BUS302: Business Plan Comparison Report - Analysis of Strategies

This report presents a comparative analysis of two business plans: Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. and Pioneer Consulting. The report examines the executive summaries, company overviews, marketing strategies, operational plans, and financial projections of both companies. The analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each plan, focusing on aspects such as the clarity of information, the depth of market research, the comprehensiveness of marketing strategies, the detail of operational plans, and the accuracy of financial forecasting. The report concludes by comparing the overall effectiveness of the two business plans, with Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. being deemed more comprehensive. The comparison emphasizes the importance of detailed planning across all business functions for achieving success. The report utilizes information from the provided business plans and supports its analysis with references from academic sources.

Running head: COMPARISON OF BUSINESS PLANS
Comparison of Business Plans
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1COMPARISON OF BUSINESS PLANS
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................2
2.0 Company overview....................................................................................................................2
3.0 Comparison of business plans...................................................................................................3
3.1 Executive summary...............................................................................................................3
3.2 Background of the company..................................................................................................4
3.3 Marketing...............................................................................................................................5
3.4 Operations..............................................................................................................................6
3.5 Financial plan.........................................................................................................................7
4.0 Overall comparison and conclusion...........................................................................................8
References......................................................................................................................................10

2COMPARISON OF BUSINESS PLANS
1.0 Introduction
Business plan refers to the written documentation about the ways that a new organization
is going to achieve the goals. This document lays out a detailed plan from operational, marketing
and financial view point (Scarborough, 2016). Sometimes business plans are also made for
existing businesses that aim to move towards a new direction. Thus, business plans are an
extremely important document to present future plans of the business about how it plans to move
as per their available resources and it is an essential prerequisite for investment of capitals. This
report will analyze the business plans of Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. and Pioneer
Consulting, which is an advertising marketing consulting firm, and present a comparative
analysis of these plans. The sample business plan for Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. is
collected from the book ‘Entrepreneurship and Small Business’ by Schaper et al. (2014), and the
business plan for Pioneer Consultancy is collected from the website Bplans.com (2018). The
purpose of this report is to study the effectiveness of the two business plans in terms of
readability, presentability of the information, analytical accuracy and forecasting. The
comparison of the two business plans are as follows.
2.0 Company overview
Two management companies have been chosen for the purpose of business plan
comparison. Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. is a management consulting service company
that aim to provide useful consulting services to the small and medium sized enterprise sector
(SME) in Sydney and other cities in NSW. The proposed services include preparing business
plans for the SMEs, training the employees in the small business management skills, and book
sales. Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. is itself a very small company initially with one

3COMPARISON OF BUSINESS PLANS
employee, and which wishes to recruit three or four more people gradually in the next two to
three years. The company also intends to earn revenue of AUD 100,000 and a profit of AUD
2000 by the end of the current year.
Pioneer Consulting is another consulting firm, whose business plan will be reviewed and
analyzed. This firm specializes in advertising marketing consulting and aim to provide valuable
service to the small firms than can rarely afford to have expensive consulting services for
maximizing their marketing effectiveness. The services of Pioneer Consulting include the
evaluation of various marketing communication tools and select the one that suits the
requirement of the client most and then combine the tools for effective marketing. This company
consists of five graduates and aims to grow its revenue to USD 25,000 by the end of the current
year.
3.0 Comparison of business plans
3.1 Executive summary
Executive summary is a short description of the document that contains a brief idea about
the paper. Burns and Dewhurst (2016) state that executive summary is the brief illustration or
summary of the entire paper with only the key points so that the readers get acquainted with the
topic and important points of the paper without having to read it all. Both the business plans
contain executive summaries.
Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. has depicted the highlights of its business idea and
goals, marketing, operations and finance in this section. All these four sections precisely points
out the most important information about the company’s future goals and how it plans to achieve
those. Due to the headings, the section, that is, executive summary is quite easy to comprehend.

4COMPARISON OF BUSINESS PLANS
The first part, that is, business idea and goals very precisely presents a summary of the company
and its aims and objectives. In the section, that is, marketing, the company has precisely
presented the market scenario for the SMEs in Sydney, and how it plans to exploit those
opportunities. Similarly, the operations and finance section depict the key points of the business.
The executive summary section for Pioneer Consulting presents few paragraphs depicting
the background of the company and the other aspects without any subheading, however, this plan
does not provide a comprehensive picture of what sections are addressed in the plan. This
summary also explains the definition and importance of executive summary in the beginning
which is not necessary.
3.2 Background of the company
This section illustrates all about the company. For instance, its mission, history and
business goals are presented in this section. Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. presents this
information in a very precise manner under appropriate subheadings. The company puts forward
the most important factors regarding the business and its history to make the organizational goals
comprehensible.
On the other hand, Pioneer Consulting only presents some headings and no subheadings
to present different aspects of the company. After executive summary, it directly goes to the
mission statement segment, followed by keys to success, which explain the view point of the
company regarding its operations. Next it makes a broad segment about the company and
presents the information about company ownership and start up summary. In this segment,
Pioneer gives a detailed snapshot of its start up balance sheet that contains requirements,
expenses, assets, liabilities, funding, requirement for funding and investment level and capital.

