SME CLINIC With Kola Owolabi
The need to prepare a business plan for your business at this time of the year and at this time in Nigeria goes beyond just having something to guide you in the way to go in terms of achieving set goals and objectives in the New Year. It is beyond the profitabilty projections that show you what is coming your way in terms of net profit out of which you will pay dividends to owners of the business, which include yourself.
The business plan is a tool for determining how relevant your business will be in the nearest and far future. Please get me right. Once people start running their businesses, they get bogged down with daily activities on how to ensure that their products and services are available for the patronage of their customers. They hardly have time to sit down and plan what the business will look like in the next five to ten years.
They don’t know the changes going on in the marketplace, particularly in their own operating space or sector. They are too busy to notice the shifts in demand patterns and what competitors are doing. Once they are still managing to sell their products, they believe all is well. Have you fallen into the same error of going on with business as usual not knowing that the world is changing everyday and so the profile of demand for products and services is changing everyday too?.
The business plan process enables you to pause to reflect and plan for a minimum time horizon of 3-5 years.
A client we are working for now intends to go into business for the first time. Upon commissioning the business plan and starting the process, the client is so much enthralled and excited with the whole thing, that is even making us slow down too much on the assignment. The process is enabling the client to think and reflect so much and in the process has discovered so many dimensions of the business that was not thought about before. That client’s scope is getting so much expanded and the dream enhanced even before commencement because the process has provoked deep thinking and a new picture of the business far beyond the imagination of the client is emerging.
We all know that vision is the driver of pursuit. If vision is clear, pursuit is keener and hotter and speed is enhanced. The business plan process enables one to come up with a clearer vision of the end from the beginning. This helps to infuse greater confidence in the entrepreneur and he approaches implementation with little fear of failure.
The process has enabled him to see what is going on in the marketplace more clearly and so he is able to come up with an action plan that will make him get ahead of competitors faster. He is armed with reliable information on the direction that market demand is going and will be coming out with products and services that will be continuously relevant. He is always ahead of everybody else and if he is somebody that keeps faith with the regular cycle of going back to the drawing board after implementation of the idea, that is repeating the planning process once in every 3-5 years, he continues on the ever growing curve.
Staying relevant in business means that you are prompt to discover the way the market is moving and to quickly adjust what you are doing to ensure that your products and services are not rendered obsolete. So if you notice that the market has slowed down for you and patronage is not as it used to be, it is better you quickly go back to the fundamentals, which is going back to the business plan process.
Kola Owolabi (FIMC) Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants, is the Executive Director of Centre of Entrepreneurial Research and Development based in Igbesa, a surburb of greater Lagos, in the vicinity of Crawford University. The organization has had the opportunity to execute landmark business development (business plan preparation and conduct of feasibility studies) and rmarket research briefs for organizations both within and outside Nigeria. The organization’s discriminating competence lies in its ability to help prospective entrepreneurs plan and execute market entry intentions across all kinds of markets and industries. He can be reached by phone or WhatsApp through 08023203198.
