Download business planning pack - Milton Keynes Council

Business Planning Guidance Notes
What is a business plan?



A business plan is one of the most important documents that anyone
starting a business or running one needs to produce.
It describes your business in detail and suggests how it might progress in
the future.
Your plan details your aims and objectives and your organisation and sets
out how you plan, manage, develop and sustain your childcare provision.
What are the benefits of developing a business plan?












Concentrates your thinking, transfers your thoughts to paper and keeps
them all in one place
Make you ask questions and do the necessary research
Helps you make decisions and plan resources
Explores whether a new business is viable
Helps guide employees and managers
Act as a Blueprint for the future – map for progress
Helps you obtain financial support
Highlights areas for development
Planning requires communication which helps you work as a team
Helps identify and understand your competitors
Helps discover strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Sets out your proposed project in numbers
What does the plan need to be?



Simple, accurate, realistic, concise and easily understood
Looked at regularly
Monitored and adapted if circumstances change
It is a living, breathing document!
Who might help develop the plan?
People who might be involved in developing the plan include:








Management
Employees
Children
Parents
Business Partners
Accountant
Business Consultant
Volunteers, etc
It is a working document for everyone.
THE PLANNING PROCESS
1. Where are we now?
 Market Research
 Business Health Check
 SWOT Analysis
2. Where would we like to be?
 Objectives/goals
3. How are we going to get there?
 Strategy
 Action plans
 Forecast
4. How do we ensure we get there?
 Evaluation
 Monitoring and Control
Key actions before you start to plan
Before you start to plan, gather as much evidence as you can to help discover
‘where you are now.’ To do this you can use the following tools:

Market Research - Conduct market research to gather information on
customers, competitors, local and national markets.

Business Health Check Tool – complete a Business Health Check
questionnaire which is a workbook that contains simple questions for
childcare businesses that can be used to build up a picture of their
business practices

SWOT Analysis - Complete A SWOT analysis, which looks at your
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Reviewing these areas and gathering lots of information can help provide a
picture of where your business is now and a basis of where it wants to be in
the future (aims and objectives)