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Monthly Archive for February, 2008

Top Tips for a better business plan

Published by Business Link on 18 February, 2008 in Top Tips • Closed

1. Do a lot or do a little
Sometimes writing a business plan is a task confined to the bottom of an in-tray or dismissed entirely as an arduous chore. But remember – a business plan can be as long and detailed or as short and snappy as you like. And because your business plan should ideally be a dynamic, working document, you can add to it as you go. Those that appreciate the virtues of writing a business plan may argue that the more you put in the more you get out. But crucially, it’s important to realise that at the very least, a little planning is better than no planning at all.

2. Write for your audience
If you are preparing a business plan to attract interest from potential stakeholders,  such as investors, banks or partners, looking at things from your audience’s perspective helps you decide what pertinent information to include. Investors will expect to see detailed financial forecasts and growth plans illustrating your suitability for investment. If your audience is yourself, in that you are preparing a business plan for your own day-to-day use, you might choose to focus more closely on other areas such as detailed operational or strategic plans.

3. The art of the start
If your business plan fails to interest and engage from the outset your audience are likely to switch off. The ‘executive summary’ is positioned at the start of a business plan, acting as a synopsis of key messages. It should inspire readers to read on, or alternatively – if your business plan is for internal use – it could serve as a handy reference point or motivational pick-you-up on a bad day.

4. Focus on opportunities and strengths
Your business plan is your message to potential stakeholders – and yourself – that your business has potential. An emphasis on identified opportunities and strengths helps reinforce your business’s key success factors. But be realistic. If you make financial forecasts based on outlandish evaluations of your potential, you might run into problems later on.

5. Think strategically
Objectives are best pursued with sound strategies. Your business plan is an opportunity to flesh out strategies capable of delivering your aims. Thinking strategically makes your business plan more than just the necessary paperwork to raise finance or attract investors. As a working document, your business plan can be a truly functional resource to steer your business in the right direction.

6. Know your market
Your marketplace has the potential to influence your objectives and strategies, dilute your strengths, or impact your finances. It therefore follows that fully understanding your marketplace is vital to future planning.

7. Highlight key people
Investors often buy into people, not just businesses, so emphasising the strengths of your key personnel is important if you are looking to raise finance. If you are preparing a business plan for internal use, the act of writing down the strengths and core responsibilities of key staff could be a useful exercise, if only to confirm that your people’s skills are fully utilised.

8. Number crunch
Numbers are important because, ultimately, your business’s potential is only as strong as your financial plan. Realising your future objectives may require capital investment or adequate cash flow, and your potential profitability will be high on the list of questions from an investor’s perspective.

9. Keep structured
A sensible structure helps you compile, write and use a business plan effectively. Potential investors and stakeholders will expect to see information laid out in a logical and easily navigable way. Structuring your plan may help you write and use it too. For example, you could divvy up different sections to be managed by different people (based on their knowledge and strengths), bringing plans together bit by bit. Visit the Business Link website for links to examples of sample business plans that follow typical structures.

10. Keep it up
Plans are made for doing, so it’s important to revisit your business plan regularly, if only to make sure you are achieving what you set out to. If your plans turn out to be unrealistic, set new goals and evaluate why things didn’t go to plan. There may be reasons to explain differences between your plan and reality, such as a shift in strategic direction or a downturn in market conditions, but consciously making the comparison helps you differentiate between an intentional change and a loss of focus or direction.

More info – Prepare a business plan

HR focus

Published by Business Link on 18 February, 2008 in HR & People Development • 0 Comments

Graduate vacancies set to rise in 2008 

A survey from the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) reports that graduate recruitment vacancies are set to rise this year, and warns that employers may have a hard time finding the right candidates.

Although vacancies are up this year, by an estimated 16.4 per cent over 2007, so are the expectations of graduates. So called ‘generation Y’ graduates (those born after 1982) are, the report suggests, perceived to be more ‘choosy’, ‘demanding’ and ‘ambitious’ than those graduating in previous years.

The survey states that 67 per cent of employers feel they might struggle to fill new positions, not just due to the higher expectations of graduates, but because often graduates are not perceived to hold the right skills for many positions.

