A Quick Guide to How to Write a Company Overview for Your Business Plan

A Quick Guide to How to Write a Company Overview for Your Business Plan

Written by:
Unenabasi Ekeruke

Jul 29, 2023
A Quick Guide on How to Write a Company Overview for Your Business Plan

If you're planning to start a new business, the one key task on your to-do list should be to create a business plan. Studies have shown that 71% of fast-growing companies credit their success to having a written business plan.

Writing a solid company overview that describes your organization and where you're headed is equally important to win investors' confidence and secure their buy-in,

A company overview gives readers a general idea of your company, product or service and target market by describing your organization and plans. With this information, prospects can make informed decisions about whether or not to partner, invest in or work with your company.

In this article, we'll explore what is a company overview and how to write one for your business. We’ve included insights, tips and ready-made templates to get you started.

 

Table of Contents

 

Quick Read

  • The company overview is part of a business plan that gives a general description of your company.
  • It typically includes a company description and its history, legal structure, mission statement, target market, team members, etc.
  • The company overview provides a strategic roadmap for your business, establishes a positive first impression about your company, attracts investors attention and persuades them to continue reading.
  • Visme has a vast library of templates for creating winning business plans,  presentations, proposals and other business documents.
  • Take advantage of  Visme's extensive library of templates, user-friendly editor, data visualizations and design assets to build impressive presentations swiftly and launch your business with style.

 

What Is a Company Overview

A company overview, or business overview, is an informative part of the business plan that provides a snapshot of your company's background and establishes its identity.

It provides a general overview of your company, its products or services and its customers. A business overview helps to introduce and spark the attention of investors, potential partners, clients and other stakeholders by succinctly presenting this crucial information.

It appears right after the executive summary in the business plan. Even though it is the document's shortest chapter, you can't ignore its significance. We’ll look at its importance in the next section.

 

The Importance of a Company Overview

Your company overview is one of the most crucial elements of your business plan. How you craft this section can make or break your entire business plan.

After all, it is the entry point to grab your readers' and stakeholders' interest. Failing to impress them at this stage might result in missed opportunities you would have otherwise won.

Let's provide more reasons why you should invest your time in making the company overview.

1. Establishes a Positive First Impression

Studies show that you only have a few seconds to make a solid first impression.

The situation is even more critical when presenting your business plan to someone unfamiliar with your organization.

Imagine if the reader had no prior knowledge about your business. What would they be able to glean from your business plan or company overview? What should people remember most about you and your business?

This is where the company overview shines. It can shape readers' initial perceptions and induce them to continue reading.

So by drafting an engaging business overview, you lay the cornerstone for building trust and curiosity. The result? It'll compel the audience to read on and discover your offer's value.

Moreover, using tools like Visme to create charts, graphs, plans, reports and infographics can help you quickly grab your reader’s eyeballs.

2. Helps To Attract Investors

If your business is in the growth or expansion phase, securing funding from potential investors becomes your priority.

Investors show interest in businesses with a clear vision, sound business plan and realistic financial projections.

But they come across numerous opportunities daily and have limited time to evaluate each. So to differentiate your business, you need to present a business overview beyond simply stating the obvious.

You must provide potential investors with information like your USP, market growth and competitive advantages. All this information will help investors assess the viability and attractiveness of your business.

3. Provides a Strategic Roadmap

A meticulous goal-driven plan is the best course of action for any company looking to succeed over the long run.

And to help you achieve those goals, the company overview acts as a strategic road map. That’s because it provides details about your company's vision, values and purpose.

By analyzing the company's operations, goals and strategies, the overview can provide insights into areas that may be vulnerable to risks and areas with the potential for growth and improvement.

 

What to Include in a Company Overview

The content of your company overview can vary depending on your company's specifics, mode of operation and purpose of the business plan.

But there are certain fundamental elements you should include in your company overview:

Let’s check them out.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

1. Company Description:

Treat the “About company” section as your elevator pitch. It should provide an in-depth overview of your business. When writing this section, consider including the following pointers:

  • The purpose and nature of your company,
  • Highlight what sets it apart from competitors,
  • Share the guiding principles of your company.

In addition, draw attention to any distinct features of your business, such as creative procedures, in-house developed technology, or unique corporate culture.

Depending on the intricacy of the business plan, a company description's length might vary, but it should always be precise and short. It should typically include 3-4 sentences.

Use the template below to showcase a digestible version of your business overview.

2. Team Members, CEO and Partners

Write a quick introduction for the members of your management team, including their names, roles and backgrounds. Emphasize their industry knowledge, accomplishments (if any) and related experience.

