danske bank business plan

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Your Guide to Writing a Business Plan

If you’re starting a new business, then you need an effective plan. Not only does this enable you to plan your company, but it also gives potential clients an insight into how your business works. A business plan is also vital if you want to attract investors or secure a loan from the bank. Drafting a business plan is a complex process, but it doesn’t have to be. This guide will ensure you create a definite plan to impress investors and clients. 

When creating your business plan, there are some essential elements you must include. The Executive Summary provides a description of your business, and what you hope to achieve. People usually write at least one page, but leave their Executive Summary until last.

You’ll also need to detail what your business offers and define your target audience. This makes it easier for people to see whether your company has a chance of succeeding. The opportunity section is also an excellent way for you to see what competitors offer and how you can create a USP to stand out from the competition. 

Appealing to Investors

Every business that wants growth and prosperity must ensure they promote themselves to potential investors. Business plans aren’t just about what the business is, but who is part of it too. Detail your current team members and explain what they bring to the company. Investors want to know they’re making a wise investment.

Your current finances and financial forecast are also essential aspects of your business plan. Look at your products, how much you’re selling them for and what kind of profit margin you expect to gain. It’s also vital you detail your outgoings and look at how various economic situations could affect your finances. 

Writing a Winning Executive Summary

There are problems in every market, and a successful business solves that problem. If you can show how you’ll be able to offer solutions in your business plan, you’ll appeal to investors. Choose your target audience based on research and ensure you show your research. There are many ways to conduct market research including defining SOMs, SAMs and TAMs. 

TAM stands for Total Available Market and comprises everyone you want your product to reach. Your Segmented Addressable Market (SAM) is a specific portion of the market you’ll target. This is important because it shows you’re able to direct your product at the right people and not just everyone. Your SOM (Share of the Market) is what you feel you’ll gain with your product.  

How to Determine Pricing

Pricing your product is one of the most challenging things you’ll have to do. There are many things to consider, such as how much it’s worth and making sure you don’t charge unrealistically. Many new businesses believe undercharging is the best way to go, but doing this can undermine your company’s authority and cause fewer people to be interested in investing.

Market-based pricing involves looking at your competitors and evaluating their prices. Which company has the most customers? How does their pricing match others? These are all vital aspects you should consider. Remember, customers expect quality and a fair price, so make sure you combine the two. 

Future Goals

Investors and banks want to know that you’ve considered what the future will hold for your company. When you write your business plan, be sure to take into account how you see the company growing, what you’ll do to ensure it thrives and that you understand the potential risks. Banks and investors want to know that you can build a business and are aware of the obstacles you’ll have to overcome.

Starting your own business doesn’t have to be difficult. If you ensure you produce a robust business plan, it can be an exciting process. Your business is part of your future, so start by outlining your goals and look forward to seeing results. 

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We help businesses achieve their goals

No matter what situation a business is in, we have usually seen something similar before. We use our experience to give business customers value-creating advice and targeted solutions throughout the Nordic region, regardless of whether they are sole proprietors or multinational groups. We always base our recommendations on the individual business’s situation and size. There are times in the life cycle of a business when specialised advice is needed, for instance during international expansion, acquisitions and a change of ownership.

Such situations are strategically important, and we have solutions that enable businesses to benefit from our experience in a variety of situations. Our business customers get access to the most innovative digital solutions on the market, solutions that make their daily operations easier and give them new opportunities. They are easy to use, flexible and secure.

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Banking for growth companies.

Danske Bank Growth is your one-stop banking solution when scaling your startup towards a global company

Ways we support startup and scale-up growth

Specialised growth advisors

• Dedicated specialists Unlock the full potential of your business with our team of dedicated specialists.  Our growth advisers are experts in their fields, equipped with in-depth knowledge and understanding of the ecosystem and the unique growth journey you are on.
• Powerful connections to the right players Harness the power of our extensive network of investors, customers and key stakeholders to fuel your growth.  We can connect you with the right players who can support you on your journey and help take your business to the next level.
• Founder banking tailored to your needs Experience Private Banking tailored to your needs with our exclusive banking solutions designed specifically for founders and top management.  We understand your personal finance needs and provide customized services that cater to your entrepreneurial journey and lifestyle.

Scalable banking solutions

• Cutting-edge digital banking Say goodbye to inefficiencies and hello to increased productivity and reduced friction with our automized and cutting-edge digital banking solutions. 
• Liquidity management to fuel your growth Optimise your business’s cash flow and maximise the return on excess funds. Gain greater visibility, mitigate risks and make data-driven decisions to fuel your growth.
• Easy international growth Seize the global stage with our trusted network of international banking partners.  Our Nordic and UK banking solutions, along with global payment capabilities, empower you to grow your business internationally with ease.

