A business plan can be described as the picture of your business, which reflects present and future ventures. It is presented in a well-researched and concise form of document in front of stake holders, investors and banks, which lets them understand how and what is your business doing or planning to do. A business plan helps entrepreneurs in many ways, such as:

• It makes the job easy for owners to attract new investors in order to raise capital
• It helps in hiring services of key professionals or consultants
• It increases chances for success of new business or expansion in current operations
• Suppliers can be managed in a better manner when a business plan provides them with strategic information

After understanding importance of business plan, next stage is to understand the contents of business plan. All you need to do is to put your goals, strategies, challenges, organizational structure, and required funds in place to start that business or to expand, if already running. All this information will be divided into separate headings, just like it is presented in the following outline:

A business plan is usually based on following outline:

• Executive summary
• Company overview
• Market strategies
• Competitive analysis
• Product design and development plan
• Operations and management plan
• Financial analysis and strategies

In addition to these sections, a business plan can also include a cover page, table of contents, and appendix at the end. Size of business plan varies from case to case and as per the nature of business, some plans can be completed in 20 pages while some require more than 100 pages.