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This creates an impression about the financial condition during the start up for the company,
which forms the basis for forecasting of the revenue and profit. Next Pioneer moves to depict the
services of the company in a nutshell.
3.3 Marketing
This is the third section of the business plan, which elaborates the marketing plans or
strategies and activities of the company. Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. depicts every
aspect of its marketing activities under appropriate segments, such as, market research, market
analysis, marketing plan, and evaluation of marketing strategies. This is a broad segment that
contains the marketing activities of the company in a very detailed manner. Blueprints Business
Planning Pty Ltd. lists the sources for market research, which helps the readers to understand the
credibility and reliability of the data. Next, the company provides a very in-depth overview of
the market analysis, which covers the analysis of the industry for the SMEs in Sydney and in
other cities of NSW, seasonality, competitors, potential strategic alliances and SWOT analysis of
the company. All these segments very accurately depict the overall scenario of the industry and
competitive position of the company, which create the foundation for profitability of the business
in the future (McKeever, 2016).
After the market analysis, the company puts forward the marketing plan in details. This
segment contains an elaborate and extensive marketing plan for Blueprints Business Planning
Pty Ltd. It also contains the market segmentation, targeting and positioning strategies,
placements, promotions and advertising strategies, ICT marketing and pricing policy. This
segment very precisely covers the most important aspects of the marketing activity of the
company, which is essential to make the reader understand the vast network of actions and
strategies needed to make effective marketing. This section is all the more important as

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marketing heavily influences the business performance and revenue of the company and hence, it
is liable to present its activities and strategies to the stakeholders (McKenzie, 2015).
On the other hand, Pioneer Consulting also presents its market analysis summary but not
much detail is present in the plan. However, the company focuses on a single specific aspect, like
market segmentation. Although, it gives a thorough picture of the two market segments that it
caters to, and its reason, yet, it does not focus on marketing or promotional strategies. These are
significant part of any business plan, as these incur a heavy cost on the company; and
unsuccessful marketing strategies, that is, targeting, positioning and pricing policies, can lead to
a great loss of revenue and profit of the company down the line (Mullins, 2012). Hence, it is
important to put forward the detailed information about these activities to the stakeholders.
Pioneer Consultancy presents the market competition scenario through a pie chart, which is
beneficial in having an easy understanding about the market competition. Apart from that,
Pioneer also presented a five year growth rate analysis to calculate the CAGR. Thus, this
presentation of the business plan seems incomplete compared to that of the Blueprints Business
Planning Pty Ltd.
3.4 Operations
Once again, Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. has presented an extensive overview
of its operations, which includes legal and licensing requirements, management details,
organizational structure and staffing, list of professional advisors, Insurance and security issues,
detailed information on the business premises, equipment, ICT and critical risks or contingency
plans. This section in the business plan describes the aspects of operational management which is
very crucial for any company. Through this section in the business plan, the stakeholders for
Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. will get a thorough knowledge about its business

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operations how they intend to address these aspects in the near future. For instance, how the
company plans to handle any critical risk situation or contingency situation is described in the
business plan. This will help the investors to have an idea about the knowledge of the officials
who are managing the operations of the business (Ward, 2016).
On the other hand, Pioneer Consultancy has presented only strategies and implementation
summary in the segment following market analysis. This section only focuses on the competitive
edge of Pioneer due to its business operations and then straight goes to illustrate its sales
strategy. This section highlights sales forecast for the next 3 years, supported by tables and
charts, and it is followed by management summary and personnel plan, which uncovers the
payroll of the personnel. This is the cost to the company for the employees. The operation
section of the business plan of Pioneer is not elaborate in comparison to that of the Blueprints
Business Planning Pty Ltd., however, the charts and tables make the market and profit forecast
scenario easily comprehensible.
3.5 Financial plan
This section is another very crucial section of business plan, which is of utmost interest to
the stakeholders. Once again Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. has presented an in-depth
description of their financial planning through basic assumptions, scientific forecasting and its
analysis of breakeven point, and few important tables on sales mix forecast, cash-flow forecast,
profit and loss forecast, personal expense statements, personal assets and liabilities. This section
ends with implementation time table. The presentation of this plan is very clear and concise and
hence, has more acceptability. All aspects of cost, such as, incomes, expenses, tax, profit
distribution, loans etc. have been clearly mentioned and statistical formulations of the forecast

