Happenings

The Business Support Programme is offered by our M.D Mr.Firdaus and Kapadia who has been accredited by The Institute for Independent Business International since 1999.

The Institute for Independent Business International is the largest organisation of its type in the world, with over 5,000 accredited senior executives, all of whom are highly experienced and mature business men and women with high level executive business experience behind them.

Some have been managing directors, executive directors and chairmen of some of the best-known national and multi-national companies in the world.  Many have experienced the unique difficulties and the loneliness of being the managing director / owner (MDO), or the proprietor of an independent business.

Each IIB Accredited Associate agrees to give some free time each month to independent businesses when they will meet the MDO or proprietor to discuss their business with them and examine opportunities or concerns the MDO may have and give guidance and source advice and help as may be needed. 

Questions on finance, including cash flow, credit control, raising extra working capital, and the possibility of alternative banking are often raised, as are questions on sales and marketing, export, manufacturing, health and safety issues, the pros and cons of quality accreditation and all other aspects of business and profitability.

The great strength of the IIB Business Support Programme is in addressing the problem of company directors and owners not having anywhere to turn for some independent, unbiased advice and just a chat with someone who has “been there - seen it - done it” and survived to tell the tale.

In these trying times, we need to re-evaluate our business objectives and business objectives and business processes. One can feel down and depressed or one can see the opportunities that arise out of this mess. Some immediately reduce costs by letting go of all ‘’unnecessary staff, starting with the temporary staff. Fact is that due to diminishing turnover portfolios, surplus production and office capacity is available. We all do not know how long this will last, but a simple fact of life is that after a downturn a boom (upwards) will happen again. Question is when?

If you believe that thing will turn for the better in 2010, assuming that you have some financial backing then now is the time to invest in preparing your organization for the boom that will follow.

Invest on reorganising your processes (cut unnecessary slack, improve product quality, reduce throughput times, re-evaluate make or buy decision, prepare for sot sourcing, invest in training of your staff, re-address your mission and organization goals. After all for now, there is some time extra available to be able to do so.

 

Possible Routings:       

• Lean management trajectory from office to manufacturing, including on-the-job coaching & training of staff. Assume that you can half your throughput time, what will be the effect on your competitive position? Assume you can half your waste, and you can separate your waste into reusable (=sellable) raw materials, what is your saving in terms of energy bill, procured good levels, etc.. Assume that you can install a good IT support system in sales support allowing your external partners to configure their own offerings, how many more percentage of sales force will you control (examples available), with the same success rate, you will obtain more orders with the same paid sales support force.

• Strategy revisiting and subsequent organizing of business processes (manufacturing, ICT support, marketing & sales, distribution systems. This on is more difficult to quantify, but a clear, shared understanding of what to strive for always results in a more focused approach to the market, hence a higher success rate in sales, and normally also a better merging on  products sold.