The task of building and maintaining a sustainable business model could never be described as a walkover. Get it wrong, and you could be staring down the loaded barrel of corporate failure. Get it right and you will earn the respect and loyalty of those who matter most to your business: your customers, your employees and your shareholders.
Simon Court, CEO of UK-based management consultancy, Value Partnership says the secret of a sustainable business model for SMEs lies in an organisation’s ability to identify the potential signs of decline and address them through strategies that actively promote longer-term survival.
All too often, companies rely on short-term wins, such as rapid expansion or cost-cutting to drive their businesses forward, forgetting to take a multi-angled view of the operation from the perspective of their customers, employees, managers or shareholders.
Court cites the example of the “ISP who does not bother to notify his clients that their servers are down, because the servers will be up and running soon enough” or the motor car dealership attendant who informs a customer that “the only courtesy car the company has is not available to customers right now because the manager is using it”.
According to Court, business success hinges on building strong internal teams that function well together and operate successfully as a whole. He refers to a company that recently introduced a new layer of externally-recruited senior managers and “got it badly wrong. Silos began to develop among the different teams, and the fluidity was lost. The new managers failed to see their teams as internal resources and didn’t have the skills to motivate or develop their staff”.
Court adds that SMEs can boost their chances of success by being vigilant and learning from each other’s mistakes. He advises firms to keep longer term-goals in mind by regularly asking: What is this business trying to promote? What does this business need in order to (continue to) be successful? And, how can we track and measure that success?
Debbie Legall
