Business Plan Writing: Brief Introduction

   A business plan is a formal statement of business goals, and mechanism to achieve it, financial status, and financial requirements of an organization. Business owners prepare Business Plan to attract lenders and investors. It is wrong to assume that only commercial organizations prepare business plans. Non-profit organizations too prepare their business plans to expand their organization.  

Types of Business Plans: We can broadly classify Business Plans into two types namely Internal Business Plan and External Business Plan.

External business plans:  These are meant for external stakeholders such as financial stakeholders like investors, lenders and donors. Here, lenders may be individuals, banks or any other financial institutions. External business plans focus more on financial details. For service oriented organizations, external stakeholders include donors, government agencies, and international lending bodies such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), UNO, and Development Banks.

Internal Business Plans: These business plans focus more on goals and mechanism to achieve goals rather than financial information. The goal may be development of new product or service or re-engineering existing product of system. 

Purpose:

·         To reveal status and direction of their operations.

·         To attract investors to invest in business.

·         To attract lenders to lend money to the organization.

·         To attract donors to donate money or provide financial assistance ( in case of non-profit organizations).

Business Plan Vs Project Plan: Project Plan is different from business plan and it describes the goal of particular project. Project Plan is also called Project Framework. It may even focus on the importance of current project in the achievement of larger strategic goal of an organization.

Business Plan Vs Elevator Pitch: Business Plan is a wider document as explained above while ‘Elevator Pitch’ is a short summary of executive summary of business.

Content of Business Plan: Business plans prepared by profit organizations focus on financial information such as financial status and profits of last five years while their counterparts prepared by non-profit organizations focus on details such as services they are rendering, number of beneficiaries, and tax emption facility.

Prime Features:

·         Introduction of Organization

·         Business Concept

·         Goals and Objectives

·         History of Promoters

·         Vision

·         Mission

·         Industry Overview and Marketing Analysis

·         Marketing Opportunities

·         SWOT analysis

·         Customer Analysis

·         Competitive Analysis (Direct Competitors and Indirect Competitors)

·         Competitive Advantage

·         Target Customers and Customer Needs

·         Business Strategy

·         Marketing Strategy & Marketing plan

·         Team and Management Structure

·         Annual Financial Reports

·         Assets and Liabilities of the organization

·         Revenue Model

·         Operating Cost

·         Operation Plan

·         Key Operational Process

·         Milestones

·         Management Team

·         Board Plan

·         Financial Plan

·         Funding Requirement

·         Use of Funds

·         Sustainability plan

·         Growth opportunity

·         Exit valuation/Exit Strategy

·         Contact Details

Limitations:

·         Estimations may go wrong. In most of the business plans, organizations underestimate and understate expenses and overestimate and overstate revenues.

·         A good business plan alone may not ensure success of a venture. Success is a result of various other factors. However, it enhances the chances of success.

·         While preparing external business plan, an organization should be highly careful about legal concerns and accuracy of financial liabilities which affect investor’s decision. Otherwise, he may face severe legal consequences.

·         Business Plan is not open to everybody. Hence, often, organizations expect their prospective investors to sign Non disclosure agreements (NDAs) with third parties before providing them with business plan. Organizations maintain higher degree of privacy and protection of trade secrets. Hence, usually, organizations show their business plan to a few selected prospective investors, lenders or donors in case of non-profit organization.

Is Business Plan open to everybody? In general, business plans are considered confidential document meant for a few potential investors/lenders/donors. However, some organizations make their business plan open to everybody with unlimited audience. They usually publish their business plan in their official web site so that it is available to everybody.

In some cases, organizations reveal a part of their business plan by hiding confidential portion of the document. If any external person shows interest in their business plan, they reveal hidden portion of business plan if the organization firmly believes that concerned person is a potential stake holder.  

Written By: S. Chandrashekara Reddy.

Contact: chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com 

Current and Future Trends of Content Generation Tools

Due to several limitations, it must be remembered that automation content generation is not a complete alternative to manual content generation and both must be made complimentary to each other in order to make the work more effective.

No content generation tool can replace the manual writing. In fact, it may not be possible to design such a tool that will completely replace manual writing because efficiency of a tool depends on the efficiency of algorithm based on which the tool is designed. However, the content generation tools that we use now are better than the tools that we used in the past and the tools that we will use in future will certainly be better than the tools that we use now. Of late, developers started focusing on developing context sensitive algorithms, which can prepare content according to the context. Developers started focusing on developing effective and context sensitive algorithms.  

