Enterprise: The Project…in plain English
The Enterprise project is a part of your course that is worth 50% of your final mark- :o!
In this project you will come up with the idea for and actually run a business. You have
to go through all the steps a real life, careful entrepreneur would. For example, getting
money to start the business up, doing advertisements, selling things and hopefully
counting profits.
A report will show Cambridge all the work you did in coming up with the business
ideas and running it. It will tell them what you thought about being an entrepreneur
and whether the business was an epic success :D, or an epic fail :'(.
To get high marks, Cambridge wants:
 you to talk about topics you learned in class, like the skills of an entrepreneur,
types of businesses, risks of business, etc. You have to show how these apply to
your business.
 you to explain and discuss what you personally think about what you did, even
if you are in a group. They want to see that you understand how to make
decisions and that you have opinions about the business.
 proof to show the work you did. Like the questionnaires you did or cards you
designed.
 Everything to be in your OWN words.
There are four parts or Tasks that make up your whole report:




Part or Task 1:- Identifying a Suitable Project or Activity
Part or Task 2:- Planning the Project or Activity
Task 3:- Implementing the Plan
Task 4:-Evaluating the Project or Activity

Part or Task 1:- Identifying a Suitable Project or Activity
This task is all about how you decided on the business idea to go with and whether
you think you’ll be good at being an entrepreneur.
It’s an introduction to your entire project and shows Cambridge you thought hard
about what idea would work and why.
Task One has to:
 Have headings, titles, paragraphs and a conclusion like any other normal report
you would write for an important exam.
 Be about 1,000 words in total.
 Show you know what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, so you have to do
an evaluation of :
o your own skills- the Skills Evaluation, and
o someone else’s (like a celebrity or business person). This time it is in a
Poster form to show that you know how to put information together in a
simple way for other people to enjoy reading. It should have: the name of
the person you chose, where the live, their date of birth, why you think they
count as an entrepreneur, what skills they have, pictures.
 Show that you thought about more than one idea and then did research to see
which should be most successful. You have to include evidence like copies of
surveys, internet research or whatever you did.
 Have an explanation of the customer needs your different business ideas would
fill and how the business would fill them. Remember a business has to fill a
customer need or want to be successful. For example: selling snacks at school will
fill the need of students because we don’t have a cafeteria.
 Have an explanation about why you chose the idea you did for the final project,
why you think it’s the best one out of them all.
 A sentence saying what you believe the main purpose of the business is. For
example, if you’re going raise money for special uniforms next Sports Day, the
statement could be: “to contribute to house spirit by raising monies for the
purchase of special, customized sport uniforms in 2013”.
 A leaflet for other member of the class, telling them briefly about the project you
chose. It should have: pictures, a description of the business idea, results of your
research and who your customers will be.
All the things above will have to be organized into different headings and labels since
it’s a proper report.
Once you’ve decided what your business will be… the next step would be to plan doing
it! This is Task 2.

Task 2:- Planning the Project or Activity
Task two is about carefully planning how the idea you chose will work. Planning
properly will give your business a better chance of succeeding, instead of failing.
You have to show that you thought about all the little things that have to be done,
what could go wrong, the money you need and how you will get people to support
and buy your products. The section will have a lot of information in it and is
probably the longest in the whole project.
Task Two has several sections in it, it must have:





