Business Planning | Executive summary or just an introduction

Business Planning | Executive summary or just an introduction

What on earth is an ‘Executive Summary’? For some reason the term grates with me. What happened to the word ‘Introduction’?

The trouble is that it has achieved a position of strength in the average business mind such that no business plan or feasibility study or similar document is complete without one. I am not saying it is not needed.  I adopt the Ladybird school of learning where if you are tackling a large project or subject it is invaluable to gain an introductory view and thereby a scope of the topic. That way you can see how much is involved and you can gain an appreciation of the whole thing.  To read the full LinkedIn article, just click here. Simple really.

Networking | People in business

Business Networking | People in Business

Business is about people to a large degree. People are always in the mix somewhere. They might be customers, staff, suppliers, contacts etc. Those who have the soft skills for dealing with people successfully can find it easier to get on and to be successful. The small business owner needs to network.

The sole trader or consultant trying to cover everything certainly needs to network. That may not be formal meetings though. Stopping to pass the time of day with people, in person, on the phone, by email, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook is always important. It is becoming the case that everyone is assumed to be in with it all and taking part in the conversations.

Some people are more gifted in these things than others.  To read the full LinkedIn article, just click here. Simple really.

Business Start-ups | Part-Time Entrepreneurs

Business Start-ups | Part-Time Entrepreneurs

If you dive head first into a new business idea too soon, you could potentially be risking it all too early, with the result that you lose everything very quickly. Successful entrepreneurs don't do this, because they pay more attention to the risk and spend more time preparing properly before devoting their entire time, energy and resources into their enterprise.

These spare-time enterprises actually increase their chances of success for the following reasons:

To read the full LinkedIn article by Bob Shepherd Asociates, just click here.  Simple really.

Business Leadership | Leaders, The 7% conundrum - Private Education, Top Universities and all that

Business Leadership | Leaders, The 7% conundrum - Private Education, Top Universities and all that

I am all for achieving equality in education provision and ensuring equal opportunities for those with talent and acumen and entrepreneurial initiative.

I have seen a lot of coverage critical of the system where the majority of our leaders, our politicians and our senior commercial folk seem to come from the 7% who attend the best universities and private education.

I think this is skewed the wrong way round. The question should not be ‘how is it that best universities and the private education schools seem to generate the leaders and initiative takers ?’ but rather, "how is it that an education system with the other 93% of our young people does not?". To read the full LinkedIn article by Bob Shepherd Associates, click here.  Simple really.

Marketing | The Elevator Pitch. So Important When Networking

Marketing | The elevator pitch, so important when networking

It’s a strange term in business that has achieved the status of a phrase everybody knows and few people have examined for meaning.

Elevating is lifting up in some way and that is quite graphic. The word pitch is interesting though. There are dozens of meanings for the word, actually 50 listed in my dictionary.  In the business networking context I like the idea that it could mean the tone of your presentation, as it does in music.

More aggressively when you pitch something you throw it and the idea of hurling your service or product at someone you have just met is an anathema to business networking folk. It will get you nowhere.  To read the full LinkedIn Post by Bob Shepherd Associates, click here.  Simple Really.

Organic Marketing | Networking South Wales

There are dozens of business networks in South Wales . I help businesses with business strategy and planning (“Business Building”) and I deal with business finance and organisation. Not a shameless plug altogether because my point is that the business planning for growth requires experience and knowledge in networking as a major sub heading under the all embracing term “Marketing”. You need all this in place to get your finance sorted to show you are a functional business ,  by which time you have a plan to put into action, if you have done it properly.

My view is that there is not just one answer to networking. Some networks work best with a business that can be easily pigeon holed by everyone. (Accurately or not – doesn’t matter, you can sort that out later on). Other businesses do not.

So which group is best for you?

To read the full LinkedIn article by Bob Shepherd Associates, please click the link.  Simple really.

Leadership | The thing about business, big or small

Leadership | The thing about business, big or small

Whatever the flavour, size, style or type of  business you have there are some common features - some common characteristics. This is the secret behind how I can contribute to a business. I do not actually need to know the technical and finer points of the business to know what needs some attention, needs a fix or needs some development.

