A Marketing Plan is an essential planning document in a business plan. Most organizations conduct a Business Planning on a yearly basis. There are cases where the marketing is very volatile, a yearly Business Planning is no longer adequate. As such, there are organizations who adopted a dynamic Business Planning.

Dynamic Business Planning simply meant the management team evaluate the business plan on a monthly basis to test the assumptions used in the plan. This is needed due to the fast changes in the market place. Due to the frequency of reviewing the business plan, organization has design a template to help the management team in their data collection and analysis for the purpose of their assessment.

Past experience unveil that there are pros and cons of using a template for the assessment of the business plan. Soem are more critical than the others but I would not rank them as it is not the same for different organizations who use it. Below is the list of pros and cons:-

Pros of using a template

1. It serves as a standard format for presentation purpose
2. It communicates the pertinent items to be addressed
3. It avoid hidden agenda
4. No excuse to be “overlook”
5. Clear indicated the sequence of tasks to be carried out

Cons of using a template

1. User wait for the template to start their work
2. Some detail may be neglected as it is not stated in the template
3. kill innovation
4. Thinking limited by the boundary of the template
5. Some go for the short cut – fill in the blanks

The above merely some examples of the pros and cons of using a template for a Business Plan. It is not necessary always happen to you but it is good to be aware and take precaution not to fall into the “syndrome” of a template. Of course, you can turn the cons to your advantage by addressing it proactively. Read more detail Marketing Plan components to avoid the cons