Disappointing retail sales in August have confirmed for many what anecdotal evidence had indicated - the Olympics did not provide the promised boost to British shops. Finger-pointing at Stratford, however, may be disguising the creeping impact of falling consumer demand.

The first point to make is that the figures are far from drastic. Sales were down 0.4% compared with the same month last year and 0.6% on 2010, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Indeed the key sentence in the report, missed by most of the mainstream media, was that "the net effect of the Games was minimal as lower footfall in London was offset by a better performance in the rest of the country".

As such, while the games appear to have failed to help retailers overall their impact was limited in a month that Helen Dickinson, head of retail at KPMG, acknowledged is "traditionally a weak month for sales".

It may be tempting, even accurate, to blame politicians for over-egging the effect that hosting the Olympics would have on the economy but this does little to explain the underlying trend.

Nevertheless, it's difficult to argue that the performances by TeamGB and now ParalympicsGB have done much to inspire present and future generations, and possibly lead to greater performance within industry and commerce too !?

London 2012 | Olympic Games | Impact on Retail | Impact on Economy | Inspiring Generations | Motivating Paralympians

SimWay had a really enjoyable morning with over 80 member businesses from Rhondda Cynon Taff, Caerphilly and Merthyr Business Clubs and the new Mayor of Merthyr on 17th July.

Wayne from SimWay was delighted to speak on behalf of the RCT Business Club and present a 'spotlight on your business' session outlining what SimWay Business Solutions does to help client organisations to sustain and grow their businesses.  We were extremely pleased to have been asked to present and thoroughly enjoyed meeting existing contacts and making new ones during the Speed Networking element of the business breakfast at the Llancaich Fawr Manor.  My thanks to Claire Curtis at RCT Business Club for all her help and for asking me to speak at this great event.

Help to Business | Caerphilly Business Forum | Merthyr Business Club | RCT Business Club | Rhondda Cynon Taff | Networking Event | Local Business

With information at our fingertips with smart phones and wifi networks, we try to speed up to match the pace of the action around us.  We stay up until 3 am trying to answer all our emails.  We twitter, we facebook, and we link-in.  We scan news websites wanting to make sure we stay up to date on the latest updates.  And we get excited every time we hear the beep or vibration of a new text message.  The speed with which information hurtles towards us is unavoidable (and it's getting worse).  But trying to catch it all is counterproductive.

At the start of each week, try to develop and write down two lists then review these two lists at the beginning of every day. 

Some people already have the first list.  Very few have the second.  But given how easily we get distracted and how many distractions we have these days, the second is more important than ever.

List 1 - Your Focus List (the road ahead)

• What are you trying to achieve ?
• What makes you happy ?
• What's important to you ?

Design your time around those things.  Because time is your one limited resource and no matter how hard you try, you just can't work 25 / 8 ! 

List 2 - Your Ignore List (the distractions)

To succeed in using your time wisely, you have to ask the equally important but often avoided complimentary questions:

• What are you willing not to achieve ?
• What does not make you happy ?
• What is not important to you ?
• What gets in the way ?

Please let us know how you get on and whether this helps !

Pace of Change | Personal Effectiveness | Becoming More Effective | Time Management | To do lists

Offering our experience and expertise in Change Management, Performance Improvement and Customer Service Excellence, SimWay's Senior Consultants will be developing and delivering a range of products in conjunction with CWBL to help small to medium sized businesses.  These will include:

• Taking Action to Survive, Thrive and Grow your business 
• Exploiting New Routes to Market
• Project Management
• Change Management
• Introducing a Customer Led Business Model & A Roadmap to Customer Service Excellence
• Performance Management

These products will all be accredited by the University and will offer an entry point to further study, where required and will hopefully provide credit towards a higher level qualification.

We will post more information on this via our website in due course, but we very much look forward to working closely with the team at CWBL over the coming months to develop these products and deliver this much-needed support for businesses and organisations.