For example all businesses need to communicate with the outside world in an attractive and constructively encouraging way. The methods for doing that may have differences in detail and sophistication and will have a different focus on one channel over another, but still the principle is there.  To read the full LinkedIn post by Bob Shepherd Assocaites, please click here.

Business Advice | They say..... A Cobbler never mends his own shoes

Business Advice | A Cobbler never mends his own shoes

As a general thing I am quite struck by business folk who propound some expertise in something when they are guilty of it themselves!!  The communications experts who can't communicate. The life coaches who are fragile themselves. The business experts who can't market themselves. The PAs who are always late. And so on.

You could say 'Cobbler and shoes' or you could point out that their own experience is an education they can use for the benefit of others. It's a consultant's privilege - 'do what I say not what I do'.  I am probably guilty of some of it myself.  We can't be good at everything. The best card I have to play is the external view. I turn up and there it is, wrapped up in some experience, some training and some developed practices and a different perspective....

Luckily my clients value it.....

To view articles and observations by Bob Shepherd Associates, just click here.

Business Running | No Word For 'Entrepreneur'

Business Running | No Word For 'Entrepreneur'

George Bush is famously supposed to have remarked that the trouble with the French is that they have no word for ‘Entrepreneur’. Quite funny but there is another aspect here. Any business needs to have a spirit of enterprise amongst its employees. It has been called Intrapreneurialism.

The best companies invite a spirit of ownership in the doings of their employees which instils a sense of value and helps with staff retention. According to some UK small businesses research.... To read the full LinkedIn post by Bob Shepherd Associates, just click here.

Setting Up A New Business

Setting up a new Business

Anyone can set up a business - Observation and experience has taught me that not everyone has the make up to do so successfully. Most professional Managers have come across those psychometric tests beloved of the HR people. Some people say they can manipulate them but I always wonder why you would want to do so. The corporate career world is full of people who are round pegs in the square hole of their employment and who are basically unsuited and unhappy with their lot. The‘Peter Principle’ pops up all over the place as people are promoted one step too far. Heaven help us when that step puts them in a senior position that carries such a bow wave of credibility that they are unassailable and too senior to be criticised. There are enough of them out there!  To read the full LinkedIn article, click here.

Missed The Point Again

Those who follow these writings will have gathered I think that the banks have a fundamental misapprehension about small business but here’s a particular example showing how the National Assembly in Wales have fundamentally misunderstood small business as well.

From the start I have been critical of the Wales Economic Growth grant which are funds left over before the grants were largely whisked away in 2010. I said it was too proscriptive, was open for applications for too short a time and sadly had missed an opportunity (otherwise known as ‘the point’) once again.

This business grant has only been open since the beginning of December and I have had enquiries where ineligibilty has been the downfall for potential applicants, but I have a better example which illustrates the inept thinking that has gone into it.

A business trying its best

A Torfaen based company has been paddling hard to keep afloat. This has been partly because it has been shouldered out of contracts with another local council in favour of a company from the Midlands in very questionable circumstances, but that’s another story. To counter this and diversify they have identified a product and a market that sits nicely alongside their own and is largely unserviced.

I was asked about the grant and a finance application. All the grant criteria seemed to be answered. The Directors had the information, were in a good area for the grant, had a nod from both the bank and from Finance Wales that lending facilities to make up the matched funding could be available subject to successful application, and the company was keen to get on with it. Although the grant advice documents do not spell this out the Directors were even aware that guidelines for new employment could be met. So the lenders had been spoken to, the Accountant had the latest recent company figures ready for sign off and it all looked constructive and positive.

What is the grant for then?

Most of the ticks in place so far, so what actually are we spending this money on? The grant minimum is £100k and the best case is a 50% match in some areas so we need to propose spending £200k.  

We need a couple of web sites, marketing and PR, a van, some employees, some equipment and some examples to install in show areas. Totting it up quickly, I stretch the list to about £90k and to be honest we could do it for much less.

