Management actions for tough times

I hate to sound like a pessimist but without the mining boom and our resources revenue stream, what would our economy really look like? Big manufacturers have been winding down production and axing jobs. Our services sector isn’t the powerhouse it should be. Small businesses are bound in red tape and bricks and mortar retail is in the doldrums.

So, let’s say consumer and business confidence is hit hard, and spending flatlines – how would your business pull through?

Management actions for tough times

There are two sides to this business equation: Cost cutting and revenue generation. You need to manage your overall business costs more efficiently as well as create new opportunities for revenue growth.

Cost-cutting

The first thing you need to do is assess your cash flow. In good times and bad, you need to have a firm grasp of what you have to pay out, what your order book looks like, and what income you're owed.
When it comes to staffing levels, you don’t have to focus on retrenchments. There may be people in your company who would prefer to cut back on hours and job share. Would any of your employees prefer to be contractors and work for short stints when you need them?

The next biggest business expense is probably your business premises. Having unoccupied desk space is costing your business money. These days, there’s certainly a business case for encouraging flexible work practices and encouraging staff that don’t physically need to be in the workplace to do their jobs remotely, while providing a shared space for them at the workplace when they need to be on site.

Next scrutinise your inventory, rationalise your stock and renegotiate your contracts or find hungrier suppliers. In terms of day-to-day business costs, can you use Skype in your business instead of expensive landlines. Can you take advantage of professional services in the cloud? You can also cut costs by taking energy efficiency measures and reusing and recycling.

Revenue growth

As part of your business strategy you should be conducting research with your customers to find out what they need, and what will keep them coming back to you. Selling more products and services to existing customers is far more cost effective than finding new ones.

Are you in step with the consumer and business shift to mobile everything? Innovating your business model to take advantage of this trend, must be a big priority. Indeed innovating your products and services could mean you’re eligible for the R&D tax incentive which is designed to encourage more companies to engage in research and development activities. To qualify, R&D activities are defined as the experimental activities that produce the knowledge to develop the new or improved products or processes. These may be offline experiments or production based trial activities.

Tough times

The Reserve Bank estimates that investment in mining will start falling not growing, and therefore subtracting from Australia's economic growth, sometime in 2013-14. On this measure alone, you’ve got a good eighteen months to put some stringent business management practices in place.

business research methods

The following information is intended to give the reader some general guidance about planning a basic research work in their organization. The remainder of the information in the section presents an overview of methods used in business, how to apply them, and how to analyze and interpret and document results.

Research Designs Depend on Information You Need and Available Resources

Often, organization members need to know everything about their products, services, programs, etc. Your research designs depend on what information you need to collect in order to make major decisions about a product, service, program, etc. Usually, you are faced with a major decision due to, e.g., ongoing complaints from customers, need to persuade funders / bankers to loan money, unmet needs among customers, the necessity to polish an internal method, etc.

The more focused you are about what you need to gain by your research, the more effective and efficient you can be in your research, the shorter the time it will take you and ultimately the less it will cost you (whether in your own time, the time of your employees and/or the time of a consultant).

There’s trade offs, , in the breadth and depth of information you get. The more breadth you need, usually the less depth you’ll get (unless you have a great deal of resources to carryover out the research). On the other hand, in case you need to examine a sure aspect of a product, service, program, eta., in great detail, you will likely not get as much information about other aspects as well.

For those beginning out in research or who have limited resources, they can use various methods to receive a lovely mix of breadth and depth of information. They can understand more about sure areas of their products, services, programs, eta.,and not go bankrupt doing so.

Key Considerations to Design Your Research Approach

Think about the following key questions when designing your research plan:

1. For what purposes is the research being completed, i.e., what would you like to be able to choose due to the research?

2. Who are the audiences for the information from the research, e.g., funders / bankers, upper management, employees, customers, eta.

3. What kinds of information are needed to make the decisions you need to make and/or to enlighten your intended audiences, e.g., do you need information to understand a method, the customers who buy sure products, strengths and weaknesses of the product or service or program, benefits to customers, how the product or service or program failed some customers and why, etc.?

4. From what sources ought to the information be collected, e.g., employees, customers, groups of employees or customers, sure documentation, etc.?

5. How can that information be collected in a reasonable fashion, e.g., questionnaires, interviews, examining documentation, observing staff and/or clients in the program, conducting focus groups among staff and/or clients, etc?

6. When is the information needed (so, by when must it be collected)?

7. What resources are available to collect the information?