This disparity between the expectations of graduates and the needs of their potential employers should be considered by those looking to recruit new talent. Expectations may need to be managed on both sides. Specifically, employers may need to review their own demands, whilst at the same time manage the expectations of new graduate recruits. Otherwise, employers may either struggle to find the right recruits in the first instance, or risk losing them when high expectations fail to be realised.

Employers should also review their approach to recruitment, making sure that new vacancies are promoted effectively and robust shortlisting and selection procedures are in place to track down the right recruits.
Recruiting and interviewing

Before recruiting and interviewing, it’s helpful to explore the options for taking on staff and outline your requirements in a person specification and job description. Once you have taken these steps, you can confidently enter the marketplace to attract the right applicants for shortlisting and interview.

Attracting talented employees is a competitive business, so you need to promote your job vacancy effectively. In a sense, you are competing against other employers just as much as potential employees are competing against each other. It’s therefore important to ‘sell the benefits’ of your vacancy and the positive aspects of working for your company. Once you have defined your ‘message’, you need to get it out there, ensuring you reach the right audience.

You can advertise directly – in the local or national press, on recruitment websites, or by placing ads on local notice boards. Or, you might ask employment agencies to source candidates on your behalf. This approach takes much of the legwork out of the recruitment process, and employment agencies could (sometimes) be more experienced in attracting and selecting the right people. Of course, in exchange for this service, you will have to pay a commission to the agency that finds your successful candidate. An alternative to commercial agencies is Jobcentre Plus – which provides a similar service but at no direct cost to employers – and can also offer further advice and support during the recruitment process.

How you decide to promote your vacancy could depend on your own personal preference or experience of what works best for your business. The type of vacancy – for example if it’s a temporary, specialist or senior position – may also influence your methods of finding candidates.

Once you have defined your message and chosen your approach to spread the word, you need to move on to manage the application process, shortlist candidates, conduct interviews and possibly even consider alternative selection methods. Click here to find out more

More info – Recruiting and interviewing
 
New measures to prevent illegal working 

From 29 February 2008, employers who employ illegal migrant workers will be liable to a new civil penalty.  By checking specified documents from every prospective employee, you may establish a statutory excuse against payment of a civil penalty for employing someone not entitled to undertake the employment you have available.
Find out more about the new measures

Customer care: the personal touch

Published by Business Link on 18 February, 2008 in Sales & Marketing • 0 Comments

A small business can be a better business by fostering excellent customer care. Indeed, it could be a key quality that differentiates a business from its bigger rivals. So much so that many large and growing firms go to great lengths to maintain the personal touch. It’s part of what keeps customers coming back for more.

In its simplest form, customer care is way of thinking. Many small businesses are hungry for new customers and passionate about keeping them. As a result, they may naturally invest more time into building one-to-one relationships with customers, or choose to ‘go the extra mile’. This could mean offering discounted prices to loyal customers, doing a bit extra without charging for it, or possibly just talking closely with customers about how they could be better served. There are many approaches, but often, it’s a business’s attitude, passion and commitment to the customer experience that counts.

Of course, customer care is often more complicated than that. Especially for large or growing businesses, where a more systematic approach may be required. For example, a business with thousands of customers may employ database technologies to segment customers into groups, in order to understand and serve them more effectively, or to identify lapsed customers so that efforts can be made to attract them back. Similarly, businesses with lots of employees – whose people perhaps don’t care so intrinsically for customer care – may struggle to maintain the personal touch, and as a result might have to encourage employees to care through training or incentives. Such issues might be especially important for growing businesses, where the transition away from close customer relationships may affect customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Big corporations often spend millions investing in customer care, and still fail to get it right. Conversely, a small business may spend nothing and deliver a truly unrivalled customer experience. This indicates that both tangible and intangible influences are vital to great customer care. In short, customer care is both a science and an art.

For businesses of any size, customer care offers a very real opportunity for competitive advantage. And crucially, it cannot be easily bought. It’s a unique opportunity to be different and better than the rest, and it should be treated as such.

More info – Manage your customer care

Moan, moan, moan

Published by Business Link on 18 February, 2008 in HR & People Development • 0 Comments

We all do it. To let off steam or because we feel passionately about something. But usually it doesn’t get us very far. Moaning is perceived as trivial, and as a consequence our moans are not taken that seriously by others. Moan too often, and you may not be taken seriously whichever way the conversation turns.

