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companies have to learn. You have to maximise your talent for work you can achieve.”
Alan Poole of James Cowper Kreston agreed: “Resourcing the opportunities is a concern, because of the risk of becoming a busy fool, fire-fighting the issues in front of you, and trying to balance what you have to do today to maintain customer satisfaction and your reputation, while needing to recruit and grow to service the newly generated work of tomorrow.”
Satbir Dhillon
John Wilcox of Thames Valley Air Ambulance (TVBMA Charity of the Year): “We are a charity, but effectively a £6m-ish turnover business with trustees as our directors. Good management practise works in any organisation and we are no different. We have to generate income, deliver results and pay our bills.
“A successful business needs a clear business approach; knowing what you do and why you do it, but with the ability to flex. No-one foresaw 9/11, yet businesses had to react to it, be nimble to do so – an area where SMEs have an advantage.”
Rob Pickering from ActionCOACH felt that far less threatening events than 9/11 could disrupt some businesses – especially those with little cohesion. “There needs to be an inspirational vision among all staff and stakeholders, so that they are all pulling in the same direction. And the vision needs to be relevant and genuinely motivational – platitudes become a joke and work negatively within a business.”
Businesses succeed through quality people and management who have the flexibility to adapt, stated Robin Barnes of NatWest, while advising growing businesses to ensure they always have some slack in cashflow to deal with the unexpected.”
Wilcox agreed, adding that “making things easy for our supporters to do business with us” was important for his charity operations.
Embrace opportunity, but don’t become a busy fool
Pitman’s John Hutchinson advised: “There are also lots of business opportunities in this region and one thing we all find hard is being ruthless about the things we are not going to do – a lesson that young growing
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Being small enough to treat every client as a valued individual, while big enough to deliver on all eventualities, was the ideal.
Adequate resourcing of customer requirements mattered Hutchinson concurred: “If you can’t deliver a service really well, then don’t do it, or your reputation will fall over.
“You need champions in your business who really want to deliver, but also the resources to support them, and other challenges that might be coming down the track.” Such factors were integral when considering which work and business areas to take on.
spirit – that’s something Grundon has in spades. We employ 700 people but the Grundon family are still involved every day, encouraging employees to be innovative and proactive about developing our future business. We’re always looking to add value to our service proposition, whether it be through the adoption of our certified CarbonNeutral fleet or offering our customers access to industry-leading treatment facilities. That way we nip at competitors’ heels, out-manoeuvre them and win more business.”
Alex Tatham said Westcoast (TVBMA Business of the Year), currently with 1,200 people, was constantly seeking to recruit. “Our £1.6 billion turnover company – the largest tech distributor in the region – is growing nicely, but the key thing we look for from people coming into our business is a winning attitude. Frankly, we recruit raw talent from anywhere.”
Westcoast had a “lively and energetic” entrepreneurial spirit allied to its winning objective, he explained. This enabled efficient processing with flexibility, leading to rapid delivery solutions – a key differentiator to its much larger global competitors.
Alex Smith said during recruitment interviews ‘the right fit’ was crucial. Being “plugged in to providing customer solutions” and “being prepared to go the extra mile” was as much part of Redwood’s culture as its technical expertise – and integral in forming its customer-facing competitive edge. “Now as we grow and scale up, retaining that quality, agility, customer service delivery and winning culture is our challenge.
Alex Smith
The competitive challenge of winning new work ...
David Murray queried where all the work opportunities were coming from.
Poole highlighted the many new and fast- growing businesses nowadays moving up into different levels of their market and accordingly requiring different professional services. But, he accepted that competition for work was often among known players.
Owen George of Grundon noted the need for competitive differentiation. During the recession his market became a price-war but now customers were looking at other factors than price. “Like everyone says, it’s all about flexibility and entrepreneurial
“We are achieving that by providing more defined processes for our people while retaining good communication and flexibility – maintaining our SME- like culture and extending it across a much larger customerbase.”
Poole stressed the ‘mission critical’ need to employ the right people in the professional services sector where client-adviser relationships are so important. To meet a growing workbook
Alex Tatham THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2016
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