requirements and commercial viability of your business project.

Good budgeting ensures that you are spending your investments and revenues judiciously. If you go spending unplanned, you are almost certain to deviate from your profitability goals. Budget allocation serves as a business’s expenditure roadmap. As a part of the business financial strategy, this module will cover the approaches and guidelines for effective budget allocation.

Action Plan

By determining the action plan, we arrive at the implementation plan with duration of the project. It maps the sequence of tasks that must be completed on time; otherwise the project will get delayed. In this module, you will learn to map the critical path that leads to the launch of your business on time. It will help you channelize your focus and efforts on priority basis and help you stay organized during the entire process.

Do’s & Don’ts are well-defined within implementation plan to avoid anticipated road-blocks during startup business setup