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and break even analysis have been shown so that all the stakeholders can understand the
calculations.
Pioneer Consultancy directly presents the break even analysis under their financial plan,
supported by a chart. Visual representation makes it easier to understand the implications;
however, this plan omits many other crucial information under the financial plan, which is
heighted by Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. Thus, this business plan by Pioneer is a very
basic plan that covers only some aspects under the business activities of the company.
4.0 Overall comparison and conclusion
By analyzing the structure and content of the two business plans by two consulting
companies, it can be said that the business plan by Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. is a
more comprehensive one than that by the Pioneer Consultancy. Blueprints Business Planning Pty
Ltd. has made a business plan that covers all the important aspects of the business and how the
company intends to address those aspects in the future. A detailed description of all the important
functions and strategies of the company is beneficial for all the stakeholders as they get an
overview about the future planning and activities of the company and hence, gain trust on it
(McKeever, 2016). This is also beneficial for the investors before they invest on the company.
The structure of the business plan by Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. is very much
organized and presented under appropriate headings and subheadings. Those are coordinated and
this structure is increasing the readability of the paper. On the other hand, the plan of Pioneer
Consultancy only addresses few basic things of the business operations. Although, the company
has provided many charts and tables to depict the market and operation scenario, yet it fails to
address all the aspects of the business operations. Moreover, the absence of proper or

9COMPARISON OF BUSINESS PLANS
chronological segments of the paper is affecting the flow of understanding of the business plan
of Pioneer Consultancy. Thus, the readability is affected in this case.
Regarding the relevance of the segments and topics, Blueprints Business Planning Pty
Ltd. has focused on using only the key information in a comprehensive manner so that the
stakeholder can get to know every operational details and segment of the business and its plan to
address those. Hence, the presentation of the information through bullet points makes it quite
readable and relevant to the readers (McKeever, 2016). The systematic ordering of the topics has
further added to the relevance of the documents. In case of the business plan by Pioneer
Consultancy, the plan lacks the systematic approach and focus only on the some key points has
reduced the relevance of the plan to the stakeholders.
However, it can be concluded that, the business plan by Blueprints Business Planning Pty
Ltd. is more theoretical and lack the visual representation of the business factors, such as, market
analysis, growth forecast, sales and profit forecast and breakeven analysis. To make a paper
more acceptable to the stakeholders, it is essential to make it easily comprehensible through texts
as well as charts, graphs and tables (Fernández-Guerrero, Revuelto-Taboada and Simón-Moya,
2012). As the business plan by Pioneer Consultancy has quite a few graphic presentations of the
data and forecasts, the plan by the other business lacks it. On the other hand, Pioneer
Consultancy did not focus on elaborating the detailed aspects or business activities, which
reduces the acceptability of the plan to the investors and other stakeholders. Thus, it can be said
that, the plan by Blueprints Business Planning Pty Ltd. is more readable, comprehensible,
relevant and acceptable to the stakeholders than the plan by Pioneer Consultancy, however, the
graphic presentation is also required to make the plan more acceptable.

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References
Bplans.com., 2018. Pioneer Consulting: Advertising Marketing Consulting Business Plan
[online]. Available at:
https://www.bplans.com/advertising_marketing_consulting_business_plan/financial_plan_fc.php
[Accessed on 11 Dec. 2018].
Burns, P. and Dewhurst, J. eds., 2016. Small business and entrepreneurship. Macmillan
International Higher Education.
Fernández-Guerrero, R., Revuelto-Taboada, L. and Simón-Moya, V., 2012. The business plan as
a project: an evaluation of its predictive capability for business success. The Service Industries
Journal, 32(15), pp.2399-2420.
McKeever, M., 2016. How to write a business plan. Nolo.
McKenzie, D., 2015. Identifying and spurring high-growth entrepreneurship: experimental
evidence from a business plan competition. The World Bank.
Mullins, J., 2012. The new business road test: What entrepreneurs and executives should do
before writing a business plan. Pearson UK.
Scarborough, N.M., 2016. Essentials of entrepreneurship and small business management.
Pearson.
Schaper, M.T., Volery, T., Weber, P.C. and Gibson, B., 2014. Entrepreneurship and small
business.