Whether you’re starting or expanding a business, you have to be aware of every scenario that could wreck your venture. A solid business plan can be just the map you need to avoid potential minefields. And if you’re looking for funding, investors will want to see a well-prepared business plan before they even think about loosening the purse strings. They’ll want to see, in a polished and well-organized format: a cover sheet, table of contents, executive summary, organization plan, product or service information, market analysis, strategy, financial analysis, charts to support your market and financial analysis, and legal documents. Each section must go into detail on many subtopics, from staff responsibilities to your customer service provisions.
We tested four software applications that are supposed to help you evaluate your business worthiness. Each program has step-by-step instructions with examples, and simple word processing and spreadsheet tools where you need to enter text or numbers. There were underlying similarities in the packages, but they varied in their quality of instruction, ease of use, interface polish, and the program flexibility to let you perfect your work.
BUSINESS PLAN PRO 2003VERSION 6.07
Palo Alto Software
Business Plan Pro 2003 comes with a great book, Hurdle: The Book On Business Planning, and the software has an appealing and efficient interface with well-written instructions. We liked the ability to switch between the Wizard Task view and Plan Outline view in the left pane without disturbing the central work area. The views show instructions in the top pane and the things you click or write in the bottom pane. You get a sense of accomplishment in the Wizard Task View when completed items check themselves off. And you can skip to different topics on the list, which is handy in Plan Outline View, where you can expand the subtopics. You can even import categories from QuickBooks.
One of the selling points of Business Plan Pro 2003 is that it contains more than 400 sample plans, but they’re not on your disk. Instead you choose a title from a menu then connect to the Web to get the plan as a PDF (Acrobat) file in a funky viewer. It then offers to open the plan in Business Plan Pro 2003. A note told us that the plan we would see had features from the ($300) Premiere edition of the program, and that those features wouldn’t work in the ($100) program we were reviewing.
Business Plan Pro 2003 has a larger hard disk requirement. It needs Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and Acrobat Reader 5 for all the kludgy file-passing. Internet Explorer and Acrobat Reader are included in the box, but we would prefer a single, competent program without all the time-wasting hoops to jump through. All in all, Business Plan Pro 2003 will help you create a thorough business plan with relative ease.
AUTOMATE YOUR BUSINESS PLAN
VERSION 10
Out of Your Mind and Into the Marketplace
We were skeptical of Automate Your Business Plan when we saw its plain-Jane appearance upon opening the application, but the moment you hit the menu you access the most supportive screens of all the programs tested. The information in Automate Your Business Plan is practical and friendly, thanks to Linda Pinson’s book Anatomy of a Business Plan, which is included in the package. Although you don’t have to read the book to use the program, you’ll want to keep it on hand.
The software offers instructions, examples, and document templates into which you simply type your own information. This made using Automate Your Business Plan the least stressful and most natural experience for creating a business plan. You also have more control of your documents. The application lets you see an entire page of the plan, not just a small, step-by-step screen. The Automate Your Business Plan program is like having a kind and wise expert at your side offering support instead of prodding you through a chute.
BUSINESS PLAN WRITER DELUXE 2003 VERSION 6
Nova Development Corporation
Nova’s program is the most attractive, with
Other screens settle down to your business. Near the beginning, for example, the Break-Even Chart told us our business was worth a shot. However, we were concerned that, at that particular stage in the program, most users won’t have a realistic idea of their operating expenses. Still, there’s nothing preventing users from jumping to the financials portion of the program.
Business Plan Writer Deluxe 2003 has a Next button format that can sometimes seem removed from the big picture of what you’re doing, but that is often a problem with wizards. The program also lets you see something akin to an outline or table of contents, but the quality and tone of instruction didn’t match those of the first two programs. On the plus side, there’s a second wizard to help you create a marketing plan, an electronic Gilbert’s Law Dictionary, Business Law Guide, and Kiplinger’s Working for Yourself.
ULTIMATE BUSINESS PLANNERVERSION 1.0
ABS (Atlas Business Solutions Inc.)
One product
But we had several problems with Ultimate Business Planner. For starters, it crashed a lot — on two different machines. It also had trouble consistently doing what the clickable icons said it would do. For example, we clicked the Topic Guide tab for “Executive Summary” and some of its subcategories. When we clicked on the Example tab, it sometimes moved to an example in the Topic Guide document, but often it gave a runtime error and closed instead. The product also has the smallest book, half of which is manual, and half business plan information. Of the four products, Ultimate Business Planner was the least developed, yet it costs $30 more than the other three. (Atlas Business Solutions, www.abs-usa.com; $129)