You’re in business. Risks are all around you and many of them are capable of doing major harm to your business. Some could even destroy your business. This is a given. So how do you manage your risk exposures. For SME businesses this is a difficult, and often poorly managed, element of accountability. There is usually some focus on liquidity risk (having enough cash) and this is from necessity. Many SME businesses manage key risk exposures such as product risk or system risk through well developed Quality Assurance procedures. Once again, often through necessity (e.g. I can’t supply Coles [...]

Okay, you get it. You need to achieve a targeted gross profit margin to ensure your business is financially successful and generates positive cash flows. And you agree that regular reporting is the key to you being able to manage this critical measure. This will enable you to respond quickly whenever these margins fall below the target figure. You just have one problem. The margins you are monitoring are all over the place. One month your margin is 43%, the next month it is 26%, and then it is something else again. What is happening? How will you know [...]

We live in the age of flat packed furniture, barbecues and other assorted household items. How do you think you would go putting one of these together in the dark? It would be near on impossible. We also live in an age where heart surgery and other complex surgeries are commonly performed. Would you want your surgeon operating on you in the dark? Yet it is not uncommon for businesses to be managed in the dark. Well to be more accurate, they are operating in twilight where they can see the parts but they can’t see the detail. This [...]