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Business Plans Go High-Tech
by Michael J. McDermott

Traditionally, business plans have been ponderous documents, designed to convince staid bankers and financiers of the worthiness of your business concept. They are still an important part of the package when it comes to arranging financing for a new company, but in today's high tech, Internet driven, 24/7 business world, your father's (or mother's) old business plan just won't cut it anymore.

One of the keys to preparing a successful business plan in today's rapidly changing environment is to build flexibility into it right from the start. The plan should incorporate the vision you have for your business, but it must be fluid enough to respond to changing conditions.

Truth be told, most of the pages in bulky, old style business plans were never even read by anyone in any case. Financial types went straight to the ledger columns, with maybe a cursory glance through the narrative portion. Voluminous appendages of product spec sheets, marketing materials, circulars, etc., were rarely perused.

It is still a good idea to gather all that material together when creating a business plan today, but consign it to an appendix or a supplementary report available to any interested party who wants to access it, but not distracting attention from the core of the plan.

That core should be a concise narrative flow that spotlights your business model and your vision for the company and its future. You don't have to get into the nitty gritty details of how your business will be run on a day to day basis. You do have to demonstrate that you have a workable concept and the vision to bring it to life.

You should start out with a written plan that will serve as a master document you can always refer back to. But in today's high tech business climate, you do not necessarily have to present that entire document to every potential investor and business advisor you deal with.

One of the keys is to build flexibility into the business plan right from the start.

Thanks to .technology such as Web sites, e mail and PO or laptop based slide presentations, you can customize your business plan presentations to individual investors or give them access to the entire document electronically.

It makes no difference whether your business is a cutting edge venture on the frontiers of new technology or a traditional business such as a cleaning service or retail outlet. You can still benefit from adopting a high tech business plan to tell your story.

When preparing a high tech business plan, think of presenting information in packets designed to fit on a single screen of a Web site or a single slide in an presentation, such as Microsoft PowerPoint. Viewers and listeners should be able to access any screen or slide in the series and be able to understand the information it contains regardless of whether they have seen other parts of the plan.

SUM IT UP

Begin with an executive summary. This is the only part of the hightech business plan that may be longer than a single screen or slide, but it should be no more than two. As the name implies, this section summarizes what is to follow, i.e., a description. of the market opportunity you have identified and the plan you have developed to capitalize on that opportunity with your business.

If you read white papers, research reports and other documents frequently used in the business the world, you will notice that most of them include an executive summary. Busy executives are bombarded with so much information these days that they simply do not have the time to wade through all of it line by line. An executive summary is designed to catch their attention and make them notice what it is about your business idea that stands out from the crowd.

The formal part of your hightech business plan should kick off with a screen or slide spotlighting your company name and any logos or unique design elements you have developed for the concept. If anything is copyrighted or trademarked, be sure to include those symbols. This screen can also include additional contact information address, phone and fax numbers, Web site URL, email address in a smaller typeface.

The next screen or slide should contain your mission statement. Preparing this screen is a good exercise for anyone starting up a business because it forces you to boil your idea down to its very essence. The mission statement should reflect the information you have presented in the executive summary but in greatly truncated form.

An executive summary is designed to catch the attention of busy potential backers.

The next few slides or screens should present your business case in a linear format, starting with the overall industry and drilling down to the specific opportunity you have identified there.

The first shot should provide a broad view of the industry, including a very brief history and its current status. Identify all parties to transactions in the industry buyers, sellers, distributors, middlemen, etc. and chart the flow of goods and/or services from end to end.

Be sure to include any unique information about the industry, such as if most participants do a significant amount of business electronically through Internetbased business to business (B2B) exchanges or e commerce. Present statistical evidence showing that the industry .is growing. If it is not, be prepared to demonstrate later in the presentation why your idea is still viable in a contracting industry.

The next screen or slide should provide information about the size of the market the industry serves, how fast it is growing and any demographic or statistical information relevant to the business concept you are proposing.

The logical follow up is a screen or slide spelling out the opportunity you have identified in this market. At its core, a business opportunity is an identifiable market need that is not being met or is being met in only a partial or inefficient manner. To cut right to the heart of the issue, if you don't have this screen or slide, you probably don't have a viable business plan.

The next shot, logically, present's the solution your business proposal represents to that unmet market need. How is your business going to provide something this market wants that no one else is providing? Or how are you going to provide something others already offer but in a more timely, efficient, cheaper or somehow more attractive way? This slide and the preceding one are the two most important parts of your presentation.

DETAILS, DETAILS

You've made your case, especially in the last two slides, so now you fill in the details. The assortment of screens or slides you will include in the next part of your presentation will be dependent on the nature of your business and any unique circumstances related to your situation. However, a few that every business plan should include are:

  • The cast of players. No matter how impressed they might be by your idea, potential investors will want some assurance that you have the human vide some key information about yourself and other key members of your team.

  • The magic of marketing. Your great idea's not worth much unless the customers most likely to buy your product or service know about it. How are you going to get your message out? What kind of advertising are you going to do?

  • Show me the money. People who have money to lend or invest are generally interested in; well, money. They want some evidence that they are likely to reap a return on their investment. This screen or slide provides that. You have to make some projections about future revenues and profits, but wherever possible, base those projections on "real" numbers such as cost of acquiring customers, raw materials and business equipment.

    • If you can't identify the market need you aim to fill, you probably don't have a plan.

    Depending on the size and nature of your business venture, you may' want to retain professional help in preparing your high tech business plan. Some areas where you might need assistance are financial (accountant or CPA), business entity (attorney, business consultant) and the Web or PC technology for the plan itself (maybe your teenage kid?).

    When your new high tech business plan is finished, you will have a valuable business tool that can be a tremendous help in raising financing and plotting your venture's course. It will be portable, flexible and state of the art, and that in itself is sure to impress some potential investors.