Palo Alto Software, the folks who brought you Business
Plan and Marketing Plan Pro, now bring you Web
Strategy Pro, a helpful tool geared specifically toward helping the web
start-up with pulling a strategic plan together.
Like its predecessors, Web
Strategy Pro is a hefty tool, requiring some PC horse power, and a definitive
investment in time to learn the system. While it may come across in ads as an
"instant-fill-in-the-blanks" business plan generator, nothing could be further
from the truth. You need to have some writing skill, some business and web acumen, and you
best have your facts gathered BEFORE you sit down to write the strategic plan. Web
Strategy Pro will help you to organize your thoughts in crisp ways, but it
won't write the plan for you.
One of the short-fallings of the previous products is that they were really written for
a brick and mortar world. Not that consultants and end users couldn't create a great web
business plan (many did), but having a new product like Web
Strategy Pro to turn to definitely makes it easier to get started.
Web
Strategy Pro helps the end user to formulate a loose plan -- about 21 pages
in the sample plans provided. By prompting the end user with a series of questions, an
outline is gradually built. The tool comes with its own integrated word processor and
spreadsheet and charting tool. As we've said in the past, the overall system would be much
stronger if it was integrated directly with MS-Office applications. If you can get past
the rudimentary functions of these native tools, you'll do fine. It can be frustrating,
though, at times.
The system asks difficult questions of the end user. It asks for information about your
web site demographics, your Internet presence, your website strategy, your site
positioning, traffic forecast, and front end and back end development requirements.
Attempting to draft these answers while you are using the tool is not advised. You need to
do some homework before using Web
Strategy Pro. Like they say, plan the plan, write the plan, work the plan.
We recommend you review the sample plans included with the system. Print them out, look
them over, and start making notes for your own responses. Web
Strategy Pro won't generate the final product for you; you can't print the
plan and bring it to your bank and expect them to give you a small business loan. You'll
still need to show the draft plan to your accountant, attorney and mentors for feedback
and enhancement. That said, it's a great tool to jump-start an operation. Considering how
competitive the Internet market is these days, speed to market is a definitive advantage.
If Web
Strategy Pro can shave even a few weeks off your launch, it's a great
investment.
One thing we'd like to see added is some integration for slide presentation. While Web
Strategy Pro does integrate tables and charts with the plan, it would be
really helpful if there was an option to generate the plan as a Powerpoint presentation
instead of a word processing document. Just as most business people can't write well, even
fewer feel comfortable drafting and making a business presentation to venture capital
companies or potential strategic partners. Having an "instant" presentation
generator would be a tremendous add-on tool.
For more information, click here.
Web Strategy Pro
