What to do if you have several businesses

44 CHAPTER 3 GETTING DOWN TO IT

This is where a slight complication creeps in. If you are writing a business plan for a small

or highly focused business you will work through the steps described here just once.

What if you have several business areas or run a group of companies?

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If you are the head of one of those business units or subsidiaries, you need to

recognise the areas where you operate independently and those where you take

or provide services to the enterprise as a whole.



If you own the business, or are taking overall responsibility for the plan, you might

have to write parts of it several times over – once for each business area and

maybe once for activities that are common to all or most businesses. However, in

this case, you are likely to be able to delegate most of the work to the heads of the

business units.

Essentially, there will be one master plan for the overall business. In addition, there might

be a separate plan for each business area (sometimes known as strategic business areas or

strategic business units).

In the top-level plan, the review of the current status, the market and the operating

plan will summarise the overall strategy for the sum of the individual plans. The finan-

cial section will show the consolidated accounts. The part of the plan that describes the

strategy in detail will show how the individual businesses contribute to the enterprise or

group of companies as a whole.

In many less developed countries a single entrepreneur (or management

team) will often run many, possibly unrelated businesses under a single

umbrella. Perhaps I should say under a single sunshade, since I have seen

this frequently in the deserts of the Middle East and the tropics of Asia-Pacific.

These successful business people have spotted opportunities and gone for them.

Unfortunately, the result is often a rather fragmented business overall.

You do not want a fragmented enterprise. You want a cohesive and integrated

set of business activities that exploits competencies, synergies and other

competitive advantages. One major review and planning exercise will highlight

independent activities and dependencies and enable a far more integrated

approach in future. This can pay handsome dividends.

This situation is found less often in more mature economies, where the

competition and the passage of time have already enabled and encouraged a

higher degree of focus.

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