A business plan is an essential document for setting up a new business.
It's a file that presents the entrepreneurial project in its entirety.
It sets out the company's strategy in writing, in terms of financial and logistical resources, recruitment, marketing, and management.
Very useful for convincing potential partners or investors, a business plan is a comprehensive document, integrating textual data and other numerical information.
A business plan is also a forecast of the company's future activity. It predicts the company's financial development and sales during its first years of existence.
To do this, it details the context and market in which the company will evolve.
It highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the entrepreneurial project, while expressing the business model chosen for the company as clearly as possible .
A business plan is structured around four key points:
- The project: the general idea and objective of the company. This involves defining the strategy of the new company and the skills required to run it.
- The product or service: the characteristics of the product or services offered to customers. How does the project differ from the competition?
- The market: a presentation of the economic context and competitive environment in which the company will operate. This section focuses on customers and competitors.
- The strategy: an essential element of the business plan, this section defines the company's business model, i.e., how it intends to make money. To set up a company's marketing strategy, it’s essential to examine the means of communication used, its pricing policy, its distribution network, its management policy, and its HR strategy.
In addition, there are various other legal elements. A business plan also defines the company's status (sole proprietorship, limited liability company, etc.).
Although it's a highly descriptive document, it must be supplemented by numerous figures. In fact, a business plan includes a statistical analysis as well as a financial section.
While the business plan must be concrete and highlight achievable objectives, it must also be a unifying document, whose role is to help encourage investors to become involved in the project.
