BUSINESS ADVOCATE COLUMN JULY 2012

If existing markets are crowded and population growth limited, how do we grow new business? It seems like a tall order for an emerging enterprise to shoulder its way in amongst existing competitors or for existing local companies to compete against larger national operations. Yet for our regional economy to grow, it goes without saying that existing businesses must develop and grow and new businesses must enter the market. For these things to happen requires a high level of business capability, financial literacy and governance. The start point may well be for existing businesses of all scale to undertake a critical audit and establish what their current levels of the above attributes are. The challenge is how a business can examine their enterprise within a sufficiently rigorous and impartial framework that allows for them to develop a meaningful way forward. There are many very competent business consultants who can assist you to do this and this is a perfectly valid path to pursue. In most case this should result in an improved level of capability although the level of understanding of how your business works may still vary depending on the methods used in this process. The understanding of how your business operates across many aspects, of how it responds to change, of how it makes decisions on future direction and of how the result of these actions is confirmed by results is critical in being able to develop and grow in an ever-changing market. The Westpac Northland Business Excellence Awards have been developed to provide the first step in the process of understanding how your business operates, what its strengths and what areas you could work on to further develop and grow the enterprise. The entry form and accompanying workshops walk the business owner through the process of understanding your business and will quickly identify how your business is truly operating. Exposing yourself to this level of examination requires a degree of courage as the results may not always be pleasant. However where this is used as a start point from which a plan can be formulated that will develop and strengthen a business then the benefits will always outweigh any discomfort. New Zealand Chambers of Commerce is still accepting entrants in this year’s awards and would encourage all Northland businesses to consider entering as the first step in developing a competitive and sustainable business.