Congratulations Blue Eco Homes!

Another huge congratulations to our client Blue Eco Homes for winning 2 awards at the 2016 National HIA GreenSmart Awards – GreenSmart Professional and GreenSmart Custom Built Home!

Inform Consulting have had the pleasure of helping them develop and implement their business strategy, including their ISO Certification and IT implantation. It’s great to see their efforts rewarded.

The business is built on the back of exceptional workmanship, strong business principles and customer services and a focus on highly energy-efficient homes.

The team watched the online announcement and as you can see from thir smiles, Winners are indeed Grinners.

Blue Eco

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN TO THE TEAM AT BLUE ECO HOMES!

Business Finance Consultants

Financial Ratios – Solvency Ratios

I spoke in previous blogs about the importance of Profitability Ratios, then Efficiency Ratios, then Liquidity Ratios. Finally, in this blog, I highlight the importance of Solvency Ratios.

It’s important to not confuse Solvency with Liquidity. While both set of ratios measure the financial health of a company, they have notable differences. As previously explained, the Liquidity Ratios are used to determine a company’s ability to pay off its short-term debts (12 months and less). The Solvency Ratios measure the ability for a company to meet its long-term financial obligations.

In other words, the Liquidity Ratios measure the ability to quickly convert assets into cash, while the Solvency Ratios checks that the business owns more than it owes. The latter has a longer term emphasis. Read more

Strategy is About Choices – Make the Right Ones

Why is it that people can give more thought to a fishing expedition than they do their business?

If you want the best chance of catching fish you go where the fish are and you use the most appropriate bait. Good fishermen (and women) research this before wetting a line. Poor fishers don’t. It’s the same in business. If you want to catch clients you have to be prospecting where your ideal client ‘hangs out’ and have the right bait – what will your target customer value? How will you deliver ‘gain’ or help reduce ‘pain’? It all comes down to strategy.
Strategy_Is_About_Choice_Image1

Every successful business, large and small has a strategy. A strategy is a means of giving clarity, focus and direction to your business, and to your staff. Working to a strategy helps ensure that your time, resources and actions are not wasted and you achieve the best returns on your investments. Read more

Culture: It all Starts with Mind-Set

“I’m an accountant. I’m all about making money. If you want to make money, get your culture right first. Don’t waste your time on the other stuff.” (Giam Swiegers, former CEO of Deloitte Australia)

Most of us understand its importance, but actively managing workplace culture in order to optimise results can be a tricky business. Even once you’ve got a handle on what culture is (and for the record, I prefer a simple definition: “Culture is the way we do things around here”), accept its importance (organisations with the most constructive cultures significantly outperform those with the least constructive cultures: quality +32%, teamwork +28%, satisfaction +26%, Human Synergistics International, 2014), and have determined that the current culture of your business/organisation is hindering performance, it can be a bit baffling to know where to start the change process.

Carolyn Taylor in her book “Walking the Talk: Building a Culture for Success” (Random House, 2005), presents the following framework which aligns closely with my own experience over 20 years helping clients improve outcomes through effectively diagnosing and improving the culture of their workplaces:

Change in the mind-sets of leaders

Leads to

Change in the behaviour of leaders

Leads to

Different decisions being made by leaders, in-line with their new beliefs and values

Leads to

People attributing meaning to decisions (symbols) associated with a change in values

Leads to

New messages being received throughout the organisation about what is now valued (supported by changing enablers which have simultaneously been redesigned)

Leads to

Other people in the organisation changing their behaviour to fit into the new norms

Leads to

Further reinforcement that the culture and its values have now changed

Leads to

New performance outcomes, the effect of the chosen values. Read more

Wellbeing in Sales, Business and Life

My friend Kitty Scheperman recently wrote a post entitled ‘7 Habits of Highly Successful Sales Leaders’. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth a visit. As I read Kitty’s article I realised that the habits Kitty was describing went beyond being applicable to sales leaders; they applied not only to sales leaders, but all salespersons, businessmen and women generally; and they applied to life.

