Braving the change – making big business decisions

We can all happily carry on in business as we’ve always done – but where will that get us?

Although staying in your comfort zone is often the easy choice, it’s not necessarily the best option if you want to grow or improve profitability.

By pushing your product or service forward you can recoup some very satisfying rewards. Fancy an increase in profitability, market share and turnover? Well you can achieve it – but you’ll need to keep pace with your target markets as they grow and modernise, and the latest trends appear. So how do you make those brave, bold decisions that have the potential to significantly impact on your business?

Decisions to ‘brave the change’ are sometimes easier to talk about than to put into practice. But it doesn’t have to be daunting, and we are here to help you through the process. Rather than jumping from A to B as quickly as possible we suggest putting actions into small, easy-to-achieve steps.

Identify and research

Your starting point is at ground level and involves taking notes. Observe what’s happening in your particular market. What others are doing might indicate an opportunity or a gap in the market that you could exploit. For instance, have you received feedback on your products that might suggest small improvements are necessary to attract more customers? Jotting down these ideas can help you to capture these thoughts.

Consider and discuss

When you have an idea, don’t just keep it to yourself – talk to others about it. Whether it’s your family, friends, employees, suppliers or customers, everyone has an opinion! Seeking an opinion is also a great way to engage your staff and get their buy-in to the change.

Impact

Before you take the next steps you need to consider what else you have going on in your business. Is it the right time, and will it fit in with your other projects? These may seem like common sense deliberations, but unless you pause and take a step back from day-to-day operations, you could easily duplicate costs or take manpower away from another important project. Gut feel will often play a part in your decision making, but don’t necessarily be afraid of that – experience does count.

Start small

Once you’ve weighed up your options it’s time to give your new idea a go. Start off with a small trial; if it doesn’t work, that’s okay. The most successful businesses have made mistakes along the way, and it takes perseverance to

see a great idea through. Often it’s just the presentation or delivery of a good idea that fails, rather than the idea itself. Keeping the trial small will reduce the risk taken and hopefully not make you step backwards.

Monitor

A vital step to appraising change is identifying the impact it has on your business. Set up key performance indicators (KPIs) so that you can easily monitor any changes. Depending on the scale, KPIs could be reviewed daily, weekly or monthly; make sure you compare like with like so you can spot the changes. Constant feedback from staff and customers can be taken throughout this process and will help to flag if the change has been beneficial. At this level you could also offer customers a percentage discount to try out a new product, so that if it isn’t such a great success, you are

“The most successful businesses have made mistakes - it takes perseverance to see a great idea through.”

minimising the possibility of losing customers.

Scale up

If the trial results are good, feedback is positive, profitability is encouraging and turnover looks promising, then you can consider the next step. Now is the time to think about investment options or taking away resources from non-profitable areas of your business. The key thing is that you’ve been able to identify that the change has the ability to make your business more successful.

Start all over again

And so it continues. If you’ve abandoned an idea or new product along the journey, or turned your fledgling idea into a working project, it will soon be time to start again at the beginning with your initial steps and consider new ideas. Constantly re-modelling your business, finetuning efficiencies and identifying the recipes that work best is the key to continued growth and success, all the while coping with external pressures and demands. It’s a never-ending challenge or opportunity, however you like to view it. Who knows where it could take you?

If you’re looking to progress your business, product or service offering, we can help to guide you through the process.

Lorraine Bolland

Beyond Xero – how Xero’s ecosystem can streamline processes and fuel growth for food and drink businesses

Many of our clients have used HMRC’s Making Tax Digital initiative as a catalyst to transition towards Cloud accounting. This is partly in anticipation of further developments in digital reporting beyond VAT.

As a Xero Platinum Partner, we are well placed to observe how things are evolving and to advise you on adapting to this fast-changing landscape.

There are now more than 700 apps that link to Xero’s application programming interface (API), and this amount of choice can be overwhelming. While it can be difficult to work out the best way to leverage this technology to save time or fuel growth, it can be well worth it. Xero says its data shows that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using app-based technology grow revenues 30% faster*.

As well as driving growth, moving to Cloud accounting is about putting business owners in control. The bookkeeping function of the future will become much more than just data entry; it will be about interpreting data in real-time so that you can make more informed decisions about your business.

Managing the cashflow rollercoaster

Many smaller food and drink businesses here in the South West are seasonal, often having to survive from cheque to cheque.

Within Xero’s ecosystem, challenger banks and fintechs have developed apps that set up bank feeds which automatically transfer bank transactions into the accounting system. This gives them real-time insights that enable them to provide funding and short-term cashflow solutions.

There are also apps that can be used to shorten payment terms, and other tools that can automate the processing of purchase invoices. For instance, Receipt Bank enables you to scan cash receipts with your smartphone, automatically sending that information to the Cloud accounting system.

Making sense of your numbers

As business advisers we are well placed to help you interpret the data pulled from Xero into forecasting dashboards such as Futrli, so that you can continue to focus on building your business.

Stacey Morrison

*Xero 2016 UK small business market study