It is immediately obvious that the Directors, over keen  at the prospect of much needed assistance from the Welsh Government have fitted the finance around the possible funding. We could probably get away with a loan of £10k, have one web site and use the workforce and vans we already have, start things slowly and take less of a commercial risk.

In summary the grant is completely useless for what they want. In fact it is difficult to see how it can be of any use to anyone unless by chance they happen to be in the middle of a project that could use a substantial injection to make it bigger and better than first thought.  The project has to be under way (but not ‘committed’ or it is ineligible anyway) because there is insufficient time to organise a new project for which this grant might have a part to play.

I am left feeling cynical, exasperated, and still somehow, after long experience, disappointed that Business Support in Wales can be so inept in its operation. 

WAG, ERP And A Shambles

A friend of mine from CIBC (Chartered Institute of business Consulting)  is going to a seminar soon with James Price, the Director of Transport and Strategic Regeneration at WAG speaking. We were asked if there were any questions she could put on behalf of the members. 

James Price is the author of ERP (Economic Renewal Programme) which was announced at the beginning of July by WAG as a strategy for business support in Wales and it was decided to implement it straight away. If you haven’t caught up with the back ground on ERP spend a little time looking over Prof. Dylan Jones Evans’ blog ( just search on his name and it will come up first) which lambasts the ERP from every direction. Because of his profile and the fact that he is read, if not agreed with, at WAG a number of the consultants who move around in this area have fed into it. The comments are as good as the articles very often. Also see my article '2 Paper Bags' published on 2nd August 2010 in these pages.

In quick summary, If the ERP was announced on day one with no other background one would have nodded approvingly commenting that the principles were good, sectors, focus, and all that. However it followed what went before. Neither approach is foolproof. 

Then to guillotine the old ways instantly, and leave the WAG staff embarrassed at not knowing which grant had made the cut, and what was replacing it is unbelievable ineptitude and made Wales look silly. A couple of months afterwards WAG staff neither knew what was replacing it or even if they still had a job. Much of that is still unclear now.

Now some 300 DET staff have gone there are answerphones still carrying their message ‘ to get back to you ‘.

The whole support system, deeply flawed as it was has been thrown into chaos with no sign of anything replacing it along the lines of ERP within 6 months. 

There are fundamental questions about some of the proposals I think with some of the major questions being 

• If we are to expect ‘Repayable Grants’ – why is WAG, without any banking experience setting up an operation to monitor and control a system which is not unlike what Finance Wales does already?
• Can WAG legally make grants that are repayable, (esentially loans) without the controls and regulations of the Banking industry?   
• Why was the announcement ERP made with no implementation in place or planned?
• Why were WAG staff instructed to say that it was Business as usual with no break in Finacial support for business when that is patently not the case

Unbelievable! If WAG were any sort of commercial business they would have gone out of business and deservedly so.  

Bring back the WDA! With all its faults at least we knew what you were dealing with and it had a good reputation elsewhere. 

Businesses needing advice and support still have a number of WAG financed options. I don't think they are effective in the main and they get the rest of us a bad name! If a business want practical business help they should consider a small investment which will ultimately save them time money and several degrees of sanity. With Bob Shepherd Associates they get a wide ranging expertise and an external perspective they can never have themselves. If you know anyone seriously starting out or anyone wanting to develop an existing business please point them to the web site  and ask them to make contact.                   http://www.bobshepherdassociates.co.uk/business_expansion.html 