Continuing Professional Development | Business Learning | Short Business Courses | Accredited Business Training | Cardiff Met University | Work Based Learning

This blog incorporates elements of the Harvard ManageMentor online module: Business Case Development.

SimWay Business Solutions see the preparation and creation of a Business Case or a Business Plan as being a vital step in laying the foundations for success. There are always alternatives - so it's essential to scope out what you could do before deciding on what you will do.

It is then worth putting effort into properly spelling out what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you will achieve it (keeping an eye on the other options that you discarded - changing your mind now will be less costly than doing so later !).

Identify and estimate the likely costs and benefits, including non-financial ones, and assess what flexibility or contingency can be allowed before the business case or business plan is doomed to failure. It's essential to think about this upfront because some costs will rise and some benefits may reduce !

When building a business case, many managers pick an early solution and fail to explore additional possibilities. Others fail to consider "do nothing" or the status quo as an alternative.

To avoid these traps, bring together the people who will be affected by the outcome of your proposal — these may be customers, frontline workers, suppliers, external or internal advisors, or (in a larger organisation) managers in other departments. Ask them to brainstorm alternatives. To generate as many ideas as possible, record everything without judgment and without discussing pros and cons. Once you have a full list, move on to assessing which are feasible.

SimWay Business Solutions would advise that once you've built a really strong business case - review it, analyse it, learn from it, keep it up to date.....in other words, make it a vital document at the heart of how you're running your business or a project. A business case (in common with a business plan) is worth doing properly and once you've put the effort into producing one, use it, don't file it !

We have a wealth of experience of writing, reviewing, amending and agreeing business cases and business plans in large and small organisations (and some of those in between !).

As such, we have learnt the importance of treating a business case as a living, breathing document. We see a business case or business plan as a type of map which sets out what to do, how to do it, and explains & records why you are doing it ! You can then review your progress against this map in order to ensure that you remain on track and in order to identify and record landmarks and milestones along the way.

We'd be happy to advise, or to help you on any aspect of business planning or on business cases. We'd also happily write one with you (it is yours after all, so why ask someone else to write one for you?). Give us a call if we can help.

Business Plan | Business Planning | Business Case | Building Business Cases | Why Change | Planning Business Change | Planning Business | Business Case Help | Business Plan Help

Please note that we have as of today activated the "Comments" feature on our blog page. 

Apologies to anyone who had tried to comment to date without success - you'll now be able to do so and we're looking forward to hearing from you.

Both Simon Deacy and Wayne Morris successfully completed the Introduction to Enterprise Mentoring course with Get Mentoring this week.  Get Mentoring (http://getmentoring.org/) is an initiative to unlock, train and support a community of enterprise mentors across the UK. 

The initiative's aim is to recruit and train thousands of mentors from the micro, small and medium-sized business community.  Having been mentors for some time during their careers and having completed their training, Simon and Wayne both qualified for membership of the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs (IOEE). The IOEE is the UK's first institute dedicated to 'learning by doing' for anyone thinking about, starting or running their own business and those who support them.  Find out more at http://ioee.co.uk/

Business Mentor Newport | Business Mentor Cardiff | Business Mentor Wales | Enterprise Mentor Newport | Enterprise Mentor Cardiff | Enterprise Mentor Wales | IOEE Mentor Newport | IOEE Mentor Cardiff | IOEE Mentor Wales | SimWay Enterprise Mentoring | SimWay Business Mentoring | Business Mentoring Wales | Enterprise Mentoring Wales

SimWay Business Solutions were delighted to be invited to present a Breakfast Briefing workshop at Cardiff Business Technology Centre.

Cardiff Business Technology Centre (CBTC) is Cardiff’s leading technology and innovation business location.  The Centre is a member of the United Kingdom Science Park Association (UKSPA). It provides thousands of professionals with the information, education, advocacy and networking resources to bring excellence to the process of assisting early-stage companies worldwide. 

