Success Factors
Through our commercial experience and research we understand successful businesses are able cut through clutter and complexity and are quick, perceptive, innovative and adaptable with a clear vision and purpose. Successful businesses are also customer focused, well managed, efficient, reliable, and have strong entrepreneurial spirit with the tenacity and determination to succeed.
We've identified key success factors that help you achieve your long term vision.
3. Staying Ahead of Your Competition
7. Strong Team and Human Resources
12. Effective Sales and Marketing
13. Supportive Ownership and Adequate Finance
15. Financial Management, Feedback and Forecasting
19. Efficient Systems, Processes and Risk Mitigation
20. Effective IT and Data security
24. Entrepreneurial Spirit
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Your success factors are described in more detail below.
For many business leaders, these success factors will be familiar. The challenge is consistently progressing these factors and carrying out the actions that produce the best results.
Often you may need additional resources to more fully action your success factors, due to pressure on management time and resources.
Clarity Advisory Group can efficiently provide additional time and resources to help you act on your success factors. We work with your team and leverage the synergy generated by building on joint strengths, insights, skills and expertise.
We help you act on your day to day success factors to boost your performance and develop your business.
We also help you achieve your longer-term success factors, helping you develop the overall health, strength, resilience and durability of your business and preparing the way for your major success.
Other than those outlined below there may be other success factors key to your success. We help you identify and action these.
1 DIRECTION AND VISION
You and your team ideally has a clear picture of your purpose, vision, mission and values.
Ideally, your clear purpose inspires and motivates you and the people around you.
Your purpose is ideally at the core of all you do across your entire business.
Your business leadership team ideally has a strong understanding of the strategic and commercial considerations for your industry, how to leverage your position in your marketplace, and the current and future local or international developments that are impacting on your business.
Your team can drive the initiatives to realise your opportunities and maintain and grow your brand and your market share.
We can help you review and evaluate your progress with your purpose in mind.
Through this focus, you can remain purposeful with a robust business model and a clear sense of direction.
2 POINTS OF DIFFERENCE
In order to attract customers, your products and service levels appeal to your target audience.
Whether you're competing on price, quality, reliability, unique products, convenience, speed and efficiency, service levels, unique service features, special offers, or a combination of these factors, you ideally provide your customers with products and services they prefer, compared to your competitors.
Depending on the nature of your business, you may be able to focus on one particular point that makes a big difference for your customers, and sets you apart from your competition.
3 STAYING AHEAD OF YOUR COMPETITION
Staying ahead of your competition and maintaining a firm grip on your market share is essential for your long-term success.
Superior products and services and superior customer service and value are the most striking way you can stay ahead of your competition.
Your brand and reputation may be so strong, and your products and services so well developed and expertly delivered, that it becomes extremely difficult for your competitors to match your compelling customer service offering. This is especially true when you're able to consistently provide excellent service and where you can consistently improve and innovate in the way you serve your customers. Your relationship with your customers and your customer loyalty may be so strong that your competitors find it difficult and time-consuming to take your customers away from you.
Additionally, your business may have barriers to entry to protect you from your competition, making it difficult for new entrants to enter your market place. There may be significant set up costs and training and expertise for your business sector. These may be costly, challenging and time consuming for your potential competitors to replicate. There may be regulatory and registration requirements that offer you some safety from new competition.
Long-standing and trusted relationships with your product and service suppliers, a strong team with extensive knowledge and experience in your industry, excellent support from your professional service providers, business mentors and shareholders, adequate finance, sound commercial profits and cash flow and your other success factors are all examples of ways to help you stay ahead of your competition.
If you have unique intellectual property or patentable inventions, you may be able to achieve a degree of protection from competition through patenting and copyright.
You may also be able to protect your brand, trademarks, business names and website domain names by registering and maintaining these locally and internationally.
4 STRONG BRAND AND IMAGE
You can enhance your entire business with a strong brand and image reflecting the purpose of your business and what you stand for.
As you generate customer loyalty, and develop your positive image, your brand can become your most valuable asset.
Excellent customer service and intelligent marketing will enhance and maintain your brand and image.
5 CUSTOMER FOCUS AND SERVICE
Keeping your customers happy is perhaps the most important success factor of all.