Written By: S. Chandrashekara Reddy

Contact:  chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com

Guidelines for Users of Content Re-writing Tools

Following are the guidelines for the users of Content Generation Tools:

·  Paid tools are usually more effective and reliable than free tools. Hence, for any company, it is advisable to depend on free tools only when the company or individual cannot afford paid tools.

·  If your website or blog is a member of any advertisement network such as Google adsense, it is advisable not to use the auto content generated by content generation tools as Google and other search engines have strictly prohibited the usage of auto generation content.

·  Some of the free content generation tools ask you to register with them and to enter your username and password to allow you to make use of them.  Avoid such tools as they consume more time and kill your productivity.

·  A large number of content generation tools are mush-rooming the market and hence, select only effective tools after making adequate enquiry about their efficiency.     

·  While going for paid version, make all the possible enquiries about prices of different tools and go for reasonably priced version. Make an enquiry even about cost-effectiveness and ROI before buying priced tool. 

·  As no tool can be as effective as an experienced content, check the content manually at first, before submitting it for publication.

·  If you are employed by someone, do not submit auto generated content until your employer orders you to do so. Otherwise, you may land in troubles because of the poor quality of auto generated content.

·  Even when your employer asks you to auto-generate content, use only the tool(s) which are suggested by your employer.  

·  If you are the employer, do not allow and encourage your employees to use auto content generation tools until its usage becomes mandatory and unavoidable due to strategic and situational issues such as time constraint or non-availability of sufficient number of content writers.

·  Content writers are advised to submit auto-generated content only after manual proof-reading and editing as major portion of such content is featured by poor readability and comprehension, and improper alignment.

Limitations of Content Generation Tools

Following are the limitations of Content Generation Tools:

·      Small scale companies cannot afford paid tools and are bound to depend on free tools. Though several free tools are available online, they are not as effective as paid tools and are not reliable. If you want to go for high-quality content, you are bound to go for paid versions.

·      At a time, a content generation tool may generate content ranging from 100 to 150 words. It may not be possible to generate large data at a time.
A tool is a tool after all and the efficiency of a tool or algorithm depends on the efficiency of an efficient content writer. No tool can replace manual work.

·    No tool can replace an experienced and efficient content writer. As per readability is concerned, there is no substitute for a person’s common sense and wisdom.

·  No content generation tool can replace the manual writing till today. In fact, it will not be possible to produce such a tool that will completely replace manual writing because a programming language or tool is developed based on a particular algorithm.

·   Employers usually do not encourage and allow their employees to use auto content generation tools until its usage becomes mandatory and unavoidable due to situational and strategic issues, because of bad quality of content created auto content generation tools.

·    Auto generated content is used usually by Search Engine Optimizers who require content in very short time and who give more importance to quantity rather than quality of content to improve its Search Engine Rank and web traffic. They may not be of much use to those who give higher importance to quality, rather than quantity. 

Written By: S. Chandrashekara Reddy

Contact:  chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com

Disadvantages of Content Generation Tools

Following are the disadvantages of Content Generation Tools:

·                 Auto generated content possesses lower quality in comparison to manually written content.

·                 If your website or blog is a member of any advertisement network such as Google ad sense, it is advisable not to use the auto content generated by content generation tools.

·                 Most of advertisement networks terminate the memberships of publishers whose sites contain auto generated content. Hence, most of the advertisement network program members keep themselves away from using auto content generation tools to safeguard their memberships.

·                 Google and other search engines have strictly prohibited the usage of auto generation content. If any website, blog or online contains auto generated content, the search engines may ban the site/blog/online page and subsequently, traffic and page rank of the web page comes down. 

·                 Some of the paid tools are overpriced. Some of the paid tools may not give the desired results and may not yield the promised ROI (Returns on Invest).

·                 Auto generated content usually contains several spelling and grammar errors which irritate the reader and often kill the readability of a write-up. The readers may not visit once again in future. It adversely affects the reputation of the website among readers. Thus, web traffic for your website or blog may come down drastically.

·                 The content may not be genuine in most of the cases. Sometimes, the content may be junk completely and may not make any sense as the content is generated merely based on the algorithm on which it is designed. Thus, it creates ambiguity among readers and readers may get misled.

·                 Accuracy of information and credibility of auto generated content may not be as high as content prepared by a writer.

·                 Content generation tools may not use most appropriate words according to the situation and may not be aware which word suits the situation better.

·                    Content writers are required to submit auto-generated content only after manual proof-reading and editing as major portion of such content is featured by poor readability, poor comprehension, and improper alignment. Otherwise, you may land in troubles when your employer questions its quality.

Written By: S. Chandrashekara Reddy

Contact:  chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com