Entrpreneurship Advantage

Strategic Growth Planning Series ― Established Businesses | EA–3000B

Established businesses are the catalysts that drive our economy. They are the source of new innovation, significant state and local revenues and new jobs. Many of these companies have carved out a small niche for themselves and are providing a value based product or service. The challenge for these established businesses is to plan for continued growth, to increase revenues and to create wealth for themselves and others.

This Strategic Growth Planning Program is developed around the newest innovative approach to business analysis developed by the Pioneer Institute called the "Strategic Planning Tool". The tool relates financial performance to specific and tangible operating functions from which to improve overall profitability and stimulate growth. The tool provides a framework to test and validate strategic assumptions and affords business owners the opportunity to measure the impact of changes in strategy across the organization.

Businesses will come prepared with three years of financial statements. The program starts with a practical and assessable overview of financial statement analysis. Then, with the support of EA consultants, business owners will begin analyzing key components of the Balance Sheet and Income Statement to measure existing company performance. This analysis will yield the identification of key financial ratios and historical trends that will be used to make inferences about the company's financial condition and its operations. This section of the Program will enable the business owner/manager to spot trends in their business and to compare its performance and condition with the average performance of similar businesses in the same industry. Once trends and specific conditions are identified, the program gets very tactical and helps the business owner relates those financial ratios to specific problems or concerns in specific functional areas in the business. Business owners are then guided, with peer-to peer input, in identifying a series of possible solutions. The program then focuses on developing a range of solutions and strategies to address the business owners' challenges. With the peer-to-peer interaction and feedback, strategies are developed. Once the strategies are defined, business owners are provided the opportunity to test their strategic alternatives and measure the impact of these alternatives across the organization. Business owners then commit to a specific course of action and begin focusing on implementation. Specific objectives are defined, interdependencies are calculated and timelines are developed. EA Strategic partners then work with the business owner over the next three months to help support the implementation of the strategy.

Methodology

The Start-Up Business Intensive is conducted in three, six hour sessions per week for eleven weeks. During the eleven week program, up to sixteen clients will be provided the knowledge, tools and resources to develop and write their own business plan, step by step. These sixteen clients with the instruction and facilitation of a highly skilled entrepreneur will form a "think tank", a focus group, if you will, to shape, challenge and validate business plan assumptions along the way. Entrepreneurship Advantage, Inc. (EA) Strategic Partners, i.e., experts representing key strategic business functions such as accounting, legal, insurance, marketing, small business lending, etc., will support classroom sessions to provide guidance and resources for key business start-up issues and challenges. Break out groups, informal discussions and presentations will be utilized to enable students to define and refine strategies and tactics. Clients will submit completed sections of the business plan at specific times during the course for review and refinement. Three hours of one-on-one consulting is provided throughout the eleven weeks to set direction and maintain focus. The result is a well conceived and tested business plan and a detailed implementation and execution plan.

Post Class Consulting

The Strategic Growth Planning Program is conducted in 8, three hour sessions, (9:00am - 12:00 pm on Saturdays) for eight weeks. During the eight week program, up to ten business owners will be selected and will be provided with knowledge, a new diagnostic tool and resources to accurately assess their business performance, and develop a strategic plan for 2006. These ten business owners with the instruction and facilitation of highly skilled entrepreneurs will be guided through the new business analysis framework to support the strategic planning process. Entrepreneurship Advantage, Inc. (EA) Strategic Partners, i.e., experts representing key strategic business functions such as accounting, financial analysis, financial business planning, will support classroom sessions to provide guidance and hands on support working with the diagnostic tool. One-one one consulting is provided throughout the eight weeks to set direction and maintain focus. The result is a sound financial assessment and strategic plan for 2006.

General Flow of the Course

The Strategic Growth Planning Program is structured around the Strategic Planning Tool. The class builds, week by week in a logical and progressive manner, from analysis, problem identification, to strategy development and testing. It should be understood that the program is structured, but no two classes are alike. EA customized each program in real time, based on the unique needs of the business owners in the class. Generally, the course will flow as follows:

Week One - Setting the Stage

Overview of the Strategic Planning Tool
The key components of the strategic planning tool
The process for developing the strategic plan

Week Two - Financials Statement Analysis

Overview of financial analysis
Review of existing financial statements
Hands-on workshop to develop "ratio tree" utilizing the new diagnostic tool

Week Three- External Analysis

Industry averages
Competitor analysis
Best in class ratio analysis

Week Four - Internal Analysis-Operational Tree

Identify links between identified ratios to specific functional areas of the business
Identify internal problem areas within each function using the "operational tree"

Week Five - Internal Analysis - Identification of Issues

Analyze each identified function and operation
Deconstruct the problem
Identify range of solutions to the problems

Week Six -Strategic Plan Development, Testing and Validation

Fine tune and validate potential strategies
Identify impact of potential strategies
Choose high potential strategic alternatives
Quantify the impact of proposed strategies
Assess viability of strategy

Week Seven - Develop Implementation Plan

Develop specific goals and objectives to support strategy
Identify interdependencies
Identify resource requirements
Develop timelines

Week Eight - Graduation

Peer-to-Peer strategic plan review
Develop post graduation consulting plan

Post Class Consulting

We are committed to helping EA Graduates execute their strategic plans. Each EA-3000 graduates will be provided with 6 hours of consulting with EA Strategic Partners and Consultants over the next 3 months to help implement the strategic plan. After the initial three month period EA-2000 graduates will have access to all EA Strategic Partners and Consultants at a 40% discounted rate for the next 3 months.

Limited Class Size

To maximize the benefit of our “think tank” training methodology, only sixteen new entrepreneurs are selected to participate in each class.

The Ideal Candidate for the Program

Candidate has been in business 6 months to 2 years business concept.
Candidate may or may not have a business plan
Candidate is a team player, values the exchange of ideas and is willing to support others.
Candidate must be proficient in Microsoft office: Word, Excel and PowerPoint