Karri Levens

Business Plans For Dummies, 2nd Edition helps you keep your businesses on track and reach your goals. Written by Paul Tiffany, PhD, professor at UC Berkley Haas Business School and the Wharton School of Business and Steven Peterson, PhD, Professor at UC Berkeley Haas Business School and CEO of Strategic Play, it helps you

• Realistically determine where your business is and where you want to go
• Create a detailed business plan and put it into action instead of in a drawer
• Use the plan to secure financing
• Prepare for opportunities avoid common pitfalls

In short, Business Plans for Dummies helps you determine where you want your business to go and create a map for getting there. You’ll discover how to:

• Identify and approach potential financial backers, including venture capital firms, angels, bankers, and others
• Clarify and crystallize your company’s mission, vision, and values
• Analyze your industry and your competition
• Identify your customers, including their needs, habits, purchase triggers, and decision-making processes
• Objectively analyze your company’s strengths and weaknesses
• Analyze your financial situation in order to do realistic forecasts and budgets
• Recognize trends and anticipate changes, both in the overall economy and in your industry
• Plan for growth, considering the product life cycle, new products, or new markets
• Structure your organization and nurture leadership

Complete with diverse techniques and approaches plus a sample business plan, Business Plans For Dummies gives you detailed how-to for designing a dynamic, business plan that will keep you on course in spite of the inevitable curves and detours in today’s marketplace. It’s a plantastic resource for business owners and entrepreneurs.

Any event you plan and stage is a reflection of your organization’s image — from the initial invitation to onsite operations. Whether you’re planning a product launch, conference, sales meeting, an incentive event, or a gala fund-raiser, remember that the magic of a truly memorable event is in the details, but so is the devil. Whether your event is for 50 or 2,000 people, whether it has a budget of a few thousand dollars, or hundreds of thousands, it has to be perfect. Fully revised and updated, Event Planning, Second Edition, gives you a blueprint for planning and executing special events with flair and without any unexpected surprises and expenses. This unique book is loaded with practical advice on:

• Choosing the best venue
• Preparing and managing the budget, with sample costing forms included
• Scheduling, staffing, and collaborating with other related professionals
• Coordinating food and beverage, décor, entertainment, and themes.

It’s still the comprehensive guide that it always has been, but much has changed in the industry in recent years, and this new edition of Event Planning includes:

• Changes in security planning since 9/11
• Innovations in technology and how they can improve – or ruin – an event
• How to stage an environmentally friendly event
• New and updated examples and case studies of where things went right – and wrong
• Event Risk Assessment – What You Need to Consider before Contracting
• How keep your budget on target and where to find hidden surcharges
• Ways on how to ease airport stress and make air travel  a pleasurable part of the participant’s event experience
• When and When Event Planners and their Suppliers will need Work Visas
• What you need to include in your client’s event history in order to design your next event so that it maximizes your client’s return on their event investment
• A companion website with downloadable versions of the checklists, additional forms and tools, author Q&A, and more at www.wiley.ca/go/event_planning.

What you don’t know or know to ask can have a major effect on the success of your event and on your budget. Event Planning takes you behind the scenes and through every aspect of organizing and executing a successful event: the planning stages, timing and logistics, budget preparation, operations, and on-site management, providing practical tools for anyone who has to plan and execute a truly special event:

• Corporate in-house event planners
• Public relations and communications companies, and their clients
• Marketing and corporate communications professionals
• Fund-raisers and not-for-profit organizations
• Professionals in the hospitality and entertainment industries.
• Business professionals in charge of planning and handling their company’s events

Praise for Event Planning 

"Allen is a good teacher. Wise planners will add Event Planning to their personal reference library as a useful working guide."
—Meeting Professional Magazine

"A blueprint for executing events for 50 or 2,000, with budgets of a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands."
—Success Magazine

"Event Planning will save beginning event planners from plenty of heartbreak and headaches."
—Lisa Hurley, Editor, Special Events Magazine

