Small businesses are usually a little unstructured but agile,
responsive and customer centric. Large businesses are generally more structured
but can be stifled with hierarchy, process and miscommunication. Smaller businesses have the
stress of hand to mouth cash flow, larger corporations have the possible luxury of external investment.
These traits have both a positive and negative impact when
it comes to managing a business, generating revenue, building or selling products,
maintaining customer relationships and managing cash flow, etc.
In small business everyone is an individual working in a
small group for the same common goals. Visibility of professionalism, productivity
and performance are easier to see and manage. In a larger corporation, employees
lose their individuality in the broader functioning of the business. Optimising the business for ultimate financial
and operational performance are more difficult to undertake and maintain.
.
. when you’re in a small boat, you can see who’s paddling hard and who’s
looking around.
Ev Williams, Twitter
Whatever size of the corporation, business success is measured
in revenue and profits, but there are other aspects including employee engagement
and customer satisfaction that make businesses successful.
People may aspire to build commercial empires, but it is no
straightforward task. Achieving a
balanced approach to business is never easy but is critical to achieve
success. All corporations have great
aspirations but sometimes day to day business just gets in the way…
‘Not enough resources’
is a common issue that is raised across all sizes of business. The more successful the business, the more
revenue, the more customers, the more work, but with this success do you have enough employees to satisfy your customers and orders?
Planning
is one way to manage resource issues and bottlenecks. Thorough planning across the entire business,
from Marketing, Sales, Presales, Development/Production, Delivery/Deployment,
Support/Customer Service, etc. provides a detailed understanding of the business
and allows orders to be turned to cash. Sales
need to provide substantiated sales forecasts and accurate detail on the timing
of such wins. Presales need to provide detailed information about the possible
scope/effort/product requirements to ensure that Development/Production can
build the solutions in budget and a timely manner, which can be passed to
Delivery/Deployment to deploy with minimal effort, etc., etc.
The need to plan ahead is important when it comes to expanding
teams and footprint - recruiting takes time, advertising for roles, assessment and
Interviewing process, notice periods of successful candidates, then training
these new individuals and getting them up to speed to be productive and
contribute to the business.
An
organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action
rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Jack
Welch, GE
Proactivity.
A proactive
approach comes with effective planning. Businesses who correctly forecast
growth can resource, implement systems, processes, expansion, channels, partners,
etc. to support this growth. If you have
to react to un-forecasted business growth this could seriously damage the business’s
health and survival, expending time and resource to react and support this
growth and distracting attention to other important areas of business.
Visibility.
Having
visibility across the business and the different facets of business operations
will provide insight into the critical points in a business where potential bottlenecks
could impact performance, customer satisfaction and cash flow. It allows business
understand potential pending issues an opportunity. Oversight of a business provides that crucial
intelligence of the day to day activities and performance. Visibility requires
constant communication from the different locations, departments or business
units to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to business
decisions.
“Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash
is reality
Cash flow Management
With all business – cash-flow is critical and the need to be
innovative in regards getting paid is always crucial, be it distributing
payments in a service, rental, subscription models to avoiding the peaks and troughs
of more traditional capital sales. Reviewing different payment options
including deposits, staged, tiered payments, etc. Ensuring you have contacts in
the respective customers financial departments to push through invoices and payment
and reduce delays in payment and mitigate potential bad debt.
Focus on your core
strengths
– ‘Stick to the knitting’
Until you have a near monopoly on your business, then do not look at removing
resource and diversifying. Do not take your eye of the ball and ensure your
core business is secured and generating revenues. Diversifying can be funded from profits,
external funding, etc. Diluting the core
business by distracting the resources and business could have dire
consequences.
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take
care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
Sir Richard Branson
Team.
The above
quote can be misinterpreted, but the fundamental message is, if you have good happy,
satisfied and motivated employees they will naturally look after your customers.
It makes sense. If you have happy, contented and motivated employees, they will
naturally adopt strategic initiatives, support management and have strong customer
focused mentality. Do not disregard the importance of building trust and
respect with your employees.
Great things in business are never done by one person.
They're done by a team of people.
Steve Jobs,
Apple
Develop a
strategic plan
. And stick to it, do not flip and flop, thorough collaborative thinking
and strategizing should allow any business of any size to develop a plan they
can look to implement and a defined path to follow. Of course, sometimes that
path may have a few hurdles, these potential hurdles should be understood so
you are prepared when they do occur so you can deviate from that path without going
to far of the beaten track.
Build a brand.
Your brand and reputation are critical to
differentiate you from your competition.
A brand is needed whatever you are a B2B, B2C or even C2C player. Ensure
your brand reflects your industry and your business, this is how your customers
will perceive you and motivates and provides direction to your employees. A clear brand strategy helps you stay focused on your mission and vision
as an organization.
With brand comes reputation,
act with upmost moral standards and do not disregard business
ethics.
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You
earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
Jeff Bezos,
Amazon
Measured Risk
Although business need to take some risks. Sometimes there
will be the need to step out of the comfort zone to make some serious and
critical decisions, that could have fundamental consequences to your
business. Such measured risk can only be
done with planning to ensure that any possible threats, roadblocks are recognised
and understood as you accept such risks.
Finally, be Alert and
ready to Adapt
We are now undertaking commerce and business in a fast-moving
world, it is constantly changing, technology, digitalisation and disruption are
now commonplace. Corporations need to understand the many alternative ways of
doing business and be alert and ever aware of this evolving and adapting world.
2019 is just around the corner… what does 2019 hold for you, have
you planned your objectives for next year…
now is the time to ensure you go into 2019 proactively and not chasing
your tail or two…
He who chases two rabbits, catches none.
Confucius
