Business Planning Business Plan: Planning the Operations Tip! There is a place for a very high level, longer term strategic vision for your firm, but don't let it be a substitute for a practical vision and strategy that will be the drivers of real action. Keep your business planning horizon between 2-3 years to create plans that are practical, compelling, and stand a fighting chance of execution. Writing a business plan is no easy task, sure you can whip something together in a day or so, but without proper planning you are setting yourself up to fail. Many first time entrepreneurs have a bit of trouble writing a business plan, which will be acceptable to bankers and investors. One easy place to fall down on is the understanding of the daily operations of your chosen business model. In the operations section of the business plan you will need to address many important factors and these must coincide with your proformas and financial projections. For instance hours of operation, labor costs and over time. Also with regards to inventory, turnover and purchasing. Service businesses must also have procedures of operations. Below I have included for you a very simple example of an operations section of a business plan, which was written for a mobile car wash business, which was part of a larger franchise organization. Feel free to print this article and then work thru each item and modify it to fit your business. Then put pen to paper on a legal pad and write additional paragraphs to your business model. Then you will have a really good understanding of what you will need complete your own operational strategic plan to insert into your award winning business plan. Think on this. Tip! Measure. In this phase, for business planning purposes, the best place to start would be your last set of accounts and last year's budget. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Operations In this operations segment we will cover inventory, equipment, distribution and hours of all basic operations. Inventory: We are required to buy all of our supplies from Car Wash Guys International, Inc. There are no set guidelines as to how much product we must buy. We are only required to purchase enough supplies to service customer demand. We will stock all supplies on the truck locked up in toolboxes below the truck bed. We will spend approximately $40.00-$60.00 per week per truck in supplies. Our initial supply inventory is provided with our franchise package. It consists of: 2GD2USE Rubber Conditioner (1 Gallon) Blitz Wax (1 Can) BST4U White Wall Magic (5 Gallons) Car Wash Guys Bumper Magic (1 Pint) Carpet Express (1 Pint) Carpet Machine Cleaner (2 Gallons) Crystal Clear Window Cleaner (1 Case) GR-8 Wax (1 Gallon) Hot Wheel Tires (5 Gallons) Resource 5000 (1/2 Gallon) Sparkle Shine Soap (1 Gallon) Super Blitz Wax (1 Gallon) Super Clay (1 Package) Tip! Social planning is not synonymous to governmental planning because it is a broad term which is relevant for numerous kinds of planning. Almost every form of planning, whether it is education planning, health planning, business planning or science planning, all have clear and definite social characteristics. The most important products to stock are: Crystal Clear Window Cleaner, BST4U White Wall Magic, Hot Wheel Tires and GR-8 Wax. We will order one month's supply of these in advance. Other products will be ordered on Thursdays. We do a product check on Wednesdays after completing the route. We will use the franchisor's on-line computer ordering system with UPS next day or following day service. Equipment: We are required to buy the truck and all car washing equipment through the franchisor or through a list of approved vendors. We will check all equipment for fluid levels each week as prescribed in our operations manual. We will fix any problems with the equipment as soon as detected, provided that all customers are serviced for that day. In case of accidental breakage, we will immediately call the franchisor for a spare truck, alert the manufacturer for an appointment or on-site service visit or repair or replace the worn or defective items. Tip! Be especially cautious about any business opportunities or hot stock tips offered on business planning blogs, as they could be scams. If an opportunity looks good to you, be sure to check it out on your own before diving in. Hours: It is our intention to run our trucks as many hours of the day and night as possible. We will use the truck to wash cars during the day. At night we might clean: Concrete Graffiti Heavy Equipment Truck Fleets Etc. Our standard car wash day will be from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm. Truck fleets will be done from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm weekdays and all day on weekends. Concrete, graffiti and heavy equipment will be done the rest of the night until 6:00 am or until all work is completed. On rainy days we will provide the following services: Heavy Equipment Holiday Store Front Window Paint Removal Horse Stables House Paint Prepping Interior Deep Cleaning (Automobiles) Special Detailing Discount Services Lance Winslow