Business Insight®
Reviews
Computer Shopper
Kathy Yakal
Business Analysis On a Disk
Spending a few hundred dollars on software may keep you from losing a lot more. If you run a small business, your business plan is often required reading for potential investors and financial institutions. Even if your plan is credible enough to bring in the funds you need, it's still not guaranteed to put you on the path to success. So software designed to help you draw up a strategic plan can be a valuable tool. In fact, you might want to consider buying the software even before you order business cards. Business Resource Software's Business Insight is one such program. At $795 estimated, it's ... certainly cheaper than hiring a real-life consultant. And it should easily end up paying for itself.
Business Insight isn't a business-plan program per se--it doesn't walk you through the steps of creating and printing a polished business plan. Instead, it asks you hundreds of questions about your proposed or existing business in a wizard-like, outline-driven interview. The program then evaluates your input and offers a text- and chart-based analysis, based on the expertise of several dozen authorities in marketing, planning, and strategy. New features in version 5.0 include an entirely revamped and improved interface; the new Quick Start feature for users who want a faster, abbreviated evaluation; and a revised comparison feature that lets you contrast different strategies.
To begin writing your plan, you must first decide which questions you need to answer; because product- and service-oriented businesses are different, Business Insight offers two separate outlines. Once you've made your selection, the program presents you with a tabbed-notebook metaphor, through which you can navigate by clicking on the tabs. It's an effective navigational tool for this application and far superior to those used in previous versions.
Business Insight gives you the option of running the Quick Start version, which presents you with only about 60 questions, as opposed to the complete version, which asks more than 500. Although the Quick Start method may save you time, it makes assumptions based on your 60 answers to speculate on the questions not asked. You can change your answers as you review the results, then decide whether it's worth going back and answering everything.
Regardless of which method you choose, the subsequent procedure is the same. You can choose individual outline topics, or use the Next and Back buttons to navigate through all the sections. The first section deals with general enterprise issues, such as business history, staffing, skills, and other descriptive questions about your company. The program provides several ways for you to supply your response: checking the box next to the phrase that best meets your needs, entering data into a blank field, or rating answers on a scale of one to 10. Each question has an Ignore box, in the event a question absolutely doesn't apply to you. And if you're unsure and want to research a question, take a guess and check the Guess box. Later, you can display all your guesses and change the answers if you choose.
Depending on whether your business involves products or services, the next section delves into the related details of either. Product-related questions, for example, deal with strategy, R&D, applications, packaging, and benefits of the product. Business Insight also poses questions about your marketing and sales plans, competition, production, suppliers, and financials. The program's thorough interrogation might call to mind details you hadn't considered before.
Now comes your reward: the analysis. Business Insight offers several levels of evaluation, along with suggestions for improvements in areas it judges weak. The main sections and subsections are displayed, as in the earlier parts of the program, using the same tabbed-notebook metaphor and navigation buttons. Hyperlinks in text sections take you back to the original questions and answers that prompted a particular rating. The red/yellow/green stoplight at the bottom of the screen denotes your progress on the overall strategy up to that point. It indicates whether you should continue with your strategy, if it needs a little work, or it might suggest you should abandon it altogether.
The level of analytical depth the program provides is impressive. Business Insight uses written observations and charts to give you credit where appropriate, and to call out inconsistencies or weaknesses in your plan. It generates a thorough analysis of your marketing strategy, operational factors, financials, strengths, and weaknesses. You get specific feedback, such as "Product is priced below average market price" or "Cost-management techniques need improvement." You get a success-potential rating in 11 key areas, graphic analysis of key marketing concepts, and a marketing-plan draft.
Business Insight is more successful at analyzing how you might fare in the marketplace than it is at helping you alter your strategy to be successful. It provides links to resourceful Web sites and a feature in the analysis segment that helps you improve your rating. But the solutions Business Insight offers are mostly mathematical--for example, it suggests how individual rankings should be changed to bring your score up.
Although $795 is a big hit for many fledgling businesses to take, anyone who's serious about succeeding in business will find Business Insight a worthy investment. It forces you to think about key concepts you might not otherwise have considered, and its thorough analysis can be an effective wake-up call.
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Business Strategy
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, Austin, Texas 78728
Fax: (512)251-4401