Validate what you are doing!
For all of the effort and energy that you are putting yourself through (and typically another 50 employees around you), there needs to be a point to it all. You need an incentive to get up in the morning, hit the road, and turn on that smile day after day. I don't know about you, but if I am spending most of my daylight time for most days of the week working and not enjoying the spoils of life, then there better be a bloody good reason for it. And chances are, if you have no motivation, then neither do any of the 50 around you!

Motivate your team!
Not unlike you, your staff are all turning up to your business for one ultimate reason; prosperity! With each individual's goal being unique, the challenge is including your core team in the process, and allowing for them to all achieve their own goals within the broader picture of your business aims. A shared vision that meets individual and company goals provides an optimum environment for your business to improve. Personal improvements in performance and results will flow directly on to the business when well planned and executed

Control your destiny!
Each business is unique. The product it sells, the market it sells to, and the facility it sells out of are all factors that affect your business and it's ability to deliver a return on investment. You need to clearly understand each of these uniquities, exploit those that are in your favour, and do something about those things that are not.

Keep your partner companies (Financier's, Distributor's, Related Entities) happy!
At any time in the life of your business, you will inadvertently want product, money, or permission to continue. Only by sharing your visions with your partners, will you turn them into a reality. Consider the last time that you have presented your projections to such an authority. Are you using that plan as an essential tool in your day to day, week to week, month to month strategy? If not, then you have probably only done that plan to keep the third party happy, and it is of no benefit to you. For those of you in that position, I challenge you to knock the dust off it, and revise it to a point where you can't live without making some kind of reference to it regularly. If you have been asked to go to the effort of validating your business, ensure that you have done it for your own benefit first and foremost, then share your visions.

Any Business Plan will have permutations of the items listed below. Whilst all are not necessary, the painting of the entire picture helps ensure the success of the strategy. As such, the goals set out in the plan are well understood by all concerned parties and there is suitable incentive for the individual to achieve those goals, which will flow onto the success of the plan and the business.

Purpose / Vision
It is important to clearly define the aims, goals, and values of the business. The vision set in the business plan should set the “tone” for the workings of the business for the future period that has been proposed in that plan. Some business plans may involve a “re-engineering” of the business in order to allow it to operate under more favourable conditions. Such plans could implicate facility, structure and cash flow. For your key staff, the resulting comments should be able to “echo” the intent in their working day, empowering them to strive to achieve set goals.

Budget
Central to the Business plan is the quantitative forecast of the business and what you expect it to deliver, taking historical performance and proposed planning into consideration. A detailed budget will provide the information necessary for Departmental and Group Managers to empower them to deliver the results necessary for the business to achieve their targets. The Budget should indicate projected monthly performance based upon the intended “period” that the Business plan is in effect for. The ongoing comparison of your budget against actual information on a Monthly (or even daily basis) helps further indoctrinate the principles set out in the business plan. If the budgets to actual ratios are well out of whack during the course of the business plan, there is something fundamentally wrong with the assumptions used at the time of the Business Plan. The Plan should be revisited to specifically attend to those areas where the business is not capable of achieving budget. In the event that the business is consistently exceeding budget, similarly revisit and strive to achieve more.

Cash-flow
Whether you plan to refurbish or re-facilitate, up the ante on sales, or even rationalise aspects of your business, a Cash Flow projection is going to give you a relatively accurate understanding of when and how you can put your plans into place. It seems that any change to the strategy of your business will affect cash flow, and the more time and energy you can put firstly into your budget, and secondly, into your projected balance sheet and cash flow, the less surprises come implementation of the strategies. The earlier exercise in ascertaining a budget usually heavily focuses on the cost centres and their ability to deliver profit. In order to ascertain Cash-flow however, it becomes necessary to ascertain the shape of the balance sheet during that course, and then pulling it apart to recognise the cash movements in the balance sheet.

Execution Strategy
This area covers the intended implementation of the recommendations of the business plan. Quite often it makes sense to keep this at a company level, and to then “individualise” the Business Plan strategies via Job Descriptions. Identify critical Items relating to timing, success and offer alternate strategies where applicable.

Executive Team
By individualising and “spelling out” individual strategies to your executive team, you make it possible to “see” the intrinsic relationship between the business and your team. From this, it becomes very clear to you of the importance of your team and their “buy-in” to your plan.
Job descriptions
A good format for a job description would be to:
> State the title and purpose of the role and how it fits into the company
> Identify Key Areas of Responsibility (point form, include deliverable's)
> Elaborate on those areas where appropriate Skills, Attributes and Knowledge required (point form)
Bonus / incentive strategies
Following on from the Job description and the Budget, speculate suitable incentives that lock the individual's goals into the business goals. This goes for any party that is “key” to the success of your plan, and not just your sales team.

Ensure that you measure your business performance against the budget on at least a monthly basis. If possible, tie in the comparison on a daily basis so that your management team can continually measure and assess.

In the event that your business has a high component of volatility, it makes sense to “review” your budget on a monthly basis, taking all environmental factors into consideration.
> Have regular meetings, which relate back to the intentions of the business plan.
> Meet with Management on a monthly basis to granularly compare budget to actual.
> At a higher level, set quarterly “executive Committee” meetings, which focus less on the detail and more at the business plan level.

Never lose sight of the visions that are realised as a part of this regenerative process. Use this time wisely for yourself, and not for someone else's benefit. Lastly, plan to succeed and execute it!

It is with our blessings that we have accepted Jason Belzycki's decision to take advantage of a once in a life time opportunity to begin work in his family's business at the beginning of May. Jason has been an integral part of the CDS business and during his five and a half years with us has won everyone over, team members and clients alike, with his ability to deliver grand results. In accepting a challenging new role in his family's business he trusts that the reluctance he is experiencing by leaving us at CDS will be offset with suitable rewards down the track.

As a part of our planned re-organisation, we recently added a new key member to our growing team. Arne Bettin joined us in January to take on the role of Service Centre Manager, which was Jason's traditional role. Arne brings over 20 years of general business and financial experience into CDS, with some of that time being spent in Dealership Accounting.

Arne is fast becoming our ITK and ITKonline expert and is strongly supported by his team members, Ann and Shohil who have sound experience in these products. Arne carries on our long standing culture of customer service, and is always readily available to cater to your needs, welcoming any challenge you can put to him.

We offer our best wishes to Jason (who finishes with us this Friday) & Arne as they embark on what are "life changing" decisions and, we know they will be very successful in whatever it is they set out to achieve.

Arne Bettin
B.Bus (Acc), CPA

Ann Fabre

Shohil Dholasaniya
B.Com MPA M.Bus (Acc)

Application Services Consultant