2 Paper Bags

Those familiar with these articles and followers of Twitter (Bob_Shepherd and other accounts) will be aware that WAG has come in for criticism from me before for trying to run the business world with bureaucrats in South Wales. The present situation is that we have "ERP". That is the Economic Renewal Programme which was published with a fanfare in early July. 
If we were starting today you could say there is some sense in the proposals and some thought obviously went into it. That is not my point. The guillotine that came down on the Single Investment Fund (SIF) grants left everyone in the dark. I have clients who do not know whether their support applications made the cut, so to speak. No one seemed to know what departments would survive and what support. And by 'no one' I mean the Business Support staff themselves who bless them, are a mixed bunch in many ways. 
We are over a month later and still they don't know, it would appear. The latest I have heard is that we might have some decisions on what is coming next and how the new forms of support will operate, some time in the New Year! 
Meanwhile, there are propositions for sizeable businesses who were getting their plans together for sensible and worthwhile investments who have put everything on hold or scrapped the plans altogether. Immediately the consultant helping them has lost his job and in some cases had many hours work done with no where to go. Next down the line the business support staff have no new business coming in and must be twiddling their thumbs. Next comes the supporting businesses for new ventures, who have lost a client. They include the property people, the accountants, the Bank staff, the recruiting agencies, the cleaners, painters, office equipment people and so on. You get the idea. For every non starting business proposition there are waves of knock on effects to take into account. 
In short, my complaint immediately is that the WAG has failed to manage their self assumed role in the economy again. Much of what they were doing was misguided on some level anyway but to pull the plug on it overnight is not constructive. On a higher plane they are doing the reputation of Wales no favours either. We already have the highest rate of dependency on Government funding for GDP in the UK. Whether or not there should be grants and active support is an argument, for which the prospective 'repayable grants' is not a credible substitute and whatever should have been done about the 1800 or so support staff employed by the WAG for business support for reasons that are commercially incoherent, the limbo we have now is ridiculous. 
Some of my colleagues have put thoughts into email about the loss of potential business that is being caused and I would encourage anyone that has relevant experience to relate to do the same. Email the minister at ieuan.wynjones@wales.gov.uk with your opinions. 
If enough people do that he might notice that companies want confidence in their working environment and are going away from Wales to where they can organise 2 paper bags. 
Bob Shepherd Associates deals with Small Business SMEs' Business Direction Development and Business Financial development. That included Grants as well as Banks and Investors until recently. 

A Spanner In The Works

I own certain tools that are always handy, useful, comfortable and my favourites to call upon. I would be sorry to lose them. That ratchet screwdriver I have had for 25 years, the swiss army knife I carry that gets used everyday for something or other.

The Welsh Assembly government have announced a new Fund for South Wales Valleys and other needy areas of £6m. It is a supplementary fund to the existing SIF  (Single Investment Fund)  providing grant aid from European money. The main objective of the new Enhancement Area Fund is to generate employment for Disadvantaged and Disabled workers by encouraging businesses, located within the Strategic Regeneration Areas of Wales, to undertake capital investment projects. Financial support ranging from £10,000 to £90,000 is available.

Fantastic! So far so good, but I am sorry – is it me? Here’s a fund that has fished out £6m from the pond and has had to play a ‘disabled’ and a ‘disadvantaged’ card to do it. That and the other usual restrictions are enough to push aside most projects. That means the fund will sit there until someone notices it is greatly under subscribed and they will have to apply for some variation, or give it back.

So now we have great looking WAG publicity material and the Assembly look business like and trendy up front, and once again can’t deliver. At the minimum £10k grant for eligible projects they would need 600 projects. At £90k each they would need 67 projects. Suppose it is somewhere in between. Say, 300 projects at about £20000 costing double that although the percentages for various eligible aspects are not all the same.

Let us be clear. That would mean finding 300 projects that can show a need for grant investment, that do not have a local focus only, that are not in the retail sector or are for portable equipment, and do not displace any other work locally. Other restrictions apply and of course they must be employing disadvantaged or disabled folk to some significant degree and purpose.  

Then there are the unspoken restrictions centring around the recruitment systems for suitable grant projects which involve the Relationship Managers and the application process which takes a good while and has a few hoops to jump through.

I might be quite wrong but I think they are going to have difficulty fulfilling their purpose. Am I missing something here? That money would be better used in some of the support that is actually successful such as the HoVIP (Heads of the Valleys Innovation Programme) scheme.

One could argue the money is only available because the disabled and disadvantaged button has been pushed and any money is better than none.  If that is the case, fine, but let’s not pretend it is a wonderful tool. I think it will stay at the back of the toolbox.  

If your business needs better business tools contact Bob Shepherd – http://bobshepherdassociates.co.uk