Your business should do all it can to deliver helpful and desirable services and products to your customers in a user-friendly way with excellent customer service and through a superior customer experience.
The ability to solve problems, meet your customers' needs and interact well with your customers are essential factors for successful customer engagement.
6 STRONG LEADERSHIP
Your business leaders and CEO, should see the business as an extension of themselves and be committed, enthusiastic and personally engaged with the needs of your business. Your business becomes their prime purpose in their business life. Your leadership and management team should inspire, motivate, develop, encourage, mentor and bring out the best from your team.
7 STRONG TEAM AND HUMAN RESOURCES
To keep moving forward you should have a skilled, motivated and energised team of management, staff and advisors dedicated to excellence in customer service, the needs of your business, committed to working well as a team, building on combined strengths, and consistently reviewing and improving the way your business performs.
Your team should be efficient and well organised, with a clear organisation structure.
Great performance and ideas should be recognised and rewarded, and managers should encourage and promote the generation of ideas within your team and share the credit.
Your team ideally enjoy their work and achieve a healthy and rewarding work-life balance.
We believe excellent human resources management is essential for successful recruitment, training, mentoring and support, and the development of a strong, well-balanced team.
8 CULTURE AND VALUES
A supportive culture of positive thinking, mentoring and encouragement will help motivate and develop your team towards your clearly defined goals.
Your team ideally feel they are part of a dynamic, rewarding, values driven and customer service inspired culture.
For your long-term success, your culture ideally encourages creativity, personal development and improvement in team performance.
9 INNOVATION
Management and staff ideally will consistently innovate in the way they interact with each other and, more importantly, the ways you serve your customers.
Well managed investment in research and development is targeted to elevate your chances of achieving successful breakthroughs, and finding ways to stay ahead of your competition.
Your team ideally develop ideas for new products and services, improved delivery to your customers, develop and streamline your systems and improve the smooth running and efficiency of your businesss, with a mindset for consistent innovation.
Your team are ideally encouraged to share ideas and suggestions for innovation and improvement. Managers ideally work with their team to achieve consistent review and improvement. Through a series of incremental and well managed innovations you can transform your business.
10 COMMERCIAL VIABILITY
Fundamentally your service offering should be commercially viable, providing solutions and value for which your customers are happy to pay a commercial price.
Your services and products should appeal to your customers by meeting a need or solving a problem.
11 RELIABLE PRODUCT AND SERVICE SUPPLY CHAIN
Ideally you will maintain robust and reliable suppliers of products and services to run your business successfully, to help you provide excellent service to your customers.
You strengthen your business where you have reliable in house or outsourced services, especially to cover your finance functions, business strategy, IT, legal support and human resources.
Where you require products or raw materials for production it is essential you have reliable suppliers, and ideally alternative suppliers, or a contingency plan, in the event one of your key suppliers lets you down.
12 EFFECTIVE SALES AND MARKETING
You will ideally have a talented and motivated sales and marketing team to market and promote your desirable products and services with intelligent marketing and effective sales initiatives, achieving sales growth in your target markets.
You can achieve a customer engaged business by consistently seeking and listening to customer feedback in a friendly and helfpul way, ensuring your business is providing a rewarding, valuable and memorable customer service experience and high levels of customer satisfaction.
A strong online presence can also play an essential role in your strategic marketing.
Your team will ideally identify and act on opportunities to improve and broaden your level of service, grow your customer numbers and increase your market share.
13 SUPPORTIVE OWNERSHIP AND ADEQUATE FINANCE
Supportive owners and adequate finance will help ensure your business remains on track, adequate capital is provided to finance the business and adequate profits are retained to allow for future growth and development. Business owners may be heavily involved in the day to day running of the business, or more involved at strategy level, Board Meetings and other key stages in the business development cycle.
14 BUSINESS PLAN
A clear business plan will provide you with a strong sense of direction and the incremental steps to take towards your success.
Many entrepreneurs carry elements of their plan in their heads. This can work well, especially in the early and more experimental stages of your business. Often, however, it helps you to focus when you commit some of your thoughts to writing.