A proper headings, titles, paragraphs, etc. just like the first part.
A Business Plan.
An Action Plan.
A Risk Assessment.
Either a Financial Planning section OR Planning Marketing
Communication section
We’ll go through each piece one by one.
1. In the real world, the Business Plan may be the only section that would go to a bank
or investor if an entrepreneur wanted support for their business – since this may be
all they see, it’s ok if some of the information put into Task one is in it again.
The business plan should include contents like :
o A Cover Page - to introduce the plan, with a picture maybe, the business
name, stuff like that
o An Executive Summary – a short paragraph talking about the aims and
objectives of the business, as well as a description of what it’s about and
the strategy to make it work. It’s a good idea to write this last even
though it comes first :s.
o An About Us section- information about who’s in the group, what their
responsibilities are, what their skills are, why you think the project will
work and who the customers are.
o The Marketing & Sales Strategy- why do you think people will buy your
stuff and support you? What needs or wants is your business satisfying
and how? How do you plan to advertise what you have? E.g. flyers, radio
or tv ads, etc.
o The Operations section- here you’ll talk about how the project will run
or operate. You should include details on: the equipment, raw materials
and staff needed
o A Risk Assessment and a time frame for everything to be done in-an
Action Plan.
o Financial Forecasts- a simple budget showing how much money you
expect to get in sales and how much you expect to spend in costs. How
much money do you need to get started? What options do you have to
get the money, like borrowing it, selling ‘shares’ or using savings?
o Review and Evaluation- How will you check to make sure everything is
going well and according to the plan? E.g. checking the monies made
each day.
2. An Action Plan will help you make sure you keep on track. It should show:
 What major things have to be done for the business to operate (Tasks or
Activity), so you have to break the business down into a things to do list,
 How long it should take be done (Timeframe) and when it should be finished
(Deadline),
 Who is responsible for doing it (Responsibility or Person Responsible),
 How you will check to make sure it is actually being done (Monitoring) and
 How it turned out, what actually happened (Results or Outcome)
Check the example below:
TASK
TIMING RESPONSIBILITY DEADLINE MONTIORING
RESULTS
st
Raise
One
Brittany/
21 May
A group meeting It was
Money to Month
Paul/
2012
will be held
difficult to
buy stock (30 days) Krista
every 2 days &
raise the
($500)
the accounts
money
will be checked through
to see what
personal
money was
savings and
raised until the the project
target is
was delayed
reached.
by 2 weeks
Collect
Two
Nathanael/
4th May
Order table
50 orders
orders
weeks
Justin
2012
showing orders were
for cases
and down
collected
payments
3. A Risk Assessment will tell Cambridge:
 what you think are the biggest risks to your business (Risks)
 how epic you think the outcomes could be (Severity of Outcome)
 how likely you think they are to happen and (Likelihood)
 what you plan to do about them (Approach or Comments)
There two scales Cambridge wants you to use to rate them:
Check the example below:
RISK
LIKELIHOOD
OF
OCCURRENCE
Customers get food 3
poisoning from the
baked goods
Not enough
customers to make
a profit
4
SEVERITY COMMENTS
OF
OUTCOME
4
We will take a course in food
hygiene and preparation to make
sure we use the best standards.
OR
5
Instead of baking it ourselves we
will buy sealed goods from an
established supermarket and re-sell
them. This supermarket is
experienced and is tested for safety
and hygiene.
Since we’re a new business, we will
have trouble to get enough
customers to keep us going. We
won’t have money to buy stock for
the next day. We will do a lot of
advertising and promotions to
make sure we at least break even.
4. You have to go more in depth into either Financial Planning OR Planning
Marketing Communications.
 Financial Planning
If you choose this one, you have to do:
o a simple budget for the projects, showing how much money you personally
think the business will make and spend. The budget has to have:
 where you got your first set of money to start and how much did you
have at that start up point
 what choices for money did you have for various things the business
needed, which one you chose any why. You should use the table
below.
COSTS OF
POTENTIAL ADVANTAGES
DISADVANTAGES METHOD
MATERIALS & METHOD OF OF THE SOURCE OF THE SOURCE CHOSEN
QUIPMENT
FINANCE
Fees for Food
Hygiene Course
for 2 people
(Total: $300)
Sell Shares in
the business
Ask school to
pay (grant)
Raise money
with a
fundraising
event
-Money does not
need to be repaid.
-Can raise as
much as we need
if we become a
limited liability
company
- Will not have to
repay the money
at all
- Money will not
have to be repaid
-Will lose some
ownership
-Have to share
profits with
shareholders
-Decision making
will take longer
- Will have to
produce a report to
justify why we need
the money. Our
results will be
reported to our
parents & will be
on our school
record which is bad
if we fail the course.
- Might not raise
enough
-May need money
to do the
fundraising to
begin with
We will ask the
school to pay
at least
some of the
money and we
will raise the
balance. We
expect that
they will pay
as the test can
count towards
the schools
results and
shows that we
are doing lots
of activities.
We will need
to be sure to
do well in the
course by
studying hard.
 how much income you think you will get and how much expenditure
over the time you run the business
 a plan as to how you will split up the money for expenses, like 300 for
stock, 100 to repay loan from school, etc.
 how much money you put for emergencies or unexpected things
 how much profit or loss you expect to make
o make a presentation that you practiced to a teacher or business person
describing what options you have to get the money, which one you choose
and why you think that one is the best.
*The person you made the presentation to has to sign a letter saying that yes, you
did do it and whether it was well done or not. I have the copy of the letter they have
to sign. You also have to include a copy of the presentation in your project.
Check an example of a budget below.
 Planning Marketing Communications
If you choose the marketing planning, you have to:
o give two examples of marketing communication that you did, like a flier
and website or a poster and leaflet
o a write up saying which one you think should be used and why you think
that method would be successful. You have to talk about reaching your
potential market, attracting customers and keeping them loyal.
Once that’s done then you can finally start running your business! Task Three –
Implementing the Plan!

Part or Task 3:- Implementing the Plan
You can finally begin actually running your business! For this section, you have two
main parts:
 Activity Report
 Negotiation
1. Activity Report
Using the Action Plan you did in Task 2, you must keep a written record of all the
activities and procedures in your project, to do this you can use:
- Wall planner or flow chart,
- Diary,
- Log with pages for notes,
- Photographs and
- Witness statements
Your report must talk about:
o what you did/what your job was and how you felt about what others did
o what problems came up and how did you dealt with them
o how did you manage health, safety and security issues
o whether you stuck to the original plan
o how was it monitored, and
o how did it all turn out.
Using that record you can now fill out the Results column of the Action Plan.
2. Negotiation
Using an activity from your project e.g. getting permission from the principal; getting
sponsorship from a business; asking for funding to start your project, etc. you have to:
 prepare a Plan for Negotiation and include any supporting materials like slide
presentations. You can use the format below to report:
 provide a signed Witness Statement which says how you did in the negotiation. I
will prepare the document for you.
That’s it for Task 3!