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There are so many unknowns at the moment. Your business plan for this year is probably as much use as a chocolate teapot in guiding your business through this challenging time. But how are you going to navigate your way out of the Corona pit if you don’t have a route map?

1.Start with your personal objectives.

Are these still the same? Many business owners are enjoying the time with family or not having to endure a commute. Do you still want what you did before?

We use a Balanced 10 Scorecard to look at 10 different aspects of our clients’ lives. Business and Finance are only two of the things that we believe need to be balanced in your life.

2. Business objectives.

With your new personal objectives where do you now see your business in 5 years time? Will you still need premises? Will you invest in software to increase productivity and save that precious time? This is your destination. It is common to set this out in financial terms.

3. 3 month plan

Just as you can’t drive a long distance in one go it is wise to plan stops along the way to take a break, stretch your legs, and make sure that you’re still heading in the right direction. A 3 month plan (or 90 days or 12 weeks) is a good period with a foreseeable timeline.

4. Where are you now?

Evaluate where you are now. What is working and what isn’t? What will take you towards your destination? What do you need to start doing and what should you stop? What can you change now and what will need to wait until we are able to live and work with the virus safely under control?

5. Action plan

How fast can you travel the route? Map out your detailed actions for the next 3 months. Think about what you need to do in terms of people, marketing, systems and products/services.

Each action should have a specific deadline and a person responsible. If it’s a longer term project then only include the actions which need to be taken in the next 3 months. The way to eat an elephant is one mouthful at a time.

6. Review

At the end of each quarter take time to review your progress. Celebrate your successes and learn from anything that didn’t go so well. Do you need to update your overall plan?

7. Reset

Reset your plan and actions for the next 3 months and you’ll gradually get closer to your 5 year goals for your business and personal life.

We can help you to keep track along the way with regular management accounts, business plans and advice. We also run our monthly FLYBY reviews so that you can book on each quarter to get help with points 6 and 7.

As I’ve had time to speak to more businesses this week it would seem that Covid 19 has been a catalyst for all sorts of business improvements that were already in the pipeline.

I’m sure that many business owners, like me, have a file full of ideas, some of which might even have made it as far as a full blown business plan. Minerva Accountants was one such plan for me (although the reality took a bit longer waiting for ICAEW to process my practising certificate).

I’ve also heard of businesses combining sites, implementing new technology, and outsourcing work. All things that they had already identified as cost and efficiency gains. The virus has moved these things from the important but not urgent quadrant to the urgent and important.

What ideas have you got in your repertoire that now need to see the light of day?

Things are starting to settle down a little as we adapt to a new normal and start to consider the best way to make use of life under lockdown and beyond.

Whilst the virus is still out there we need to remember that it is only social distancing measures which have prevented more of us from being infected. The reason that lockdown is able to be lifted a little is because we now have spare hospital beds. So please keep up your usual physical distancing precautions if you’re out and about.

But we do now have a roadmap of how the UK will change over the next few months, so we are able to plan how to get staff working as safely and efficiently as possible.

There will undoubtedly be some sort of recession but those of us who have been through the last few recessions are not scared by this and I’m blowing the dust off the content from the last recession as you read this. At the moment the economy is said to have contracted by about 30%. So only 70% of the opportunities are available and they’re not spread evenly across all industries.

So you don’t need to be ahead of the roaring lion, you only need to be ahead of 30% of your competition to ensure that your business is not one of the ones being eaten.

What can you do to stay ahead of your competition? Build a plan to include:

• Marketing so your name is out there when others may still be licking their wounds
• Tech investments or general efficiencies so that you can carry out work cheaper, better or faster than your competitors
• Recruiting and training the best people as they are laid off from other jobs

If you need help planning then please do shout but, as always, the important thing is to have a plan. And a bit of cash from a bounce back loan may help too.

How is your plan looking for the next 3 months?

I was thinking about the difference between ready assembled furniture and flatpack.

The former is generally more substantial, better made and may last for generations. The latter might be cheap and convenient at a certain point in our lives but we have the hassle of putting it together, it often wobbles and I have no idea what do with the ‘spare’ parts.

Where else do we try to cut costs but spend more time for an inferior product?

Should you use a professional for your bookkeeping/accounts? Many accountants/bookkeepers do this to focus on their core business!

What about your graphic design? Outsourcing our visual brand and design to a professional meant that we were shortlisted in the British Accountancy Marketing Awards last year.

