Business Plan Helps Insure Sweet Success
By admin | September 2, 2010
Quick. Name a product or service that you or your business will gain more satisfaction from while its being developed or produced than when its finished.
Your answer?
My tax return?Wrong answer.Chocolate chip cookies?Youre getting much closer.I give up.
Your strategic business plan.I never would have said that.
Well, dont feel embarrassed. Most business owners and managers do not consider developing a Strategic Business Plan for their organization. In fact, less than 20% of all small businesses have any type of plan in place including operating plans, marketing plans, succession plans, etc.
They deny themselves such pleasure for a number of reasons:
Its far too difficult to do.
Its far too costly to do.
I dont have the time.
Imagine that you have hired a builder to construct your dream home. You have this rather vague picture of this house in your mind and you communicate this image to the builder.
Now imagine that your builder plunges into the construction of your home without any architectural plans. No drawings.
In a panic, you stop construction and ask the builder why he isnt using any plans or drawings?
He responds, Its far too difficult to do. Or Its far too costly to have done. Or I dont have the time.
It would be crazy to build a home without plans. How long would that dream house of your last if it was not built to any type of specifications? How long do you think your business will last without any direction or strategy?
Now back to my original question.
What is fascinating about developing a business plan is that the greatest satisfaction is derived from the development of the plan itself. Just like baking chocolate chip cookies. I get more enjoyment from eating the delicious cookie dough while Im baking than I do from the baked goods upon completion. Sometimes I get halfway done baking and stop completely. On rare occasion, the dough never makes it to the oven.
The business plan development process includes the following three steps:
1.Analyze the business as it exists at this moment in time
2.Determine your 3-5 year vision for the business
3.Decide what you need to do to move towards that vision
As you go through this process you will be forced to examine your business, as you have probably never done before. You will uncover your strengths and weaknesses. You will identify market opportunities and threats. You will set goals and objectives and than establish an action plan geared to achieving them.
You will take that image of your dream house out of your head and onto paper where it belongs.
When you finish, you will feel exhilarated and motivated like never before. You will find new confidence in your business. If this is not the case, its time to bail out. Sell the farm.
Once your business plan is completed, it than becomes your road map for leading your business. You will use it to make sure that the construction of your business is just as you have planned for. You may even want to share it with others such as your employees, your banker, or even your family.
Just like chocolate chip cookies.
Quick. Name a product or service that you or your business will gain more satisfaction from while its being developed or produced than when its finished.
Your answer?
My tax return?Wrong answer.Chocolate chip cookies?Youre getting much closer.I give up.
Your strategic business plan.I never would have said that.
Well, dont feel embarrassed. Most business owners and managers do not consider developing a Strategic Business Plan for their organization. In fact, less than 20% of all small businesses have any type of plan in place including operating plans, marketing plans, succession plans, etc.
They deny themselves such pleasure for a number of reasons:
Its far too difficult to do.
Its far too costly to do.
I dont have the time.
Imagine that you have hired a builder to construct your dream home. You have this rather vague picture of this house in your mind and you communicate this image to the builder.
Now imagine that your builder plunges into the construction of your home without any architectural plans. No drawings.
In a panic, you stop construction and ask the builder why he isnt using any plans or drawings?
He responds, Its far too difficult to do. Or Its far too costly to have done. Or I dont have the time.
It would be crazy to build a home without plans. How long would that dream house of your last if it was not built to any type of specifications? How long do you think your business will last without any direction or strategy?
Now back to my original question.
What is fascinating about developing a business plan is that the greatest satisfaction is derived from the development of the plan itself. Just like baking chocolate chip cookies. I get more enjoyment from eating the delicious cookie dough while Im baking than I do from the baked goods upon completion. Sometimes I get halfway done baking and stop completely. On rare occasion, the dough never makes it to the oven.
The business plan development process includes the following three steps:
1.Analyze the business as it exists at this moment in time
2.Determine your 3-5 year vision for the business
3.Decide what you need to do to move towards that vision
As you go through this process you will be forced to examine your business, as you have probably never done before. You will uncover your strengths and weaknesses. You will identify market opportunities and threats. You will set goals and objectives and than establish an action plan geared to achieving them.
You will take that image of your dream house out of your head and onto paper where it belongs.
When you finish, you will feel exhilarated and motivated like never before. You will find new confidence in your business. If this is not the case, its time to bail out. Sell the farm.
Once your business plan is completed, it than becomes your road map for leading your business. You will use it to make sure that the construction of your business is just as you have planned for. You may even want to share it with others such as your employees, your banker, or even your family.
Just like chocolate chip cookies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
management trainer. He is also a very popular public speaker. Tim can be reached at timfulton@hotmail.com.
Topics: Business model | No Comments »
UML Business Process Modeling For Improved Efficiency
By admin | September 2, 2010
Improving business process by understanding existing relationships between departments in the company
Business process modeling is one of the most important aspects regarding the understanding and restructures of activities and information a company uses to achieve its goals. If you can understand and improve processes before you start any major project, the outcome will be achieved in a more efficient and effective manner.
An efficient UML business process modeling allows businesses to understand better their internal mechanisms through a graphical way of transmitting the information. These graphical notations will allow a better understanding the existing relationships between departments. By having a clearer view of their internal functioning, large companies will be able to improve their operating techniques and methods, thus increasing their efficiency. Several available technologies can bring the advantages of business process modeling closer to organizations. Among such technologies, the most relevant and used are UML (Unified Modeling Language), the service-orientated architecture and the model-driven architecture.
Only by understanding better the company’s current and future goals and strategies, by understanding, the business processes required supporting these strategies and by presenting serious improvement plans, can large businesses evolve and modernize themselves. A large company will always be harder to change than a small, compact firm will and here business process modeling shows its advantages. When setting to develop such a business process model you will need to go through several steps. First, you will need to identify the overall company’s strategy so you know your main goals you want to reach. After you create a model of the existing business process, then you must set up workshops and interviews to develop it. When this step is done, the current company’s business processes are analyzed and split into several, smaller threads using UML activity diagrams. Because each thread is presented in a detailed manner and you can observe all the dependencies between threads in a graphic manner, you can see easier what and where changes and improvements must be done. All the required changes and their interactions with the current situation will be put together in a so-called target model. Based on the model you will know what changes you must do and in what key segments. Read more at http://www.diagramssoftware.com
In business process modeling the emphasis is put on how exactly, the work is done in a certain company rather than what work is done. By knowing all the flow and information routes within the organization, you can optimize all the major processes. Business process modeling uses UML technologies (to me more precise, the UML’s ability to easily create and edit all sorts of visual elements: flowcharts, Gantt charts, structure, behavior and interaction diagrams, such as communication, activity and deployment charts) to create the modeling notations, the graphical representations of the major processes, flows and stores. If you require more detailed process models
, you can resort to the included UML profiles. Utilizing business process modeling together with UML technologies to graphically present the information and data is a major advantage for any company that requires to a better understanding the ways it internally works to improve itself.
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Read more about improving efficiency with Business Diagram Software and process flow software at => http://www.diagramssoftware.com
Topics: Business model | No Comments »
