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Your business may compete head-to-head with a number of other companies, but this doesn’t mean you have to treat ALL other businesses as if they are the competition. In fact, there are real benefits in creating strategic alliances with other like-minded organisations.

When you look at the wider marketplace, you’ll see that there are businesses out there that may well compliment your offering. And by working together (rather than against each other) it’s possible to become valued strategic partners, collaborating to serve your joint customers, improve brand awareness and, ultimately, expand your target market.

If this sounds like a positive strategy, now’s the time to do your homework and start hunting down the best strategic partners for your business.

Working to serve a shared customer base

Strategic partnerships are all about finding the common ground between you and your intended partner – and this means finding the best ways to combine your efforts. If you can share the same customer audience, and create a complimentary way of meeting their needs, that creates a broader, more connected way of growing both companies.

Finding a company that’s interested in forming a strategic alliance

1. Find partners in complementary sectors – if you’re an accounting firm, like us, it makes sense to partner with solicitors, lawyers and other professional services providers who can help your clients. If you’re a maker of shoes it makes sense to partner with a clothing manufacturer that shares your same sense of style and purpose. The key here is to find a shared audience or customer need, and to create some real synergy between your two businesses.
2. Take part in business networking and events – to get a wider understanding of your local, or industry specific, business network, it’s worth taking part in plenty of online and offline business events. You’ll meet new people, hear about new brands and will find it easier to find your ideal strategic partner. The wider your business network, the more choices you have for an alliance.
3. Look at crossover between your target audiences – once you’ve found a potential strategic partner, it’s important to take a detailed look at the crossover between your partner’s audience and your audience. Do they shop through the same channels? Do they fit a certain age group or social demographic? Are these customers local, or are they part of a national or global online customer base? How large is their database?
4. Cross-reference your customer databases – by sharing and comparing your client relationship management (CRM) data, you can cross-reference both sets of customer data and see where there’s overlap, or where you may already share some of the same customers. The better you understand each other’s customers, the more likely it is that you’ll find some common ground for shared marketing and promotion.
5. Run joint events and promotions – presenting joint webinars with your strategic partner, or running joint promotions. By finding a common theme, you bring both audiences together and reinforce the alliance between your two brands. You also reduce the expenditure by sharing the costs and reach a wider audience.
6. Combine your R&D efforts – to move your alliance forward, you can also try combining your research and development (R&D) activity, to find new products, new services and new ways of keeping your joint customers happy. By sharing the time, costs and effort of developing new offerings, both companies will benefit – and you keep your businesses at the cutting edge of their respective sectors or specialisms.

There’s plenty of advice available to help you manage your business finances. But what about the tips and hacks you need to get fully in control of your personal finances?

We’ve outlined seven essential tips for managing your personal finances and making the best of your investments and savings.

1. Create a budget and stick to it

Having a budget helps you keep track of your income, expenses and debts. It also ensures that you’re spending money in the right places. A sensible budget keeps your expenditure in check, but also gives you the cash you need for your day-to-day needs and purchases.

When creating a budget, think about all your regular outgoings and the major purchases you’ll need to make over the coming months. Be realistic about your expenses and make adjustments as needed. Remember to allocate money for savings and investments, too.

1. Pay off any debts and liabilities

Other than for major investments such as buying property, borrowing money should always be a short-term solution. High-interest debt, such as credit card debt, can eat away at your savings and hold you back from achieving your financial goals.

It’s a good idea to make paying off your debt a priority. Review your credit card debts, personal loans and overdrafts and focus on paying off the debt with the highest interest rate first. Consolidating all your legacy debts into one easily manageable debt can also make sense – lenders can help you consolidate these debts and bring down your overall repayment costs.

1. Save regularly and look for the best interest rates

We all know it’s good to have a ‘nest egg’ behind you for those times when cash gets tight. Building an emergency savings fund gives you a more solid financial foundation and protects you against unexpected expenses and unplanned purchases.

Whether it’s a sudden expensive car repair, or losing your job and salaried income, with savings in the bank you always have liquid cash available. Aim to save at least three to six months’ worth of living expenses and make sure you shop around for the savings accounts with the best interest rates. It’s also sensible to set up a standing order from your main bank account, so you automatically pay a set amount into your savings account each month.

1. Invest in your future to build solid foundations

It’s all very well to have money in the bank today – but what about further down the road? Make sure you’re making provision for the major life events such as marriage, starting a family, buying a house and (eventually) retiring and stepping back from employment.

