Szenarioanalyse

Szenarioanalyse means running the same plan through more than one set of assumptions and presenting all of them. The model itself does not change, because the same costs, the same prices and the same structure stay in place, and only the assumptions that are genuinely uncertain are moved. The usual three cases are these:

1. The cautious case assumes that appointments are thin for the whole period.
2. The expected case keeps the uptake the plan was built with.
3. The good case assumes that the room is busy most of the time.

A single forecast is close to the least useful thing that can be handed to a bank. It invites exactly one question, whether the reader believes the number, and it gives them nothing to work with when they do not. Three cases make the conversation productive, because the reader can see which assumption the plan actually depends on and can argue about that one instead of dismissing the whole Businessplan. It also tells a lender that the person who wrote the plan has thought about being wrong, which is the quality that lender is looking for in the first place.

For a new service in a pharmacy there is usually only one input worth varying, and that is uptake. The price is known, because it has been set, and the cost of a single appointment is close to known, because the consumables, the laboratory charge and the working time can each be counted. What nobody knows is how many people will come, so the cautious case is not a version in which everything is expensive. The Rentabilitätsvorschau is then produced three times from the same spreadsheet with that one line changed.

The cautious case is the one that decides whether to start. If the plan still works at low uptake the decision is comparatively easy, because the worst case has already been examined, whereas a plan that only works in the good case is a bet on demand. Such a bet may still be worth taking, though it should be taken knowingly rather than by accident.

Two figures are worth reading across all three cases:

• The Break-even is the appointment volume at which the service covers its own costs.
• The Amortisationsdauer shows how long the equipment bought for the service takes to repay its cost.

The time needed to reach both of them grows quickly as uptake falls, and seeing by how much is the point of the whole exercise. How the investment and the running costs are recognised for tax depends on the individual situation and belongs with the Steuerberater.