Don't let exchange rate fluctuations hinder your growth.  Our currency risk management solutions provide expert guidance, effective hedging strategies, and valuable market insights to minimize the impact of currency volatility.

• Solutions to attract and retain talent Gain a competitive edge in attracting and retaining top talent for your business.  Our comprehensive employee health and pension solutions offer peace of mind with robust healthcare coverage and pension plans, providing valuable benefits to your employees as a group.

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• A supplement to venture capital Extend your scale-up’s runway and increase your financial flexibility by obtaining supplementary bank debt solutions to leverage your funding round.
• Simplified terms for your peace of mind Say goodbye to complex exit agreements and tangled governance structures. We provide straightforward banking terms and conditions, ensuring less dilution and limited personal risk. We understand that as a scale-up, you are already ‘all in’. 
• Short and long-term facilities Take advantage of our flexible payback terms and solutions that can be tailored to your needs – often guarded by revenue and liquidity covenants.
• Flexible funding solutions for your needs Explore our customized funding solutions tailored to your specific requirements.  Whether you need credit lines, loans, guarantees, asset finance, or other financial instruments, we will guide you through the options and help you choose what suits your needs best.     

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"danske bank has been our main bank from the start and has supported us in our rapid growth. we are pleased with the easy co-operation with the growth team.", juha vartiainen.

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Who we serve

Tech driven companies 

Tech driven companies typically operate in fast-paced, dynamic environments that require rapid innovation and agility to scale and stay ahead of competition. For the past decades Danske Bank has helped tech companies grow and scale. Our banking solutions help them support global sales, easy online banking interfaces and navigate urgent cash-flow challenges.

Health Tech

Technology enabled solutions and services pose a huge potential in improving discovery, delivery, and quality of care. At Danske Bank we understand that health tech companies are operating in a world of uncertainty, with tight regulations and unpredictable development timelines. We offer a market-leading portfolio of financial solutions to help you grow and scale.

Green Growth

With the challenges that lay ahead of us in the green transition, there is an increasing need for green growth companies that can find the right solutions and make them scale – typically using both a digital and a hardware component. Danske Bank is helping companies bring hardware products into mass production offering financial solutions designed to address the unique needs of green growth companies at the intersection of hardware and software.

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Nordic Startup Jobs 2023 

State of Nordic Impact Start-ups

• State of Impact Startups 2022 October 2022 Open file
• Nordic Startup Jobs 2022 September 2022 Open file
• State of Nordic Impact Start-ups 2021 May 2021 Open file
• Return on diversity November 2020 Open file
• State of Nordic Impact Start-ups 2020 May 2020 Open file
• Impact Report Nordic Investors 2019 September 2019 Open file
• State of Nordic Impact Start-ups 2019 May 2020 Open file
• Insights Report: Impact Startups 2018 March 2023 Open file

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Danske Bank embraces digital future with omni-channel business model

As the digital landscape continues to change, so to does the financial sector. banks must ensure that they give customers a balanced service, whether serving them online or meeting face-to-face.

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The digital world is moving faster than ever, driven by technological breakthroughs, demographic changes and new consumer demands. Consumers have fully embraced the opportunities the internet has to offer – from everyday shopping for books, clothing and groceries, to finding their next home and saving for retirement. At the same time, consumers expect the full attention and service of the seller or service provider, no matter whether interaction is digital or face-to-face.

The banking industry is no exception to consumer demands: our customers want banking to be easy, convenient and relevant. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for us as retail banks. It is a unique opportunity to be present in the daily lives of our customers and play a proactive role as their financial adviser. But at the same time, we need to make sure that whatever channel our customers prefer, it will be a positive experience for them every time we are in touch – anywhere, anyhow and anytime.

Customer behaviour has changed significantly over the past 10 years, and we need to acknowledge that we as banks need to design our products and processes to fit our customers’ true needs rather than to force customer needs to fit our products and processes. So instead of the conventional product-driven customer approach, we need to fully support the entire journey of our customers in all life events.

Creating a customer-centric omni-channel business model takes strong commitment and proactive understanding of customers’ needs, dreams and challenges. Only that way can we as banks achieve the trust of our customers and make them ambassadors of our businesses.

The banking industry is no exception to consumer demands: our customers want banking to be easy, convenient and relevant

At Danske Bank , we have worked intensively with further strengthening the way we serve our retail customers in all channels. Over the past years, we have identified a number of key drivers to boost customer satisfaction. We have launched a number of game-changing initiatives to create a unique value proposition based on the ambition to make banking and financial decisions easy and coherent for our customers.

