Pressure’s on. How to handle the rise in staff costs.

Pressure’s on. How to handle the rise in staff costs.

Average pay rises are to jump to 3.5% according to the DailyMail today. Compulsory pension contributions are breathing down our necks.  And the government has announced a rise in minimum wage from October 2015.  All in all, staff costs are on the increase putting even more pressure on small businesses. 3.5% doesn’t seem like much.  So why…

How to boost the sales value of your company

How to boost the sales value of your company

If you are thinking of selling your business one day, even if it is in 5 years’ time, you need to begin boosting the sale value today.  If and when you finally sell, your buyers, their lawyers, consultants and accountants, will all be looking through your company’s past history… in extreme detail. Possibly for the previous…

Client Profitability- All Clients are not Created Equal

Client Profitability- All Clients are not Created Equal

Businesses are in the habit of measuring many things: customer satisfaction, financial performance, staff performance, market share and share value to name a few.  And then there are hundreds of key performance indicators out there.  David Parmenter has some books on the subject, in which he describes an endless number of them. But I think, one…

Forming a state-of-the-art Finance Team: it’s all about personality.

Forming a state-of-the-art Finance Team: it’s all about personality.

When hiring finance staff personality is more important than experience and education.  The first you are born with, the other two you can work on. Mark Dumon describes the 7 types of personalities which are deemed to fail in Finance.  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/financialcareers/09/7-people-fail-finance.asp  They include the Selfish Jerk, the Doormat and the Excel Lightweight. You may be surprised…

Cashflow Management

Cashflow Management

There are countless reasons why businesses fail, such as choosing the wrong business partner, not listening to your customers or avoiding having a business website. But if you choose only one thing to get right, make sure it’s your cash. 90% of small business failures are caused by poor cashflow, according to Dun & Bradstreet. Here are…