A company’s management is responsible for creating value; achieving returns in excess of the company’s cost of capital–equity and debt. The discipline of creating value on a sustained basis requires a clear set of strategic objectives, understood throughout the enterprise and used as a framework for making day-to-day operating decisions. For most “going concerns” developing a strategy is really a process of assessing its current competitive position and direction and questioning where it wants to go. The later question raises important issues regarding capital resources and allocation, staff capabilities, and the like. Developing a strategy properly should be a challenging data-driven process, not a thoughtless rubber-stamping of commonly accepted company truths.

For Pelorus, business plan development is usually in the client context of a start-up company or an existing company entering a new business. In either case, a data driven and logically developed business plan is an excellent foundation for setting the direction and marshalling the resources needed for a new business. The process of developing a business plan early-on can be extremely helpful in identifying opportunities and the “rocks and shoals” that face all businesses. It clearly is better to identify and avoid problems while still in a “paper-stage.” Spending investment capital on a faulty initiative that could have been vetted with proper research is shameful.