Price: £79.00
Summary
Teneric have 27 business plan templates covering a good range of businesses such as running a bar, starting a consultancy and opening a retail outlet. However they really score on the additional support and extra planning tools that they provide.
Detail
Teneric have not taken the full-blown software application route to providing business plan assistance. Instead they provide a number of example plans, that you can choose your type of business from and then supply additional help in the form of extra business planning material and an online support forum. For those not able to find a suitable example plan, there is also a generic template that can help with constructing your own individual document.
You can't really compare these to the more comprehensive business plan applications, however for small businesses and those seeking a bank loan, it provides a very cost effective solution.
After purchasing your plan from Teneric's website, you will receive an email giving details of how to download the example plan and accompanying material. We received the generic package, which comprised 5 sample plans, a business plan guide, an article describing 25 free ways of doing marketing and a cash flow wizard (Excel workbook).
The site seems to change occasionally with different offers, so you may find there is other material also available as part of the package.
Looking through the sample plans they contain all the sections that you would expect, from an Executive Summary to Financials, including the section most frequently forgotten by novice business plan writers - marketing.
In the generic plan there are short explanations of each section for you to input your own text and by double-clicking on the graphs or tables, you are able to edit the financial figures.
The cash flow wizard is based on an Excel workbook and provides a straightforward way of determining your businesses cash position for your first year.
As an "extra" the 25 marketing ideas is a nice touch, since it does help the thought processes when thinking about how you would get noticed or find customers.
Finally the business forum is relatively well used by members and does offer useful advice for those taking on the task of writing their first business plan.
Pros
- Helpful for producing business plans for bank loans.
- Simple cut and paste, or edit existing text.
- Useful advice and articles available.
Cons
- Not suitable for larger businesses or raising private equity funds.
- No real analysis tools available.
- Bit simplistic.
