List the key elements of a business plan

The key elements of a business plan are much the same,whether for a large business or a small business. Executive Summary An executive summary of your business plan provides the reader with a snapshot of your company profile and goals. It also should explain why you are seeking financing and information about your banking and currency investors. Market Analysis Market analysis describes your industry, gives information about the target market for your product or service and describes how your product or service will meet the needs of the target market.

Responsibility[ edit ] The management of business continuity falls largely within the sphere of quality management and risk managementwith some cross-over into related fields such as governanceinformation security and compliance.

Risk management is an important tool for business continuity as it provides a structured way to identify the sources of business disruption and assess their probability and harm.

It is expected that all business functions, operations, supplies, systems, relationships, etc. Business Impact Analysis is the generally accepted risk management term for the process of determining the relative importance or criticality of those elements, and in turn drives the priorities, planning, preparations and other business continuity management activities.

If there is no business continuity plan implemented and the organization in question is facing a rather severe threat or disruption that may lead to bankruptcy, the implementation and outcome, if not too late, may strengthen the organization's survival and its continuity of business activities.

These standards ensure that proven methods and concepts for business continuity are used. As with many quality management standards though, the primary task of identifying relevant potential disasters, making plans for evacuation, buying spare machines and servers, performing backups and bringing them off-site, assigning responsibility, performing drills, educating employees and being vigilant cannot be replaced by adherence to standards.

As such, commitment by management to see business continuity as an important topic and assign people to work on it, remains the most important step in establishing business continuity.

Several business continuity standards have been published by various standards bodies: It is formal in style in order to facilitate compliance auditing and certification.

National Fire Protection Association: It too was withdrawn in when it was in effect replaced by ISO It also involves 1 assessment of the probable effect of such events, 2 development of recovery strategies and plans, and 3 maintenance of their readiness through personnel training and plan testing.

See also business impact analysis Policies[ edit ] Policies are those things mandated by the management of an organization that will always be performed according to a preset design plan, and supporting all business functions within an organization. Business impact analysis BIA [ edit ] The entire concept of business continuity is based on the identification of all business functions within an organization, and then assigning a level of importance to each business function.

A business impact analysis is the primary tool for gathering this information and assigning criticality, recovery point objectives, and recovery time objectives, and is therefore part of the basic foundation of business continuity.

The BIA can be used to identify extent and timescale of the impact on different levels of an organization. For instance it can examine the effect of disruption on operational, functional and strategic activities of an organization. Not only the current activities but the effect of disruption on major business changes, introducing new product or services for example, can be determined by BIA.

Most standards require that a business impact analysis should be reviewed at defined intervals appropriate for each organization and whenever any of the following occur: Significant changes in the internal business process, location or technology Significant changes in the external business environment — such as market or regulatory change [3] Document management[ edit ] In large information technology environments, personnel turnover is inevitable and must be planned as part of business continuity.

The solution to the problems associated with turnover, is complete and up-to- date documentation. This ensures that new personnel will have the information they need to quickly become knowledgeable and productive with respect to the business functions they are tasked to support.

This also implies that business function related documentation is largely generated rather than written from existing systems and managed in an automated manner. This brings a level of stability to the business functions by requiring the support personnel to document and coordinate proposed changes to the underlying systems.

10 Key Elements of a Good Business Plan

As this process becomes more and more automated, the emphasis will be less upon personnel control, and more upon regulatory compliance. Audit management[ edit ] One of the most costly and time-consuming aspects of information technology management is dealing with auditors.

One of the goals of business continuity is data center automationwhich includes audit management. All modern business functions should be designed with the concept of automatically generating the requisite audit compliance information and documentation as part of conducting day-to-day business.

This dramatically reduces the time and cost associated with manually producing this information. This provides a written contract stipulating the expectations of management with regard to the availability of a necessary business function, and the deliverables that information technology provides in support of that business function.

Communications systems[ edit ] Another component of business continuity is communications in times of duress. Members of the disaster recovery team must be able to communicate effectively among themselves as well as with managers, directors, customers, partners, and even with the media. This section may contain indiscriminateexcessiveor irrelevant examples.

Please improve the article by adding more descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further suggestions. September The following is a list of logical entities within an information technology environment which aid business continuity: Virtualization provides a means to achieve resiliency Networking design can support resiliency by design Resource or service groups Journaling file system is a means to achieve resiliency High availabilityalong with Redundancy engineeringdescribes a principle or means of achieving of resiliency Continuous monitoring can be a means to maintain resiliency or improve recoverability Main article: Business continuity planning Planning, prevention, and preparation are a key part of any business continuity management system and have direct read across from civil contingencies planning.

The activity begins with understanding the business to identify potential risks and threats to critical business activities both internally and from the external environment.

It is also advisable to examine the resilience of suppliers. Also called business resumption plan, disaster recovery planor recovery plan. Key accountabilities including authority to invoke, instructions subsequent to invocations, and a detailed communications plan must be included in the plan to ensure efficient resumption of operations.Dec 03,  · Section I - Executive Summary.

1 - Executive Summary.

The Executive Summary is the most important part of your business plan. Because if it . There are seven major sections of a business plan, and each one is a complex document.

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Read this selection from our business plan tutorial to fully understand these components. It’s ideal for every entrepreneur to prepare or know how to write a business plan in Nigeria or anywhere else around the world.

Whether you’re starting a business, running a business or about to expand a business, having a business plan as a road map to follow is crucial to your success. 9 Most Important Elements of a Business. Osterwalder’s business canvas helps illustrate how a company intends to make money.

The Eight Key Elements of a Successful Business Plan and How to Make Them Work for You | HuffPost

Key Activities: the tasks the company must perform to succeed. 7. The A1 suffix is typically seen as part of an application identification number or grant number and “A1” is often used to refer to a new, renewal, or revision application that is amended and resubmitted after the review of a previous application with the same project number.

For a new business, a business plan helps improve your chance of securing financing and investment. Established businesses should review their business plan and update it regularly in order to provide direction for growth.

Our business plan template will help you to create a business plan easily.