The fact that these qualities are applicable across all areas of our lives reaffirms my strong belief that sales has matured significantly over the past decades from that of the cliched slick ‘snake oil’ salesperson to one of collaborative relationships where salespeople look to help identify and deliver sustainable solutions and benefits to their clearly-targeted customers. Read more

Business Finance Consulting

Financial Ratios – Liquidity Ratios

In earlier blogs, I spoke about the importance of Profitability Ratios, then Efficiency Ratios. In this blog, I highlight the importance of Liquidity Ratios.

Liquidity ratios are used to determine a company’s ability to pay off its short-terms debts. Short term means 12 months and less.

Liquidity ratios can be of enormous benefit to business owners, Directors and Managers when developing budgets. They tend also to be of great interest to lenders, Creditors, potential investors and prospective Managers and Directors when making decisions as to whether or not to join a company.

Common liquidity ratios include the Working Capital Ratio, the Current Ratio, the Quick Ratio and the Operating Cash Flow Ratio. Read more

Business Finance Consultants

Financial Ratios – Efficiency Ratios

In an earlier blog (Financial Ratios – Profitability Ratios), I spoke about the importance of Profitability Ratios. In this blog, I highlight the importance of Efficiency Ratios.

In simple terms, Efficiency Ratios measure how well companies utilise their short term assets and short term liabilities to generate income. Efficiency ratios, for example, might include the time it takes for companies to collect cash from customers, how quickly or slowly they pay their suppliers and the time it takes to convert inventory into revenue.

While Efficiency Ratios are generally used by management to help improve the company, they are also often used to inform outside investors and creditors of the operational performance of the company.

Let’s consider a couple of examples of Efficiency Ratios:

Debtor Days tells you how many days it takes for the money to reach your bank account after you have issued invoices. The lower, the better. A decrease in the ratio is good; an increase should be regarded as an alarm bell.
Debtor Days = Debtors (Net of GST) / Annual Sales x 365

Creditor Days represents the average time that a business takes to pay its Creditors. The higher, the better.
Creditor Days = Creditors (Net of GST) / Annual Cost of Goods Sold x 365 Read more

THE DREAMER, THE REALIST AND THE CRITIC -The Value Of Different Perspectives

When a close colleague of Walt Disney’s was asked what he thought were the secrets of Walt’s success, he reportedly replied “There were actually three different Walts: the dreamer, the realist and the critic. You never knew which one was coming to your meeting.”

  • Walt the dreamer was optimistic – the creative, self-actualised, “big picture”, inventor of new ideas.
  • Walt the realist was the practical one – the planner, the organiser, the one focused on “getting stuff done”.
  • Walt the critic was skeptical – testing dreams and plans against reality, looking for gaps, obstacles and risks.

With the inclination and ability to look at a single issue from multiple perspectives, Walt Disney was able to creatively solve complex problems and consistently make sound decisions that ultimately led to his significant success.

Walt Disney was not alone in recognising the value of looking at things from different perspectives, and indeed Edward de Bono’s renowned Six Thinking Hats technique is all about using multiple points of view to improve problem solving and decision making. Read more

Wayne Moloney

A sales manager is a Performance Supervisor

A Sales Manager has many roles, with another being a ‘performance supervisor’. View Wayne’s latest appearance on Strategic Selling Group where he explains that management means measurement of processes and procedures in order to achieve outcomes.

 

Business Finance Consulting

Financial Ratios – Profitability Ratios

A recent article in the Australian Financial Review explained that the three main reasons for business failures were: Poor Financial Management (28% of failures), poor Accounting (16%) and lack of Management experience (15%).

So Poor Financial Management is the main culprit in business failures. The Directors and the owners of a company need to monitor the financial performance of the business. Revenue, Gross Profit, Operating Profit are important elements, but they have limitations: Firstly, they vary considerably with the ups and downs of Revenue (seasonality), and secondly, an increase in Operating Profit does not always reflect good performance (if Operating Profit increases by 5% for example, while Revenue increases by 20%, it is a poor result).

Ratios do not have these limitations and that is why they are widely used to measure financial performance.

Let’s look at the first set of financial ratios: The Profitability Ratios.

Profitability ratios measure the business’ ability to generate profit as compared to its costs and expenses, over a period of time.

They are: The Gross Profit Ratio, the Operating Profit Ratio and the Profit Before Tax Ratio. Read more