Business planning in a crucial function of an entrepreneur while starting a new project or venture. The entrepreneur prepares a suitable business plan to give shape to his ideas. A business plan is a document describes various elements involve in starting a new enterprise. It is, in fact, an integration of plans in various functional areas like production, finance human resource, marketing, etc. It lists the owners and various stakeholders of the business and also describes its organization plan as shown in Box l.

A business plan serves the following purposes:

(i)    It provides a blue print of actions to be taken in future.
(ii)    It guides the entrepreneur in raising the factors of production.
(iii)    It serves as a guide to organizing and directing the activities of the business venture.
(iv)    It helps in measuring the progress of the venture at successive stages.
(v)    It communicates to investors, lenders, suppliers, etc. the programmers of the business.

        An entrepreneur needs a project plan because of following reasons:

(a)    Idea of resources required. Entrepreneur gets the information about his regular and repetitive requirements of raw materials, finance, human resources, etc.

(b)    Portrayal of position. It presents an accurate picture of the project to various parties of the game, namely wholesalers, dealers, financiers etc.

(c)    Help in Planning. It helps in planning of various things right from purchase of inputs to production planning and distribution arrangements.

(d)    Help in execution. It helps in execution of project in a well-organized and systematic manner.

(e)    Help in monitoring the project. Feasibility plan helps an entrepreneur to monitor his project as the plan of action, sales target, marketing strategies, expected profits are all clearly mentioned in it. When the project starts working, actual results could be compared with the planned targets and standards to monitor the progress of the project.

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