Investing in stocks, bonds or a pension plan can help you grow your wealth over time. Consider working with an independent financial advisor to achieve your investment goals and help you create a diversified investment portfolio that aligns with your goals. They’ll also help you achieve the best risk tolerance with your investments.

1. Keep an eye on your personal credit score

Your credit score is an important factor in determining your financial health. A personal credit score measures your risk to a potential lender – the lower your risk, the more likely it is that a provider will lend you money, safe in the knowledge that you’ll make the repayments.

Many of the big credit agencies now offer personal credit reports. Make sure to check your credit report regularly to ensure that the information is accurate and to gauge the impact this score is having on your ability to borrow money. Simple steps, such as paying your bills on time and reducing credit card balances, can help to improve your credit score.

1. Stay informed about taxes and reliefs

Taxes are a necessary part of paying our way in society, but tax costs can also have a significant impact on your personal finances. It’s important to stay informed about changes to tax laws, especially those around income tax and capital gains tax, and to understand how they affect you. We don’t have an inheritance tax in Australia, however there is a need to consider future tax ramifications for your beneficiaries so having a properly-considered and professionally drafted will is essential.

It’s worth working with a tax professional who can review your tax situation and suggest all the available tax reliefs and incentives that may be open to you.

1. Review your finances regularly

Keeping a close eye on your finances is the best way to keep things in check. Most banks now offer apps that make it much easier to review your income and expenditure, and to see exactly where you’re spending your money. With so much financial information available, there’s no excuse for letting your money management get into a mess

Regularly reviewing your finances helps you stay on track and make adjustments as needed. You can even use one of the many personal finance software platforms to help you stay organised in the cloud and make well-informed financial decisions.

Talk to us about getting your personal finances in order

Managing your personal finances, investments and savings well requires discipline, knowledge, and a good understanding of your end goals. By following these seven top tips, you put yourself in the financial driving seat and set the foundations for a solid financial future.

Where you need a helping hand, we’re available to introduce you to the best independent financial advisors and to work with them to help plan to manage your taxes.

Does your business need to improve its cash position? Poor cashflow is a problem for many businesses, whether you’re a start-up or an established family business. Talk to us about how you can get proactive with cashflow management.

It’s a well-worn phrase, but cashflow really is the lifeblood of your business.

When your cash inflows are greater than your cash outflows, that puts you in a positive cashflow position – giving you the liquid cash needed to trade, improve and grow as a business.

But if costs start to outstrip your income, that can leave too little cash in the pot. This results in mounting debt, problems paying suppliers and (in the worst cases) the failure of your business.

So it’s vital to get proactive with cashflow management!

Fast ways to improve your cashflow

Cashflow is an ongoing process, where you need to constantly track, monitor and act on the numbers you see in your regular cashflow statements.

A negative cashflow position can be due to a number of factors, whether it’s insufficient sales, slow payment of invoices or poor cost management. The solution to these issues is to take a proactive and holistic approach to improving the company’s cash situation.

Some key ways to boost your cash position include:

• Improve your sales and marketing – creating more sales and boosting income
• Make it easy to get paid – using the latest in payment tech to speed up payment times
• Track and manage debts – chasing any late payments to reduce your aged debt
• Manage spending effectively – and start to track, review and reduce your costs

Talk to us about improving your cashflow

If cashflow is becoming a headache for your business, we can quickly help you get back in control of your cash position – and attain that all-important positive cashflow position.

Get in touch to improve your cashflow.

Are you interested in comparing your business performance against the ATO Small business benchmarks? It can be a useful exercise to see whether your business is performing well, on average, or lower than the benchmark figures.

Each year the ATO publishes industry-based data to highlight specific ratios of financial and other types of performance.

For example, you can compare your cost of sales to turnover, total expenses to turnover, or labour cost to turnover. Comparing to average data gives you an idea of how your business performs compared to others in your industry.

It’s no problem if your ratios are different – but it can be a helpful starting place to look if you want to improve financial performance or reduce costs. If your ratios are very different from the ATO’s, then it could be worth diving deeper into your financial reports to see if you have problems that can be addressed. For example, a hospitality business might realise that its food cost is much higher than average and then take action to change suppliers and manage wastage.

The ATO benchmarks are based on your business industry code used in your activity statements and tax returns. If you’re not sure what industry you fall under, check the ATO Business industry code tool to find the correct code for your business.

To start comparing your business, you’ll need some information from your accounting software financial reports.

