By Victoria White, Assistant Manager Ross Boyd Limited
Planning is a vital process for any business. Mapping out what your business’ objectives are and how they’re going to be achieved is the first step on the road to success. While formal business planning tends to mean ending up with a large unwieldy document, which often doesn’t offer much value to the small agile growing business, it’s important to remember, as Benjamin Franklin said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. However, creating a quality concise strategic plan supported by accurate and practical workings for your business is now easier than ever before.
With rapid changing markets and the introduction of much improved tablets, smartphones and software, both the need to and the opportunities to capture, create and communicate business plans, in straightforward, innovative and engaging ways, are vast. It’s also important to remember that it’s really about the planning process rather than the number of pages in the output plan. SME investors typically want a plan less than 10 pages.
For the SME market, there are a number of software applications that can shake up how your business plans are created and monitored. For example, Business Plan Pro includes both an online or desktop planning tool which contains hundreds of sample business plans and thousands of industry profiles to support your plan. Financial forecasts are made easier for you by providing integrated financial spreadsheet software that allows you to simply plug in the numbers with forecast calculations being done for you. Of course, if you put rubbish in you will probably get rubbish out, but an experienced business planer will offer real insights and real QA. Ross Boyd Limited have supported the preparation and review of thousands of plans; and we have a team with real practical business, tax, accounting and marketing experience.
Another great piece of accounting software, is Xero, simple and easy to use and available online it really works well for small businesses. Ross Boyd Limited have actively helped many SME clients make the transition to Xero and other systems for better and more user friendly financial management. CrunchBoards, a Xero add-on, takes your financial information further. It allows you to create dynamic data analysis and forecasting to support you’re planning process. This is an innovative software tool which gives you control over how data is analysed and presented and, as it’s a Cloud application, you can use it anywhere, be it in the office or on the go from your smartphone.
Even with all the technology and easy to use software available to produce your plans, business planning and forecasting can still seem like a daunting process. However, regardless of the stage your business is at, whether you want to enter new markets, acquire a new business, refinance or simply improve your profitability, it is difficult to do it successfully without taking the time to stand back from the day to day activities and plan it out. Our team at Ross Boyd Limited understands this and we have the proven track record in business and strategic planning to assist you in developing the right plan for your business, using the latest products and technology.