"If you do not know where you are going any path will get you there. But when you have objectives, planning is essential."
When you use a FARMANCO consultant to help you with your business planning you will be using someone with a wide range of experience. This experience not only covers the financial and succession aspects of your business plan, but importantly also consists of an in-depth knowledge of agricultural production systems, which ensures that your plan is practical and complete.
Farming businesses readily tackle day to day planning issues such as annual production planning, budgeting and even financial and production reviews. These are essential for making short-term decisions, particularly those involving finance and benchmarking.
Farm business planning has greater emphasis on the longer term strategic direction of the business. The main questions a farm business plan seeks to ask are:
- Where do you and the business you are involved with want to be in the future?
- What is the current situation?
- What is the most appropriate route to achieving your objectives?
A good business plan provides answers to the above questions and a plan of action with clear responsibilities for all those involved. Monitoring progress and updating the plan regularly will be made easier with a well designed business plan.
Your FARMANCO consultant will guide you through the development of a business plan and focus on critical issues. We have developed a business planning guide and software to assist you with this process. This ensures that it is produced efficiently in a form understood by all the business members and easily updated.
An important role of your consultant is to help determine the business's capacity to meet the objectives that are set. They can ensure that objectives are well defined, achievable and that progress can be measured. At times the business members might need encouragement to lift their expectations. Often the involvement of an outside person is invaluable in allowing issues that might otherwise be compromised by emotion (particularly in family situations) to be addressed objectively.
A typical Farmanco farm business plan is shown below.
A FARMANCO Farm Business Plan Development Outline
Develop Personal Objectives
These are developed in areas such as - Family and Lifestyle, Estate Security, Succession Planning and Retirement and Education (including personal development and education of children).
Develop Business Objectives
These are developed in areas such as - Finance, Production, Management, Labour, Marketing, Land and other Farm Resources.
An Audit of Available Business Resources
An Audit of Past Performance and Establishing the Current
Position
This is done looking at the areas of Finance, Production, Marketing and Personal.
Identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and
Threats to the Business
Develop Personal and Business Strategies to Achieve the
Defined Objectives
This will involve constructing plans in the following areas (with emphasis placed on the most important issues for your business) - Family and Lifestyle plan, Estate and Succession Plan, Education Plan, Finance Plan, Production Plan, Marketing Plan, Management Plan and a Farm Resource Plan.
An Action Plan
This indicates who does what and when.
A Monitoring Plan
This is used as a tool to remind all those in the business to check progress regularly.