The Meet Our Team page shouldn't just be about the team growing your business and the value and expertise they bring to the table. It should help your audience and stakeholders get familiar with your team.

After writing about the team members, give specific information on the company's founder or CEO.

Outline their mission, vision, values, leadership style and significant contributions to the company. Draw attention to their track record of achievement, prominence in the business or any other unique and notable characteristics

3. Legal Structure

Determine your firm's legal structure, including whether it is a corporation, limited liability company (LLC), partnership, joint venture, or sole proprietorship. This information makes your company's legal structure and ownership structure clear.

It should also contain details regarding the business's ownership structure, such as the names of the shareholders and the percentages of the company they own.

4. Company History

Describe your company's history, beginning with its inception and moving forward. Mention the date of establishment, the members involved and pivotal moments that have shaped your company.

Talk about any noteworthy accomplishments, industry accolades and growth milestones that show the progress and resiliency of your organization.

5. Mission Statement

The mission statement section should summarize your company's purpose (main motive) and core objectives.

When writing this section, show how your company's values align with those of your potential target audience. Describe the fundamental beliefs and principles that guide your company's activities and decision making.

6. Target Market

Analyze your target market, including your ideal customers' demographic and psychographic profiles. While writing about this element, consider including the following:

  • gender,
  • age group,
  • personality traits,
  • geographic location,
  • size of the target market,
  • changes/trends in the market

When writing this section, mention the industry and your target market in which they operate.

And if you’re pivoting or starting a new business in another industry or targeting a new market within the same industry, you should mention it in the company overview.

Detailed information about your target market shows you've done your homework and understand your market like the back of your hand.

This can boost investors' confidence in your business.

7. Product or Service

Give a detailed explanation of your products or services, highlighting their features, benefits and unique characteristics. Show how your products or services address customer problems/pain points or meet their desires.

Highlight any technology breakthroughs, quality certifications, or design characteristics that set your offerings apart. Share notable client success stories, feedback, or case studies demonstrating the worth of your offerings and clients' satisfaction.

8. Objective and Goals

Define your company's short and long term objectives and goals.

These may include financial objectives, market expansion strategies, product development successes and other quantifiable results.

Explain why each goal is important and how accomplishing it will help drive business growth. Additionally, explain the strategies or activities to achieve your goals.

9. Competitive Advantage

Lay out your competitive advantage by showcasing what distinguishes your business from other companies.

You can shed some light on what makes your company unique. It may be anything from novel technology to outstanding customer service, cost management, or exclusive alliances. Remember to highlight how your competitive edge makes investing in your company a great decision and opportunity for investors.

You should include the company's patents, trademarks and other intellectual property rights you’ve acquired here. Even if you’ve applied for a pending patent, feel free to mention it.

How to Write a Company Overview

A company overview should highlight the USP of the business and convey it to the audience concisely and engagingly. To create a strong USP, businesses must examine the profile of their target customer and market their products in a way that shows how they can solve their problems.

Let's see how you can write the company overview and use it as the foundation of your marketing efforts:

1. Provide Basic Company Information

Consider the company overview as your company's introduction. Give critical details about your business in the first paragraph, such as

Company Name: Mention your company's legal name as it appears on state records.

Management Team: Consider listing the names of the company's owners, founders and individuals who are part of the company.

Business Structure: Identify the type of business, such as a corporation, LLC, partnership, or sole proprietorship.

Location: Share the address of your company's main office and any additional owned sites.

By including these specifics, you provide a succinct description of your firm in the business overview.

2. Include Unique Details

After jotting down the basic information, it’s time to write down the key components. Write down your company history, mission statement and the industry you operate in.

Include a brief summary of the problem your business is trying to address and the proposed solution. Be sure to keep this statement relevant by considering your long-term goals. Other relevant details you can mention here include:

  • Any honors or accolades that your business has won
  • The business principles and cultures
  • Any new or unique aspects (features or benefits) of your product or service
  • The commitment of your business to social responsibility

However, below are some common mistakes you should be mindful of while writing:

  • Using a dull template,
  • Drafting unrealistic goals,
  • Over-hyping your business,
  • Making the overview complex,
  • Poor grammar and punctuation,
  • Not defining your target audience

If you need help crafting content for your company overview, you can use Visme's AI writer. It can quickly generate text for your presentation, ensuring the information is clear and concise.

a GIF of generating text using Visme's AI writer tool

3. Showcase the Passion

When creating a company overview, showcasing your passion and enthusiasm for your business is essential. Injecting humor, storytelling and brand voice can make your overview more engaging.