We believe that the fundamental requirement of all customers is that they have a fair deal with their bank. With our Customer Programme, launched in 2013, we wanted to introduce a programme that systematically rewards customers for the business they trust us with. Basically, the programme is offering customers favourable prices and benefits based on their business volume with us. The more business (loans, investment and savings), the more benefits and favourable interest rates and prices we offer, and in terms of primary touch points, our service model ranges from personal advisers to contact-centre advisory service. Now, 18 months later, more than one million of our customers in Denmark (a country with some five million inhabitants) have signed up, and we have successfully launched a similar programme in Finland.

Strong online presence Customers want banking to be easy and convenient, and we consider presence on all digital platforms crucial for maintaining a strong relationship with customers and acting proactively. Danske Bank has been first mover in the Nordic region with our award-winning eBanking, mobile and tablet solutions and our P2P app, MobilePay.

Over the past year, we have expanded our online offering with an easy eBanking solution, primarily for elderly customers who find the digital world challenging; introduced online meetings as an alternative to advisory meetings at the branch and, most recently, established the Danske Guide feature in our eBanking and mobile solutions that proactively gives customers targeted recommendations on their financial opportunities.

Consumers shop at conventional shops, pop-up shops and flea markets, as well as at online shops through their laptops and mobile phones. Consequently, our customers demand easy, secure and fast payment solutions that match their shopping preferences at any time. This demand has attracted a number of new market players, like Google and Amazon, which have the ability to create digital eco-systems which include payment services.

At Danske Bank, we want to meet customers’ expectations and make sure that all our customers have convenient payment solutions at their disposal – regardless of whether they are online savvy or find it difficult to navigate in the digital world.

Therefore, we offer a range of products tailored to customers’ individual preferences: • With the MobilePay app (our P2P app) we have made smartphones a new channel for easy and quick payment between mobile users and between mobile users and businesses. The app is market leading in Denmark and the most flexible and user-friendly solution for both customers and non-customers. • With contactless and combo MasterCards, paying with a card at shops becomes even faster and customers can decide whether to pay now or at a later time. • With our cash card we offer customers an alternative to cash. It can be used in shops and ATMs in Denmark. The card is especially helpful to customers who are not comfortable with PINs and passwords or who sometimes have other persons do their shopping.

Danske Bank’s customer-centric omni-channel business model is designed to travel across borders

Customer-centric culture As retail banks, we need to be extremely aware of the fact that customers want more options – but with less complexity. Conventional online banking and payment solutions will not be enough in the future, we have to think about how we use our substantial knowledge about customers to build and further strengthen their relationship with us. To me, there is no doubt that we have to act proactively and build strong eco-systems that generate additional value for our customers and a new profit pool for us.

At Danske Bank, our next step in strengthening our digital offering to make everyday life easier is developing customer-friendly digital solutions to cover all events in a customer’s life. The first area we will work on is home purchases – from the customer’s interest in a property to the signing of the loan agreement and handing-over of the keys.

No matter how many digital banking solutions we introduce, no bank will survive without a highly-skilled and motivated front-line staff to advise customers. Whether our advisers meet with customers at face-to-face or online meetings, they are key to ensuring that customers feel welcome, confident and acknowledged, and to making sure that customers experience easy-to-understand, competent and proactive advice that creates value for them in the long term. Only that way can we as banks achieve the trust of our customers and make them ambassadors of our businesses.

At Danske Bank, we believe that developing and preserving a customer-centric culture requires that advisers have sufficient time for their customers. Consequently, we focus on reducing the administrative workload and delegating decision-making authority to give advisers time and room to serve customers. Through an idea bank, we received more than 600 suggestions from employees on how we can simplify procedures to create more time for customers and we have seen proactivity increase 25% in just one year.

New business opportunities Danske Bank’s customer-centric omni-channel business model is designed to travel across borders, giving us a competitive edge in new markets because of synergies and a strong, agile organisation. While Danske Bank is market leader in Denmark, Finland and Northern Ireland, we hold a challenger position with much potential in Norway and Sweden. We want to realise this potential and grow our market position, and we believe that our business model and attractive value proposition provide a strong foundation for further expanding our business in these markets.

There is no doubt that the years ahead will be challenging for the banking industry worldwide and that competition will be fierce. Disruption from new digital entrants will be profound and what we have seen so far is just the beginning. Consumer behaviour and preferences will continue to develop and we must be ready to respond to them. But the future also holds much potential if we can develop simple and easy-to-use solutions to the complex requirements that our customers have and seize new market opportunities while keeping a strong focus on customer satisfaction.

