Recently I met a millennial entrepreneur who has had a business plan template sitting on his home screen, unfilled, for 18 months.
He’s like many business owners who, if presented with something which is purportedly dull, are quite likely to park it and leave it undone.
However the same entrepreneur, in his own words said, “I would’ve entered a game to create a business plan in a heartbeat.”
A game by definition usually has a little bit of action, adventure, vibrancy. It’s about creating something from nothing in a fun and effective way.
By using a gamification procedure in creating a business plan, users can take a helicopter view of their business, and adopt strategic thinking around its operation rather than diving deep into tactics.
Gamification allows a business owner to see the wood from the trees of their enterprise.
The Bizezi web-based app is a tool for entrepreneurs that uses four gaming levels to make it much easier for business owners to create a business plan.
Level One is arguably the most challenging because it requires validation of your business idea. Bizezi uses a Business Model Canvas allows you to assemble the ‘jigsaw’ pieces of a business proposition to gauge its soundness.
Having completed Level One, Level Two is much easier - entrepreneurs can then examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of their venture.
Once a SWOT analysis has been carried out, business owners are much more able to accurately assess the cashflow implications of their business. Because a strategic or helicopter view is required (rather than the day to day tactical operation) this Level Three allows owners to ‘see’ areas of their business they might not necessarily otherwise address.
The best part about gamifying Levels One to Three is that the data collected in the background can be easily collated to populate Level Four - the actual creation of your business plan.
Sure, there may be some gaps, but these are now much easier to flesh out by taking a strategic view of your business.
This is where your business plan can enter the real world - a place where stakeholders such as bankers, financiers, investors and suppliers can have the confidence to see, literally, that you know what you’re doing.
By gamifying the creation of a business plan through the Bizezi app, entrepreneurs have a fun, relatively easy, often self-populating means to make this important document.
Bizezi makes its simple for our millennial entrepreneurs, in fact entrepreneurs of all ages, to get on with creating an all - important business plan.
Try it out for yourself and feel the relief of producing a document that many people want to see - but too many put off doing for fear it is going to be complicated, painful and involved.