People may observe high-performing ventures that don’t have business plans and conclude, why bother to plan?

Business planning is a time-consuming exercise and any business has to weigh up the value that is generated from spending time writing a business plan versus simply going out there and trying to sell. This can be particularly beneficial when a venture is launching a product or service in a very uncertain market, where even after carrying out plenty of analysis, uncertainty still remains.

How do high achievers manage to create a great business out of merely a good business?

Cranfield studied the accounts of 15,000 independent UK businesses with turnovers between £1m and £50m over a four-year period.

The results? Many aspire, few achieve. Fewer than 2% of these businesses consistently grew sales and profits by 25% and provided a decent return on capital employed.