When your business is starting out, or gaining traction, we recommend a short form business plan summarising in one or two pages your main points such as what you do, what uniquely qualifies you to succeed, what your financial projections show and the main steps you can take to enhance your chances of success and minimise the possibility of failure. You can be flexible and re-visit your plan as often as you need to as you find your way.
As your business develops you may feel you would benefit from a more comprehensive business plan where you document your purpose, mission, vision and values, and analyse your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This plan might include your products and services, your branding and image, your customer service points of difference, your people culture, what you stand for, your research and development, an analysis of your market place, sales and marketing plan, operating systems, your team and your organisational structure, forecast cash flow and profitability, your sources of finance, sensitivity analyses to show how sales and other variables can impact on your bottom line profit, your short term goals and your longer term goals, key opportunities, detailed action points and other key matters for the current and future success of your business.
Under-planning can result in missed opportunities and a lack of strategy and direction, whereas over-planning can be a distraction from the day to day running of your business. Consequently there's a sensible balance to be achieved in terms the amount of time spent planning, reviewing and updating.
Aspects of planning can impact on your precious time as a business leader. In order to spend your time more effectively we can take the time and hassle out of your planning process, and deliver a valuable strategic business plan that prepares you for major success.
15 FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, FEEDBACK AND FORECASTING
Financial management and discipline is essential in your business to ensure you have adequate cash flow, monitor your sales levels, control your costs and operate profitably.
You can receive helpful real time feedback and management information on the performance measures that really matter to you and your business, providing a clear understanding of your profitability and key performance variables to help you improve your profitability and cash flow.
Ideally your finance team will use quick, efficient, well organised, well managed, synchronised and user-friendly reporting systems that are suited to your information needs and complement the activities of your management team across your entire business.
Your finance department should identify opportunities and provide solutions to boost productivity, efficiency, profitability and cash flow.
Your finance team should provide helpful budgets, forecasts and business plans to help you plan and manage your future profitability, cash flow and growth, and deliver opportunities and reliable long term strategies to grow and develop your business in line with your vision.
An excellent CFO provides strong leadership for your finance team and delivers vision, planning, forecasting, budgeting, commercial strategies and opportunities for success. Your CFO manages and performs the actions needed to achieve financial strength, performance and resilience. Clarity Advisory Group provides excellent CFO services.
16 CASH FLOW
Cash flow is the life blood of any business. Legally, you're required to ensure there's adequate cash flow to meet your immediate and longer term payments as they fall due.
Cash is the fuel that propels your business and creates new possibilities. Cash is king.
Cash flow projections and regular monitoring of cash flow help you plan to ensure you have adequate cash. Ideally your business has sufficient customers and income to be cash positive and self financing, however during phases of growth and development, or seasonal sales cycles, you may need sources of finance to provide adequate cash flow.
17 LEGAL STRUCTURE
Your legal structure can achieve a level of legal protection from litigation and can afford beneficial tax breaks and opportunities to minimise tax. The correct legal structure can give you more flexibility to raise finance for your business and achieve your desired ownership interests.
Therefore the correct legal structure suited to your circumstances is essential for the success of your business.
Clarity Advisory Group can guide you through this process and provide the most suitable legal structure.
18 GOOD GOVERNANCE
Good governance is essential to ensure you meet your legal and regulatory requirements to keep your business compliant, minimising the risk of penalties, fines and legal action.
Effective governance also boosts the value of your business as perceived by potential investors.
Your governance requirements will vary significantly depending on the nature and complexity of your activities and therefore it is essential you understand the legal framework for your business and have the right level of governance and professional support suited to your needs, and directed in order to address your highest risks.
We also recommend you have a strong organisational structure within your team, so that team members have solid accountability and a robust understanding of their areas of responsibility.
Ideally your governance is efficient, highly automated and encourages the creativity and imagination of your team.
19 EFFICIENT SYSTEMS, PROCESSES AND RISK MITIGATION
Quick, efficient, scalable and adaptable systems, processes and procedures will facilitate the smooth running and the growth and development of your business and the efficient delivery of your products and services, making the best use of technology.
Ideally your systems and procedures will produce a memorable and enjoyable experience for both your staff and your deserving customers, who's service experience can be made as streamlined and rewarding as possible.
