Nothing beats a pen and paper

I was sitting down the beach today after a barreling dawn session at “The Wreck” in Byron Bay and was thinking about the values of pen versus computer when planning…………..and decided that nothing beats pen and paper especially after my recent trip to Malaysia where my laptop got fried yet again…

OctiSphere 1.0 created at Bondi Icebergs Club 2003

I decided to revert to my diary for initial notes and the mud-map of what we were planning on our 08 projects and how they all fitted together. Now I understand you may think these sketches are the product of a deranged mind but they are in fact proof of concept. The first image is Octisphere1.0 which we mapped out at the Bondi Life Savers club in 2003.

7.am swell at The Pass – Byron Bay Jan 7th, 2008

Virtually every line, circle and unit in OctiSphere 1.0 became a reality. OK so it may not be clear to the layman but we did translate these initial diagrams into logical working mindmaps.

Anyway the process got me thinking again last week when we were planning out a supply chain for our outsourcing business and came up with another gem – Octisphere 2.0.

OctiSphere 2.0 created at Byron Bay Surf Life Saving
Club January 3nd 2008

I’d been working on a business plan for a new project we’re doing in The Philippines and was using the Palo Alto Business Planning software called The Social Enterprise Edition of Business Plan Pro . The problem was I’d just burnt through yet another lappy. Out came the pen and paper and Voila!

Anyway whilst pen and paper pretty much always work its handy to use the The Social Enterprise Edition of Business Plan Pro as it makes business planning simple and fast. We use this social business planning software literally every week in our telecentre consulting service.

It was developed by Palo Alto Software in partnership with the Social Enterprise Alliance specifically for nonprofit organizations as an easy-to-use blueprint for planning a successful earned income venture, or social enterprise.

Our team had input in the early stages of this program development as we had found that we needed a social business planning tool and I had just finished using their pro version for a commercial enterprise I was working on. The new product turned out to be perfect and we used it extensively last year on YSEI.org – our new Youth Social Fund.

Tutorials

PaloAlto even have some cool tutorials on YouTube

Its features include:

* Wizard task instructions tailored to earned income ventures
* Includes market analysis, strategy and implementation descriptions
* Produce an earned income sales forecast, personnel plan and financial statements
* Specific drop down examples for social enterprises
* Calculate your Social Return on Investment (SROI)
* New resources for developing and financing earned income strategies
* And more…

This is worth checking out if you are an NGO keen to scale. The Social Enterprise Edition of Business Plan Pro.

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