Toolkit: Business plan

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The main purpose of a business plan is to use it as a guide for decision-making.

Just a reminder to keep a record of all the tools in the table below. As long as you can fill in all the cells of the table, you will be able to write a successful IA.

You are not expected to prepare business plans. You are expected to be able to analyse and evaluate them.

Business plan is a document that sets out organisation’s future objectives and strategies to achieve them. The purpose of business plans is (surprise-surprise) to plan for the future. But for you, IB students, the purpose of different organisations’ business plans is to use them as a guide for decision-making. For example, if an organisation decided to change something in the way it operates, is it in line with the plan, objectives, strategies and mission? The answer lies in analysing the business plan.

There is no one single way how to write business plans. You can find thousands of templates online. However, all decent business plans should have some elements that must not be ignored. The most important elements of any business plan are the four business functions: human resources, finance and accounts, marketing and operations management (production). Anyone who prepares a business plan has to think of a way how the four business functions will be implemented in reality. Actually, we have already learnt what the elements of business plans are in the very first class, so please review it if you forgot. I’ll just paste the picture about the elements of the business plan (BP) for your convenience:

However, in reality, business plans are not...