In the business boom of the late 1990s, software for preparing business plans was itself a big business. With plenty of venture capital available, a good-looking boilerplate plan could mean the difference between a company being founded or an idea foundering for lack of financial support. Then the bottom fell out of the venture capital market, and business plan software languished, though the need for business plans for obtaining credit kept this application from vanishing completely.

These days, there seems to be some interest once again in financing new businesses, but even more important, there is a growing awareness that a solid plan is necessary for the growth of an existing business.

Fortunately, this segment of the market didn't just disappear.

At the same time, business plan software is not the same application as budgeting software. There is some overlap in processes, and even the use of the end product. But the two applications are more synergistic than interchangeable.

Planning software, such as budgeting, is used to prepare an operating plan for management to follow in the near term. By planning out goals, both financial and operational, management is creating a roadmap for the business to follow, and a benchmark to determine how much of that roadmap the business has actually achieved.

A business plan is a bit different. While it may (and usually does) incorporate budgets, the major intent of most business plan software is to lay out the intent of a proposed business, detail its management structure, and project its marketing and operating possibilities. That's not to say that a business plan application can't be used for operational management, but only that day-to-day operational management is usually not the focus of the application.

The user of each type of application also tends to be different. Business planning applications are often used internally, while business plan software is a common tool in the arsenal of accountants and consultants, who often guide clients through the process.

This is often a good approach, even if the application offers wizards to its users, a feature common in this type of application. While a wizard can help a user navigate the process, your experience with all of the players in the process - from the user making up the plan, to the potential investor, to other similar enterprises - makes you a valuable resource when actually constructing and fine-tuning the business plan.

THE SAME, YET DIFFERENT

We looked at six popular business plan applications. To some extent, they are all pretty similar, using boilerplate text and a spreadsheet-like matrix of financial projections. There are, however, differences both in approach and in methodology. Some of these differences might be more important than others.

Regardless of the approach taken, we think you'll find an appropriate product. None of the seven packages requires a particularly powerful PC, and all will run very nicely on most laptops, should you want to take the application to the client.

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