Building a Strong Business

Understanding your organization's strengths and weakness and building strong business skills is essential for any organization working in the export market. Building a strong business includes having a business plan, good financial planning, and strong accounting and administrative skills. A business plan will help you to evaluate your organization, identify new opportunities, set goals for where you want to be in the future, and make a plan to meet those goals. Financial planning will assure that you know what your expenses and income are throughout the year. It will also help you to plan ahead so that you have the funds you need to get your work done and know how to access credit if it is needed. Finally, accounting and administrative skills will make sure that your keep accurate records on sales, expenses, inventory and other aspects of your business. We hope to grow this learning module over time, to offer more information and resources. If you wish to learn more about building a strong business, the recommended resources offer a good place to get started. you can also look at the resources listed below.

Websites

SME Toolkit -  offers software, business forms, training and additional resources to help small businesses in emerging markets grow and succeed. They have articles, business forms, online training, and other resources on accounting and finance, business planning, human resources, marketing and sales, operations, and information technology.

SCORE - this website has a variety of resources on starting, managing, growing and financing your business. They also have templates to get you started in writing your own business plan, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and sales projections.

My Own Business -  a practical and user-friendly site to help set up and get a small business off the ground. Though not specific to crafts enterprises, it offers advice and tools in the form of an online 12-part course useful to any enterprise. Information is available in Arabic, English, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Mongolian and Spanish.

Manuals

The following manuals are available for download in pdf format. They require having Adobe Acrobrat to open.

The Finance Export Guide by the West African Trade Hub is a 20 page manual complete with information on export financing. It covers pricing of products, terms and conditions of export, contracts, methods of payment and financing your shipment. It is an easy to understand resource with lots of valuable information for small and medium producers. Download here.

Into the Market Manual by Tradecraft and IFAD is a 137 page manual that focuses on accessing markets but has an excellent section on building a sustainable business that helps small and medium enterprises asses where they are at, where they want to go and how to get there. The manual will take several minutes to download.  Download here.

How to Write a Business Plan - This 48 page manual, written for small and medium enterprises, provides stpe-by-step guidelines for writing a business plan, with lots of worksheets and practical information. Published by Ethiopian Business Development Services Network (EBDSN). Download here.

Starting a Small Business - This 53 page training module by UNESCO on entrepreneurship and how to start your own business includes advice on developing entreprenurial skills, getting started, and mobilizing resources. Download here.

How to Prepare your Business Plan is an advanced manual on writing a business plan. It is intended for use in training of senior and middle management in business planning and as a reference guide for individual enterprises to prepare their business plan. The 228-page manual is available for download here.
Published by ‹UNCTAD› and SOFI, New York and Geneva 2001