I did some research on business plans for entrepreneurs for this posting and a frequent theme that came up was comparing a business plan to a road map for your company. In this age of GPS devices (I have rarely been lost since I broke down and bought one) is the concept of a road map becoming obsolete? I don’t think so since the few times I have had problems was when there were temporary detours or permanent road changes. I thought of this when I ran across How to Refine a Business Plan that makes the point that is is very important to revisit your “road map” for your business on a regular basis. Just as you need to occasionally download an upgrade to the the maps on your GPS to keep it accurate (I get tired of hearing recalculating after a point) , you need to look at these key areas to keep your business plan up to date:
- Marketing
- Competition
- Staffing
- Financials and Projections
- Reevaluation
The article concludes by making the point that you need to update your business plan on a regular basis to keep your business running as efficiently as possible. There is another link at the end of the article about the worst 5 business plan mistakes, after all just as you wouldn’t want to drive your car over a cliff (or in this case into a lake) due to not doing an update, the same principle applies to your business.
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