But then – if we didn’t criticise anything – there would be no motivation to change things for the better. We would suffer quietly in silence, acting like nothing was wrong with the world. Thankfully, there happens to be a happy middle ground.

The best type of moan is really not a moan at all, it’s a constructive criticism. In a sense, constructive criticism is moaning with a purpose. Rather than seeking to criticise in an overbearing or trivial way, a constructive criticism is a more diplomatic and productive approach which seeks to offer solutions to the problems at hand.

It is of course true that sometimes there are problems which have no obvious solutions, making it difficult to offer any kind of truly constructive criticism. Also, a problem or issue may exist where it isn’t your responsibility to find a solution, leaving you unable or unwilling to devote your time to generating constructive suggestions. In such cases, we might be left wondering what else we can do but moan or keep quiet.

Regardless of these issues, making the distinction between moaning and constructive criticism can be helpful to an individual or a business on several levels. On an individual level, an emphasis on constructively criticising a person or their way of doing things could minimise the potential for confrontation or bad feeling. Instead, the recipient of your criticism may actually find your feedback useful. Such an approach can foster stronger relationships when working with others, especially when managing people, where personal development is part of your responsibility. On a broader level, a company culture in which constructive criticism is acceptable – and when deemed valid is considered and acted upon – could help an organisation improve its products, services, processes or operations.

An open and constructive atmosphere is, at worst, better than the cloak and dagger approach of moaning. At best, it could improve communications and foster a more collaborative and creative approach to solving your business’s most challenging problems.

More info – Inform and consult your employees

Intellectual Property explained

Published by Business Link on 18 February, 2008 in Legislation & Regulations • 0 Comments

Intellectual Property (IP) refers to creations of the mind, which can be protected and exploited in similar ways to physical property.

The creations of architects, writers, designers and software makers… Unique visual designs, inventions, products and processes… The way products look or feel… The names, signs, symbols or slogans that make products, services and businesses distinctive…. These things are valuable to their owners, and they have a right to protect them. These things are IP.

In many ways protecting IP is a moral imperative. Others should not be allowed to freely copy or steal your ideas and creations without your consent or compensation. But protecting IP is also a commercial imperative. By protecting IP you can protect your interests, establish a competitive advantage and maximise your success and profitability. And like physical property, IP can be exchanged, traded, licensed or sold, offering the potential for further value to be realised from the creative process.

A framework of regulations exist in the UK that seek to protect the interests of IP owners. The regulations fall broadly into four main types of IP: patents, trade marks, copyrights and designs.

• Patents protect new inventions, giving the owner the right to prevent others from making, using, importing or selling an invention without permission. An invention must be new or inventive, and must be capable of being made or used in industry.

• Trade marks grant protection of a sign or symbol – including names, logos, slogans, domain names, shapes, colours or sounds – that are distinctive and that distinguish a business’s goods or services from those of competitors.

• Copyright protects creative or artistic works from being copied or used without permission. Works are automatically protected by copyright as soon as the work is ‘fixed’. This could mean when the work is written down, recorded, published on the Internet or stored electronically. There is no application process or fee for copyright, but owners may need to provide proof of copyright in the case of a dispute.

• Design protection focuses on the appearance of an item resulting from its features or the way it looks, rather than on how it works. Characteristics such as an item’s colour(s), shape, texture, material composition, contours and lines may contribute to a product’s appearance. There are several different forms of protection for designs available in the UK, all of which require that a design must be both new and individual in character.

There may be additional requirements and steps to take when registering different types of protection. In some cases (as with patents) it may be necessary to seek professional or legal guidance. It is also important to remember that IP rights are territorial. In other words, some types of IP protection are only valid in the countries where they are granted or registered. Even if you don’t trade abroad, it may be important to protect your IP from being stolen or used in other countries.

For more information, select from the following resources:

Guide – Protecting intellectual property

Guide – Intellectual property protection overseas

Interactive Tool – Find out how to protect your ideas

More info – Other IP resources

Link – UK Intellectual Property Office Website