As the pace of competition has accelerated, product life cycles have shrunk.

It used to take 8 to 10 years to design and build a car.

Now it can be in less than a year and half.

Windows of opportunity open and close with blinding speed; and customers, who are constantly being wooed by the competition, are more demanding than ever.

Some people will advise you that it is impossible to plan for the future and thus business plans are irrelevant and a waste of time.

In fact, in this era the exact opposite is true. It is now more important than ever before to have a battle plan during what might, in retrospect, be viewed as “peacetime.”.

Planning and preparation are required for your financial as well as your company’s survival. No one is saying, “The world is more uncertain for you now, so plans are no longer relevant.” The truth is that planning and that planning skills are now most important and more vital than ever. In this regard, businesses are no different from individuals.

Success in this super competitive era depends on making very clear business plans and statements. Winners develop a vision of where they intend to be going, and this blueprint will allow them the flexibility to respond appropriately when the unexpected occurs.

The basics of it all are that by not planning you limit your options and flexibility greatly .

What is diffirents in business strategic planning int this time period of 2006 ?

Good business plans require different attributes. The networking revolution created by the Web for business-to-business activities and business-to-consumer products and services has offered new opportunities but has created a very different business environment.

There are essentially only three central tenets that are a part of business plans:

1. A focus on speed in all of its manifestations

2. The integration of the Web into the core of what the company does .

3. A focus on how the company adds value for its customers

Planning is the essential element in the competitive battleground, and speed is the central weapon. Like all artillery, speed is an asset when a company is able to employ it .

In building its own business; it is a liability when an “armed” competitor is moving like lightning to undermine your core business. And whether it’s being used for or against you, the ever-present element that must be factored into your plans.
There is a great need and reward for “Speed”.

Planning for speed involves an even broader view. To be successful you should take on the widest possible focus on speed and create your businesses accordingly.

Build your plans with the following in mind:

The speed with which you need to bring a product to market .

The speed with which your competitors might introduce a competitive product.

The speed required to improve existing products and bring enhancement (or future generations) of your product to market .

The speed with which the industry, because of the Internet, could potentially be transformed

When these factors are fully integrated into a business culture, they lead to a clear way of determining the intensity at which to approach the market:

1). Faster, better, cheaper. . .

It’s getting repetitive, but if a product is faster,

better, or cheaper on the Web, companies need to exploit it immediately

2). Get your feet wet now so that you’ll be prepared to swim hard very soon.

Even if your competitors aren’t there yet, start exploring what the Net can do for your business

3.) Planned evolution is vital.

If you that have the capability to rapidly evolve
your products you will find it easier to stay ahead of your

e -competition, and developing this capability must be a goal of yours in itself.

4). You cannot waste time being concerned about cannibalization.

Worry about “cannibalization” (creating one product to replace another) assumes that a company owns a market and has time to leave a product in the marketplace until the company is ready to replace it with something new.

Smart planners realize that this is an outmoded way of thinking. The new breed of winners in most industries assume that the competition is right at their heels and any competitive advantage they have is fleeting. As a result, they worry about hurting sales of an existing product by bringing out a new one.

Be much more concerned with constantly driving to stay

ahead of the competition.

Some brick-and-mortar companies have found it more difficult than others to let go of the “old way” and are sometimes less nimble than newcomers. To survive, they will need to find ways of eliminating excess baggage.

You will be ” Ahead of the the game .

If you recognize the need for online success and can establish your operation, with an independent management style then you that can have the freedom and resources to win in a today’s environment.

You will certainly be rewarded.

Lastly A good business plan should also answer this question: “In the evolving competitive arena, how does my product or service add value?” Focus on this issue and act on your findings and you are most likely to develop successful plans to which the customers remain loyal.

This is certainly the integral most basic concept which your Grandmother would of insisted on .

The recession has hit two groups disproportionately: the over-50s and the under 20s. The over 50s are increasingly turning to self-employment as employers are often blind to their talents and experience and find jobs increasingly hard to find and eBusiness, trading on the internet, is ideal for those with skills to sell.

But our generation is the last generation for whom the computer and the internet were an ‘optional extra’ for our formative years.

So does my eBusiness, with its low start up costs, its access to a world-wide market, really need a business plan? Wouldn’t it simply waste time and effort better used to launch a business?

Well, if you’re simply going to sell off the junk in your loft and garage on eBay then a business plan would be a waste, but if you’re thinking about earning a sensible living this way then you’d better give your business plan some serious thought. And that’s the point: the process of thinking out the business plan is probably as valuable as the plan itself.

In working on the business plan of a youth organisation providing youth clubs to a deprived group of children it seemed enough to make shelter, organised games and access to the internet but what was the real purpose of the organisation. Well their results are confidential but one could suppose that providing 1. positive role models to young lives, 2. a sense of stability in a chaotic world, and 3. a view beyond their immediate cultural surroundings, might figure in any list of objectives.

We came to see that the pool tables, the computer terminals, the leadership were the ‘inputs’ to the system, the ‘outputs’ the organisation was trying to achieve were quite different, and our recruitment policy moved away from seeking active, fun-loving young people towards more mature motherly types likely to stick around for the long term.

The Business Planning process helps the entrepreneur to focus, to ask the right questions.

1. What is my business? What does it do? Who does it do it for? To what end?
2. Who are my competitors? How strong are they? Have they left a gap in the market I can fill?
3. How will I sell my goods or my services? How will my customers come to me?
4. When my business takes off, how will I exploit it? What will that cost?
5. How I deliver my goods or my services, where will I buy in my products, store them? How will I organise my business, keep my books?
6. How much money will I need? Where will I get it?

On this last point, if you’re using your own money, think of yourself as your own banker and ask when will I make a profit, and what is the cost of failure?

So, even if you never write down your answers the process of thinking them through will make your start up better organised and targeted.

Better to ‘waste’ a few days in some basic research than to waste a few months on following the wrong trail. It may be your own money, but you can only spend it once, and when it is gone…

Those who know how to start a dollar store recognize the true value and importance of their dollar store business plan. They know their it sets the course for their business in the years ahead. Yet to maximize the value of a the plan it must be used on a regular basis. It must become a part of the process to not only establish a dollar store, but to measure successes and to recognize where adjustments must be made to the business operation. Your business must be thoroughly reviewed and updated on at least an annual basis. In this article I present some of the actions that will keep your business plan producing the best possible support for you and your dollar store business.

· Those who know how to start a dollar store recognize the need to thoroughly examine every aspect of their business plan at least once per year. Examine your plan on at least a quarterly basis. While it is a powerful tool to continually move your business forward there is often not enough time to complete a line-by-line review during those quarterly examinations. However since January sales levels are typically much lower than other months of the year it is the perfect time to schedule a thorough review and update of your business plan.

· Start by assessing how your business performed during the previous year. Use the performance data and current market conditions to set everything in-place to have an even better year ahead. Walk through your business plan step-by-step and then, being as neutral and impartial as possible to evaluate how your business performed during the previous year.

· Use your final assessment to determine where you did extremely well, and where there remains work to be done. Modify your business plan accordingly. Be sure to identify the actions required to accomplish exactly what you have planned for the year ahead. Don’t forget to include money commitments, if required.

· Rewrite your business plan so it is updated to accurately reflect exactly the plans you have for the upcoming and future years. Those who know how to start a dollar store invest the time to make changes in their documented goals and actions. They also commit the resources required for the actions noted. All of these come together as their newly revised and updated business plan. Then they start moving toward every-better business results.

To your success as you discover how to start a dollar store!