Easy Notes - By Manoj Singh

Business plans can be seen as a blueprint of your business proposal. It explains every minute detail of your business and gives answer to all major questions which is being asked by an Investor / stakeholders starting from idea origination to financial projections. 

This is one of the vital decisions which a company makes during the life cycle of goods / services. Success and failure of product is directly linked to the pricing nowadays. Many goods are priced on higher side but are not demanded by customers & once the price is reduced, the same product becomes a huge success. Few goods are priced on higher side and are demanded very much by customers but once the price is reduced then demand also gets reduced. Hence, pricing decisions are very tough to be made. There are various strategies which are being followed nowadays related to pricing and few of them has been discussed in detail as under. 

This is the rate at which central bank of a country (e.g. “Federal Reserve” for USA, “Reserve bank of India” for India, “Central bank of Russian Federation” for Russia) lends money to commercial banks in case of any deficiency / shortfall of funds. This is one of the important tools to control inflation rate in a country.

SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities & Threats) analysis is a business planning tool to assess the overall situation of the industry by highlighting various external and internal factors affecting your business. This was used for the first time in 1980’s by GE. This helps a lot in understanding your business and shows up improvement areas as well as areas which can provide competitive advantage.

Strengths & Weaknesses arises due to internal factors prevailing within organization such as Work environment, Organizational structure, Operational efficiency, Brand value / image, key personal, financial capacity, market position, Patents & many more. One should build upon their strengths and minimize weaknesses. E.g. Huge cash surplus could be strength of a company and large debt can be seen as a major weakness.