In the Philippines, having any kind of written plan will already put your small business way ahead of the curve. However, even the best-laid plan can only take you so far. Change is a constant in life and business. Sooner rather than later, you’ll need to see if your initial small business plan remains relevant.
If you haven’t reviewed your plan in a while, below are a few reasons why you may want to revisit or totally replace it. If you’re ready to make a change, be sure to check out First Circle’s small business plan financing solutions.
New technology, regulations, and market behavior made the old plan obsolete
Technology, market preferences, and business regulations are constantly evolving and your business has to evolve with them. Sticking with an old plan that no longer accounts for present-day realities is a quick way to become irrelevant, and possibly extinct.
Your mission and vision are outdated
Your mission and vision should help guide all of your business’s decisions. If you are no longer capable of following them, then it means that either your plan has failed or that you need to come up with a new one. In either case, something has fundamentally changed and your business will have to readjust or risk losing its way.
Your business has reached an important milestone
When your business grows larger or has gained a certain number of employees, it may be time to reevaluate if your current plan is still valid. Larger businesses can no longer have the founders wearing multiple hats and they may have to invest more time in developing systems and scalability compared to smaller ones. This is especially important when you transform from a startup into a fully-fledged medium or large enterprise.
You never took the old plan seriously
If this describes your small business, you’re not alone — especially in the Philippine context. However, that doesn’t mean that this is acceptable. A business plan is a crucial way of ensuring that you do not get sidetracked into wasting resources on unnecessary expenses. Reviewing and, if necessary, revising your business plan and committing to it can go a long way into better maximizing your chances of continued and sustainable growth.
You need new sources of financing or income
If you’re pivoting towards new sources of financing or planning on earning more income in a new area, it’s worth revisiting your business plan. This will help you better understand the framework with which your business could better achieve those new goals.
Your business has developed an important new product
Any groundbreaking products, services, and technologies that you develop are a sufficient reason for reviewing your business plan. If your innovation can affect how you fundamentally do business, then it follows that you should revise the plan to account for it.
You are fundamentally changing your business strategy
It doesn’t make sense to hang on to a plan that no longer has relevance to your organization’s direction. Pivoting to a new market as well as developing new approaches to product development, sales, and marketing all necessitate a review of existing plans.
You have aren’t reviewing it often enough
You need to periodically review your business plan to see if it continues to hold any relevance to your present situation. For most businesses, once yearly may be a good frequency for reviewing their plans. If your industry is fast-paced, you may want to do this at least quarterly or as new developments arise.
The old plan does not reflect your values
Your business may eventually become bigger than any single person in it. Occasionally, the values and perspectives of the people within the organization can shift, over time. This means the assumptions and intentions with which you operated when you first created your business plan may no longer be the same today. In this case, you can either change the business plan or consciously recommit to the existing one.
Small business plans are more than just a formality. They ensure that your venture does not make decisions that it may later regret. They prevent your organization from exceeding its scope, spreading itself too thin, and doing nothing in a vain attempt to do everything. If any of the reasons above apply, then it might be high time to take another look at your business plan.
When was the last time you reviewed your business plan? How important was it for your small business?