However, it's also important to remember that 65% of the general population are visual learners. Therefore, creating visually appealing presentations is also crucial to keep your audience engaged, apart from storytelling and humor. Visual aids such as graphs, charts, and images can help convey complex information in an engaging way

To create stunning presentations with top-notch visuals, Visme's thousands of templates can be customized with text, images, and colors. Now you can enhance your content's value and make your slides look more engaging!

4. Define your Product or Services

Next, describe your offerings in more detail, along with your target market.

Your potential customers must first understand the products/service you offer and how they can help if you want them to invest in your company.

Nonetheless, other parts of your business plan, like your market analysis, will go more in-depth about that information.

5. Review with your Team

Writing a business plan is a collaborative activity. Brainstorm with your team to create a compelling narrative for your company summary.

During the session, pick everyone's brain to get unique ideas and then leverage their feedback and fill in the different sections of your company overview.

Visme makes team collaboration super seamless. In Visme, team members can leave tag each other, leave feedback and resolve comments in real-time and on their time. Once done, you can share and publish your work for everyone in your organization. You can easily publish your presentation online in Visme and share it directly with a URL or embed it on your website.

Watch this video to learn how to collaborating using Visme.

Consider your team member's suggestions, as they can help you whether or not you’ve communicated your message to the point.

6. Highlight Your Goals

Outline your objectives and what steps you will take to achieve them in the last section of your business overview.

Recognize that goals can change as your company goes through different stages of development.

For instance, if your business is growing and seeking investors, goals related to scale and growth become more prominent. However, profitability and expansion may become more critical as your business grows.

Emphasize the value of reevaluating and reviewing goals frequently to be responsive to market conditions. This approach ensures your business remains agile and focused on a path to long-term success.

7. Keep it Concise

Remember that your business plan has plenty of room for specifics. The company overview should include the most fundamental details required for someone to understand your business.

You don’t need to worry if your first draft is too long. Simply read it several times and cut out any extraneous elements and phrases to shorten it.

And to make your readers continue reading the whole plan, make sure it’s written clearly and complemented with engaging visuals such as icons, stock photos and videos.

mission statement template - add images and videos

The company overview is just one part of the business plan. We all know how important it is to start your new business on the right foot. And so we're here to help.

Watch the video below to learn how to write a  business plan. This video will help guide you through your financial planning, marketing strategy, unique selling point and more.

 

8 Company Overview Templates

Visme has many company overview and business plan templates with different design layouts and structures for various industries.

It might initially feel intimidating with all the data and no design experience. But our intuitive editor is foolproof whether you're a novice or a professional.

We have handpicked eight business overview templates to help you get started!

1. Consultancy Business Plan Template

The consulting industry has steadily grown over the past several years. It is expected to reach $343.5 billion by 2025. So if you’re looking for investors or promoting a consulting agency, then this professional business template is perfect for you.

This template lets you present a business idea or proposal to your clients. It highlights your company's services, key features, strategies, testimonials and more.

Furthermore, you can ensure brand integrity by customizing this template by adding brand assets like colors, fonts and company logos. You can also create a brand kit in Visme to store them across all your designs.

If you don’t want to do it manually, you can also access Visme’s Brand Wizard to generate a complete set of branded templates. You only need to input your website URL; the wizard will pull in brand assets that match your brand style.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

2. Software Brand Go-To-Market Strategy Plan Template

Are you looking to launch a new product as a software brand? There's nothing better than this template for a software brand's go-to-market strategy.

With a monochromatic color combination that enhances clarity and understanding, the template is professional and easy to read.

You can use Visme to make an interactive map to complement your go-to-market plan. To visualize geographic data, you can quickly generate color-coded maps using the free map maker and templates. This feature is helpful when envisioning an area where most of your consumers live.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

3. Travel Website Business Plan Template

According to a study, an estimated 700 million people will book travel online by 2023. Out of these, 83% of US adults want to book their trips online.

Getting off the ground can be difficult for many travel brands today. But if you want to invoke a sense of adventure in your business and clients, use this travel business plan template to show that you've researched and why you are the ideal fit for them.

Using this template, you can be sure that your business plan includes everything you need, including a mission statement, business objectives, a SWOT analysis of the market, a sales forecast and organizational management.

Tailored to those passionate about travel, you can effortlessly capture everyone’s imagination with photos of idyllic locations pulled from Visme’s library of high-resolution stock images.

And if you don't find anything that catches your fancy, don't sweat it. With Visme's AI image generator, you can generate professional-quality photos, graphics, art, drawings and paintings. The wizard will automatically generate and present options if you simply input an accurate prompt that precisely describes what you want.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

4. Consulting Revenue-based Sales Plan Template

Do you want to create a comprehensive sales plan for your consulting business? This template can help you with that.