• Gross sales income
• Salary and wages expenses, including superannuation
• Vehicle expenses
• Interest on credit cards and loans
• Cost of sales
• Total other business expenses, including all running costs, administration, contractors, suppliers, rent, freight, training and website fees.

Once you have these totals, either from your software or your last tax return, you can compare your figures to the ATO benchmarks.

Want to learn more? We can analyse your business performance using the ATO benchmarks as a starting place for comparison and discuss areas you can target to increase profitability, reduce costs and streamline operations.

Keeping on top of your cashflow is even more important during tough economic times.

With a global slowdown on the cards, energy prices soaring and supply chain still challenges, cash is likely to be tight over the coming year and beyond. Cloud technology and fintech apps, can give your business the best possible control over its cash.

Why is cashflow so important?

To keep your business operating, you need enough money coming into the business to cover your outgoings – with enough surplus cash to deliver a profit. When recession begins to hit, this can have a significant impact on your income.

Consumers will have less disposable income to spend on your products and services. Business customers will be looking to reign in their spending on suppliers. As a net result, your business is likely to make fewer sales and will bring in smaller revenues.

This means:

• Reduced income coming into the business
• Less cash in the business to cover your operational expenses
• Not enough money in the bank to pay suppliers, utility providers or payroll costs
• In the worst-case scenario, insufficient cashflow for you to continue trading.

What can you do to improve your cashflow situation?

The more informed you are about your cash position, the more you can do to prepare for any cashflow gaps. It’s this foresight that can make all the difference when you’re battling against tough external economic forces and a downturn in sales.

If you want to safeguard your cashflow, these are some sensible steps to take:

• Switch to cloud accounting – accounting and finance technology has moved on in leaps and bounds in the past decade. The latest crop of cloud accounting platforms all offer a detailed reporting of your cash position. These software tools will generally offer real-time data, giving you up to date cash numbers.
• Integrate with cashflow forecasting apps – cloud accounting platforms let you add third party apps to create a custom app stack of helpful business tools. There are plenty of cashflow forecasting apps to choose from, giving you the ability to predict your future cashflow position.
• Plan ahead for the cashflow gaps – when your forecast shows a shortfall of cash coming up, that’s the time to take evasive action. If you can see that there’s a cash hole approaching next month, it’s time to look at ways of raising extra finance to fill that hole. That could mean extending your bank overdraft, taking out a small business loan or taking out an invoice finance facility with a lender.
• Look for opportunities to cut your overheads – one way to even up your cashflow is to cut down on your expenditure. If you can cut back on overheads, expenses and unnecessary costs, this can help you re-balance your cash position, even when cashflow is getting tight. Look for cheaper suppliers, buy in smaller quantities and take every opportunity to cut costs and keep your spending more sensible.
• Update your prices and your sales strategy – raising your prices is one way to bring in more cash, with the same volume of sales. But it’s a balancing act. Putting your prices up can alienate existing customers and could see you losing customers, but if you can find the sweet spot for your pricing AND also drum up more sales, you can quickly increase revenue and give your cash inflows a healthy boost.
• Review your cashflow reports regularly – it’s important to look at your cashflow numbers and reporting regularly, not just at period-end. This is particularly important when economic times are tough. With the most current cash information to hand, you can make informed business decisions and aim to keep the business operational.

Talk to us about updating your cashflow processes

With your business in a healthy cashflow position, you give yourself some solid financial foundations for riding out the global recession. No business is invulnerable in these conditions, but with liquid cash in the business, you have more flexibility and more capital to play with.

Book a meeting and let’s see how we can improve your cashflow processes.

It’s tough going for business owners this winter. Illness is rampaging through the community – it’s hitting staff, suppliers, clients and schools, creating disruption throughout the economy.

With the labour market tight, businesses are already understaffed. Add high rates of absenteeism, and remaining workers and business owners are under incredible pressure. When you love your job and always want to do the best for your clients, it’s easy to start overworking yourself and run the risk of burnout.

It’s vital that you take care of yourself this winter, so here are three ways to help prevent burnout:

1. Start saying ‘No’– Small business owners are experts in saying ‘Yes!’ and then figuring out the details later. It’s how you grow a small business and build your reputation for being able to solve problems for your clients. Unfortunately, if you’re overworked and stressed out, it’s time to start saying ‘No’. Begin by turning down work from difficult clients, or work that’s outside your core business, so you’re focused on where you add the most value.
2. Identify at least one area you can outsource – You can’t do everything yourself, particularly if you’re understaffed. Look at your processes and try to identify an area that’s not part of your core business which you can outsource. It might be social media posts, or office cleaning, or even just subscribing to a meal kit service to take the stress out of cooking. Usually, the cost of these initiatives will quickly pay for themselves: once you feel less stressed, you’ll be more productive.
3. Hold onto your interests outside work – Running a business can be all-consuming, but hang onto your friends, sports and hobbies even when it gets busy. Letting your relationships, health, and pastimes dwindle away will undermine your emotional, physical, and mental health.