Should you self-publish your book quickly or use an independent publisher? Choosing a good publisher helped The Number Business to win the specialist category at the Business Book Awards last year so I’m using the same publisher for Growing by Numbers

And what about IT? I’m pretty good with tech but I’ve spent several months with a niggle on my emails and now I’ve called in the professionals (good/bad news is that it’s not a simple issue for them either). It’s costing me time each and every day!

What should you be delegating or outsourcing in your business?

At the moment there are too many tired people trying to do too much under difficult circumstances. They’re out of routine and possibly disturbed sleep too. No wonder that more than a few business owners are feeling bruised and shaken.

So how to get a quick confidence boost irrespective of what is going on around you?

• Read through the testimonials on your Linked In, website or elsewhere. If you don’t already have a collection then start now with every nice think that is said to you.
• Stand tall. Imagine that somebody is pushing down on the top of your head and push back up. Shoulders back, down, and relaxed (easier than it sounds). Strong core; abs, stomach and back should all be strong. If you look confident you will start to feel confident
• Have a favourite incantation for times like these. My favourite as a teen was Coue’s “Every day in every way I am getting better and better” repeated 20 times, twice a day.
• Forgive yourself. These are “unprecedented” times, as you have probably heard far too often recently, but that means that we’re all making up at least some of it as we go along. Relax and let go of any mistakes.

I’d love to hear any more quick confidence boosts

After the initial crisis a couple of weeks ago we now seem to be settling down to a new “normal”. Now that we are through the worst of the firefighting we can start to improve our current situation for the next 3-6 months.

As always start with the biggest processes and look for ways that they can be improved. Not all changes will be worth making as they may not reap sufficient benefits in the timescale to justify the time or money required to set them up. This shouldn’t stop you coming up with the ideas; it is just that there are now two potential payback periods of “lockdown/recovery” and any benefits after this time.

It is also worth thinking about what sort of business you want to run after the virus. Have you learned new things or implemented new processes or products/services that are worth keeping?

This week has been exceptionally busy for some of our clients. To cheer them up a little I ordered a little something to be delivered to all our course alumni.

It took a while to find a suitable supplier who was still trading but I took a certain geeky delight in receiving an invoice emailed from their Xero software. Not just any old invoice but one with buttons!

1. One button to upload the invoice directly into my own Xero software. Even simpler than forwarding the email to my Xero mailbox
2. One button to pay straight away by card so I didn’t need to add bank details for a transfer. In the current climate I knew that paying straight away would help that small business and so did the owner.

As systemising for efficiency and speeding up cash inwards are two of the areas we look at on all our courses it I was in tech paradise

How can tech help you in your business?

We’re delighted that MTD (Making tax Digital) prompted so many businesses to review their accounting procedures. For those of you who would still like a hand to do so or to take it further then please do get in touch.

But are there any other systems that can be moved away from paper?

Document management system

Often it’s just a case of not printing out the documents you creating but defining an online filing system for Word, Excel and PDF items. You might want to invest in a document management system for maximum searchability but even ordinary File Managers are quite powerful. Storing these in the cloud with Onedrive, Googledocs etc can make them accessible to your whole team if you wish to share them.

When devising a filing system you should bear in mind how often documents are retrieved and ensure that filing time does not outweigh retrieval time.

Software

Sometimes additional software is required:

• If you’re not already doing it then we can recommend software for your purchase invoices and receipts to be automatically uploaded into your accounting software through a photograph, a forwarded email or a scan. The invoice will be stored electronically as well as creating the accounts record.
• Can you keep an online appointments system which works with your CRM?
• Can you schedule and keep a record of staff hours? (See Deputy) It may be possible to link this with your payroll software too.
• Can any site inspection documents completed and stored electronically?
• Can your clients book appointments online? (see Calendly.com for a free tool)
• Can your team share work and ideas online? (see Trello.com, Slack, Asana)
• What about meeting records? We’re communicating much more online now with Zoom and Teams. If you record a Zoom meeting (do let participants know) you will have a record of these meetings. If you need a text record then you can use transcription software with the saved audio file
• Online signatures can save printing out reams of paperwork for contracts. Signable.co.uk is UK based so complies with GDPR.

There are all sorts of possibilities which can help you to operate remotely,  more efficiently, and reduce your environmental footprint.

Post in

Any paper post will need to be scanned. Depending on your volumes you might want to invest in a fast feed scanner or just photograph single documents.

Legacy paperwork

Old paperwork can be scanned OR you can just move to paperless from today and gradually archive the papers as time passes.

There are so many ways that you can go paperless and, as always, we’d love to help your business efficiency and sustainability.