Tag: Evaluate

The Complete List of Things to Evaluate Before You Open or Invest in a New Venture

Do you have an innovative idea you wish to market? Are you planning on opening a new business? Are you investing on somebody else’s idea?

If you said “yes” to any of these questions, don’t do it just yet!

Starting or investing on a new venture can be an emotional process full of anticipation and excitement. You need to keep a cool head and treat the process with the utmost objectivity.

To help with that, I’ve put together a complete list of questions you NEED to answer before you even think about putting a business plan together. This will help you make sure that no overlooked variable makes you incorrectly go forward or not. Make sure you don’t skip any part of the process and end the exercise with a very honest yes or no decision based on the answers.

You will find it difficult if not impossible to answer some of the questions. It is very important to understand the sureness of each response and the risk that each unanswered question implies. Handle this risk by analyzing scenarios with the different possible answers.

Write down a simple comment to each question, doing this formalizes your analysis. You can also think about each question in a SWOT analysis context identifying each one as a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity or Threat.

The Dos and Don’ts to keep in mind:

Do this all the time

  • Be methodic, analyze completely. Understand the need, competition and constrains, then tailor and differentiate.
  • Be on the lookout all the time for the fatal flaw that will make this fail.
  • Lots of questions can’t be answered or are too vague, check the risk of not knowing them.

Don’t Do This

  • Don´t follow the classic idea method: “I have an idea, let me think how to shove it to the channel or customer”.
  • Don’t focus on the features of the product, focus on the need you are trying to fulfill.
  • Don’t get tempted to skip a full analysis.
  • The most frequent mistake is to think everybody in the market is like you. If you like the product, everybody else will.
  • It is common to confuse a good idea with a good business opportunity, they are not the same.
  • Thinking “We have no competition” is only for naive entrepreneurs.
  • Don´t obsess with first mover´s advantage, most of the time funds prefer second movers because the idea is already validated.

The questions you need to answer:

Product or Service

  • Can you describe the business idea in 25 words or less?
  • Is the idea scalable? Is it limited to your time or something else?
  • Can your offering later change / adapt?
  • Risk of not being able to develop / manufacture the product?

Market or Customer

  • Can you do formal market analysis or only informal? (Interviews, observations, focus groups, surveys, market experiments, etc.)
  • Who is the customer? How precisely can he be defined? Location, profile, etc.?
  • What problem are you solving? Why would the customer buy? Does he want to?
  • Commercial risk, no willingness to buy?
  • How big is the market? Growing or shrinking?
  • How penetrated is the market by the industry? What share can you get fast? Later?
  • What price is he willing to pay? Based on what? How important is it?
  • How price-conscious is your customer?
  • Risk of change in consumer behavior?
  • Can the target market later be changed? Can you later attack other levels in the value chain?

Industry

  • Can you do formal analysis or only informal?
  • Is it thriving? Shrinking?
  • Do suppliers have power? Risk of supply shortage? Change in price?
  • Barriers to entry:
  • . Contractual? Patent or trademark?
  • . Lead time in tech development? Innovation?
  • . Management? People?
  • . Location?
  • . Regulations and government?
  • . Other barriers?
  • Can barriers change easily?
  • Do you have relations in place?
  • . Customers?
  • . Suppliers?
  • . Partners? Talent? Investors?
  • Experience in industry? Yours? Other management?
  • Risk of regulatory or other government related changes or intervention?
  • Technology risk of obsolescence?

Competition

  • Can you do formal competition analysis? If not, what informal analysis can you do? Is it good?
  • Who else is attacking the market? How? Successfully?
  • What is your competition´s pricing strategy?
  • What is the closest thing in the target market to your product? Are you a first mover? Second? More than that?
  • Strategic advantages / differentiators. Clearly visible to consumers or only in your mind? Sustainable? True, important and provable?
  • . Function? Design? Quality? Uniqueness? Innovation?
  • . Delivery? Channel? Availability? Location?
  • . Cost? Marketing? Sales?
  • . Ignorance of buyers?
  • . Customer service?
  • . Other?
  • Are you taking advantage of a certain opportunity, situation or advantage?
  • How fast can competition catch up?

Channel

  • Which options do you have?
  • Which one is the ideal? Why?
  • If the first choice does not work, does it make sense to try others?
  • What channels does your target market prefer?
  • Which ones are your competitors using?
  • How much integration do the channels have?
  • Will the channel change with customer habits or tech?
  • Risk of no access to the correct channel or consumer?

Sales and Advertising

  • How will you get customers?
  • How will you retain customers? Is it important?
  • Describe the necessary salesforce?
  • Can a salesperson of ordinary skills sell it?
  • Do you need advertising? Which kind? How much? Is it important?

Economics

  • How clearly can you model the basic economics of the idea? (Costs, sales, margins, required capital, ROI, etc.)
  • Will there be economies of scale? Are they important?
  • Accounts receivable? Can it become a problem?
  • How will you finance initially? Later?

Management

  • Do you have or can get the necessary management team?
  • Do management / leadership / organizational capabilities make a difference? How big a difference?
  • How valuable is intellectual property?
  • Does it make sense to do this solo? It normally doesn’t.

