Drone logistics and Business Planning

The specialist literature contains many lists of principles that should be applied when drawing up a business plan. These include many vague, subjective factors that are more relevant to marketing. However, it is primarily the fact-based and financially backed values that are important for the relevance of a business plan. The financial plan is therefore the most important part of the business plan. It is used not only to forecast future economic success, but also to determine the capital requirements for this.

The following general principles (excerpt) have proven useful in financial planning to date:

• Principle of caution (3 scenarios – best-case, real-case, worst-case)
• Principle of high detail (planning approach: with Xthousand values/case)
• Principle of multiple checks by different experts
• Recursive verification approach
• Consideration of legal restrictions and possible developments in the law
• Consideration of market trends, statements by analysts, and assessments from the political arena

The following methods (excerpt) were used to determine costs and expenses:

• Subdivision into fixed costs and route-dependent variable costs.
  (Additional variable costs for personnel and technology only arise when routes are flown)
• Personnel requirements develop according to route-dependent scaling
• Determination of costs for drones from leasing/rental/depreciation (monthly amount) and ongoing maintenance costs (usually dependent on intensity of use)
• Determination of flight costs from technical costs of the drone and operating costs
• General costs incurred from normal business operations
• Special costs (for example, training and testing expenses) in accordance with official requirements
• Investments in technical requirements are valued at market prices with an inflation rate over the planning period

Existing internal data (technical costs and personnel costs) and reliable market data are used as the basis for the data. The earnings forecast is extrapolated conservatively from the company's existing data, i.e., it captures internal cost savings (relative earnings) and potential earnings that could be generated on the free market.