How Should You Review Your Business Plan?

When was the last time you reviewed your business plan?

If you can’t recall, it’s possibly long enough, and by now your plan might not even offer a realistic blueprint for your business.

You see, writing a business plan is not enough. It’s much more important to review and update it time and again to keep it relevant and useful.

Now, the question is how and how often should the business plan be reviewed. Well, we will cover all that in this blog post but before that, let’s understand what exactly is a business plan review.

Why should you regularly review your business plan?

Whether you have just written your business plan or yours is sitting on the shelf collecting dust—it is important to revisit it regularly to ensure that it remains useful and relevant.

Many businesses review their business plans regularly, and if you don’t, here are all the reasons why you should.

• A rigorous review ensures that your plan includes all the relevant and essential information for stakeholders. It identifies gaps in your plan and removes inessential fluff to make it crisp and qualitative.
• Regular review realigns your business strategies with the changing market conditions. This will ensure that your plan remains relevant, effective, and in line with your long-term objectives.
• The review analyzes resource allocation and helps you make essential changes to ensure that none of the resources get over or underutilized.
• Critiquing your plan allows you to see your business objectively. You can see the faults that are otherwise invisible and make essential changes to strengthen your business’s position.
• Reviewing your plan pushes you to reevaluate your financials, making sure they aren’t impractical or unrealistic.

Plan review is therefore essential for everyone— a new business as well as an established one to drive a business in a forward direction.

How to review your business plan?

Reviewing a business plan requires an eye for detail. While we are not suggesting a microanalysis of the plan, thorough reviewing should ensure that every aspect of the plan is properly covered and presented, the facts quoted are corrected, and there is negligible scope for confusion.

Here is a quick step-by-step guide to reviewing business plans:

1. Read the business plan

After you write a business plan, read it at least twice to find critical errors, gaps in information, lack of depth, and irrelevant information. Start making notes wherever you find room for improvement.

2. Put yourself in the investors’ shoes

As you review your plan, think from an investor’s perspective. Evaluate if the plan has sufficient information about a business model and financial aspects to aid decision-making. If not, rework and focus on aspects that show the business’s potential to make money.

3. Assess your business strategy

While reviewing, reassess your market research and analysis. Ensure that the target market and competitors’ edge are explicitly explained.

Think from the customers’ perspective while analyzing your products and service section. Do you see the benefits or USPs that would make the target customers want your products and services? If not, rework the section and present your offerings in a stronger light.

Also, check your marketing and sales strategies to see that they are clearly laid out.

4. Evaluate the management team

Assess the management section to see if it strongly reflects the potential of your people to execute business strategies. If not, the section needs rework. Focus on highlighting their achievements, skills, and expertise.

As a new business, you might still be building your team. However, the section must acknowledge the gaps in your talent team and offer strategic ways to overcome them.

5. Reassess your financial projections

Scrutinize your financial and profit projections to identify missed costs and overly optimistic profits and revenue. Ensure that you offer a logical and easy-to-follow explanation to help prospective investors assess the practicality of your projections.

Following these steps will ensure that the business plan is effectively critiqued.

How often should a business plan be reviewed?

A business plan is a living document that needs regular reviewing and a thorough update every now and then. However, the question is how often?

Ideally, a business plan should be reviewed at least once every year to keep it relevant and useful. However, most successful businesses follow a review cycle of 45 days to 6 months to increase their adaptability to market changes, emerging trends, consumer shifts, and government regulations.

It’s okay if you cannot conduct a regular review of your business plan, month after month. However, if there are major industrial or market changes in your business landscape, you should reassess the plan and make essential changes immediately.

Now, you and your partners can determine the review cycle for these living documents. However, as long as your plan represents the current situation of the business landscape, the review can be carried out on an annual basis.

Things to consider when reviewing a business plan

Now, here’s a list of things you should keep in mind or bear as a checklist while reviewing your small-business business plan.

• Ensure that the business plan covers information about all the essential business plan components. This includes sections for executive summary, company overview, market analysis, products and service offerings, sales and marketing plan, operations plan, management team, and financial plan.
• Ensure that there is a verifiable source for every data you present or the claim you make.
• Remove all extra information that is irrelevant to the context. Focus on simple, concise language with no complicated jargon.
• Reassess your competitors’ section and check if it highlights your competitive advantage.
• Ensure that the plan offers a clear understanding of your target market and the market share.
• Check your financial projections to make sure they aren’t conservative or overly optimistic.
• Add a table of contents if the plan is extremely detailed.
• Evaluate the business strategies and ensure they are in line with your business goals.
• Reassess the plan from your audience’s point of view.
• Recheck for any factual, grammatical, or content errors.

Mark this checklist as you review your business plan to ensure full assessment.

Review your Business Plan with Upmetrics

When was the last time you checked your plan? If you can’t remember this is probably the time to review it and make necessary updates so that it continues to serve as a realistic guide for your business.

No excuses about how tiring or exhausting updating your business plan can be. With the right Business planning software, you can review and update your plan in no time.

Its AI business plan writing feature allows you to quickly draft/rewrite sections of your business plan and reassess your financial projections to ensure that no expense, costs, or revenue streams remain unaccounted for.

However, if your plan needs a complete makeover, consider rewriting it using our AI business plan creator. All it takes is 15 minutes for this tool to create a plan based on the details and answers you offer.

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