Entitled Preparing For Change, Simon Deacy and Wayne Morris provided a "thought-provoking" introduction to the importance to business of ensuring readiness for change and for businesses to ensure that they are as competitive as possible - reacting to customer 'hopes and expectations' not just customer needs.

For more information on CBTC, visit http://www.cbtc.co.uk/

Preparing for Change | Business Change Management | Increasing Competitiveness | Business Mentoring | Business Consulting Cardiff | Business Consultancy Cardiff | Management Consulting Cardiff | Management Consultancy Cardiff

We are often asked "what is change management?".  One of the most pre-eminent thinkers on Change Management, Dr. John Kotter, from Harvard Business School, talks about how to win over both hearts and minds in his book "The Heart of Change".

Within Dr Kotter's 8 Step Process, winning hearts and minds is an important part of business thinking and a way to change behaviour in an organisational or a cultural change.

The emotions of business must play an important role to change behaviour to achieve the significant change projects. Getting to the business heart is something that many people miss.

Listen as Dr. Kotter gives some business tips to achieve the heart of change, hosted via YouTube (this video has also now been added to our "CHANGE" page).

Change Consultants | Realising benefits | Delivering Benefits | Change Management Consultant | Change Management Consulting | Change Management Consultancy | Change Management Advice | Change Management

To keep momentum in a project, or in a business, or in a charity or public sector organisation, you need to run great meetings.

Make your next meeting more productive with these three simple guidelines:

Restate the meeting's purpose - Even if you think everyone knows it, it helps to remind them and sharpen the group's focus.

Include everyone - If one or two people dominate the conversation and others are shy about leaping in, draw out new people by saying, "Thanks for those ideas, Carl. What are your thoughts about this problem, Megan?"

End well - Close the meeting with an action plan and a clear time frame. State the decisions the group has made, who owns what, and when they need to report back to the team.

SimWay Business Solutions' consultants are experienced senior leaders, managers, coaches and mentors - offering support to businesses, and to individual managers and leaders.  We can help your organisation to improve the effectiveness of your performance reviews and meetings to an extent where it helps your business or organisation to deliver better performance.  Our consultants are used to delivering such performance improvements in large organisations across the UK and to delivering successful change initiatives and projects - that's our specialism. 

Call us to discuss just how we can AND will help your business or organisation to prosper. 

Improving Performance | Business Advice Wales | Business Advice Cardiff | Business Advice Monmouthshire | Business Advice Bristol | Team Meetings | Project Meetings | Project Management Reviews | Project Management Consultancy | Change Management Consultancy | Management Consultants Monmouthshir | Business Consultants Monmouthshire

An elevator pitch could be a brief e-mail summary of your business. Or it could be a short story that you can tell in the course of a elevator ride.  Or, more commonly perhaps, it could be your business pitch at an organised networking event or any event where you have an opportunity to explain what you and your business does in the hope that it opens the door to opportunities or an introduction or referral.

You use the elevator pitch to get meetings with prospective clients, partners or investors. And if you don't have an introduction from someone else (an introducer or referrer), an amazing elevator pitch is critical to a successful cold e-mail or when meeting someone for the first time at an event.

The term 'elevator pitch' was based on the fact that 118 seconds is the length of the average elevator ride in New York City.  The first 8 seconds are "the hook" - the time you have to get the 'lean in' factor.  That's where you capture the recipient's interest.  Those initial 8 seconds are the key - as we all know, first impressions count.  With the world seeming to spin faster, 45 seconds is more likely than 118 seconds so practice what you can say and how you say it during 30, 45 and 60 seconds - if you're able to tell them more, they will probably have already 'leaned in'. 

It's the quality of the elevator pitch (the introduction to your business and the products and services that it provides) that makes the recipient want to know more....  With this in mind, plan and prepare and practice. 

Finally, Best of Luck !

