The National e-Commerce Extension Initiative
Southern Rural Development Center
Internet Strategies to Improve Farm Business Management
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  menu_item The Internet and the
      Manager

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  menu_item The Internet as a
      Communications Tool

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  menu_item Business Planning and
      Market Research on the
      Internet

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     menu_item The Business Planning
         Process

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        menu_item Developing Your
            Mission

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        menu_item Performing Situation
            Analysis

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        menu_item Defining Goals and
            Objectives

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        menu_item Establishing
            Strategies

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     menu_item Using the Internet to
         Conduct Marketing
         Research

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        menu_item Industry Analysis
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        menu_item Market Analysis
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        menu_item Competitive Analysis
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     menu_item Module Summary
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  menu_item e-Commerce
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  menu_item Developing and
      Maintaining Your Own
      Website

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  menu_item Promoting Your Website
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  menu_item Glossary
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The Business Planning Process


As a business manager, planning is an ongoing effort. That is, you should be assessing the external environment, analyzing where you are relative to where you want to be, and making sure you are on a path to achieve your goals. It is very important to note that the process of developing a business plan may or may not lead to a written business plan. Periodically, however, you should undertake a structured, thorough business planning process that leads to a written business plan. Where appropriate, we will point out those bits of information that are relevant to the written business plan. In general, we will focus on the planning process, which contains four major steps;

  1. Developing your mission,
  2. Performing situation analysis,
  3. Defining goals and objectives, and
  4. Establishing strategies.

Often, the analogy of planning a journey is used to describe the business planning process. In that analogy, the business's mission is the reason for undertaking the journey. The situation analysis defines your starting point. Goals and objectives, on the other hand, define your anticipated destinations. Finally, strategies define how you plan to get from your starting point to your destinations. The following sections describe these in further detail, providing information about how the Internet can play a role in each of the steps.


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Web site and all contents © Copyright SRDC 2009, All rights reserved.
CSREES These materials were developed as part of the Southern Rural Development Center’s National e-Commerce Extension Initiative. They are based upon work supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Award No. 2005-45064-03212

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Southern Rural Development Center.
 

For Questions or Comments, contact Shannon Turner.