At the beginning of the new year, at their desks, do directors and small business owners have a business plan with detailed action plans as a basis for the development of the business throughout the year? A business plan is a synthesis of the process of researching business ideas, business planning of a business or investment project, or of a business before a new stage.
A good business plan outlines all the issues that need to be prepared before the project is implemented and what needs to be done (action plan) during the project implementation.
In fact, small businesses in our country do not pay attention to making business plans for the coming year every year. Why?
First of all, small businesses often do not have an investment planning department. The sales and business departments of these businesses often only focus on their main job of selling and developing business networks, but rarely make annual plans for the whole business, from market development, products, finance to human resources. Business owners are too busy with daily management and business work, no longer have time to focus on outlining the business strategy and goals of the business. Therefore, business planning, if done, is not done regularly, sometimes every year.
Small business owners are often directly involved in managing and operating their businesses. They often think that having a strategy “in their head” plus a good sales and production team is enough. Employees of these businesses are rarely communicated the business strategy and goals of the business by the business leaders, except for key employees. Business owners also often think that a business plan is just a stack of paper with words and numbers and does not bring benefits to the business. In fact, to have a business plan, you have to spend a certain amount of time analyzing the market situation, outlining goals, and orientations in a comprehensive way… rather than just thinking in your head.
An important reason is that small businesses often lack information, do not have enough staff to monitor the competitive situation in the market, have not applied information technology, especially the Internet, to synthesize and analyze information about the domestic and world markets. These businesses have also not paid attention to the help of many organizations that support small businesses in Vietnam and take advantage of the information sources and management methods that these organizations provide.
Because small businesses often do not have strong financial resources to buy market information from market research companies, small businesses often lag behind large corporations in developing business ideas and products. The most basic reason is that many businesses do not have the ability to make business plans, which does not mean that these businesses are doing badly, but often the opposite. However, without a specific business strategy and business plan, small businesses, even though doing well, still encounter many difficulties, especially when faced with new investment opportunities, having to make important decisions about personnel, finance, organization, etc. Business owners will be confused because they do not know if their decisions are correct, whether they are likely to bring profits or not.
