Michelle Ijomah, Co-founder, Agnes Health

Roadmap for direction

Our business plan serves as a roadmap for us. It's our map in understanding where we're going, where we are, and what we need to do to get to where we are. The things that help us ensure that our business plan is a roadmap are things like understanding our finances, where we want to be financially and goals we have. Goal setting, really. We have a section in our business plan that's focused on our goals and we continuously adapt that. We have goals that we've set for the next five years and then we work down as we go along.

Akbar Sher Khan, Social Entrepreneur and Legal Advisor

Continuous evaluation and adjustment tool

A business plan is not set in stone. That's something which entrepreneurs need to be very clear about. Once you've written a business plan, it doesn't mean you have to stick with it. It can evolve, it needs to be lucid. The ultimate goal should be to ensure that you are meeting the KPIs and strategic goals you've set.

Financial budgeting: cost and revenue drivers

Another thing business plans help you do is your financial budgeting and costing. That's another area which entrepreneurs should be very careful about, focusing on what their cost drivers are and what their revenue drivers are. For example, if you are planning to hire new employees you may think that it's going to help you bring in more revenue. There needs to be a method where you show that, if you've invested in hiring new employees, have they brought that amount of revenue in a particular quarter or not? A business plan should be used as a yardstick to measure your successes.

Celebration and team motivation

Michelle Ijomah

We're a small company and one of the things we do to ensure that everyone is aware of what's happening in the organization is to keep everyone updated. A win for me is a win for my product manager. It's a win for everyone. We communicate that across the board and everyone's aware, this is what we're doing, this is where we're going. When we hit a goal, when we hit a milestone that we're really proud of, it's a team effort in celebration and communicating. We all understand we've gotten this. One of the things that it does is motivates the team to keep working and keep pushing because they know that there's progress being made.

Key takeaways 

Use the business plan 

• As a roadmap

• To set and track KPIs

• To track financial performance and inform decisions

• To set milestones that you can celebrate with your team