The Business

Plan
What is a Business Plan?
 A business plan is simply a guide –
a roadmap for your business that
outline goals and details how you
are going to achieve those goals.
Why is business planning important?
 Starting a business without a business plan is like driving out of your
driveway without knowing where you are going or how you plan to get
there.

Business Planning helps define and guide business owners on:

1. an agreed route for your business
2. key objectives for the next three to five years and how they will be
achieved.
3. directions and timelines in which to achieve your goals
4. a day-to-day operations and decisions
5. a benchmark to measure your progress towards achieving your goals.
Who will read or use your business plan?
1. Staff – because your business plan contains your strategy and action
plan for your business, it will be referred to by staff to ensure the
decisions they make match the overall plans and objectives of your
business.
2. Investors and lenders- your business plan is also likely to be shown to
people outside your business when you look to raise finance or
investment capital.
3. Potential hires- if you are looking to employ a new senior staff
member, a professional business plan could help clinch the deal.
4. Potential business partners- they’re likely to be impressed by a
comprehensive business plan.
5. Buyers- your plan will play an important role in presenting your
business to potential buyers when it comes time to sell your business.
Business Plan Template
 Appearance – the manuscript must be prepared on a computer, neat in
appearance, and without error. Avoid strikeovers and handwritten
corrections. Printing of the business plan should be letter/laser quality
with dark black characters that are consistently clear and dense. The
manuscript can be printed on only one side of each paper.
 Paper- use white book paper or substance 20 bond paper and 8 ½ x 11 in
size.
 Typeface- Times New Roman or Arial are the only acceptable fonts.
-the same typeface must be used throughout the manuscript, including figures,
tables, plate captions with the exception of certain tables, figures and
appendix material, which may use a different font.
-Italics should be used only to highlight specific words or phrases in the text.
-the official font size is 12 point and must be used for all material in the text.
 Spacing- double spacing is required throughout the manuscript.
Footnotes, bibliographic entries, long quoted passages, figure
and table captions, and items in lists and tables may be single-
spaced. If individual footnote or bibliographic entries are
single-spaced, there must be double-spacing between each
entry. There are special spacing requirements for some of the
preliminary pages.
 Margins- margins must be uniform on all pages. Margin requirements
apply to all materials included in the paper such as figures,
tables, photographs, etc. and all material in appendices. The
margins of the thesis page are:
 1. 1 inch minimum on the top and bottom
 2. 1.5 inches minimum on the left
 3. 1 inch minimum on the right
 Page numbers- page numbers must fall within the
margins. Page numbers must be placed in the top of
the page at the right side. The body of the text must
be fully/double justified with one inch indention of
each paragraph’s first sentence.