As an SME owner, now is a good time to do a “stocktake” across your business, after 12 months of racing to get to the end of June. This new financial year is especially worthy of taking time to reflect and celebrate with your team!

During the past 12 months there have been a lot of challenges for many SME business owners. The uncertainty created by COVID-19 and the many related problems – border closures, lockdowns, supplier chain shortages and labour market shortages…just to name a few!

But despite these challenges, there is plenty of good news around as well!

The economy has recovered better than expected by the government, economists and indeed many SME business owners. This reflects the strength of the SME community – optimists who are committed to their businesses.

The key has been looking for flexibility, to change how the business is operating and adapting to new business models etc. We service many clients who are SME business owners and we talk to them every day. We are very happy to see that many of these clients will close off this difficult financial year with great results for their business.

When a business has performed well during the year there are a lot of value-add services that we can provide to help them move profit out of the business, making it available to expand their investment portfolio. We can help to manage more than just business success, we can use that success to build on personal wealth success.

So how do you do a “stocktake” across your business?

• Identify and CELEBRATE what has worked well with your team – cheer loudly for all of the achievements over the past 12 months with your team. Overcome uncertainty, as a team collectively and individually, the team as a whole and each individual team member have all earned huge credit.
• Identify and ADDRESS what did not work well, the things that caused stress on the business and your team – some common challenges SME’s usually face have been made a lot harder in the past 12 months. For example, labour market shortage…usually a Seek advertisement will have 50-100 applications but now only a few trickle in!
  
  When we greet our SME clients in meetings we always ask how is your business doing? The most common response to this question is, “I need more good and productive staff!” So, none of us are alone in suffering this! We are also seeing some of our clients overcome this by investing more in technology, even in AI (e.g. robot arms for use on production lines to replace traditional workers). By doing that their wages expense is reduced and the bottom line profit improves.
• Budget for the next 12 months – We assist almost all of our clients to prepare a budget for their business. It is amazing how this simple exercise can enlighten business owners. With a budget you don’t travel in the dark throughout the year, it gives you an opportunity to address issues as they arrive.
• Resource plans – Your team is the most valuable asset SME’s have. A resource plan will switch on the light so you can fairly assess the productivity, performance, improvement and opportunities for the team as a whole as well as individually. Investing the time in a resource plan always provides a huge pay off.
• Bring the team with you – a new Financial Year celebration with the team will be the best investment you can do when 1 July 2021 arrives!

If you would like our help in implementing these important strategies into your business just contact one of our team and we will happily work with you to make this new year the best ever!