Planning for a Viable and Successful Business

A complete toolkit for setting up mid to long-term plans for running your business efficiently

Created byClaudine Bongo

Last updated 9/2019

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

A complete toolkit for planning your business activities
How to set up and implement effective short, mid and long-term plans for your business development and operations

Course content

1 section • 5 lectures • 1h 5m total length

Action Planning11:23
This module will help you think about the various activities you’ll need to put in place to turn your dream of running a successful business into an achievable goal.
Through this video tutorial, you’ll learn how to
Identify your business development needs and goals;
Set up clear actionable steps for achieve them;
Implement your Individual Action Plan (IAP).
Overall, this lecture will guide and help you gain insight for setting up short, mid and long-term goals for starting up a business.
Through this process, you’ll find it easier to follow through with reaching your goals and objectives.
Business Environment 1 - SWOT Analysis7:30
This module will help you understand the concept of SWOT Analysis and learn how to use it as a strategic planning and decision-making tool for your business.
Through this lecture, you will learn how to
Make a detailed assessment of all resources available to your business;
Recognise the opportunities presented to you as a business owner;
Reduce areas of weaknesses, mitigate operational risks or threats.
After completing your IAP from Lecture 1, you will be better prepared to perform a skills audit to identify further areas of training needs for achieving your goals. A SWOT Analysis will help you do this.
Operational Planning9:31
This module will help you understand the importance of setting up a short-term operational plan for your business (up to 12 months), learn the various steps involved in the process and enable you to monitor its implementation throughout a set period of time.
Through this lecture, you will learn how to
Establish and implement short to mid-term actionable steps for achieving your business development goals.
Plan your business operations for a set period of time (usually 6 to 12 months).
Identify all resources needed (manpower, finance, time, equipment, facilities) to reach your short to mid-term objectives.
Put in place procedures, policies and systems for monitoring your projects or activities implementation.
Identifying Seeds Funding in the UK8:15
This module will provide pointers for identifying funds to cover your start-up or expansion costs.
It also offers useful information about the UK Credits Rating system, as well as practical steps to follow to improve yours and increase your chances of accessing mid to long-term credits for your business (if necessary).
Overall, this lecture will enable you to plan, design and put in place mid to long-term strategies for sourcing start-up or expansion funding.
Business Planning28:54
This module offers a complete step by step guide to developing an effective Business Plan.
It provides a template or canvas for compiling the core sections of any business plan.
By the end of this module, you will be able to
Create an effective Executive Summary,
Identify the key components of your business DNA (Goals, Objectives, Vision, Mission and Value Statement),
Sharpen your own understanding of your products / services and their characteristics,
Design and develop key policies and procedures relating to the following business functions: Marketing, Operations, Organisation and Finance.
Overall, this lecture will enable you to plan your long-term business operations as well as strategic development.

Requirements

There are no particular requirements for our courses however, we think they would be ideal for busy entrepreneurs who don’t have much time to attend more formal educational or vocational trainings and can only afford to spend a few moments at a time for their personal and professional development, including improving their business skills.

Description

This course is designed for busy entrepreneurs who want to improve their skills, knowledge and understanding of planning, both operational and strategic. By following the steps recommended, you’ll find it easier to follow through with implementing your plans and the more you do this, the more confident you’ll become in doing so.

The course includes a series of video tutorials, covering five distinctive topics:

1. Action Planning

2. Business Environment 1 – SWOT Analysis

3. Operational Planning

4. Identifying Seed Funding

5. Business Planning.

Together, these five modules will help you think of the main factors you’ll need to consider to achieve business development goals. They will help you make a detailed assessment of your strengths and available resources, identify your weaknesses and the issues threatening your business, and they will also help you recognise the opportunities presented to you as a business owner.

Even though they cover complex and comprehensive topics, our video tutorials offer contents that are easy to follow and understand (both in terms of language and visuals), and are designed to accommodate a variety of learning styles.

Throughout your tutorial, you’ll have the option to pause and rewind the videos at any time, as well as slowing down the delivery speed.

Each module offers clear learning objectives, short lectures explaining the theoretical framework, useful examples and practical case studies.

Whether your business is at the conceptual or piloting stage, or whether you’re fully operational or considering an expansion phase, this course will help you gain the confidence, knowledge and understanding to improve your planning skills, and give you all the tools you’ll need for planning.

The course will help you develop both strategic and operational planning and management skills for creating a viable and sustainable business, which are also key prerequisites for a successful business.

Who this course is for:

This course is designed for people who want to run efficient and sustainable enterprises; this includes:
a. People who want to become self-employed and/or start up their own business
b. Existing entrepreneurs, who are at an early stage or a more mature stage of their start-up journey
c. Small and Medium-size Enterprises (SME) who are looking to scale up their current business operations
d. Anyone interested in improving their strategic planning and/or operational planning and management skills.