Business Growth Plan: Key Elements, Opportunities, and Assessment

The following must be included in your business plan:

Your Proposed Future Business. – What is the product/service (i.e. provide a clear description)? What does it do? What innovations does your idea bring to the market? Appropriate intellectual property rights (IPR) in order to protect your business idea/enterprise, if applicable

Customers – identify your target customers. B2B or B2C? Who are the end-users? Who will buy your product/service? What is the USP of product/service? What customer needs does the product/service meet? The underpinning research for the target market and an evaluation of the businesses’ position in the market

Competitors – Who are your competitors for the product/service? What market share do your competitors have? Why might your customers buy your product/service rather than that of the competitors?

Skills analysis – what skills do you have for developing and taking your business idea forward? What skills do you need? How will you address any skills gaps that you might have?

Projected 2 year profit and loss account and proposed 2 years cash flow forecasts including break even

Finding, evaluating and selecting suitable sources of funding to grow the business opportunity

Your plans for obtaining your resources, both tangible and intangible between now and either 1-2 year ahead. This should include a breakdown of your start-up costs.

The type of organisation and the management information systems required to effectively control the business

Vision for your Business Idea – what future does your business have?

You are required to produce a 1500 word Business Growth Plan

You are allowed a 10% plus or Minus dispensation of the word limit

The word count excludes the executive summary, conclusion, introduction, References and Appendices

Students are to use wider range of resources from peer reviewed academic journals as well as books and other academic databases such as Mintel, EBSCOhost, ProQuest etc.

This assignment has been designed to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your achievement of the following module learning outcomes:

LO 1 Evaluate the opportunities for advancing an idea so that it meets a market gap or requirement and allows the enterprise to grow into a growth sustainable business proposition

LO 2 Analyse the skills and resources required for developing a business, including finance and people

LO 3 Plan the development of a business and pitch the proposition to potential investors and/or interested stakeholders.

How your work will be assessed

Your work will be assessed on the extent to which it demonstrates your achievement of the stated learning outcomes for this assignment (see above) and against other key criteria, as defined in the University’s institutional grading descriptors. If it is appropriate to the format of your assignment and your subject area, a proportion of your marks will also depend upon your use of academic referencing conventions.

Target Customers

This assignment will be marked according to the grading descriptors for Level 6 The marking grid at the bottom has details of how your work will be assessed

Please see section 6 of the Guidance on using the Assignment Brief template document for text recommended for use in this section.

Please also note that work that is submitted up to 10 working days beyond the submission date will be considered a late submission. Late submissions will be marked and the actual mark recorded, but will be capped at the pass mark (typically 40%), provided that the work is of a passing standard. Work submitted after this period will not be marked and will be treated as a non-submission.

This assignment should be submitted electronically. Please use the relevant Turnitin submission point in the Submit your work area in your VLE module shell.

Please ensure that your work has been saved in an appropriate file format. Turnitin will only accept the following file types: Microsoft Word and PDF. Your file must also contain at least 20 words of text, consist of fewer than 400 pages and be less than 20MB in size.

You can submit your work as many times as you like before the submission date. If you do submit your work more than once, your earlier submission will be replaced by the most recent version.

Once you have submitted your work, you will receive a digital receipt as proof of submission, which will b sent to your forwarded e-mail address (provided you have set this up). Please keep this receipt for future reference, along with the original electronic copy of your assignment

Please use the provided checklist below to make sure you are ‘fit to submit’ your work

We recommend you use this checklist as soon as you get this assignment brief to help you plan your work

Fit to Submit: Assignment Checklist

This brief assignment checklist is designed to help you avoid some of the most common mistakes students make in their coursework.

Have You Read The Assignment Brief?

In it you will find details of the assessment task, word count, the assessment criteria your work is marked against, and the learning outcomes – the basis for the assessmentstrategy in each module.

Students often lose marks by forgetting some of the more straightforward elements of their assignments. We recommend that you “tick off” each of the points below as you prepare your work for submission.

Have you read and understood the assessment criteria?

Have you met the learning outcomes? You will lose marks and your work may even be failed if you have not.

Have you demonstrated you can think and write critically in the completed work?

Have you maintained an academic tone throughout your work? Is your work formal,focused, developed and clear?

Have you checked that the referencing in your assignment is in line with your programme requirements?

Have you proof-read your work and used spellcheck software to check your spelling and grammar?

Have you checked the presentation of your work is as specified by your tutor, for example, are font size, colour,style, line spacing and margins as the tutor specified?

Have you kept to the word count (or equivalent)?

Can you confirm that the work submitted is your own and not plagiarised?