How the Internet has affected business planning

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The Internet's Effects on Business Planning

A Pew study indicates that only 2 percent of Americans can't get internet access, and over 80% of households have broadband access in some form. (Robertson, 2013) Most schoolchildren become familiar with the internet in their classrooms or in their visits to the school library, now called the media center. These children will grow up into a work environment that considers the use of the computer and the internet to be an essential business tool, as essential as a paper and pencil was a century ago.

Planning is an all important part of building a business, second only to having a business dream. The business plan is the most important document when starting up a new business or branching out into a subsidiary business. Research can help determine the need for the goods or services that would be sold, the market percentage that could be achieved, the competition and the opportunities available in one's chosen market niche. The internet provides an important information source for all of these research subjects.

This is a consideration of the internet's effects on planning by how it influences 1) the motivation for planning, 2) the processes for planning, and 3) the outcomes of planning.

Here is an outline of the definitions of the necessary components of a business plan. Entrepreneur and investor Tim Berry provides an overview of the seven essential documents that are necessary for a business:

1. The Executive Summary. This must contain the highlights of your business plan, in a format that assumes that important readers will read only this document.

2. The Company. This section outlines the method whereby the legal entity of the company, including initial ownership, startup costs and initial funding. If the company is ongoing, this is where you put the history and past performance of the company.

3. What You Sell. In this description of the ...