Winning Business | Elevator Pitch Advice | Helping Businesses Succeed | Changing Performance | Changing Business | Management Skills | Business Skills | Business Monmouthshire | Business Wales | Business Cardiff | Networking Advice

Based on the book by Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer, and Paul B. Brown

We all know how new projects happen in a predictable world: A team is assembled, a market analysed, a forecast created, and a business plan written. Resources are then gathered, and the plan is set in motion.

But how do you launch new projects in an unpredictable environment? What's the best way to do it in an age where the proliferation of data and opinion makes truly decisive analysis impossible; when faraway events have immediate, unexpected impact; and when the economic crisis has made companies reluctant to take big bets on unproven ideas?

Take a look at what serial entrepreneurs do - they navigate through uncertainty, minimising the risks as they go !

Academics and major consultancy practices have spent years studying these leaders and the logic they use to create new products, services, and business models in situations where the old methods of analysing, forecasting, modelling, planning and allocating no longer work.

A detailed study of 27 serial entrepreneurs, by University of Virginia's Associate Professor of Business, Saras D. Sarasvathy was undertaken, from which the results were enlightening:

·     instead of starting with a predetermined goal, these entrepreneurs allow opportunities to emerge:

·     instead of focusing on optimal returns, they spend more time considering their acceptable loss; and

·     instead of searching for perfect solutions, they look for good-enough ones.

The point is that successful entrepreneurs don’t just “think different.” They translate that thinking into immediate action, often ignoring analysis. Rather than predict the future, they try to create it.

Look at Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz: Coffee sales had been steadily declining for two decades before he came up with the café concept that would grow into a multibillion-dollar business.

This logic shouldn’t be limited to entrepreneurs working outside the bounds of traditional organisations. (After all, Schultz first tested his café idea when Starbucks was a small retailer of coffee beans, teas, and spices, and he was its director of marketing).

We believe that any manager can, and should, follow the same process when confronting the unknown. It presents them with an extremely low-risk way to launch new projects and thus begin to change organisations and improve their performance.

For more information including how we can help you, please visit the rest of our website or give us a call. In addition, please contact us if you would like a free copy of our change model sent to you by e-mail.

Change Management Help | Project Management Help | Helping Business Change | Change Management Monmouthshire | Project Management Monmouthshire | Change Management Bristol | Project Management Bristol | Project Management Wales | Change Management Wales

The Banks and Local Authority Grants are not your only sources of funds, but when you need funds from the Bank or Local Authority, you complete a Business Plan. 

• Is your Business Plan fit for use or is it a means to an end - just to get the overdraft, loan or grant ? 
• What do you do with the Business Plan once funds are secured, a grant awarded or your accountant satisfied ? 
• Do you go ahead and do what you said you would do in your Business Plan?
• Are you running your business in the way you said you would in your Business Plan?

Think about how much cash could be available INSIDE YOUR BUSINESS.  Doing what you set out to do in your Business Plan, reviewing how effective that is and making improvements as you go can free up savings and capital, and makes your business more competitive.

What if you could improve efficiency by 10% in:

• your purchasing operation and supply chain;
• your production process; or
• your sales and marketing activities ?

These are just examples - there are other opportunities in most businesses.  Becoming more efficient may release capital for investment and could also enable you to make more use of your assets - people and equipment. 

CHANGE takes many forms, but the most common areas in which SimWay helps client organisations is in the following activities:

• becoming more competitive and efficient;
• making savings from their processes and systems in order to generate working and investment capital;
• launching new products;
• identifying and entering new markets - including identifying a route to market for their goods and services.

Give SimWay Business Solutions a call to see how we can help your organisation.  We're passionate about helping people....in fact, WE GET A REAL BUZZ FROM DOING SO.

We offer every new client a free, initial consultation so that there is no risk for your organisation - you can identify how we can help and whether that help is right for you.

Business Change Wales | SimWay Business Change | Business Efficiency | Business Savings | Save to Invest | Save to Grow | Save for Growth | Working With Clients | Consultancy Wales | Partnership Consultancy | Working Together

2012 - Another Difficult Year ?