"Event Planning gives readers a blueprint for planning and executing special events with flair. Consider the book as preventative maintenance."
—Sales Promotion Magazine

"A guide to well planned events. Event Planning is a must for any PR maven."
—Marketing Magazine

"This book will be a help to all event planners, from rank beginners to seasoned professionals. It provides excellent guidelines as well as helpful details."
—Katherine Kossuth, Director of Operations and Special Events, Canadian Film Center

"Sometimes a name just says it all. That's the case with the updated second edition of Judy Allen's Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide to Successful Meetings, Corporate Events, Fundraising Galas, Conferences, Conventions, Incentives, and Other Special Events. Allen not only delivers on the title's comprehensive promise, but also addresses changes in the industry since the first edition was published in 2000, such as the increased role of procurement and the growth of virtual events. Each chapter provides tips and sample checklists and outlines the paths to follow and the pitfalls to avoid in every aspect of meeting planning, from venue selection to on-site execution."     —Corporate Meetings and Incentive Magazine / MeetingsNet.com

"I recommend that Judy Allen's book, Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide 2nd edition, become your Bible for approaching your next affair, whether it's a meeting, conference, incentive travel function or fundraising gala. My copy has highlighting on virtually every page. Yours will, too. After you've read this book (or one of ten others she's authored), you'll be an expert on creating unforgettable events your attendees will enjoy and remember for a very long time."     —Dave Egan, Head Writer, Writers Direct Group

For downloadable versions of the checklists, additional forms and tools, author Q&A, and more, please visit our companion website at www.wiley.ca/go/event_planning.

Business Plans For Dummies, 2nd Edition helps you keep your businesses on track and reach your goals. Written by Paul Tiffany, PhD, professor at UC Berkley Haas Business School and the Wharton School of Business and Steven Peterson, PhD, Professor at UC Berkeley Haas Business School and CEO of Strategic Play, it helps you

• Realistically determine where your business is and where you want to go
• Create a detailed business plan and put it into action instead of in a drawer
• Use the plan to secure financing
• Prepare for opportunities avoid common pitfalls

In short, Business Plans for Dummies helps you determine where you want your business to go and create a map for getting there. You’ll discover how to:

• Identify and approach potential financial backers, including venture capital firms, angels, bankers, and others
• Clarify and crystallize your company’s mission, vision, and values
• Analyze your industry and your competition
• Identify your customers, including their needs, habits, purchase triggers, and decision-making processes
• Objectively analyze your company’s strengths and weaknesses
• Analyze your financial situation in order to do realistic forecasts and budgets
• Recognize trends and anticipate changes, both in the overall economy and in your industry
• Plan for growth, considering the product life cycle, new products, or new markets
• Structure your organization and nurture leadership

Complete with diverse techniques and approaches plus a sample business plan, Business Plans For Dummies gives you detailed how-to for designing a dynamic, business plan that will keep you on course in spite of the inevitable curves and detours in today’s marketplace. It’s a plantastic resource for business owners and entrepreneurs.

—Forbes Magazine

“Key Bank has referred people to The Business Planning Guide for years. Bangs’s no-nonsense style takes the intimidation out of the business planning process.”

—Jayne Crosby-Giles, Senior Vice President and Area Sales Manager, Key Bank

“The Business Planning Guide is a classic of American entrepreneurial literature.”

—David BenDaniel, Professor, Johnson Graduate School of Business, Cornell University

For anyone considering venturing into the unknown waters of starting or managing a business, having a voice of experience at hand can mean the difference between a safe journey and shipwreck. Too many new ventures start with neither compass nor map—highly inadvisable in such an important undertaking. New and existing businesses alike need tools for business analysis, financial forecasting, and budgeting guidelines to grow and prosper.

Although these terms sound technical, the practical, proven, and real-life advice offered in this all-new ninth edition of The Business Planning Guide makes the jargon come alive. If you are an entrepreneur or manager wanting to launch and grow your venture on more solid financial footing, these are the step-by-step strategies you need to compile a complete business plan and financing proposal.

