How to Summarize Your Company in a Business Plan

The Company Summary of a business plan provides a high level look at how all of the different elements of your business fit together, including information about the nature of your business and the success factors that you feel will make your business successful and consequently, profitable.

What Goes in the Company Summary Area of a Business Plan

What you include in your Company Summary will in part depend on the nature and age of your business.

For example, you might include:

A concise opening paragraph about the company. Here's one business plan example of this paragraph:
XYZ Consulting is a new company that provides expertise in search marketing solutions for business on a worldwide basis, including website promotion,online advertising and search engine optimization techniques to improve its clients' positioning in the search engines. We will cater to the higher education market, including colleges, universities and professional educational institutions.

Also mention if you plan to expand to other markets and what your expanded markets will entail.
Company Ownership. Indicate whether the company is structured as a sole proprietorship, LLC, S Corporation or partnership, as well as the state and city in which the business is established as a legal entity.
Startup Summary, if applicable. If your business is in the process of starting up, provide information about your startup expenses, assets and investors and the amount of each investor's contribution to your startup capital and the amount of your liabilities.

Company Locations and Facilities. For most home businesses, this is going to be a short paragraph. Here's a business plan example:
The initial office will be established in a dedicated office room in the proprietor's home in ABC County "Silicon Alley" area of Massachusetts, the heart of the high tech industry in the Northeast United States and home to hundreds of colleges and universities and a vibrant higher education community.

If you are operating alone and the success of the company will be highly dependent on your knowledge and abilities, you may also want to include some personal history highlights to explain your education and experience that makes you perfectly suited to anchor your company. If there are weaknesses in your qualifications, indicate how you plan to overcome them or compensate for them. You can attach a complete resume in the Appendix section of your document.

All in all, you should be able to cover the Company Summary in your business plan with about one page. You may also want to include a graph or chart with respect to startup costs or capital requirements where appropriate.

Business Plan Example

Sometimes the best way to understand what goes into a business plan is to view an example business plan. Here's an example of the Company Summary section of a business plan for a high tech consulting company.

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For those of you who would like to go into a bit more detail on how to write a business plan or would like more input on business plan examples or suggestions, I welcome you to participate in the discussion on this topic in the Business Plans folder in the About Home Business Forum.

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