We can help

Not sure if outsourcing tasks will pay for itself? We can work with you to analyse the costs and benefits of any business investment. Get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

Scaling up your business isn’t about steady growth over time. It’s about having a clear strategy for quickly expanding the business to achieve full-scale hypergrowth.

Most startups grow organically, adding customers here and there and gradually expanding over time. Scaling up aims to accelerate this process, pushing your growth to move beyond that slow, organic pace. To achieve this, every element of your business model needs to be reviewed, refined and systemised – so you have scalability built into the company from the ground up.

Systemise your processes and build scalability into your DNA

Scaling up is a fast-paced, hectic and transformative process for any business. But with the right planning, strategy and funding, the return on your scale-up investment can be significant. Systemisation is the starting point and the driver of your efficiency.

The aim of your systemisation process is to make the business ordered, standardised and efficient. Look at how the business works. Write down every process and operational action. Then see how these processes can be made as lean and effective as possible, and aim to make these operations easily repeatable – so they can scale on demand as the business grows.

If any processes can be automated, automate them. Automation is a key driver of productivity and efficiency, so make use of any tech that could help you get more streamlined.

Remove yourself from the everyday running of the business

This may sound counterproductive, but a big goal of a scale-up strategy is to make yourself redundant from the everyday business. If all the operational elements of the business have to pass through you, as the founder and CEO, then that limits your ability to scale.

Remove yourself from the equation, so the business can grow without your everyday input at the operational level. This allows the business to function without you, leaving you with more time to focus on the high-level strategic work. That’s more time for business development. More time working on innovation. More time building relationships with customers and suppliers.

Expand your executive team and workforce

Once you’ve stepped back from the day-to-day tasks, your CEO role can become far more of a driving force behind the growth of the business. But you can’t do this single-handedly. You’ll need a close and trusted executive team to work with. Plus an experienced management team who you can delegate to. And an expanded workforce at all levels of the organisation.

As the startup evolves into scale-up, the business will become more complex and the workload will increase. To cope with this and keep the company running like a well-oiled machine you need a team who are ready for the task and fully on-board with your aims for the business.

Increase your operational infrastructure

Hypergrowth of the business means a greater volume of sales and work. To meet this demand, you urgently need to expand your operational infrastructure. That means looking at the size of your workspace. The amount of tech, equipment and machinery you have. And the ways you deliver your end product/service to your increased customer base.

The key here is to apply a LEAN methodology – keeping everything as simple and basic as possible, while also building in the capacity to deal with this increased volume of work. Get the operational procedures out of your own head and turn them into lean, seamless processes. And invest in the equipment and operational systems needed to cope with your increased output.

Look at investment and access to funding

To bring your scale-up plans to life, there’s a need to invest heavily in the future of the business. You’re likely to need new assets and equipment. Larger premises or multiple workspaces. More raw materials or stock. And a bigger workforce – which will mean a larger payroll each month.

You may be in the fortunate position of having plenty of spare cash in your reserves. But for most potential scale-ups, there’s going to be a need for external funding. This could mean you and your fellow directors putting money into the business. It could mean approach lenders and business finance providers to take out a loan. Or it could mean looking for private investors to plough money into the business. Whatever the source of this additional funding, you a clear funding strategy to work from – a funding plan that’s aligned with your scale-up plan.

Share your strategic goal and growth plan

For scaling up to be a success, everyone in the company must be on board with the idea. Make your growth aim and key numbers transparent, so the whole team is engaged and motivated by this common aim. And make sure you have a detailed scale-up plan that factors in the challenges of expanding your workforce, resources and operational infrastructure.

Think about:

• WHY you want to scale and what the end goal will be
• HOW you will achieve this – and what the timescales will be
• WHO you need on board to make this work
• WHAT new assets and equipment will be needed
• WHERE the funding will come from to bankroll this plan.

If you’re thinking about scaling up your established startup, please do get in touch. We’ll help you build a viable scale-up plan, with costings, budgets and achievable targets to meet.