The Business Planning Guide provides three complete sample business plans and offers expert guidance, including information on how to:

•  Collect relevant information from inside and outside your company.

•  Analyze current market conditions as well as your business’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

•  Determine the appropriate amount and kinds of financing you will need. 

For businesses small or large, for-profit or non-profit, author David H. “Andy” Bangs, Jr., offers his business philosophy: “The thrill comes in making a business grow, serving more customers, trying out new ways to deliver value to them, and watching your employees grow and develop.”

“I believe that this book will fill a great need for both full-time competitive intelligence practitioners, and those looking to add analytical skills to their managerial tool kit.”
--Bill Fiora, Partner and Founder, Outward Insights

“All practicing managers and business decision makers should be grateful to Fleisher and Bensoussan for showing them how their analysis work can become more rigorous and their approach less casual. Accept no imitations. This is the genuine article.”

--Sheila Wright, Director of the Competitive Intelligence-Marketing Interface Teaching and Research Initiative (CIMITRI) at Leicester Business School, De Montfort University

The Definitive How-To Guide for Business and Competitive Analysis

• Transform raw data into compelling, actionable business recommendations
• Answer the questions executives ask–“What?” “So What?” and “Now What?”
• Today’s 24 most valuable techniques: how to choose them, how to use them
• For everyone who performs analysis: managers, consultants, functional specialists, and strategists
• A completely new book by the authors of the popular Strategic and Competitive Analysis

Business success begins with deep clarity about your competition and your business environment. But, even as data gathering has improved dramatically, few business professionals know the state-of-the-art techniques for analyzing their data. Now there’s a comprehensive, immensely practical guide to today’s best tools and techniques for answering tough questions and making actionable recommendations.

Business and Competitive Analysis begins with end-to-end guidance on the analysis process, including defining problems, avoiding analytical pitfalls, choosing tools, and communicating results. Next, the authors offer detailed guides on 24 of today’s most valuable analysis models: techniques that have never been brought together in one book before.They offer in-depth, step-by-step guidance for using every technique–along with realistic assessments of strengths, weaknesses, feasibility, and business value.

You are flooded with data. This book will help you transform that data into actionable insights and recommendations that enterprise decision makers cannot and will not ignore. Craig S. Fleisher and Babette E. Bensoussan begin with a practical primer on the process and context of business and competitive analysis: how it works, how to avoid pitfalls, and how to communicate results. Next, they introduce their unique FAROUT method for choosing the right tools for each assignment. The authors then present 24 of today’s most valuable analysis methods.They cover “classic” techniques, such as McKinsey 7S and industry analysis, as well as emerging techniques from multiple disciplines:economics,corporate finance, sociology, anthropology, and the intelligence and futurist communities. For each, they present clear descriptions, background context, strategic rationales, strengths, weaknesses, step-by-step instructions, and references. The result is a book you can rely on to meet any analysis challenge, no matter how complex or novel.

• The fundamentals of business and competitive analysis
  Goals, processes, pitfalls, deliverables, and benefits
• Competitive analysis techniques
  Nine Forces, Competitive Positioning, Business Model, SERVO, and Supply Chain Analyses
• Enterprise analysis techniques
  Benchmarking, McKinsey 7S, Shadowing, Product Line, and Win/Loss Analyses
• Environmental analysis techniques
  Strategic Relationships, Corporate Reputation, Critical Success Factors, Driving Forces, and Country Risk Analyses
• Evolutionary analysis techniques
  Technology Forecasting,War Gaming, Event/Timeline, Indications and Warning Analyses, and more
• Financial, probabilistic, and statistical techniques
  Basic Statistics, Competitor Cash Flow, Analysis of Competing Hypothesis (ACH), and Linchpin Analyses

Table of Contents:

