Business Planning

Use NovaMind to grow your business

There are many uses for NovaMind within your business - below we highlight just a few of them...

Creating Business Plans

Using NovaMind to create business plans means that you have something that you can show to prospective investors which they will understand clearly and quckly. You will have a plan that can be taken to a bank for a business loan, and the bank manager will be able to see at a glance that you have thought the business through properly.

New staff coming into the company and existing staff will be able to see how the business is organized and how they fit in to the company structure, and how they can contribute.

Nothing gets forgotten in the planning out of staffing, processes, products or finances because you have the overall picture of the business always in front of you.

How to create a Business Plan

To create a thorough business plan using NovaMind, you should be thinking about the following areas:

• Background: Age of the company, number of employees, annual sales figures, location of facilities, ownership (e.g sole proprietor, partnership, venture capital etc), background of the key personnel who are going to make the business work.
• Marketing: the macro-environment in which you are operating, the competition, industry specific factors, customer demographics needs and priorities, product strategy, pricing model, promotion strategy, distribution strategy.
• Production and manufacturing: the processes involved, production facility requirements, inventory requirements, equipment requirements, supply chain requirements, fixed cost allocation.
• Finance: source of funds, existing loans and other liabilities, projected sales and costs, break even analysis, expected return, monthly pro-forma cash flow statement.
• Human resources: responsibilities, specialist skills and their availability in the marketplace, training required, skills required, compensation, hiring strategies.

All of these items can be used as branches and sub-branches on your Mind Map with links to other appropriate resources, and using color, images, adornments and link lines to highlight the importance, and interrelationships between different parts of the plan.

With this type of plan in place, you have a much higher probability of running a successful business.

Goal Planning:

A company must identify and work towards goals to become market leaders and give direction and inspiration to staff. Plan the company goals by identifying those that are short-term and long term then title each branch with your different goals E.g. customer base, market share, service and quality levels. Under each branch provide further detail of your strategic plan for implementing the goals. Alternatively, additional Mind Maps that contain the strategy to achieve specific goals can be created and hyperlinked from each goal. By using colors, pictures and adornments, staff can visualise the outcome and take ownership of the goals, remaining focused on what the company is trying to achieve.

Selling your ideas:

Ever had problems trying to sell your ideas to work colleagues, your boss or clients? Perhaps they thought your idea sounded more time-consuming than the perceived benefits? Your idea will be more understandable and objectives clearer when you organize and develop your thoughts using NovaMind. With your key objectives in the middle of the Mind Map and requirements broken down into logical and achievable steps, you can illustrate what would be involved in a format that is easy to understand and demonstrates forward planning.

Your audience will understand your idea in just a few seconds, and be able to easily recognize the benefits.

Company Mission Statements:

Create a Mission Statement to define what the company exists for and strives to achieve, publish it for guidance so employees remain focused on these commitments. Divide your Mission Statement into different categories according to the company's objectives, its commitment to customers, commitment to employees, expected staff conduct and product performance as the radiating branches from the title. Your mission statement will be professional, easy to understand, creative and can be exported in a number of formats for publishing in brochures, on the web and posters.

Planning Your Website:

Planning the number of pages, page titles, what information to include in your webpage and what pages should be linked can take a matter of minutes instead of hours. Have your own brainstorming session to document what you want included and then decide the most logical location for information.

Organizational Structures:

Use NovaMind to represent your existing organization structure is an easy, colorful and understandable way to present the information where you can view the whole structure at a glance. Start by adding the executive position into your document title. Each radiating branch will represent a different department and underneath each branch the manager/s followed by staff beneath them. Staff answerable to more than one person can have connecting lines drawn between them and their supervisors to indicate this. When planning or amending your organization structure, it is a simple case of clicking and dragging to move branches or individual positions around the page. Easily export your company structure to JPEG for posting on your intranet or Keynote (or PowerPoint) for presentation.