The evaluation of a company, or about a single business of it, could be performed for different purposes: in some cases for legislation needs (assets in kind, capital contribution, merger or demerger of a company); in other cases the evaluation could be voluntary, for example, to assess the company in comparison with the main competitors, to consider alternative strategic options available for the owners or in order to open the capital stock at the entrance of new shareholders through equity/capital increase.

The business plan is a powerful and very useful tool to check the company performance in the following periods; the companies are exploiting this tool for internal purposes (for planning and asset management), and for external purposes (to inform the stakeholders about the strategies, economic forecasts, financial projections of the company, or to find capital from institutional investors, banks, venture capitalists and investors or lenders in general).

Either the business plan and the financial evaluation are tools useful for fund raising activity, especially oriented to bank lenders.

In some cases the final goal of the company is to boost its financial situation and the preparation of the business plan and the evaluation of its equity value are documents regularly requested by banks or financial institutions to verify the repayment capability of the company.