Other

  • Validation:
  • . How fast can you know if the business can work or not?
  • . Can you define the variables to know it? How fast can the data flow?
  • . Do you need product development to know? Dangerous!
  • . Do you need a long selling process or many tries to know? Dangerous!
  • Can you diversify? Not easy on new ventures, but can it be done?
  • Give me the biggest drawback / risk (fatal flaw) of the idea? The one that will make it fail?
  • Enlist the seemingly fatal flaws that can be fixed.
  • Does the idea fit your life objectives? Workload?
  • Do you feel passionate about the idea? Enjoyable? Are you doing it only for the money?
  • Give me the upside / best case scenario?
  • Give me the downside / worst case scenario?

How To Evaluate A Business Idea For Developing An Enterprise

Why Do You Need A Business Plan?

Planning is a process that never ends for all businesses. It is extremely important in the early stages of any venture when the entrepreneur will need to prepare a preliminary business plan.

There are different types of plans that may be part of any business operation. These include but not limited to Financial plans, Marketing plan, Human Resource plan, Production plans, Sales plans etc. Plans may be short term or long term or may be strategic or operational. Whatever the type of plan or the function, plans have one important purpose; to provide guidance and structure to management in a rapidly changing market environment.

A business plan on the other hand is a written document prepared by the entrepreneur that describes all the relevant external and internal elements involved in starting a new venture. It is often an integration of functional plans such as marketing, finance, manufacturing and human resources. It also addresses both short term and long term decision making for the first three years of operation. Thus, the business plan, or road map, answers the strategic questions of where am I now? Where am I going? And how will I get there? Potential investors, suppliers and even customers will request or require a business plan.

How I Prepared My Preliminary Project Proposal

In my case, I followed the following break downs keeping each section as brief as possible.

1. Background: in this section, I established the context of the project by giving an account of the problem it is trying to address.

2. State of the art: I gave an overview of existing and emerging technology in the field, including an account of rival technologies and a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the various options.

3. Proposal: I wrote an overview of the proposed project and the approach, i.e. the activities which I will be undertaken to achieve the project objectives. Clearly establish the research element or novelty component in the proposal.

4. Consortium: an overview of the proposed manpower and establish the required ability to carry out the project successfully (e.g. skills, competencies, etc.)

5. Objectives and Deliverables: Identify (1) the objectives and (2) the deliverables of the proposed project.

6. Competitiveness: if applicable, establish the competitiveness or advantages of the proposed solution compared to other solutions, whether these already exist or are still being researched.

7. Cost: give an overview of the project cost (including start-up cost and working capital requirements).

8. Impact: this section should include:

i. Markets and Uses: identify possible uses and markets for the deliverables of the project.

ii. Benefits and Beneficiaries: identify the beneficiaries of the project’s results (e.g. the project participants, the general public, third parties) and the manner in which they will benefit.

iii. Roadmap: give an indication regarding what further steps, effort, costs and timeframes are necessary before tangible benefits can be realized from the deliverables or results of the project (unless these are realized within the lifetime of the project).

iv. Spillover Benefits: identify any secondary benefits of the project (e.g. facilitating participation in funding programmes, improving Malta’s ranking, strengthening Malta’s reputation in a particular area, etc.)

Preparing a Detailed Business Plan

Stages of writing a business plan are: After deciding to go into business, before starting the business and when updating is required.

Business plans can be written for retail business, wholesale business, service business, manufacturing and any other type of business.

A business plan is written by doing the following:

Identifying all the questions that could be asked about the business.

Determining what further information needs to be gathered to answer all the questions.

Obtaining all the necessary information.

Comparing various alternatives

Making a decision on each question.

A business plan should:

Have a good appearance

Provide an index

Provide a summary

Number each copy

Be signed to show who is submitting it.

Depend on the nature of the business.

A business plan should be organized to carry a cover page, table of contents, executive summary, business description, Marketing plan, organizational plan, operational plan, financial plan and appendices.

Outline of a typical business plan is as below;

1. Title: Feasibility study Report on______________________

Commissioned by_________________________

2. Project consultants

3. Table of contents:

Executive Summary

The Report

Project Background

Objective of study

Project description and

Loan advancement

Promoter

Location

Market and marketing plan

Potential customers

Competition

Pricing

Sales Tactics

Advertising and Promotion

Distribution.

Technical Feasibility and management plan:

Factory

Machinery

Overhead charges

Packaging materials

Raw materials Manpower and Labour costs.

Financial Projection/Feasibility:

Overview on capital requirement

Financial plan

Projected cash flow

Projected profit and loss account

Projected balance sheet

Break-even analysis

Source and application of funds

Organization Plan:

Form of ownership

Identification of partners/Principal shareholders

Authority of Principals.

Management team background

Roles and responsibilities of members of organization

Assessment of Risk:

Evaluate weakness of business

New technologies

Contingency plans.

Schedules:

12 months projected sales

12 months projected purchase

Fixed Assets and depreciation schedule

Profitability index.

Thanks for reading

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