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Pro Tip: Developing Resiliency

admin Blog, Pro Tip Business Tips, Liquidity, Margins, planning, pro tip

As a business owner it is your obligation to focus on developing resiliency in your operations. This obligation is to your customers, your employees, your partners and ultimately to yourself and your future. What does developing resiliency mean though?

– Focusing on margin improvement. Margins = Security in an uncertain economic climate.

– Developing adequate liquidity reserves.

– Prioritizing diversification in your revenue streams and the means to generate them.

– Spend time on planning for the future.

These four pillars can give you security through resiliency, don’t deprioritize them!

Pro Tip

glevi Blog Budgets, Business Tips, Goals, Growth, planning, pro tip

Happy New Year! Everyone wants to start the year off right, how can we approach that? For us, it is all about planning:

1. Consider where you want to go.

2. Plan out a realistic path to achieve your goal(s) using historical data and assumptions.

3. Consider what resources (in particular people) are required for your path.

4. Understand the impact on cash of your growth trajectory. Do you need to adjust your path or find additional funding to make it possible?

5. Think about the next goal after this one, at least broadly.

6. Set incremental goals to track progress.

Set yourself up for success in 2025!

Pro Tip

glevi Blog Forecasting, Growth, pro tip, Scaling, Segmental Analysis, Strategy

Segmental analysis is something many SMEs do not engage in, but it often proves invaluable when we are working to identify the best areas of potential enterprise value growth. Segments can include things like products, services, geographic areas, marketing verticals, team member, and more. Understanding what you are doing now to drive the highest value allows you to be intentional about doing more of that, it also allows you to work to identify complimentary offerings or targeted areas of efficiency improvement to drive higher contribution margin strategic growth. Get granular, start now!

Pro Tip

glevi Blog Cash Flow, pro tip

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, no matter the size. Unfortunately, sometimes, when SME owners contact us, they have reached a critical point with their cash flow and are in desperate need of immediate improvement. Here are a few areas of focus that can help alleviate cash crunches quickly, if sometimes temporarily:

1. Negotiate more advantageous terms with vendors/suppliers.

2. Adjust payment terms of clients/customers.

3. Revise sales promotion offerings.

4. Target easy areas for cost-cutting.

5. Liquidate under-valued/obsolete inventory.

Cash flow improvement is possible, with focus.

Pro Tip

glevi Blog Growth, pro tip, Strategy

Growth is not always a natural upward progression, it can be elusive. When we start to experience stagnation or even retraction, we have to think outside of the box. Some possible pathways to consider may be offering a new product or service that is complimentary or adjacent to your current offering to your active or former clientele, identifying an opportunity to productize something about your service, or developing a recurring revenue stream to provide a base for your operations and increase enterprise value. Now is the time to think about this for 2025!

Pro Tip

glevi Blog pro tip, Workflows

Effective and efficient operational workflows are integral to reaching peak financial performance in SMEs. The absence of these will result in negative consequences like a lack of accountability in the team, confusion over which vital processes are to be performed by each individual, a slower cash conversion cycle, customer satisfaction below the desired rating and lower margins, amongst others. Doing the work to improve operational workflows is a necessary part of improving financial performance, and a valuable strategic initiative to focus on.

Pro Tip

glevi Blog Compliance, pro tip

Compliance seems boring, but being out of compliance in the variety of ways that can happen can create very serious risks for your business. Ensuring that you are in compliance in your business organization and operations can include things like professional licensing, business licensing, insurance, banking, record keeping, financial recording and more. Creating procedures to keep up with compliance tasks is essential for any business interested in avoiding penalties, fines and potentially criminal or civil charges. If you suspect you are out of compliance, don’t procrastinate, act now!

Pro Tip

glevi Blog Forecasting, pro tip

Driving blindfolded is scary, right? So is operating your business without a financial forecast! Taking the time to use a data driven approach to plan out your future growth trajectory is worth its weight in gold. We see the advantages of this process every day, including empowering informed decision-making, a better understanding of the needed liquidity for planned growth and a focus on using assets in the most efficient way. Get to work analyzing past financials, determining realistic assumptions and considering external factors to pave the way for forecasting effectively.

Pro Tip

glevi Blog Accountability, pro tip, Scaling

A primary area of margin degradation prevalent in SMEs is the result of a lack of accountability among team members. Holding people on your team accountable does not need to be a negative conversation! Developing the necessary processes and KPI tracking capabilities for this purpose will empower team members while naturally increasing accountability and engagement on the team. Aligning the personal interests of team members with the interests of the organization is key for maximizing financial results. This is true regardless of industry or the size of the organization. Developing workflows that support accountability is often the first step to achieving organizational scalability and for reducing conflict and confusion between team members.

Pro Tip

glevi Blog Budgets, Cash Flow, planning, pro tip

Growth through expansion into new geographical locations is exciting, it is also expensive! Focusing on top line sales growth in this situation is common, but cash forecasting to ensure sufficient liquidity is maintained is essential. Without this part of the process the business can be put at a high risk of experiencing a cash shortfall, despite those added sales. Make sure that liquidity planning is not left out of your 2025 budgeting and strategic planning process.