The Western Mail's 'Business in Wales' supplement on 8th February 2012 reported that according to a NatWest study, 50% of Welsh Small to Medium-sized firms (SMEs) see survival as their biggest challenge in 2012. Interestingly, Scottish SMEs at 58% and Northern Irish SMEs at 54% were even more pessimistic.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2012/02/08/welsh-businesses-just-looking-to-survive-in-2012-91466-30286280/

The survey comes at a time when there is increasing evidence that the UK is facing a double-dip recession. According to the Welsh companies surveyed:

• 23% said that finding new customers was their biggest challenge
• 19% said that managing cashflow and accessing finance was their biggest challenge

According to those companies surveyed in Cardiff, Swansea, Wrexham and Aberystwyth, not a single one saw opportunities coming from the Olympic Games.

In response to the report, the Federation of Small Businesses commented that their own research had showed that "businesses in Wales are still diversifying, innovating and improving. In the face of obvious adversity, many are still looking to grow and expand."

An additional survey of Federation of Small Businesses' members, the "Voice of Small Business" survey reported in The Western Mail on 22nd February suggested that 56% of Welsh Businesses trying to achieve growth achieved a growth in sales. Meanwhile, 66% of Welsh Businesses have introduced a new or improved product or service over the last 12 months (compared to 53% in 2009). The principal reason for FSB members to apply for financial support is cash flow while 30% of companies see Competition in their market as a barrier or obstacle to success.

SimWay Business Solutions recognise that many areas of business support and advice are provided at little or no cost, thanks to the generous support of Welsh Government and local authorities - hence our focus on providing a specialist change and performance improvement solutions service to help businesses to survive and grow after the initial business start up support runs out. Interestingly, the FSB asked their members what they thought of Local Authority support for businesses - the response being that just 3% said that they were very satisfied with such services and 14% were quite satisfied. However, 18% said that they were quite dissatisfied and 17% were very dissatisfied.

Shortage of Skills was again reported in the FSB Survey as a big issue for businesses in Wales - 22% of respondents stated that this was a barrier or obstable to their success (15% of which reported marketing as a particular problem - although in our experience, identifying 'route to market' is a particular problem that we can and have helped our clients with).

We can help......Coming soon will be the first of a series of Business Support and Training events being run by SimWay in South East Wales......SimWay Business Solutions specialises in helping organisations to implement and manage change successfully - whether that be in launching new products, entering new markets, expanding their operations or becoming more efficient.  Call us on 01600 729180 to find out how SimWay can help your business today.

Small Business Growth | Small Business Survival | SimWay helps business | Change to Survive | Change to Thrive | Change to Grow | Help Launching Products | Help Launching Services | Help Increasing Production | Help Improving Performance

Last week saw the launch of a major new piece of research by the CMI - The Business Benefits of Management and Leadership Development. 

Some of the key findings include:

• 43% of managers rate their own line managers as ineffective or highly ineffective
• In top performing organisations, 80% of managers are rated as effective or highly effective – compared to just 39% in low-performing organisations
• Management and leadership development activities can lead to increases of up to 32% in people performance and 23% in overall organisational performance – but too few employers are doing the right things
• High performing organisations spend on average 36% more on management and leadership development per manager per year than low performing ones (£1,738 compared to £1,275).
• Professional qualifications are highly rated by managers, especially in early career stages.

The report – produced jointly with HR consultancy Penna, with researchers at Henley Business School – includes recommendations for employers. The report can be downloaded free of charge at www.managers.org.uk/mldbenefits.

If your business' leadership and management skills need development, please give SimWay a call on 01600 729180 to discuss what you need and whether and how we can help

Management Development | Leadership Development | Management Training Wales | Management Training SimWay | Leadership Training Wales | Leadership Training SimWay | Leadership Development SimWay | Leadership Development Wales | Management Development SimWay | Management Development Wales