BUSM 4010 Professional Business Plan Development: Get Started

This guide was created to assist in researching a new venture. Use the links below or the menu to the left to access the best sources for each of these topics:

• Industry & Market.  Use this page to learn about your industry and target market.
• Marketing. Access databases that will help you understand your customers and how to market your product to them.
• Operations. Use the resources in this section to find articles and data to determine your business operations and staffing.
• Financial Data. Find benchmarks and other data to create a financial model.
• Funding. Research investors and other sources of funding.

You will find resources for determining Risks throughout the tabs on this guide.

Who are the customers? If you customers are individual people, use market research reports to find segmentation, consumer preferences, and buying patterns. If your customers are businesses, use an industry report to find the size of the market, market drivers, and geographic concentration.

How do companies like this work? Industry reports provide general information about the industry - all the companies that sell the same product or service. Reports also include largest companies, suppliers, emerging trends and regulatory changes, performance benchmarks, and key business issues.