What should Business Owners do now?

Rishi Sunak yesterday presented his latest Budget (27th October 2021). In his closing segment, he explained that there has to be a limit on the economic support that should be expected from the taxpayer. He wants to reduce taxes by the end of this Parliament, which means that Business Owners are now on their own as we continue to emerge from the pandemic.

What does that mean for your Business?

1 You need to optimise your business wherever you can.

All of your systems and processes need to be set to give you the very best returns.

Most businesses reviewed costs in the closest detail in the height of the pandemic, and cut wherever they can, but this needs to become an oft-repeated process. It’s easy for us all to get complacent again as we get busier!

• A few extra expenses really can add up.
• A small inefficiency in a process grows as that process is repeated more often.

2 Agility is key, so plan, plan, plan…

None of us saw the Pandemic coming, but those businesses with cash reserves, and the ability to adjust and respond to the challenge are now in a much stronger position.

• Can you start to put a plan together that puts you in a stronger cash position over the next six months?
• Do you know what you’d do if you lost a key member of the team, if you lost a key customer, a key supplier went under, or we went back into Lockdown?

Planning for existing or potential problems is a really smart thing to do, so that you’re some distance down the road to implementing it before your competition, or just have more headspace to deal with it because you’ve thought about the possibility already.

3 Do you understand how your business is really working NOW?

We’ve all learnt huge amounts from the last eighteen months. Some businesses are unrecognisable.

• Have you incorporated all of those lessons into your business?
• Are you entirely sure that the processes and procedures that you think are taking place really are? There was so much upheaval from working from home for example, that many business owners are finding out the hard way that their customer care isn’t quite where it should be.

You’re not entirely on your own!

Rishi may have signalled that there is little extra support coming from Government, but that doesn’t mean you’re entirely on your own.

We’ve been working with business owners for more years than we care to remember, and though this was our first pandemic too, we’ve supported nearly a hundred clients through it, and spoken to many more along the way. We have the knowledge, experience and the tools to help businesses thrive as the upheaval of Covid moves into the past.

The riskiest period for businesses is the next twelve to eighteen months, as statistically more businesses fail after a recession, so remember that we’re here as a sounding board, a source of support, or just a contact book whenever you need us. Please get in touch if you’d like to talk anything through, or just bring us up to date with any new plans or challenges you may have. If we know what those are, and ideally while you’re still in the planning stage, we can be far more help.