Business Strategy

                                     A good business plan is just the starting point and can soon become outdated. However falling behind in a tough environment, making poor investment decisions or focusing on the wrong product or service could mean a long term disadvantage or even a shake out of the race.

    The automotive and energy sectors are on the verge of a new area, the green age, where the future is increasingly being shaped by environmental legislation and other issues such as demographic disparity, emerging market economic growth and changing customer behaviour. Existing business models are further complicated by competition from lower cost developing markets, industry deregulation and technology convergence, and must be re-assessed on an ongoing basis. More important than ever companies need to wisely put their assets to use to successfully compete in today’s tough market conditions.

What factors are involved in creating a good business plan? Is it the length of the plan? The information it covers? How well it’s written, or the brilliance of its strategy. No.

The following illustration shows a business plan as part of a process. You can think about the good or bad of a plan as the plan itself, measuring its value by its contents. There are some qualities in a plan that make it more likely to create results, and these are important. However, it is even better to see the plan as part of the whole process of results, because even a great plan is wasted if nobody follows it.