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What is a smarter better business?

  Sep 16, 2021


What is a smarter better business?

What is a smarter better business?

Here at Malloch McClean, we are fortunate enough that we get to work with many different businesses. While every business is unique, those that are successful have common traits - their ability to plan, report and communicate.  

Planning 

Businesses need to continually evolve to ensure that they remain relevant and profitable. A retail store might decide to increase sales by introducing a new product, lift the marketing budget to increase conversation rates or create a loyalty programme to retain existing clients.  

Farmers could look to adopt new technology to get more insights, improve performance and prepare for the future. 

That’s understandable and makes perfect sense…right?

A successful business will plan for the future. They often have a structured process that they undertake to challenge their current thinking, look for and explore new opportunities, brainstorm ideas to grow their business and their people. Effectively building or reviewing a plan that will see their business being relevant in 5, 10, 20 or even 50 years time. 

Reporting 

From the plan, successful businesses will set objectives/targets and have KPI’s (key performance indicators). Would you drive a car without monitoring the dashboard? Your business is no different! Your Business KPI’s and reporting dashboard are there to ensure you are on track - are there any areas that needs attention? Depending on the nature of your business, some will have daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly tracking and use that data to make better business decisions. 

Examples of reporting measures:

Retail businesses might monitor things like weekly sales targets, stock on hand and costs vs budget. 

Farming businesses might monitor things like lambing%, sheep scanning %, avg lamb weight, date of sale, pasture growth rates/utilisation, per cow production, costs per kilo of milk solids and Imported feed costs.     

Communication

When buying a property, we often hear the words, location, location, location. In business, especially those with business partners and/or family members this should be communication, communication, communication. 

In business you need to be prepared to deal with conflict, those that do it well have regular meetings with all interested parties. They start with an agenda which is circulated before the meeting, (this allows for deeper thinking), they discuss/debate and look to gain agreement, prepared actions and conclude meetings with minutes to ensure clarity. 

Unfortunately the opposite is too common and this is often where issues begin to arise. Not talking because you don’t want to offend anyone and not dealing with issues can create even more tension and uncertainty between parties.     

At Malloch McClean we can help facilitate this for you, your family and/or business partners. We work with many clients to help them create a business plan or succession plan as well as improve communication, reporting and performance through our coaching programmes.

If you are striving for a smarter, better business, please contact our team.

Written by Blair Evans
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