Leveraging Greater Value From Business Reporting
To understand why business reporting is an issue, do a postage stamp calculation of the number of reports being produced and the staff time and effort required to produce them.
5 Reasons Why Businesses Go Bust
Just about every international business expert and every business consultant involved in business development and business growth, will have gained valuable experience of how businesses go bust.
Maximise Performance By Tracking Your Trends
Operating a successful business involves tying a number of different strings together. Some say marketing is critical, or financial management, or closing the sale. These are all important - but to really maximise their performance, it's essential to track progress. Listed below are some critical, but simple, components to track and a method for doing so.
Staying Afloat In Uncertain Times
It is critical to continuously monitor the financial health of your business in both good and uncertain times.
Understanding The Stages Of Growth
Recognising the different stages of your company's growth and adapting your own leadership skills to what is required, will pay off in spades as you face the myriad of challenges that lay in wait for anyone who runs a successful company.
Recession Survival Kit
Let's be clear about one thing. Real success is sustainable. It lasts and it happens in any economic climate - in spite of external influences - and is not exclusive to soaring economies or to businesses that are lucky. Businesses that survive and thrive in tough times are those which adopt an attitude of discovery rather than resistance.
Assessing Your Business Performance
A review of your business will identify any areas which are working really well - and any which may require you to take action. Being informed about the real drivers in your business is critical to achieving results and optimal utilisation of all your resources.
Keeping Organisational Performance On Target
Mis-handling the target-setting process can be the cause major issues for an organisation. Here is a new ten-step target-setting process to help organisations set their targets in a better way.
Essential Attributes Of Great Companies
Although there is no single formula for what creates a good - or great - company, there are some shared attributes.
Corporate Retrenchment Or Renewal?
The bottom lines may be the same, at least at first. But there is a profound difference in the long-term profitability and competitiveness of companies that renew and regenerate rather than retrench.
Business Success Means Doing The Right Things - And Doing Things Right
Why are some companies so successful? At a fundamental level, the executive mangement are "doing the right things" and everyone "does things right".
Getting Your Business To Run Without You
When you place appropriate value on your time, you will spend more time with your customers, and more time working on your business, rather than in it. Ultimately, you will have a business that runs without you.
The 10 Biggest Blunders
... and how you can avoid them.
The Fourth Key To A Remarkable Workplace - Promise
What are the promises you make to your stakeholders in business today? Stakeholders both internal and external to your business are the key to your business success.
Matrix Structures That Work
The argument for Cross-Functional Workgroups is a compelling one.
Will A Mentor Impact My Business Success?
Do you sometimes feel that you are building your business all by yourself? Perhaps you feel that it would be great to have someone to talk to about your business without them necessarily being part of the business. Considering a business mentor or coach may just be for you.
Evaluating The Structure Of Your Business
Structure allows organisations, and the various groups within them, to function efficiently and effectively.
Ten Essential Habits For Entrepreneurs To Succeed
There is a definite set of fundamental habits that make it easier to grow your business - the same ones Rockefeller used to dominate both his industry and era.
Business Performance Improvement
Businesses are consistently asked by their stakeholders to improve business performance - i.e. enhance revenue, reduce risks, and minimise costs.
Organisational Alignment – Getting The Geese Lined Up
I guess most of us have read about the reasons why geese fly in a ‘V” formation – how by doing so and rotating the lead position, the skein add 70% to its flying range.
Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall...
Facing corporate reality.
The CFO As Corporate Prophet
Long before a crisis hits
Long before it shows in the financials
Or in the KPIs
The signs are there for those who know
These signs are the measures of corporate health
The predictors of corporate performance.
The Three Black Boxes Of Business
There are three black boxes which you must have in your business to ensure that it performs to its maximum potential and wrings out the profits you need to fund your dreams so that you can retire prematurely to the beaches of the world whilst there is still sand in the hour glass of your life.
Predicting & Preempting The Corporate Heart Attack
Long before a crisis hits, long before it shows in the Financials, or even in the Key Performance Indicators (KPI's), the signs are there for those who know.
10 Tips For SMEs Borrowed From Big Business
While they may not have the resources of their larger counterparts, there are a number of tips that smaller businesses can learn from "big business" to help them in their growth.
Continuous Renewal: Managing For The Upside
An organization’s ability to learn, grow and refresh itself is critical to high performance. Fostering and managing continuous renewal are most effective at the project and initiative levels. Here are five contrarian principles for making it happen.
Using KPIs As An Organisation Scorecard
Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be effective as more than indicators of individual employee performance. They are also widely used to measure overall organisation performance. Whether for individual or organisation-wide use, the basic principles are similar, but the emphasis and actual measurements are different.
Try Triage - It's Therapeutic!
Just what the doctor ordered. Those in business have much to learn and profit from the medical practice of TRIAGE.
Cost Of Measuring
The proliferation of performance measures and performance measurement systems is well documented and this has raised the question of just how much does it cost companies to measure and analyse such vast quantities of data.
Guiding Principles For Business Success
Let's look at the guiding principles for sound workplace relations, to become an innovative business, to become a profitable business and to shockproof your business.
Symptoms Of Decline
Effective cash flow management is an essential consideration in any business, particularly in light of GST. Not only is effective cash flow management critical in the current economic climate, many other factors can impact on a business operating successfully in today's marketplace.
Improving Company Value - The Value Based Management Approach
Many businesses struggle to improve their value because they do not have clarity about what their business is worth and what drives that value. If you can’t measure it, how can you improve it?
It Works Better When You Turn It On
Simple lesson, hard experience.
Revenue - A Vital Feature Of Cost Management
Revenue is too often the forgotten side of the cost management equation. Cost management is the management, not just the measurement, of cost.
Benchmarking Small Business Performance
Benchmarking has gained popularity since the 1970s and has become a common component of Total Quality Management (TQM) programs taken up by large entities. Although small businesses are generally aware of the concept they often shy away from benchmarking because of time and cost issues. Yet benchmarking is appropriate for any business, small or large.
Shared Services Or Common Problems
Successful producers sell items for more than it costs to make. Customers buy when they judge items to be worth the purchase price. Producers and customers both profit when the benefit to them exceeds the cost based on informed choice by the customer.
Why Develop Performance Measures?
Why are performance measures so integral to the building of systems, that lead to the continuous improvement of team performance? There is a crucial hierarchical contribution performance measures can make to the successful implementation of the initiatives which follow.