Preface

1. Business and Competitive Analysis: Definition, Context, and Benefits

2. Performing the Analysis Process

3. Avoiding Analysis Pitfalls

4. Communicating Analysis Results

5. Applying the FAROUT method

6. Industry Analysis (The Nine Forces)

7. Competitive Positioning Analysis

8. Business Model Analysis

9. SERVO Analysis

10. Supply Chain Management (SCM) Analysis

11. Benchmarking Analysis

12. McKinsey 7S Analysis

13. Shadowing

14. Product Line Analysis

15. Win/Loss Analysis

16. Strategic Relationship Analysis

17. Corporate Reputation Analysis

18. Critical Success Factors Analysis

19. Country Risk Analysis 

20. Driving Forces Analysis

21. Event and Timeline Analysis

22. Technology Forecasting

23. War Gaming

24. Indications and Warning Analysis

25. Historiographical Analysis

26. Interpretation of Statistical Analysis

27. Competitor Cash Flow Analysis

28. Analysis of Competing Hypothesis

29. Linchpin Analysis

Index

Business Plans For Dummies, 2nd Edition helps you keep your businesses on track and reach your goals. Written by Paul Tiffany, PhD, professor at UC Berkley Haas Business School and the Wharton School of Business and Steven Peterson, PhD, Professor at UC Berkeley Haas Business School and CEO of Strategic Play, it helps you

• Realistically determine where your business is and where you want to go
• Create a detailed business plan and put it into action instead of in a drawer
• Use the plan to secure financing
• Prepare for opportunities avoid common pitfalls

In short, Business Plans for Dummies helps you determine where you want your business to go and create a map for getting there. You’ll discover how to:

• Identify and approach potential financial backers, including venture capital firms, angels, bankers, and others
• Clarify and crystallize your company’s mission, vision, and values
• Analyze your industry and your competition
• Identify your customers, including their needs, habits, purchase triggers, and decision-making processes
• Objectively analyze your company’s strengths and weaknesses
• Analyze your financial situation in order to do realistic forecasts and budgets
• Recognize trends and anticipate changes, both in the overall economy and in your industry
• Plan for growth, considering the product life cycle, new products, or new markets
• Structure your organization and nurture leadership

Complete with diverse techniques and approaches plus a sample business plan, Business Plans For Dummies gives you detailed how-to for designing a dynamic, business plan that will keep you on course in spite of the inevitable curves and detours in today’s marketplace. It’s a plantastic resource for business owners and entrepreneurs.

“I believe that this book will fill a great need for both full-time competitive intelligence practitioners, and those looking to add analytical skills to their managerial tool kit.”
--Bill Fiora, Partner and Founder, Outward Insights

“All practicing managers and business decision makers should be grateful to Fleisher and Bensoussan for showing them how their analysis work can become more rigorous and their approach less casual. Accept no imitations. This is the genuine article.”

--Sheila Wright, Director of the Competitive Intelligence-Marketing Interface Teaching and Research Initiative (CIMITRI) at Leicester Business School, De Montfort University

The Definitive How-To Guide for Business and Competitive Analysis

• Transform raw data into compelling, actionable business recommendations
• Answer the questions executives ask–“What?” “So What?” and “Now What?”
• Today’s 24 most valuable techniques: how to choose them, how to use them
• For everyone who performs analysis: managers, consultants, functional specialists, and strategists
• A completely new book by the authors of the popular Strategic and Competitive Analysis

Business success begins with deep clarity about your competition and your business environment. But, even as data gathering has improved dramatically, few business professionals know the state-of-the-art techniques for analyzing their data. Now there’s a comprehensive, immensely practical guide to today’s best tools and techniques for answering tough questions and making actionable recommendations.

Business and Competitive Analysis begins with end-to-end guidance on the analysis process, including defining problems, avoiding analytical pitfalls, choosing tools, and communicating results. Next, the authors offer detailed guides on 24 of today’s most valuable analysis models: techniques that have never been brought together in one book before.They offer in-depth, step-by-step guidance for using every technique–along with realistic assessments of strengths, weaknesses, feasibility, and business value.

