Szenarioanalyse

Szenarioanalyse means running the same plan through more than one set of assumptions and presenting all of them. The usual three are a cautious case, an expected case and a good case. The model itself does not change. The same costs, the same prices and the same structure stay in place, and only the assumptions that are genuinely uncertain are moved.

A single forecast is close to the least useful thing that can be handed to a bank. It invites exactly one question, which is whether the reader believes the number, and it gives them nothing to work with when they do not. Three cases turn the conversation into something productive, because the reader can see which assumption the plan actually rests on and can argue about that one instead of dismissing the whole Businessplan. It also signals that the person who wrote the plan has thought about being wrong, which is the quality a 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. 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, it is a version in which appointments are thin, and the good case is one in which the room is busy. 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 holds together at low uptake, the decision is comparatively easy, because the downside has already been looked at and survived. If it only works in the good case, then what is being proposed is a bet on demand, which may still be worth taking but should be taken knowingly rather than by accident. Two figures are worth reading across all three cases, the appointment volume at which the service covers its own costs, which is the Break-even, and the Amortisationsdauer of whatever equipment was bought for it. Both stretch out quickly as uptake falls, and seeing by how much is the point of the exercise. How the investment and the running costs are recognised for tax depends on the individual situation and belongs with the Steuerberater.