Planning Your Web Hosting Business - Key Parts of a Business Plan
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A good generic business plan features six key parts: executive summary, the enterprise, the market, operations, organization, and key risks/timeline. Not every business plan will cover all of these parts in the same amount of detail, and in the same business plan, these will vary significantly in length. Your own business plan will change as time goes on, you acquire more information, and your own needs (and those of your customers) change.
If your business plan is like a nonfiction book, the executive summary is a comprehensive introduction. As with most introductions, it should be written last, and for the same reason. You need the information contained in the rest of the work to give an introduction that truly covers the subject.
An executive summary tells the reader what the company is all about, who the founders are, and what they see the business doing—the vision for the company, if you will. It should also include a statement about the market opportunity: why now is the right time, and your company is the right company, to take advantage of the current situation. You’ll see these points repeated in other parts of the business plan.
The part of the business plan that covers the enterprise describes your company’s product or service, and how it holds an advantage in the marketplace. Obviously, for a web hosting firm, the basic service is hosting websites, but you will also offer customer support, and you might offer services related to web hosting (such as website design). As for your firm’s advantages, they will vary with your own and your employee’s backgrounds, among other factors. Maybe you have actual experience running, say, a small boutique. This gives you an advantage in understanding the needs of this kind of business, which may assist you in hosting websites for small boutiques. Or maybe you have a lot of experience explaining technical details to the less technologically savvy in a way that they can understand.
Next: Key Parts of a Business Plan: The Market >>
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