Colin Barrow, Paul Barrow, Robert Brown

The Business Plan Workbook

A well-compiled business plan is a basis of success for each company regardless of its size. It will allow to plan particular steps, organize available information and it is also required while applying for the financial resources necessary to develop business activities. All this is possible to obtain if our business plan is prepared in an accurate manner. It is not a difficult task but all business plans which have the proper guidelines should be successful.

The Business Plan Workbook can be quite supportive for people who intend to write a fine business plan. It was created by Colin Barrow, Paul Barrow and Robert Brown. They took advantage of the knowledge and experience of hundreds of fledgling entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship Faculty at Cranfield School of Management in Great Britain, which is also known for its entrepreneurship development programmes. The authors managed to expand their own method of supporting students in their creation and approval of the conceptions of the business development.

After the end of each program, a special commission, consisting of some fine banks and venture capital funds management representatives, was invited to evaluate all presentations. It helped many businessmen to develop their skills and at the same time to refer to the way of thinking of the financial subjects.

The book consists of 20 tasks to accomplish. As a result, you will create a successful business plan. All tasks are divided into seven logically organized stages, which structure the book. Each step is described in a separate chapter.

The first stage refers to prime activities and the current state. It also depicts all goals and objectives of the company, describes the project as well as products and services. The second step is to study the market in order to find the customers and determine the competition. The next phase explains how to build your competitive advantage and how elements of the business should function. As a result, your company will be perceived positively in comparison to the others. In a fourth step, you are instructed what action should be taken to implement the strategy, which is also an operational side of the project. The fifth phase concerns forecasting the results, predicting losses and gains and the analyzing the profitability. The sixth part presents how to control the company. There tracking the results of your company was described. Eventually, the last step is about writing your business plan and its presentation.

Furthermore, the book presents different sources of funding new and small companies and discusses the issue of collecting the data for market research. It is a kind of supplement to the presented content.

As far as I am concerned, The Business Plan Workbook is a highly recommendable title. Many examples of actions, which were successfully put into practice by entrepreneurs, were presented to illustrate the problems discussed in the book. Moreover, each task includes a set of exercises (in a form of questions), which tell us what information should be prepared in a certain moment. It is especially helpful for a person who is not familiar with the presented issues.

The workbook was written in an accessible and comprehensible way. The authors use the second person, which is a significant facility for the reader while acquiring the information.

The Business Plan Workbook should be read by all people who want to write a business plan and who do not know how to do it in a proper way. The book guides you step by step through the whole process in a simple manner. This book is definitely worth buying.

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