Palo Alto Software is the creator and distributor of a unique family of business
planning products which include Business Plan Pro, Marketing Plan Pro and CashPlan
Pro. For the purposes of this review, we looked primarily at the Business and
Marketing Plan products.
We've written our fair share of plans over the years, so we were naturally curious
about any tool which could help us to craft a better plan faster. For the uninitiated,
writing such plans can be an arduous task. As a consultant, we are always amazed at how
few people even consider writing such plans. But they are a necessary evil, and because
most folks lack the experience to do so themselves, they turn to folks like me. Since I
frequently find myself working on several plans simultaneously, I had a real strong
interest in this family of software products.
Writing such plans requires the author to follow a fairly formal and rigid outline.
While portions may be omitted, and the entire plan abbreviated, you need a road map, and
both of these planning tools do an excellent job of providing very precise direction. In
fact, the family of products is actually wizard-based. As you follow the process, you
progress from step to step with a click of a button.
The tools explain what type of text is expected within a particular chapter of the
plan, and it even offers examples of such text. Tables and charts also contain sample data
to provide examples of required information. If you run out of ideas, there are links back
to the family of Palo Alto web sites where there are an abundance of more examples,
suggestions, and advice. The packages also come with a nice collection of sample plans
written for different industries. These can help you get started quickly.
If you are not an extremely PC literate individual and are not comfortable with
Microsoft Word and Excel, these planning tools will be perfect for you as they provide
everything you need within one application. Rather than juggling several applications, and
cutting and pasting data between them, Business and Marketing Plan Pro provide you with
the ability to create an integrated document complete with text (word processing), tables
(spreadsheets), and charts (graphs).
For the more advanced user and writer, you may find this integrated approach a bit
stifling and awkward. For instance, editing text or numbers is somewhat limited when
compared to the full power of Microsoft Office applications. It's a trade off, really, of
convenience vs. power. If you don't know what you are doing, Business and Marketing Plan
Pro will help you to create a good-looking plan. If you know what you are doing, you may
be a bit frustrated by the interface.
A word of warning: while these tools will help you to create good-looking plans,
I'm not so sure you can consider them finished products. I'd still suggest that you let
your lawyer or accountant review them -- especially the numbers. Since you usually only
get one chance to pitch your plan to a prospective investor or bank, you better make it
count. Furthermore, most people can't write worth a damn (trust me, I taught College
English for years -- I know what I am talking about), so even using these products does
not guarantee your thoughts are complete or even well-written. You would be wise to
consider the end product of these tools as nothing more than working drafts. After you're
done, get some reputable, experienced people to proofread, edit and enhance the document
so it presents you in the best possible light.
Palo Alto provides a library of sample plans, a companion book which is included (Hurdle
by Timothy Berry, the developer of these tools), and a family of web sites all of which
provide good examples for the novice and professional. Once your plan is completed, you
can even post it to their web site for potential investors to read. And if you decide to
become a "pro" after learning how to use the tool, you can even apply for a
listing in their directory as a planning consultant.
Business and Marketing Plan Pro seem to require a great deal of RAM. We experienced
some system freezes when we attempted to keep Outlook 5.0, Explorer 5.1 and the planning
tools open at the same time. It may just be our system (128 MB RAM) or possible memory
leaks from somewhere else, but we do recommend you have plenty of RAM in your own system
when using these tools.
Additionally, we experienced some flaky problems with the installation of Business Plan
Pro which eventually displayed an error message stating we needed to re-install Windows
98. Palo Alto was very responsive to our problem and suggested a work-around which
involved manually loading and upgrading some system software. Apparently, there are some
known bugs with nvidia video cards, and my system just happened to have the wrong
combination of elements to create the problem. While they were able to get us up and
running within a number of hours, we would have liked to have seen the installation
process better documented with a clear warning about what needed to
be loaded as well as what types of hardware conflicts have been known to create
software problems.
That said, both Business and Marketing Plan Pro have a lot going for them. The fact
that the programs can upgrade themselves over the Internet through their web sites is a
good sign that Palo Alto wants to stand behind their customers and provide good post-sales
support. We're anxious to see the next version, and hope they work out some of the bugs we
experienced. Their technical people have stated these problems have been addressed in the
next version. So, all systems are clear, and it's time for you to go check them out. Click
on the banner at the top of the page to visit their site for more information.
Business Plan Pro
