Creating an Online Business Plan

Your Organization Breakdown in Your Online Business Plan

Your online business plan needs to make sure it addresses the management and administration structure – in other words your organization’s breakdown. Online businesses often have a simpler organization structure than a traditional business, but that’s not always the case, and it must be clearly defined.

You will need to cover the management structure and ownership of your business. It’s okay if one person fills a number of roles. Online businesses that are starting up often don’t have more than one or two people running the whole business.

During the startup period, the owner is not going to be receiving a paycheck or any benefits. Initially owner salaries are going to be figured out based on the profitability of the company but they should never be more than fifty percent of the profit of the business.

If the company is limited, there will be the distribution of shares among the owners. That could be one person, two people or more, but the breakdown needs to be included in the business plan so potential investors know and understand the business structure.

You will also need to include the managerial style that you plan to use. This should be broken out so that not just investors but business owners can stay on track and later compare.

• Communication - Communication will be mainly through, i.e. email, texting, oral, etc.
• Decisions Making - Who is going to be the final decision maker for all the decisions pertaining to your business.
•   Project Management –There are different styles. You should define what style you are going to use. For example, all project management will be defined by the PMI PMBOK standards.
• Record Keeping – The company will use to manage our financial records.

You will need to define the management structure. For example, Person A will be President, Director of Marketing, and Director of IT. Person B will be Director of Operations, Director of Finance. You are then going to define what the responsibilities are in each of those positions that a person holds. Be clear and concise when describing these roles, because you will be using this yourself in running your business.

The organization breakdown is going to look very different from one business to the next, so make sure that you take the time to properly define what your business organization is going to look like.

Your Online Business Plan Must Measure the Market and Metrics

You are going to want to specifically focus on the users and your demographics that you plan to hit with your new online business and how your costs and price compare to what the market is currently willing to pay for the product or service you are going to offer.

It’s here that you are going to take the time to make a list of your current competition along with what you feel they are doing correctly and what they are doing wrong. This is one of the most important sections for luring lenders and investors on-board with your plan. If you aren’t able to show that you have an idea that’s innovative and that you also have the marketing strategy to shoot you forward, you’ll have difficulty getting any investment interest.

In the business landscape today, your ideas need to also make sure to include social media strategies such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Your business personality needs to shine through here and if you know the magic to help this happen in social media, you are definitely on the right path. When you are able to locate influencers that’s how you will discover those people who are linked to what you have to offer or who can help you to identify the impact you will have on society.

Online entrepreneurs are lucky to be able to make use of metrics. This is something that businesses in the past did not have access to. This instantly lets you measure how your business is doing. It shows how successful you are in a very inexpensive and practical manner. These are very easy to obtain.

Sure, it’s nice to read what your online customers are saying; however, this does not tell you whether a person is actually buying the product you have to offer. The easiest and most effective way to measure success is by paying attention to how your business is performing with those individuals that you have already established a relationship with. This will give you some good feedback about just how effective your online business actually is.

It’s important that your business plan pays adequate attention to those marketing factors in combination with the use of metrics to ensure that your marketing is actually working the way you believed it would. Remember once you look at your metrics, this is a good time to ‘fine tune’ any necessary changes that you think you need to make.

Online Business Plan Needs to Include Your Management and Financial Summary

You are creating your business plan for your online business and like all business plans there are a number of sections you need to put together to ensure you have a plan you can follow to keep your business on track and headed for successes. You may be surprised to learn that many business plans come up short in their management and financial summary. Perhaps this is simply because they are unsure.

Start by creating an outline of what type of experience you want to see your management team have. How many people you envision on your management team, the individual roles that they will have and what their responsibilities will be individually and as a team.

Think of the management summary as hiring resume where you can easily see the qualifications you are looking for, the work history of those that will be involved in the startup of your business. If it’s a smaller venture like so many online businesses are, you may have to wear many different hats yourself and improve your skills in some areas. You may not have the luxury of having many people on your management team and so in these instances, in addition to you having to have a wide range of skills, the people you do hire may have to be able to perform a broader range of tasks.

In addition to taking the time to outline what your management team will look like you need to also address any financing that you have put into place and that’s ready to go for your startup. Your working capital is critical to your startup. How much working capital you need will depend on your specific venture. Some companies have little to no stock on hand while others carry huge amounts.

Sales and revenues are established by you for the business plan; however, we all that these projections can be way off if the person creating the business plan isn’t being realistic, so try to keep it real. Your business plan is also going to establish how much capital you already have and what your operating costs will be.

What’s nice about an online business, is that if you don’t any sales yet so you can’t provide solid sales numbers, you can get your website up and running, go live, get things moving on the site in a practical way that’s closer to reality and then show the potential investors what you are making and what you’re spending.

Bottom line – make sure your business plan thoroughly details your management and financial needs.

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