You are flooded with data. This book will help you transform that data into actionable insights and recommendations that enterprise decision makers cannot and will not ignore. Craig S. Fleisher and Babette E. Bensoussan begin with a practical primer on the process and context of business and competitive analysis: how it works, how to avoid pitfalls, and how to communicate results. Next, they introduce their unique FAROUT method for choosing the right tools for each assignment. The authors then present 24 of today’s most valuable analysis methods.They cover “classic” techniques, such as McKinsey 7S and industry analysis, as well as emerging techniques from multiple disciplines:economics,corporate finance, sociology, anthropology, and the intelligence and futurist communities. For each, they present clear descriptions, background context, strategic rationales, strengths, weaknesses, step-by-step instructions, and references. The result is a book you can rely on to meet any analysis challenge, no matter how complex or novel.

• The fundamentals of business and competitive analysis
  Goals, processes, pitfalls, deliverables, and benefits
• Competitive analysis techniques
  Nine Forces, Competitive Positioning, Business Model, SERVO, and Supply Chain Analyses
• Enterprise analysis techniques
  Benchmarking, McKinsey 7S, Shadowing, Product Line, and Win/Loss Analyses
• Environmental analysis techniques
  Strategic Relationships, Corporate Reputation, Critical Success Factors, Driving Forces, and Country Risk Analyses
• Evolutionary analysis techniques
  Technology Forecasting,War Gaming, Event/Timeline, Indications and Warning Analyses, and more
• Financial, probabilistic, and statistical techniques
  Basic Statistics, Competitor Cash Flow, Analysis of Competing Hypothesis (ACH), and Linchpin Analyses

Table of Contents:

Preface

1. Business and Competitive Analysis: Definition, Context, and Benefits

2. Performing the Analysis Process

3. Avoiding Analysis Pitfalls

4. Communicating Analysis Results

5. Applying the FAROUT method

6. Industry Analysis (The Nine Forces)

7. Competitive Positioning Analysis

8. Business Model Analysis

9. SERVO Analysis

10. Supply Chain Management (SCM) Analysis

11. Benchmarking Analysis

12. McKinsey 7S Analysis

13. Shadowing

14. Product Line Analysis

15. Win/Loss Analysis

16. Strategic Relationship Analysis

17. Corporate Reputation Analysis

18. Critical Success Factors Analysis

19. Country Risk Analysis 

20. Driving Forces Analysis

21. Event and Timeline Analysis

22. Technology Forecasting

23. War Gaming

24. Indications and Warning Analysis

25. Historiographical Analysis

26. Interpretation of Statistical Analysis

27. Competitor Cash Flow Analysis

28. Analysis of Competing Hypothesis

29. Linchpin Analysis

Index

• tools for analysing the market, customers, competitors and the business environment
• techniques for examining and choosing between different strategic options
• how to use the business planning model that accompanies this book to prepare financial forecasts
• how to analyse and mitigate risk
• how to identify the business's financing needs and select the appropriate type of finance
• how to use the book's business plan document template to write your own plan

In addition to containing everything you need to know to prepare and write a convincing and sound business plan and then put it into practice, this revised and updated Guide to Business Planning will be invaluable to anyone involved in any form of strategic analysis or business planning.

Celebrate All the Way to the Bank

Weddings, parades, fairs, graduations, conferences, political rallies, fashion shows—what do they have in common? Everyone would rather have someone else plan and conduct them! That someone else can be you if you’re a professional event planner who knows how to develop a theme, find a location, arrange entertainment, plan transportation and do the myriad things needed to pull an event off successfully.

Learn everything you need to know to get started in one of today’s hottest—and most lucrative—businesses:

• How to stay abreast of the newest entertainment, food and decoration options
• Hot new industry trends, from environmentally friendly parties to extravagant first birthday parties and more
• How to build a loyal customer base for large and small events
• Targeted strategies for planning commercial events, political events, civic events, social events and more
• The latest information on the use of technology in event planning

With gross profits averaging 30 to 40 percent, you can easily earn six figures a year planning and conducting events—and have a blast in the process. If you’re looking for a flexible schedule, a wide variety of responsibilities and new adventures every week, event planning is the business for you.

