SME growth looks brighter years from now

While the present economic and global financial climate may seem bleak time for most, the advice for the moment is to sit tight through the recession because the ‘gray period’ won’t last forever.

Don’t fear, SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) growth 20 years from now is looking positive but it won’t be what we are used to. In fact, there are many new adjustments that we will have to accept about what business will look like decades from now…

The Eurozone crisis is putting the euro in jeopardy and driving a dozen leading European countries in major debt; America seeing a severe ‘anemic growth’ and retail leader China potentially foreseen to go through some sort of fall, the global financial sector is looking like it may implode at any moment.

Rainbow beyond the financial storm

However, although this time in the financial cycle that is seen as a heavily detrimental, it is also a period pushing businesses to be more innovative; to make more from less.

This has seen the rise in companies taking on more of their own marketing strategies (think Facebook Fan pages and basic but effective on line video campaigns), designing ‘more for less’ products and applying strict budgets to their financial years to keep them out of harms way.

This sort of behaviour is sure to continue through the end and out of the recession making SME’s independent, resilient, and more innovative than ever before. An education in the ‘school of hard knocks’ or so to speak to make them bigger, better and stronger years even decades from now.

Build the basics

If basics for getting by now will be the ingrained set of guidelines that SME’s will adhere to by pure habit decades from now, then it is useful to know what business owners should be considering to make the present recession feel a little lighter and the future a lot brighter. These basics can range from management to marketing, day-to-day business operations and recruitment.

1. Marketing: by investing in a marketing plan, SME’s can stand resilient against the recession and competitors. Engaging with professionals to help develop a strategy and then going on to handle day-to-day marketing such as website population and updating, the search engines of the world are bound to pick products and services up more easily. Maintain a steady plan for website development; curate and nurture a stream of web engagement through your social networks and your customers will come to you or be driven to your website.
2. Day to day costs: running your business as effectively as possible will sustain you through the hard times and make your well deserved income be more sustainable beyond the recession. Consider everything; from your utilities bills, how could your business gas prices be revised to get you more for less through better planning for example, to your printing set up and space rental. Every aspect of your business that you pay for should be reviewed, considering you probably set up your business prior to the recession, it is likely there have been adjustments to services to cater to companies needs in these difficult times and you have just not been made aware of them.

3. Image by: ryantron

   HR and recruitment: It is time to challenge your HR sector and consider job roles. This doesn’t mean flailing and retrenching the majority of your staff, it means considering the following:

- Training: bettering the skills of your existing staff so they can be more effective and with fewer resources.

- Hiring: re-write job roles to fit into your revised business set-up. Hire to fill positions where a ‘jack of all trades’ would be more useful that a highly specialized, more expensive candidate who would only do less for more. With training this multi-tasker will eventually find their niche, but in the mean time they can fill in on all levels and offer their skills in every area.

Positive outlook for Growth

Looking ahead according to Dr Frank Shore is all about the changing of retail behavior over the next two decades.

Check out page four of the FlipSnack below on more about Dr Frank Shore’s predictions on the high street, micros-business growth,  spotlighted growth sectors, the advantages of specialization and “mega trends expected for 2020″.

With your business prepared and secure to slowly make it through the recession unscathed, be warmed by the fact that your newly acquired resilience will make you all the better for it years from now. Let us know your tips on how you keep your business going!

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