Both startups and successful growing businesses need a “plan”. Business planning forces you to put on paper your roadmap to success.

One of the best ways to learn about writing a business plan is to study the plans of established businesses in your industry.

However you decide to put your plan together, whether using packaged commercial software programs, simple outlines, or any number of very instructive books available at popular bookstores, the plan should be reviewed by someone you believe can give you honest and unbiased feedback. The SBDC at UNF offers free and confidential counseling to clients writing business plans.

One of the business planning strategies we recommend is called Activeplans. ActivePlans Strategic Business Planning Netware is a unique and convenient way to write your business plan. Activeplans was created with one goal in mind: to give you the ability to create a business plan for your organization. Every feature of the Activeplans program moves you toward this end.

Activeplans Netware runs right off of the internet so there's no software to download or install. We take care of the technology so you can take care of managing your business. It's the way it should be.

Here's how it works: You sign up for your own safe and secure account. Then using your web browser, along with your account name and password, you access Activeplans from anywhere at anytime. All of your work on your plan is saved from session to session and when you're done, you can export your work into your favorite word processor and spreadsheet program for deeper refinement.

There are two different types of plans that Activeplans can construct: a business plan and a strategic plan.

The business plan is perfect for start-up ventures or for businesses that need a formal written planning document to communicate with members of a management team, employees, customers, or financial backers.

With the business plan, there are no examples provided. But don't fret. You don't want to spend time looking at other people's plans, you want to create own unique plan. That's why we have provided a collection of responses prepared by business professionals so you can create a unique and individual plan without recreating the wheel. Simply point and click on your responses to create a chunk of plan text. Activeplans’ natural language text engine organizes your thoughts into complete sentences. To complete a step simply modify as needed, and then move on. There's no better way to organize your thinking.

The strategic plan is based upon a proprietary planning process that helps you to express your vision as strategic story. It is ideal for existing or growing business that are seeking to conduct a strategic planning session. The strategic plan demonstrates that the best visions, and strategies for that matter, are stories-stories told in a future tense. Creating a story is a creative act, not a systematic or mechanical technique. It's a process perfectly tailored to creating strategy since strategy making itself is a creative act.