Business Plan Pro 2006 is a comprehensive and powerful program that provides all of the tools and resources that you need to build a viable business plan. The updated software has a significant increase in UK-focused resources and content and comes complete with 500 sample plans, making it easy for a first time user to find an example that is similar to his or her business needs. There's now also SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis and a wizard-driven interface accompanied by instructions that make it a snap to create a business plan. Most of Business Plan Pro's examples are excellent too, wisely written and full of useful advice The rest is up to you!

Pros: Comprehensive; educational; helpful wizards; bundled book
Cons: Only Premier edition can import from Excel


Business Plan Pro 2006 (reviewed here) and Business Plan Pro 2006 Premier (£130 ex. VAT) are software packages designed for those planning to start their own business. The key feature of the software is that it helps you determine your strategy whether you want to sell your business, go public, or simply stay the course and grow.

Some of the new topics include detailed Exit Strategy and Financial Risks and Contingencies. Of course, it doesn't tell you what type of business to pick and how to run it, which is one of the key aspects of running a successful business - no matter how big! Founder Tim Berry's own book 'Hurdle - The Book on Business Planning', is also included along with a specific UK supplement.

If you've ever started or ran your own company, you should know that a lot of planning really helps. Business Plan Pro 2006 covers pretty much every aspect a bank manager is going to ask when you go for that all-important business loan, from SWOT analysis, overheads, and budget forecasting. Business Plan Pro 2006 Premier further allows you to calculate not only your break-even but how long it will take to pay back an investment, add specific details to your business plan regarding your use of potential investment, and includes specific chapters on Valuation, Exit Strategy, and Financial Risks and Contingencies.

Business Plan Pro now offers more than 9000 different industry profiles and 500 different sample business plans to give you a little insight into how your business compares to similar companies. The software also explains, step by step, what the data means and how you can use it to your strategic advantage. It allows you to develop a thorough and objective study of your company's internal Strengths and Weaknesses and external Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) so that you can determine the best strategy for success, and it allows you to create a number of vital documents: Loan Document, New Product or Service Description, Financial Plan, Marketing Plan, Complete Business Plan.

The automatic Plan Review is a neat new feature as it checks for more of the common financial-planning mistakes, offering tips and suggestions on improving your plan, and the improved Table Wizards walk you through the process of generating relatively advanced financial tables for your specific business and industry niche. The improved Plan Setup Wizard walks you through the process of configuring your plan outline, your financials, and other key settings to match your plan to your company and your industry, and there are direct links to sources for market data, venture capital opportunities, and legal guidance.

If you're simply looking for a heads-up on the type of issues an accountant will raise you with, you can open a sample business plan and view its Plan Setup summary to see if it's a good match for your business. You can then make specific changes to the sample plan in order to tailor the business plan for your particular business needs, goals and objectives. This is a quick and easy way to become familiar with the issues that you'll have to fully understand in order to get your business off the ground. You can then use the Report Writer to generate a 'finished' report that includes only the data relevant to your business and planning objectives.

Using the software is very similar to a personal accounting or tax package, and its appearance is just as bland. The wizard asks a series of questions that include: start date, the type of business you are creating, cash versus accrual accounting and lots more, and provides explanations and resources. It effectively walks you through the process of building a plan and even refers you to specific chapters in the enclosed books.

Based on your answers, the wizard recommends a template. Of course, you can customise plans by adding new topics or deleting those as and when needed. Once you've completed the wizard, you can work from the intuitive Plan Outline that displays the structure and topics in your plan and lets you quickly navigate to portions that you wish to work with, as well as add, delete and rename topics. Built-in spreadsheets analyse cash flow, financial ratios and milestones and the software builds-in the many cross-links. From the spreadsheets you can then customise colour charts and graphs.

Business Plan Pro 2006 doesn't work on its own, either. You can import data from Intuit's excellent QuickBooks to build financial forecasts from accounting data and export plans to Microsoft's Word and Excel and create PDF documents. And if you're taking your plan on the road to meet and greet investors, the program exports charts, financial data and text into PowerPoint to form the basis of presentations. [8.5]

BIOS, Oct 19, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Business