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InForm Consulting Group was formed in 2006 through the collaboration of four experienced business people, with very complementary skills, to provide practical advice to a wide range of businesses. The Founding Partners have over 100 years of business experience between them and this allows InForm to provide a complete service to its clients.
InForm Consulting Group provide a wide range of business advisory services to SME’s and consulting services to large companies, including:
- Business plan development and implementation
- Sales planning and training
- Development and growth of new markets
- Cross cultural management
- Business acquisition and divestment
- Business re-engineering
- Partner negotiation - supply and distribution
- Start-up management (business development, departmental, whole company)
- Greenhouse gas footprint analysis, management strategy and carbon credit brokerage
- Lean manufacturing
- Process improvement
- Capital Raising
- Financial management
- Cash Flow improvement
- Organisational Structure & Role Definitions
- SWOT & PEST Analysis
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Strategy – is it all too hard??? |
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Written by David Burgess
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Thursday, 04 February 2010 13:05 |
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One thing is for sure, “you will not succeed without one”. How many times do you want to talk about strategy and you quickly hit a proverbial “brick wall”. Sometimes I get the impression that business strategy is overcomplicated and has a language that most business owners do not understand. I own up, I am guilty of the language trap and have seen my clients eyes glaze over in a haze of mis-communication.
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| The Macquarie Dictionary is no help either – “skilful management in getting the better of an adversary or attaining an end”. So we need some skills, some management and an end point, call this a goal. This is a start. |
As a result, the confusion over Business Strategy leads many business owners will do one of the following:
- Ignore strategy and hope it goes away
- Hire consultants to develop a strategy for them and then leave the business implement
what they were going to do in any case.
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- Integrate strategic processes into their business and as a result end up with an “evergreen” strategic direction.
Let me explain the third option in more detail as it is the way to go for business strategy.Strategic Processes are actions and should be thought of in the same manner as, say, the Operational Processes used to build a product, sell a service or design some software.
There are required steps that need to be done to get something done well. So the following outlines the three stages of strategic planning. |
Stage One – Our Current Situation
- Define what the business does – this appears simple but putting this in words and writing it down will provide the clear statement required to move forward. “We provide a short lead time printing service to metropolitan based advertising agencies”
- Define Targets – the business owner must state what the targets are going to be for the foreseeable future. “We will double the number of clients over the next twelve months and achieve sales of $2.5 million per year.”
- Define what is influencing the business – what is happening in our market, our competitors, our suppliers which will influence our business and our targets. This is where you need to get very good information on what is going on around you. You sales people will have good information, industry associations will have reports and newspapers/journals will be another source of information. Summarise this down to around five critical “things” that you will need to consider.
- Define what needs to happen within your business in order to achieve the target. This could be production related; numbers of staff; skill development; bonus and pay rates for staff; etc, the list goes on. Make sure that you test each of this as being critical to achieving the target, if they are not, get rid of them.
The output of Stage One will be a statement of what the business does, what the target is and a list of those critical “things” which will impact (both positive and negative) on achieving the target.
Test and question what has been done to this stage; are your assumptions back up with facts and data; does anything sound too farfetched or unrealistic. It is never too late get the strategy right.
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Stage Two – Plan to Implement
I will simply say here, you need to involve all your people and suppliers/customers to implement your strategy. Detail out your actions using the simple steps to project management. Get the actions and outcomes owned by individuals in your team. You can get basic planning tools from the internet to assist with this step.
Stage Three – Keep in Touch with Progress
This is a vital step in your business strategy process. This is where it can all fall down. As the business owner it is up to you to monitor progress, measure results and drive the fine tuning of the implementation while continuing to communicate the goals you want to achieve. Also, this step is essential to react to dramatic changes in costs, orders or anything else which comes along to challenge your business. Remember to always refer back to the work done in Stage One and use this as a foundation for you actions and decisions. |
Review the information in Stage One each year as a regular part of your business diary. This will ensure your Strategy is EVERGREEN and a part of your business activities at all time.
Finally, never ever get a consultant to “do your strategy for you”; it will not work and it will be a waste of money. Use your consultant as the facilitator, not the decision make, let them keep you and your team disciplined and on track. |
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Last Updated on Friday, 05 February 2010 14:59 |
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What happens when the Bus hits you? |
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Written by Dave Boulter
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Monday, 01 February 2010 10:50 |
Does this sound familiar? You have started your business and have a number of staff. Everyday is busy but there is that nagging fear of "what will happen if I am not around today?"
You are not alone. At InFormGroup we talk to businesses in the same situation regularly. Two things come up in discussions. It is difficult to get staff that you can rely on and secondly a lot of what is done each day is learned process and there is a lack of documentation to help staff through situations that may arise in the day. The first topic is for another day, but lest look at the latter.
"I just do not have time to document what we do". As a business owner myself, I would agree. But somewhere along the way a time comes when it is important to document things. If that time comes and you dont have the capacity to do the documenting, what would happen?
The usual example is" What would you do if you were hit by a Bus?" Well most likely I would be dead and so I dont really care ! But lets assume you survive but you are in intensive care in Hospital. How will your business run? Usually a family member steps in and helps. But how does that person know what has to be done?
If the staff have been with you for a long time, you may get by. What if the staff are relatively new?
A simple answer is an Operating Manual and it does not have to be Biblical in size to be of value. Here are some things to start you off:
* List your suppliers, contact names and what you normally order and when
* List your most valuable customers. They can be contacted by the family member and usually will be very helpful to that member in making sure the products and services outstanding is understood so they can be delivered.
* make sure all of you staff details and contact numbers are available so your stand in can find the person they need quickly.
* Make sure another family member can access and authorise Bank Transactions. You need to pay staff and your bills.
* Write down common tasks that are done each day: before business starts and after close of business
Apart from the above an Operating Manual for your business would outline different business activities that are done each day. Things like: Quoting, scheduling of jobs, invoicing, collections, newsletters you produce, handling incoming stock, delivering orders..... the list goes on and is specific to your business.
The main thing is to do something and do it today. Who knows when the Bus could hit! |
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