Your systems and procedures should complement the innovative mindset of managers and staff who are encouraged to use their creative thinking to deliver excellent customer service.
Systems and procedures should also mitigate the risk of poor service and legal proceedings by creating robust processes.
In addition, sufficient insurance is recommended to protect against significant business risks.
20 EFFECTIVE IT AND DATA SECURITY
To build your success your IT systems should be user friendly, robust, reliable, quick, efficient, scalable and adaptable, making the best use of technology for your business needs.
Ideally your IT systems will have, as a minimum, financial institution grade security over user access to your data, and the regular back up and secure off site storage of data to prevent data theft and data loss.
You should also ideally have a disaster recovery plan in the event of a system outage or system damage, so your business is able to continue operations quickly and seamlessly with minimal, or no, disruption for your customers and your team.
For your peace of mind Clarity Advisory Group can review the robustness of your IT data and systems, and provide suggestions and solutions where improvements can be made.
21 LOCATION
Choosing the ideal location for your business can be extremely important. For example being well located for retailing to the public, transport links, access to big city infrastructure and services, or proximity to manufacturing areas and your key suppliers and customers. The cost of your business premises and the length of your lease term can also be important, together with possibilities to expand your footprint.
22 LONG-TERM VIEW
Ideally your business has a long-term view and builds for long term success based on a robust business plan that is well conceived and regularly reviewed and updated.
This promotes forward thinking and clear sighted management who can identify and act on opportunities for your business in the changing business environment.
A strong long term view helps your business consistently take the incremental steps towards ultimately achieving your long term vision.
Well developed systems and processes designed to meet long term needs will provide resilience and facilitate effective delegation to managers and their support teams. Ideally your systems will stand up to due diligence for raising capital or a successful onward sale of all or part of your business. ISO compliance can also provide a long term boost to the value and success of your business.
A long term succession plan is also well worth implementing as it lays the foundations for the successful transition of your business to the next generation of ownership and management. This is worth implementing well in advance of any major transition. This also provides the opportunity for the business founders and owners to remove themselves from the day to day running of the business, allowing management to flourish and facilitating a clearer sense of perspective and insight for the founders and owners.
The ability for the founders and owners to remove themselves from the day to day running of the business, at a time of their choosing, helps to ensure the ongoing success of your business and your team.
23 CONSISTENCY
Consistency, or staying power, with the renewed determination to achieve your goals on a day to day basis, will ultimately result in achieving your long term vision.
Ideally your management team will consistently show the leadership, dedication, perseverance, strength of character, tenacity, enthusiasm, skills, learning, adaptability, attitude and positive work ethic to align their goals with your vision and achieve your joint aspirations.
A well co-ordinated plan for your long term success and a focus on your longer term goals will help you and your team consistently take the necessary steps to achieve your vision.
24 ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
Entrepreneurial endeavour encourages your team to head into unknown territory, trying new ideas and finding better ways to serve your customers.
The mind-set of the entrepreneur typically includes the determination to make new ideas work, the perseverance to meet customer needs and the awareness and insightfulness to identify and create new opportunities.
25 WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Whilst it's essential for you and your team to achieve consistent customer service and improvement in all you do, it's also important to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
A healthy work-life balance enables high productivity, great energy levels and a clear sense of clarity and perspective for your ongoing success and achievement.
At Clarity Advisory Group we encourage a healthy balance within our team with work pursuits, career and ambition and health, leisure, family, friends, the community and life's other passions and interests.
We also strive to make work and ambition a rewarding and fulfilling part of our lives, through our positive supportive culture for consistent improvement and our other success factors.
26 CLARITY AND SIMPLICITY
Your business should be able to cut through complexity, remove unwanted clutter, and focus on what really matters to you and your team, namely your purpose, mission, vision and values, and in particular the customer service experience and levels of customer service you deliver.
Clarity Advisory Group helps you achieve this clarity of vision.
We help you manage and elevate the overall health of your business.
With clear thinking we help you achieve clarity, efficiency and success.
27 ACHIEVE YOUR VISION
In all you do we encourage you to ask the question "does this help us achieve our vision?"
We help you implement your success factors, as part of a series of well coordinated incremental steps towards your long term success.
For an initial chat, or for more information on how we can help with your success factors, please contact us.