What Business Plan Software Shouldn’t Do

The ideal business plan software doesn’t write your text or do your numbers. Instead, it helps you with the mechanics of managing the links between the different numbers, and the main topic outline, laying out the page if you need to print it, and giving you ideas, questions to answer, and suggestions.

Broken_Lightbulp_Flickrcc_snail_race[1] I just saw another blog post by somebody who ought to know better, knocking business plan software for writing people’s text. What would a programmer know about your business or what should be in your plan, the blog asks.

This is the logical equivalent of saying that word processing software isn’t a good tool for writing a letter, because what would a programmer know about the content of your letter? It’s a tool, for heaven’s sake. Done right, it doesn’t write your text. Of course not.

I get the feeling that people who have never used business plan software guess what it’s doing and then criticize their guess, instead of the actual software.

Or maybe it’s that they’ve seen those stupid ads all over the Web for business plans that write themselves, or just fill in the blanks and get financed, and similar dumb claims. That’s not business plan software any more than a purchased term paper is research or writing software.

(Image: Snail Race via Flickr cc)

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