TMA Topic Overview: Business Plan

Benefits of Product or Service

TMA Topic overview: Business Plan
One vehicle for acquiring an understanding of the entrepreneurial process is through the preparation of a start-up business plan. The focus of this TMA is to select a business idea and create a mini- business plan. Writing a business plan requires you to ask tough questions about the nature of the business. 

What are the benefits of your product or service? 
What is the target market and how will you penetrate it? 
How will you develop and produce the product or service? 
What resources, including funding, are required to successfully create the business plan?

TMA components
1. Description of the market: Target Market:  Who? How Many? Analysis of Competition:  How Many? Strengths and Weakness?
Market Penetration Projections and Strategies 

2. Description of the products: What Is to Be Developed or Sold?

3. Marketing Plans: Pricing How Sales Are to Be Made Advertising and Sales Promotion

4. Financial Analysis: Income statement forecasted for 3 years

TMA Requirements

This TMA consists of 20% of your total course grade. It is a team project. Each team will consist of 4-5 students.

The initial task of your team is to select and propose a business idea to the instructor for approval. 
Students should arrange with their tutors in order to verify that no other team had selected the same idea for the project.

TMA  Paper  (maximum 6 pages-Times new Roman 12 Font)
Each team will work on the TMA paper as they would normally do with other courses, but this time in group. This is a good opportunity for students to learn a set of skills thatare very important in the professional business world, such as, team playing, time management, planning, communicating with others, etc.

Each team is required to select a team leader. The TMA paper should be uploaded to the LMS by the team leader only. This is a very important requirement in order to avoid Turnitin similarities.  

The names of all the team members should be written on the pt3 form, including the name of the team leader. All team members will receive the same mark on the TMA essay paper. Students are required to use the pt3 form provided on the LMS for this specific TMA.

Students are expected to make sure the written TMA meets the following criteria:

Plagiarism: It’s imperative that team members write the TMA using their own words. Plagiarism will be penalized depending on its severity and according to AOU plagiarism policy.

Format:  team members are expected to write their answer using a business plan format. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 2 marks from the total TMA paper mark. 

Word count: TMAs are expected to be within the specified page count. Not adhering to specified word count could result in the deduction of up to 2 marks of the total TMA paper mark. 

Referencing:  team members are expected to use a good referencing style for in-text referencing and list of reference at the end. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 2 marks of the total TMA paper mark.

Online resources: team members are expected to use online sources to support their answers. A minimum of 3 sources is required. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 2 marks of the total TMA paper mark.