Business Plans: & THEIR Rejection: (Why We Exist).

In a nutshell, poor planning will often lead to failure. The excuse: ‘Oh. We didn’t see that coming’. Failures, within the business, have in 2025/6, faced the following;

‘Insolvencies in early 2026 remained high, with UK business failures rising 30% in February month-on-month, heavily impacting construction, retail, and hospitality due to high costs, weak demand, and tax burdens.’ Source -Google.

We have to ask: What were the antecedents? We have tools that could have taken these factors into consideration. At worst, contingencies considered in the event that demand dropped off causing a fatal lack of revenues. The same thinking applies to demand, high costs and tax burdens.

If pointing a finger, you have to wonder why management failed to plan. Even setting up contingency funding, some of the pain of people losing their jobs, might have been eased. BHS is a classic case. See here; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Home_Stores. Whatsupdocs has provided a reference in the use of information and neither endorses or condemns any BHS record.

The company’s failure is replete with examples of errors in judgement.

Where will growth and assets (traditional and asset contingency items. Knowledge, specific insight, cash, economies of scale etc). come from?

Businesses may need money. For growth and contingencies. Where from and how?

The structure of a plan should read as series of objectives, an overview of the opportunity, the size of the opportunity and how you’re going to pursue it/them (strategy) and the actions that enable the strategy (tactics). These processes are frequently misunderstood and result in a sketchy and vague document that will fail at the first hurdle.

Plan Rejected: An absence of market knowledge & research.

You’re in front of a lender: ‘Welcome. Have a seat. So what’s happening in your marketplace’. ‘Our marketplace?’ ‘Yes. Size? Wider group? Competitive intelligence? Your keystone industry? Your industry group?’

It’s very common. Missing research? Missing investment.

Plan rejected: A lack of clarity.

A plan killer. Vague musings, spoofing, ‘don’t worry, I’ve done this before’. An inability to communicate complexity (think of it as sophistication) which leads to a document gathering dust in the broom closet.

It comes down to your selling of your business to people who will invest in it. Risk, mitigation, confidence? Possible causes include too much information as the plan is put tother. Too many sources of data that needs filtering. Too much opinion and too much doubt and confusion by whatever cause. Would Warren Buffet invest in you?

Plan Rejected: An aversion to risk or a failure in understanding.

Planner seeks someone else’s’ money to mitigate their own position but it backfires because the risk is completely one sided. Risk can be mitigated and, in many cases, entirely. Risk varies from person to person and in most people there’s a noticeable aversion to losing any money.

Planner unable to specify the resources they need. People who hate selling can often shy away from hiring salespeople. While it may be patently obvious they are needed, if missing from a plan, it’s likely to be rejected.

Plan Rejected: Inconsistent waffle from beginning to end.

Ineptitude. A poor understanding of the overall process and what makes a great plan. Issues are frequently related to knowing-how (a strength and asset), ability, leadership, risk, an edge, identifying assets (strengths) and managing a presence mitigating a prominent place within a marketplace. When these factors are not addressed, they leave an impression of vagueness, confusion and non-specific utterances.

Do we know what we’re talking about?

Likely as not. A track record of raising £/$ 50M for several external projects inclusive of Start Ups, syndicated and project loans. It puts one in a unique position to understand acceptable ways that succeed..

Much of that was learned the hard way. Presenting to board members requesting investment and why we should have a couple of million to explore how we can stream massive amounts of data.

Obtaining £10M for the purposes of growing a startup from Goldman Sachs. Assembling the team that put Oracle into Vodafone and winning the deal against fierce competition. Putting the first Unix databases into BT.

These were valuable lessons learned over decades.