How to Create Better Business Plans With AI

Creating a business plan is one of the many daunting tasks you face as a founder. It requires extensive research and detailed financial forecasting, along with a way to convey your business model. 

The issue is that writing a business plan takes longer than it should. It’s not that we should skip over the research and forecasting, because they’re important, but a lot of the time is spent on formatting, aesthetics, describing, and visualization. And, even then, we’re susceptible to human biases and mistakes.

AI has many uses, and there is perhaps no better showcasing of its flexibility than when writing a business plan.

What AI Can Offer

AI in business planning doesn't mean generating a business plan with a prompt. This would be far too general, and produce something rather generic. Instead, there are various specialized subsets within AI that can tackle different tasks. 

Natural Language Processing enables computers to process human language, so this can be useful for market research analysis, like gauging the sentiment in control groups.

Machine learning uses AI to learn from data and make predictions - so this can be used within about financials and consumer behaviors. 

Generative AI and LLMs assist in the creative process, being a bouncing board for ideas, and creating descriptive text and images; from SWOT analysis to marketing strategies. 

Document Structuring and Visual Refinement

AI-Powered Templates for Business Plans

Business plan templates are a great way to get the ball rolling, as they provide guidelines and remove some of the wasted time spent on design. 

AI can be used here to help decide on which template is suitable for your model and industry, as well as to generate changes to the style and formatting. To do this, take a screenshot of various templates and upload them into an LLM like Gemini or ChatGPT, where feedback will be provided. Some template software may also have AI tools built in to make real-time adjustments based on text prompts.

Real-Time AI Collaboration: Screen Sharing with AI Studio

Imagine sharing your screen with a super smart business partner. Except, you don’t have one, because you’re a lone founder. Well, Google’s AI Studio can be exactly that - and for free. Through screen sharing, the AI can analyze the visual layout of your document through a constant live feed. So, when making an adjustment, it can provide real-time feedback. This isn’t just useful for aesthetics and formatting, but it can catch and mistakes you type within the copy. This saves time editing at the end, as you have it watching over you as you go. 

AI in Research

Automated Market Research

Market research is the backbone of any solid business plan. It’s very important but equally very time-consuming. AI isn’t supposed to erode your efforts in this area, but instead, enhance the findings. 

For example, AI can be used to help generate web scraping code, or, to read the scraped PDFs from a range of sources like industry reports and competitor sites. In either case, more can be learnt in a shorter amount of time, each with references. In fact, Google’s Notebook LM will even reference its findings, so you can double-check it has the correct analysis.

Competitive Intelligence

AI can help understand your competitors, such as identifying their strengths/weakness and assessing the market position. Data will be important, but you can also ask LLMs for ideas about where to gather the data. The analysis itself, such as within Excel, can be guided by AI’s formula generation. Otherwise, alerts for when competitors make changes to their websites can be automated, such as price updates.

Financial Projections and Forecasting

AI-Enhanced Financial Forecasting

Financial forecasting is one of the more tricky parts of any business plan, and traditional methods often rest on big assumptions. Though AI can certainly help by speeding up the modelling of these, its predictive power can also be a second approach to come at forecasting from a fresh new angle. For example, modelling complex simulations.

The Writing Process and Document Generation

Writing a business plan can be very difficult for some people, especially if they’re better at the numbers side of things. Even the most basic of chatbots offered by OpenAI, Claude, and Google are sufficient in writing without grammar or spelling errors. At the very least, they’re powerful proofreaders.

Alternatively, you can become the editor, and allow the LLM to describe different elements of the plan, such as the graphs and finances. It may actually be more accurate, though it’s never wise to let it roam freely without a firm edit. AI image generators can also supplement text in an engaging way.

Final Word

AI helps not only speed up the process of business planning, but also the accuracy. It allows founders to fill in gaps in their skill set, be it literacy or visualizing data, acting as a mentor, writer, and programmer.