Business plan software is something that often gets overlooked and isn’t considered to be a necessity for some reason.  In my opinion, business plan software is essential, it is not a luxury. I am a huge advocate of business planning. When people ask me  if they need a business plan, my response is, “Absolutely!” You see, starting a business without a business plan is akin  to  starting college without a degree plan. If you don’t know where you are going, you won’t know how to get there. You will waste your time and your money if you are not following a plan. It’s really  that simple!

So, you know you need a business plan, but what about  business plan software? For business planning,  there are really three alternatives: 1) crafting your own business plan from scratch; 2) hiring a business plan writer or business planning consultant; or 3) using business plan software to write your own business  plan. Each of these alternatives has its own advantages   and disadvantages.

Writing your own business plan from scratch is certainly a possibility. Doing so gives you the freedom to format and arrange the plan in any way that you see fit. On the other hand, doing financial projections, which are necessary  for  the  purpose  of budgeting and financial planning, can be difficult to do  without a business plan program,  or at least financial projection software or spreadsheets.

Hiring a business plan writer makes sense for some people.  A business  plan writer is generally well-versed in business planning and will have insight that will assist you in preparing a comprehensive business plan that takes everything into account. The disadvantages to having your business plan  professionally written are the expense associated with the initial plan, and the limitations that exist in regard to changing it as your business evolves, which is something that business plan software empowers you to do.

Business plan software is relatively inexpensive when compared to hiring  a  professional business plan writer or consultant. However, when compared to doing your own plan from scratch,  it may seem like an unnecessary expense. Business plan software does have many advantages. A good business plan software package, like Business Plan Pro by Palo Alto, has the headings  and  categories for a business plan already set up for you. It also has  guidance throughout the business planning process that  explains  what  to include in each part of your business plan.

What I really love about Business Plan Pro is that it is so  easy to do financial projections using the business plan software, whether or not you understand  accounting.  The main financial sections include a section for start-up costs,  one for income projections, one for a proforma balance sheet, and one for  a projected cash flow statement. Information that input into one of the financial forms automatically transfers calculations to the other financial statement forms making the process of projecting your financial plan a breeze.

Another huge advantage I see in regard to business plan software is that when you use business plan software to create your own business plan, you can make changes to it anytime you need to. It doesn’t become a stale  document  that sits on the shelf and collects dust. A business plan should be  always evolving. You should update your business plan frequently including new goals, objectives and milestones. You should also adjust your financial projections regularly for the purpose of budgeting. Business plan software makes it easy to do.

If you choose not to use business software, and to create your own business plan from scratch, you will need some guidance unless you are a  professional  business planner yourself. The Small Business Administration  at  sba.gov has some excellent resources and guides about business planning. If you choose to hire a  professional business plan writer, do  review their qualifications and references and make certain that you understand exactly what is included in the business planning services they are offering.

About the Author:

Copyright Christopher Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you’re getting? If so, it is time to get the tools that will put your internet marketing venture in high-gear. To learn proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business, get the insider secrets from

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Business Plan Software: Do You Need It?

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Tags: "project, "software, management", projectmanagement, tools

Summary
What are the processes that your project software goes through to produce a project plan? What information do you need to provide to enable it to work effectively? If your software can schedule resources as well, how does it do that and what data does it need?

Project (or Time) Analysis
Your scheduling software needs some basic data to be able to work out the schedule:
- The tasks in the project;
- How they are related – their dependencies;
- Their estimated durations, which may be calculated from the estimated effort.

You may also want to impose some constraints on the schedule, such as locked target dates (this task must start on or finish by this date, or cannot start before this date), or delays (lags) or overlaps between tasks.

Once it has this information, the software will start at the first task (the one which has no predecessors) and work its way forward through all the links, calculating the earliest start and finish dates for each one.

Having worked out the earliest dates, the software then starts from the last tasks (the ones with no successors) and calculates the latest start and finish dates for each task.

You can see that it makes sense if you can define a single start task and a single end task, otherwise the calculation is made more complex. These can be milestone tasks called Start Project and End Project, if you like, and help to make the whole network much neater. (A milestone task is one which has no duration.)

When all the dates are in place, the software can calculate the total float – the amount of time by which a task can be delayed without affecting the project end date. It may also calculate free float, which is the amount of time by which the task can be delayed such that its succeeding tasks can still start at their early start date.

The tasks which have no float are identified as critical, i.e. delays to these tasks will affect the project finish.

Resource Analysis
If you have limited resources, you may want the software to work out a schedule based on the availability of those resources. This implies that you need to do the following:

1  Estimate resource requirements
You may have already done this in order to calculate the durations of the tasks, in which case the requirement would be entered as the total effort. Alternatively, if you have specified the duration, you might enter it as so many hours per day or as a percentage of the resource’s daily availability.

2  Allow tasks to slip
Float must be introduced into the whole schedule. You might do this by specifying a target end date on the last task which is considerably later than the calculated latest finish date. Or your software may allow you to specify by how much time the whole project can slip (may be called overrun).

3 Specify priorities
You might want certain projects, and tasks within projects, to take precedence when resources are allocated to them. There should be a way of indicating the priority at both project and task level.

4  Allow task splitting and/or variable durations
Your software may let you specify that certain tasks can be split to avoid overloading resources, and/or that the duration of the task can be extended. The minimum permitted duration of the split elements and the amount of time by which the duration can be varied should be specified.

With all these elements completed, the software will progressively schedule the tasks (according to priorities) later and later to avoid resource overloads using:
- Splitting and variable durations;
- Standard and variable durations plus float;
- Standard and variable durations plus overrun.

Even after using all these possibilities, there may still be some resource overloading.

Problems with Automatic Resource Scheduling
There are a two main issues associated with using the software to schedule tasks according to resource availability.
1  Project managers do not like their projects being rescheduled without their direct input.

They may prefer to use manual methods of rescheduling to avoid overloads.

2  A considerable amount of extra information on every task on every project is required to make the process work properly.

If your projects are planned at a very high level, e.g. only one or two tasks per project, then this may not be an onerous burden, but for many project managers the amount of time that would be spent setting up the data on a multitude of tasks in each project is not outweighed by the usefulness of the result.

Conclusion
Scheduling software can be very useful, but you need to know what data it needs to work effectively, and understand how much effort may be required to input that data.

About the Author:

Linda has a Master’s Degree (with Distinction) in Technical Authorship, and over 25 years’ experience in software implementation and consultancy. She was a member of the management buy-out team when 4c Systems Ltd was formed in 2002, having worked on the 4c product for 5 years before that.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – How Does Project and Resource Scheduling Software Work?

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Tags: "project, "software, management", projectmanagement, tools