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BizMiner for Business Planners
In addition to an industry benchmark balance sheet, you will need an overview of your industry's performance in your market area. Multi-year trend information such as average sales, total industry market volume, failure rates and the specific performance of businesses like yours (average size for the industry, small business startups, etc.) provides an important component to your plan. Key data helps tell your story, identify industry (and your own) strengths and weaknesses – and convinces lenders and investors that you know what you are talking about. Most banks or investors require three solid years of your own numbers (or projections) against industry balance sheet benchmarks and financial ratios. Our Industry Financial and Market Research series develop separate trends and measures with industry-wide, small business and startup measures for each industry we analyze. We develop financial analysis reports for more lines of business (over 10,000) than any other provider, assuring you that the assumptions in your plan are truly based on the performance of businesses like yours. Our marketing research reports (covering more than 16,000 lines of business) are available in both national and local versions, so you can match your type of business and market area to others in the same situation. That crucial information forms the competitive backdrop to your business plan. It also helps you create your own targets, and alerts you to obstacles that you might need to address as you tell your story. In general, retail and service businesses will find Local Market Research Report Profiles most useful, since they reflect a particular local market area. Manufacturing, mail order and internet-based service or retail startups should look more toward the national comparisons in our US Market Research Report series. One note—if your market area doesn't have at least 25 firms in the analysis pool that is used to analyze the industry in that area, consider selecting either a larger area (state or national) or a broader, less specific industry category. 1. We provide hard financial analysis on your specific line of business. Business owners and business planning consultants come to BizMiner looking for reliable, detailed data they can incorporate into their business plans. A quality plan incorporates three years of industry performance and trend data, which is usually required by banks or investors. Our Industry Financial Profiles ($69) include:
2. We provide business plan data that helps you tell your story to a bank or investors. In addition to our Industry Financial Profiles, many business planners use our local and national Market Research Profiles ($99). Each Market Research Profile addresses a series of competitive trend issues in your specific line of business, including average sales, total area market volume and failure rates for the industry and startups. The reports even track firms that were in operation three years ago and report on the growth of those that made through that first, difficult period. (These measures detail industry averages, small businesses and startups separately.) You can easily compare your business vision to these real-life experiences for any of 16,000 industry segments in every state and most metro areas. In general, retail and service businesses will find Local Market Research Report Profiles most useful, since they reflect a particular local market area. Manufacturing, mail order and internet-based service or retail startups should look more toward the national comparisons in our US Market Research Report series. One note—if your market area doesn't have at least 25 firms in the analysis pool that is used to analyze the industry in that area, consider selecting either a larger area (state or national) or a broader, less specific industry category. Use Market Research Profiles to bring your vision in line with the experience of other firms like yours – or to sharpen your argument about how your business will be different. If you are starting a b-to-b business, the Market Research Report series also helps you understand your customers. How are they doing? Should you target an industry segment in a particular location? If you plan to locate in several states, our State Market Indexes ($599) give you an overview of the vitality of a selected industry segment in all fifty states and DC. If you don't need a complete set of industry trend measures, our Industry Data Buffet (from $84) lets you select only the measures you want for up to four market areas. These profiles help you tell your story by “painting a statistical picture” of your industry or the competitive market in your area. The data in them creates a backdrop of competitive knowledge that lets you seize on the positives and identify problem areas like high failure rates, low sales growth or inefficiency in your market. Your recognition of both – and your explanation of how you plan to overcome problems you identify with the help of our reports – is a powerful tool to bring to investors. 3. We help you understand what kind of performance to expect from an average firm, a small business or a startup in your line of business. Our reports help you understand what to expect from a business by analyzing the experience of others in your situation – in your line of business and in your market area. Our local and national Market Research Profiles develop special “survivor” measures that help you assess where successful businesses with your characteristics usually land in three years. The “survivor” measures add a dimension to traditional industry “snapshot” analysis, which we also include in our Profiles. This multi-faceted view of the industry – “snapshot” and “survivor” images – is one of the great advantages of BizMiner analysis. Another is the range of industry and location detail. The third is a set of proprietary measures that help sharpen your understanding of what's to come: survivors sales, sales per employee measures, failure rates, entrepreneurial activity rates and concentrations of high growth firms in your market. These and other analytical advantages help you understand the current picture of the business you are starting – and where it may be heading over the next few years. Other Tools for Business Planners We have other tools to help you, too. You can view free samples of any of our profile series. The samples show you exactly what measures and format you can expect with any report of that series and version. If you are struggling with the measures in our reports, we provide free Market Research Report Edge and Industry Financial Edge memos that help you understand how to understand and apply various measures. You can even read more about our analytical methodology. And of course, you are always welcome to contact us with questions. |
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