MyAdvisor™ - Business Plan Evaluation
Evaluating business opportunities is one of the most difficult decisions anyone can make. Formal business plans can a standard tool to capture relevant information, but the task of evaluating these plans is still very complex. MyAdvisor - Business Plan helps you or a team evaluate a business plan across several dimensions, visibly identifying both strengths and areas for improvement. The tool provides a comprehensive framework to evaluate multiple factors, including the market and competitive elements and leadership skills brought to the venture. Using comparable and meaningful performance metrics, MyAdvisor-Business Plan first identifies key criteria for making decisions about a business plan's potential, then enables you to evaluate those factors for across one or more business plans. This allows you and the prospective business's stakeholders to competently assess the merits of the proposed business and make decisions confidently. The tool allows one person to evaluate up to 8 business plans, or up to 8 people evaluate one business plan.
You Need MyAdvisor - Business Plan if...
- A more orderly (standardized) and disciplined approach to assessing business plans is needed.
- You are looking for a time-saving and effective way to screen business plans.
- You must compare business plans from different industries or product/services lines.
- You need to score and rank business plans in a consistent manner.
- You need to identify a business plan's strengths and areas for improvement.
- You have more than one business plan to evaluate, or more than one person evaluating a business plan.
MyAdvisor - Business Plan gives you immediate access to a valuable business assessment tool at a low price. You get forms, userguide, and reports that you can put to use right away!
Criteria
New business ventures must be strong in a number of areas to be viable: they must provide a major or unique advance on current offerings; they must be based on feasible technical considerations; the management team must be experienced and skilled in this kind of business venture; the potential financial return must be substantial compared to the proposed investment; etc. Simply following a business plan template won't guarantee these elements are in place.
For investors, venture capitalists, business school professors and others who must evaluate a number of business plans and compare them, it is critical to see where plans are strong or weak. Weakness in one area will doom a plan that is otherwise strong, as in a business plan that is based on an exciting innovation but which has no prospects of making strong returns. Those who prepare business plans want to assess their overall prospects early, before they sink large amounts of time into the process. If they can identify weak areas early, they can work to revise the strategy or bring in more resources.
The criteria used in MyAdvisor - Business are representative of key considerations that are commonplace in decisions regarding technology innovations. Using a standard form, an evaluator can rate up to eight business plans and compare and rank them against the ideal characteristics of a strategically and financially advantageous venture. The tool helps you select business plans that:
| The Advance | Represent a significant advance on the current offerings or practices in a particular market |
| IP Position | Offer a realistic chance of establishing defensible intellectual property |
| Status | Propose offerings which have undergone significant real world testing |
| Capability | Are backed up with sufficient resources and business capacity to execute on the opportunity |
| Validation | Have been tried and vetted by a representative group of customers |
| Marketing Plan | Have a realistic and detailed marketing plan |
| Management Team | Are backed up with a management team with sufficient experience and education to execute the plan |
| Investment Offering | Have a favourable investment structure |
| Market Size and Share | Target a large and attractive market and the chance to capture a significant portion of it |
| Competition | Don't face competitive threats that are too entrenched or powerful |
| ROI | Represent an attractive return on investment |
MyAdvisor - Business Plan can be used for:
- Analysing the potential of the proposed business or businesses.
- Making an initial "rough" assessment to determine whether a plan merits a closer look.
- Determining the unique factors of a business plan, and if it has the requisite elements to succeed.
- Ensuring that management, potential investors and other stakeholder are fully aligned with the Business's strategic plan and objectives.
- Identifying "qualified" business plans and articulate why you believe they will succeed.
- Helping business students learn how to develop their own plans and evaluate others' plans through clear written and visual feedback.
- Comparing business plans competently and confidently, with clear, transparent justification.
- Judging business plan competitions.
| MyAdvisor - Business Plan | AdvisorSL | |
|---|---|---|
| Modify Criteria | No | Yes |
| # of Business Plans Evaluated | 8 | 25 |
| # of Evaluators per Plan | 1 | 6 |
| Access to Free Criteria Set Library | No | Yes |
| Create and Use Your Own Criteria | No | Yes |
Free downloads:
- Free Evaluation Form for Evaluating Business Plans (pdf)
- Sample Business Plan Evaluation Report (pdf)
System Requirements: PC with Windows 2000 Operating system or later; 60MB of free disk space; minimum of 256MB RAM; Microsoft Excel; Administrator rights for installation.
Screen shots:
Price: $19.95
Email this page"ProGrid has been a valuable tool in helping to focus decision making on critical issues and key success factors, and to quantify risk and potential" - Linda Humphreys V.P. Corporate Affairs & Commercialization Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research