BDP: Introduction, Purpose, Benefits VS Risks, and a Simple Format

Being a youth of this generation of freedom or a so-called “millennial”, we don’t exactly like to be controlled. Now as much as we hate it, this is what a lot of us feel when we work for existing companies with their seemingly outdated policies. To solve this “problem” the answer that a lot of youths have come up with seems to be forming a startup company.

There are a lot of geniuses in our generations with great ideas. But that is just the start, the main issues begin when one has to turn that genius into a functional plan that generates a sustainable Profit. This functional plan also has another name in the corporate world – BDP (Business Development Plan).

A BDP is a blueprint of your business or in other words, a thorough plan on how to run a business. Some of you who are bad with plans might already be sweating but with some basic understanding, it is not that complicated.

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Today we will discuss the benefits, the risks, and a simple way of making a Business Development Plan – so that you are prepared to gain the benefits, grip the market and turn in profits. But before we go into that, we first have to know the purpose of a BDP.

Purpose of a Business Development Plan (BDP)

As you may have guessed, the main purpose is just to guide you in your business endeavor. However, this sentence in itself is a bit Vague to understand. So to simplify it and make it easier to understand, let’s just list the purpose of the BDP out.

1. To give you an insight into how the company will run 
2. To Attract the Investors
3. To help you analyze the pros and cons of your business
4. To help you analyze the market scenario 
5. To help you plan the overall aspect of your business

Pros and Cons of BDP

With the use of BDP known you have to think “Is it that good to have a BDP?” There is an old saying that goes “There is not a single thing that doesn’t have any flaws, regardless of how good it is and not a single thing that has its good aspects, regardless of how bad it is”. However, this is not necessarily the case for a BDP.

This is the same for BDP as well. The good thing about having a BDP is that it will help you run your business smoothly once you start running a business. Meanwhile, the only bad aspect is that it is tedious to even start making a BDP- that is unless you have guidance.

All things considered, making a BPD doesn’t really have any disadvantage besides a small bit of stress at the start of making one. Instead, there are many disadvantages of not having a BPD. To list them out in short here are some pros of having and a few cons of not having one.

Pros of having a BDP

1. It provides you with great opportunities for Growth
2. It  will help you identify your target audience
3. Analyzing the strength and weakness of your company becomes easier with a BDP
4. It will help you in setting the financial goals and plans for your company
5. Having a BDP will make it easier in running your company 

Cons of not having a BDP

1. Your company will lack any objectives for the most part.
2. It is likely to have mismanaged resources.
3. Their structure of your organization won’t be clear and conflicts will arise easily.
4. The chances of miscommunication will increase drastically- as there is no specific plan of action
5. You won’t be able to find good investment sources.

This is just the gist of the issues you will face if you don’t have a BDP however even if the core issues are comparatively less in number, they will birth to a large number of other smaller ones which can very well pile on to make a huge mountain of problems for you. 

The simplest way of the BDP

To make the simplest of the Business Development Plan, all you have to write is the general information of your company. This includes simple things like what your company is all about, what it will do and aims to accomplish, its core values and goals, a summary of your financial plan, and a bit about your marketing strategy.

Along with this, the only extra thing that you have to include is a basic and realistic prediction of how your company will turn out if you successfully manage to succeed in all of your campaigns and how your company will turn out if you fail at your campaigns. 

The good thing about writing a BDP this simple is that you can tell this to anyone and no harm will come to you. The biggest drawback of making one in this manner is that big investors will take it as a joke for the most part. So this form of a BDP only good enough to attract local investors.

On a side note, once you make this form of BDP, you can use this as a starting point to make a more complex one. This is because everything that you have included here is a good format for the executive summary for a more complicated one as well.

Final thoughts 

A Business Development Plan is one of the most important things that you should do before starting a business. While this is a complicated thing to make, it is also something that no business can start without as this is literally the plan and the blueprint for how your business will function in the future.

That being said, once you get the basics of this, it is not really that hard to create one. There is also no steadfast rule on how you should write a BDP as well. As long as the necessary things are included in the Plan, it is all good. 

Now, we assume that your next target after knowing the pros and cons of BDP is likely to make one. But do you know how to make a BDP? The complete process is not the one we mentioned here after all. Don’t worry as we have got your back.

Why don’t you follow our article on the Stepwise Process to Write a BDP to know the complete steps.

If you already have a business do you know that a website helps a lot? If you are curious, check out this article where we answer Why Your Business Needs a Website?