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Dual-track’s Strategy for Incumbent’s Transformation: The Case of Danske Bank Adopting a Platform Business Model

• Department of Digitalization

Research output : Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review

Access to Document

• 10.1007/978-3-319-95273-4_7 Licence: Unspecified
• Persistent link

T1 - Dual-track’s Strategy for Incumbent’s Transformation

T2 - The Case of Danske Bank Adopting a Platform Business Model

AU - Staykova, Kalina Stefanova

AU - Damsgaard, Jan

N2 - Situation faced: The traditionally stable and conservative financial service industry is undergoing a process of transformation where contenders utilizing new technologies and relying on novel business models challenge the role of incumbent financial organizations. The changing preferences of customers, who demand customized services at convenient for them time, and the shifting regulatory environment, which encourages the entry of fintech start-ups, threaten the dominant position of these traditional actors.Action taken: Instead of observing passively this ongoing trend, Danske Bank, one of the leading banks in Northern Europe, took a proactive approach to digitalization by launching pre-emptively a number of disruptive digital initiatives in order to protect itself from disruption. Danske Bank correctly read the market dynamics in Denmark in connection to consumer readiness, technology maturity and competitors’ actions and decided to venture into the mobile payment area in order to position itself as first mover. By launching its solution MobilePay, which functions as digital payment platform, Danske Bank also adopted a platform business model, which differs from the traditional banking products.Results achieved: Leveraging its first mover advantage, MobilePay gained momentum and has successfully defended its dominant position in the Danish market, which other local and international mobile payment solutions tried to threaten. Four years after its launch, MobilePay is currently being used by more than 90% of the Danes, has established a growing ecosystem of partners, and has expanded to other Nordic markets. MobilePay’s success has helped Danske Bank improve its brand image and reduce customer churn. It has also demonstrated Danske Bank’s ability to be at the forefront of digital innovation by proving the bank’s capability to address the changing preferences of its private customers and to deliver on the digitalization agenda of its corporate customers. Lessons learned: This case demonstrates how an incumbent financial organization can successfully protect its core services by venturing into disruptive digital initiatives, such as the launch of platform business model, which requires the adoption of different business thinking. The success of such initiative depends upon the timely launch of a customer-centric solution with focus on simplicity, ease of use and strong value proposition. Despite the short-term gains, the long-term sustainability and profitability of such a solution operating in constantly changing environment requires its continuous development. Its success also depends on achieving a certain level of organizational autonomy from the traditional business, while at the same time establishing synergy to it in order to gain access to the incumbents’ core resources.

AB - Situation faced: The traditionally stable and conservative financial service industry is undergoing a process of transformation where contenders utilizing new technologies and relying on novel business models challenge the role of incumbent financial organizations. The changing preferences of customers, who demand customized services at convenient for them time, and the shifting regulatory environment, which encourages the entry of fintech start-ups, threaten the dominant position of these traditional actors.Action taken: Instead of observing passively this ongoing trend, Danske Bank, one of the leading banks in Northern Europe, took a proactive approach to digitalization by launching pre-emptively a number of disruptive digital initiatives in order to protect itself from disruption. Danske Bank correctly read the market dynamics in Denmark in connection to consumer readiness, technology maturity and competitors’ actions and decided to venture into the mobile payment area in order to position itself as first mover. By launching its solution MobilePay, which functions as digital payment platform, Danske Bank also adopted a platform business model, which differs from the traditional banking products.Results achieved: Leveraging its first mover advantage, MobilePay gained momentum and has successfully defended its dominant position in the Danish market, which other local and international mobile payment solutions tried to threaten. Four years after its launch, MobilePay is currently being used by more than 90% of the Danes, has established a growing ecosystem of partners, and has expanded to other Nordic markets. MobilePay’s success has helped Danske Bank improve its brand image and reduce customer churn. It has also demonstrated Danske Bank’s ability to be at the forefront of digital innovation by proving the bank’s capability to address the changing preferences of its private customers and to deliver on the digitalization agenda of its corporate customers. Lessons learned: This case demonstrates how an incumbent financial organization can successfully protect its core services by venturing into disruptive digital initiatives, such as the launch of platform business model, which requires the adoption of different business thinking. The success of such initiative depends upon the timely launch of a customer-centric solution with focus on simplicity, ease of use and strong value proposition. Despite the short-term gains, the long-term sustainability and profitability of such a solution operating in constantly changing environment requires its continuous development. Its success also depends on achieving a certain level of organizational autonomy from the traditional business, while at the same time establishing synergy to it in order to gain access to the incumbents’ core resources.

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-95273-4_7

DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-95273-4_7

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9783319952727

T3 - Management for Professionals

BT - Digitalization Cases

A2 - Urbach, Nils

A2 - Röglinger, Maximilian

PB - Springer