If you are worrying about the future of your business, help is at hand. Don’t bury your head, use this simple checklist to identify next steps.
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- Review your Budgets and set realistic and achievable targets for 2020.
- Get rid of Won’t pay customers.
- Review debtors list and chase up overdue invoices (if appropriate).
- Offer existing debtors extended payment terms and/or discounts.
- Make sure your terms of business contain explicit payment terms.
- Assign responsibility to one individual for invoicing and collections.
- Agree extended payment terms with all suppliers in advance.
- If appropriate, review banking facilities and discuss future needs.
- Put extra effort into making sure your relationships with your better customers are solid.
- Review and flow chart the main processes in your business (e.g. Sales processing, order fulfilment, shipping etc) and challenge the need for each step.
- Encourage team members to suggest ways to streamline and simplify processes (e.g. sit down and brainstorm about efficiencies and cost reduction).
- Use ‘bottom up’ budgeting where everyone in the office gives input on areas over which they have control – target a 10% cost saving.
- Review your staffing needs over the next few months.
- Get your members of staff involved in a discussion of likely trading conditions and get their input on reducing costs and maintaining revenues.
- Review your list of products and services and eliminate those that are unprofitable or not core products/services.
- Establish your key performance indicators (KPI’s) and measure them on a daily basis e.g:
• Sales Leads generated
• Orders supplied/fulfilled
• Cash balance
• Stock Turnover
• Debtor Days
• Gross Profit
• Net Profit - Review efficiency of business processes and consider alternatives such as outsourcing certain activities locally or overseas.
- Communicate with everyone involved in the business, explain the strategy and get their buy-in.