Any event you plan and stage is a reflection of your organization’s image — from the initial invitation to onsite operations. Whether you’re planning a product launch, conference, sales meeting, an incentive event, or a gala fund-raiser, remember that the magic of a truly memorable event is in the details, but so is the devil. Whether your event is for 50 or 2,000 people, whether it has a budget of a few thousand dollars, or hundreds of thousands, it has to be perfect. Fully revised and updated, Event Planning, Second Edition, gives you a blueprint for planning and executing special events with flair and without any unexpected surprises and expenses. This unique book is loaded with practical advice on:

• Choosing the best venue
• Preparing and managing the budget, with sample costing forms included
• Scheduling, staffing, and collaborating with other related professionals
• Coordinating food and beverage, décor, entertainment, and themes.

It’s still the comprehensive guide that it always has been, but much has changed in the industry in recent years, and this new edition of Event Planning includes:

• Changes in security planning since 9/11
• Innovations in technology and how they can improve – or ruin – an event
• How to stage an environmentally friendly event
• New and updated examples and case studies of where things went right – and wrong
• Event Risk Assessment – What You Need to Consider before Contracting
• How keep your budget on target and where to find hidden surcharges
• Ways on how to ease airport stress and make air travel  a pleasurable part of the participant’s event experience
• When and When Event Planners and their Suppliers will need Work Visas
• What you need to include in your client’s event history in order to design your next event so that it maximizes your client’s return on their event investment
• A companion website with downloadable versions of the checklists, additional forms and tools, author Q&A, and more at www.wiley.ca/go/event_planning.

What you don’t know or know to ask can have a major effect on the success of your event and on your budget. Event Planning takes you behind the scenes and through every aspect of organizing and executing a successful event: the planning stages, timing and logistics, budget preparation, operations, and on-site management, providing practical tools for anyone who has to plan and execute a truly special event:

• Corporate in-house event planners
• Public relations and communications companies, and their clients
• Marketing and corporate communications professionals
• Fund-raisers and not-for-profit organizations
• Professionals in the hospitality and entertainment industries.
• Business professionals in charge of planning and handling their company’s events

Praise for Event Planning 

"Allen is a good teacher. Wise planners will add Event Planning to their personal reference library as a useful working guide."
—Meeting Professional Magazine

"A blueprint for executing events for 50 or 2,000, with budgets of a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands."
—Success Magazine

"Event Planning will save beginning event planners from plenty of heartbreak and headaches."
—Lisa Hurley, Editor, Special Events Magazine

"Event Planning gives readers a blueprint for planning and executing special events with flair. Consider the book as preventative maintenance."
—Sales Promotion Magazine

"A guide to well planned events. Event Planning is a must for any PR maven."
—Marketing Magazine

"This book will be a help to all event planners, from rank beginners to seasoned professionals. It provides excellent guidelines as well as helpful details."
—Katherine Kossuth, Director of Operations and Special Events, Canadian Film Center

"Sometimes a name just says it all. That's the case with the updated second edition of Judy Allen's Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide to Successful Meetings, Corporate Events, Fundraising Galas, Conferences, Conventions, Incentives, and Other Special Events. Allen not only delivers on the title's comprehensive promise, but also addresses changes in the industry since the first edition was published in 2000, such as the increased role of procurement and the growth of virtual events. Each chapter provides tips and sample checklists and outlines the paths to follow and the pitfalls to avoid in every aspect of meeting planning, from venue selection to on-site execution."     —Corporate Meetings and Incentive Magazine / MeetingsNet.com

"I recommend that Judy Allen's book, Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide 2nd edition, become your Bible for approaching your next affair, whether it's a meeting, conference, incentive travel function or fundraising gala. My copy has highlighting on virtually every page. Yours will, too. After you've read this book (or one of ten others she's authored), you'll be an expert on creating unforgettable events your attendees will enjoy and remember for a very long time."     —Dave Egan, Head Writer, Writers Direct Group

For downloadable versions of the checklists, additional forms and tools, author Q&A, and more, please visit our companion website at www.wiley.ca/go/event_planning.