1. Executives' Summary - Summary of chapters 3-8. Prepare this summary after chapters 3-8 are finished.
   
2. Overview - Include in this chapter:
   
   
   
   1. An introduction of current status and required status.
      
   2. An explanation for the whole required process.
      
   
   
3. External analysis - The analysis purpose is to map and understand the business environment. The analysis includes:
   
   
   
   1. Legal environment - Relevant rules and regulations that influence the business operations.
      
   2. Economic environment - Influencing factors such as interest rate, customary credit days in the business' industry, atmosphere in stock exchange and payment ethics in the business' industry.
      
   3. Cultural environment - Religion, customs, lifestyle and business behavioral codes.
      
   4. Political environment - Political stability level.
      
   5. Competitors - Identification of existing and potential competitors, Identification of industry enter blockers.
      
   6. Customers - Identification of existing and potential customers, identification of market segments and niches.
      
   7. Opportunities - Environment changes can make new markets be available for your business.
      
   8. Threats - Regulation changes and foreign currency sensitivity.
      
   
   
4. Internal Analysis - The analysis purpose is to map and understand the business and it's positioning within the environment. The analysis includes:
   
   
   
   1. Business essence - Business vision values and principles.
      
   2. Business' targets and goals - Definition of short and long term business targets of the following aspects: Market segments, market portions, products/services variety and income.
      
   3. Current strategy - Business structure, operating methods, products/services variety and customers' relations.
      
   4. Strengths and weaknesses - Current market portion analysis, current business positioning and customers dependency analysis.
      
   5. Current stage of products'/services' lifecycle - competition level, profit margins and existence of "next generation" products/services in the market.
      
   
   
5. Definition, analysis and characterization of the major challenges:
   
   
   
   1. Saturated market.
      
   2. Product/service weakness comparing to customers' product/service.
      
   3. Profit margin's decrease.
      
   4. Weak image
      
   5. Risky dependency on customers.
      
   
   
6. Major challenge - Choosing the major business challenge and preparing several alternative plans in order to cope with it. Plans can be:
   
   
   
   1. New product/service development.
      
   2. Improvement/expansion of existing product/service.
      
   3. Addressing new market segments.
      
   
   
7. Major challenge solution - Choosing the solution with an explanation of the reason. Preparing an implementation plan that includes all required resources.
   
8. Chosen alternative's tactic - Guide lines and concepts for implementation. It is the high level design of the marketing implementation.
   

Assaf Katzir is owner and CEO of Katzir Soze Investments Ltd
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