Are you lacking on-going support for your business strategy execution?

A new report from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills  (BIS) has provided a valuable window into the state of the SME nation. According to its findings, 69% of SMEs aim to grow sales over the next three years, and a further 26% intend to employ more people within the next 12 months. In addition to growth, many SME owners are looking to enhance their working environment, with 70% planning to increase the skills of their workforce, 49% planning to introduce new working practices and 40% wanting to invest in premises.

In a post-Brexit world, this sense of ambition is promising, particularly when you consider how important SMEs are to the UK’s economy; according to Companies House, 99.9% of all registered businesses have under 250 employees and employ over 14.4m people. However, translating that ambition into reality isn’t necessarily as simple as you might hope. The report shows that SMEs still face significant obstacles to their success, including increased competition, regulation and taxation, as well as staff and skills shortages.

So what does this mean in practice?

Increasing complexity within your operational environment, coupled with limited skills and resources meant that for many SMEs, realising their ambition would remain a distant dream. However, back in 2012, help was on the horizon when the Coalition Government launched its £200 million GrowthAccelerator programme. Designed to deliver growth support for 26,000 of England's most ambitious small businesses, the partnership between the Government and the private sector would see proven business experts working with companies to identify their barriers to growth and how to overcome them. But after three years, the programme was scrapped; in its 2015 autumn statement, the Government announced a 17% spending cut for BIS, which meant the Business Growth Service, which included the Growth Accelerator programme, was abolished. It left many ambitious SMEs in the lurch with partially completely projects, and struggling to finish the implementation of their new strategies.

Following the closure of the GrowthAccelerator programme, an industry survey conducted on 150 managers of SMEs highlighted the struggle they now faced to access the support they needed to grow. The main challenges cited were: 
 

• Lack of access to finance and funding (32%)
   
• Finding new business and entering new markets (32%)
   
• Challenges and costs of employee rights and restrictions (26%)
   
• The cost of training and finding the appropriate trainers (24%)

Whether you were part of GrowthAccelerator or not, the reality is that despite having a clear business goal and a robust strategy, in practice, the proper execution of any new strategy can often prove to be highly challenging. Often, this results in either a partially successful strategy roll-out, or frustrated efforts, which can prove highly de-motivating for all involved.

So what’s the key to success?

The Business Growth & Marketing 'Strategy Execution' Support Programme

Experience has shown us that there’s a huge gap in the market when it comes to providing continued support on the execution of strategies developed during the initial consultancy phase. Typically, business coaches and consultants will come in to aid a business and create a great business or marketing strategy, but then leave it to the SME to implement. Strategy execution takes place over a much longer period than the strategy development cycle and can present many new and complex challenges. With potential skills gaps in the team, alongside limited time and resources, the painful truth is that these strategies for success often fall by the way-side.

However, in order to ensure total project success, we have developed a new support programme, which ensures you have continued access to our input and expertise during the entire strategy execution cycle. This advisory service offers various levels of support, ranging from email and telephone support through to 1-2-1 fully tailored mentoring, to suit your specific business needs, circumstances and budget.

As well as helping you to execute your newly developed strategy, we promise that you will engage with the same consultant that provided you with the initial coaching, consultancy and training. We believe this is important for project continuity and to maintain our high-quality standards.

If you’re looking for on-going mentoring at a more cost-effective price,
discover more about our Client Support Programme and register today.