Consulting revenue-based sales plan template will help your businesses outline the various stages, executable actions, methodologies, outcomes, and goals of the sales process.

If you’re a consultant or a consulting firm, you can use this template to stay on top of your sales plans.

And if you want to include any data outside of Visme, as seen in the 7th slide, you can easily import it into your presentation. Visme allows you to connect and import data from Excel, Google Sheets, Google Analytics and Survey Monkey to create charts and graphs that visualize your data.

After importing the data, increase your presentation's impact by using data visualization tools to transform raw data into visually appealing graphs, charts and infographics. This approach stresses crucial points effortlessly, sparing your audience from grappling with text-heavy content.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

5. Nonprofit - Business Plan Template

Creating a business and marketing plan for your nonprofit is essential when starting a business. You need to get the word out to increase donations and awareness for your cause.

This heartwarming business plan template will help you share your vision with potential donors and stakeholders. The stunning visuals capture the essence of your organization's objectives, making a lasting impression on those who support your mission.

Go ahead and edit content and change images, fonts and color themes to suit your unique needs. Add a dose of interactivity and animated features like navigation, pop-ups and icons that can highlight more information when users hover over them. It’ll create an immersive experience for your stakeholders.

However, If you’re short on time and looking for a way to customize and complete this template quickly and easily, try Visme Shortcuts. It’s a simple feature that allows you to find features, elements or assets by typing “/.”

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

6. Unique Restaurant Business Plan Template

Whether you're seeking to launch a new restaurant, grow or revamp your current business, or evaluate investments in this sector, you can use this vibrant and extensive template.

With soothing colors that will complement your restaurant's theme and beautiful visual elements, this template will add a touch of flair to your presentation. It has well-crafted aesthetic parts, balanced layouts and thoughtfully designed icons that make the presentation appear better.

Get a head start on creating a memorable business plan for your restaurant. If you want to share the business plan with key stakeholders, download it or share a live link.

If you share the live link, you can use Visme analytics to see how many people clicked and viewed your business plan. You can access unique visits, average time, duration, IP address and more analytics.

So wow your audience and unlock the doors to your restaurant's success with this delicious business plan template.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

7. Denim Business Plan Template

A study by Technavio revealed that the denim industry will grow at a CAGR of 6.71% between 2022 and 2027. It means the demand is considerably high and the business is profitable. Now, that also implies cutthroat competition in the market.

So, you must create a winning business plan for your denim brand to engrave your audience and stakeholders. This trendy template can help you capture the essence of your creative vision and stay ahead of the curve,

If you want to fit your business or individual preferences, you can easily alter the backgrounds, fonts and colors while editing the template. Use Visme's dynamic fields to speed up the editing process and keep your presentation polished.

With the dynamic field option, you can update texts that repeat across slides. Even if you want to create specific variables for your use cases, you can do so with the Custom Fields option.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

8. Real Estate - Marketing Plan Template

A written strategy and projections for your real estate investment are necessary to get funding for a proposed project.

Use this professionally created marketing plan template to increase your real estate sales. It includes pre-designed pages to display your business goals, buyer persona, SWOT analysis and more.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

If your goal is lead generation for your real estate business, with Visme forms, you can create customized forms, popups and CTAs to embed on your landing page or website. Get three times more impressions and leave a lasting impression on your audience with no code builder form.

 

Effortlessly Create Company Overviews & More with Visme

A company overview is your entry point for attracting the interest of partners, investors and other stakeholders.

It takes skill and a deep awareness of your audience, as a business overview is not just a list of numbers and statistics. A well-crafted narrative that showcases your organization's vision, goals, and significant accomplishments is essential.

Nonetheless, creating and sharing a data-driven business plan doesn't have to be tough a nut to crack. You can seamlessly convey your ideas and goals with Visme's easy-to-use editor, professionally created templates, attractive data visualizations and interactive and collaborative features. Additionally, Visme offers millions of premium images, visual aids, and design elements to make your company overview stand out.

It's time to abandon traditional approaches and create a business plan that entices your stakeholders. Sign up for Visme today and start creating!

Create Stunning Content!

Design visual brand experiences for your business whether you are a seasoned designer or a total novice.

Try Visme for free

    We’re stingy and don’t share emails with anyone.

    About the Author

    Unenabasi is a content expert with many years of experience in digital marketing, business development, and strategy. He loves to help brands tell stories that drive engagement, growth, and competitive advantage. He’s adept at creating compelling content on lifestyle, marketing, business, e-commerce, and technology. When he’s not taking the content world by storm, Unenabasi enjoys playing or watching soccer.