Sunday, Mar 25, 2012
Gulf News
Abu Dhabi When launching a business venture, a captivating and impressive business plan is what entrepreneurs should pay attention to, competitors in the fifth MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Business Plan Competition were told. The competition was announced last week at the Higher Colleges of Technology.
The year-long competition will see the winner and two runners-up share prizes worth $70,000 (Dh255,000).
The 50 semi-final teams represent 11 countries from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Yemen, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Palestine and Syria
Map
“The business plan is the business map,” said Tarek Kettaneh, Senior Lecturer at the American University of Beirut who addressed the competitors.
“The business plan is selling a document that translates the dreams of entrepreneurs into a map to follow. It is not a collection of spreadsheets with financial forecasts but the tool which convinces investors to part with their money,” he explained.
Kettaneh said that the key elements when creating a good business plan include having highly skilled and experienced people. Recognising opportunity is also an important element. Kettaneh touched on factors such as making a good assessment of the market size, targeted segments, potential for future expansion, pricing, sales volume and sales cycle, how to attract, hold and increase one’s market shares.
Additionally, it is important to have a clear thorough analysis (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat) of the competition the venture will face, what is deemed valuable by the customer and how to convince him that the product or service is better, the marketing plan for promoting the product or service and distributing it.
The third element is context which means identifying variables that are out of the venture’s control and that can help or hinder the business — like taxes, customs duties, import bans, energy prices.
“Finding the right marketing strategy that gives the highest and fastest customers is fundamental. Statistics indicated that getting a new customer costs five times more than keeping a customer,” Kettaneh said.
Another important aspect of a business plan is that there are some deals that can still be made successfully even with small deviations from the original plan.
By Iman Sherif ?Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
