Christmas! Phew!  There’s not one business leader I know that isn’t ready for a break.  But as you kick-back with your mince pie and coffee (or something stronger), it’s a good time to reflect on all your business has accomplished in 2014 while setting goals for 2015.  Here are a few considerations I’d like to throw into the mix.

1. Your Client Portfolio

Take a detailed look at your client portfolio and the % of business each contributes to your overall revenue. Is it balanced? Ideally your biggest client should be no more than 15% of your turnover. Are you really making money from each client or are they pushing you to over-service such that it’s diluting your profitability?  Perhaps 2015 is the time to refocus and make some changes.

2. Cashflow

Christmas is often a time that highlights particular problems with clients who don’t pay on time. The impact on cashflow is exaggerated because businesses often have to pay their staff a little earlier in December. The perfect storm!   Why not tackle credit terms and bring down the average time to payment in 2015 and see what a difference that makes to your business finance.

3. Staff retention

It’s likely that your staff will take time to reflect over Christmas too, it’s often a time when people think about changing jobs.  If there are key staff members you want to retain then utilise the wide range of compensation tools at your disposal, it doesn’t have to be a salary increase.

It’s probably also worth mentioning here that, if you’re not already on top of it, you should also be preparing for the new pension legislation and the auto-enrolment of staff through 2015 (see previous blog post).

4. Pricing

When was the last time you reviewed your pricing policies, systems and proposals?  By systemising your pricing you can gain consistency and efficiency while also reducing risk to profitability.

5. Products and Services

Are all your products and services profitable? If not, then why? Act now to either make the changes necessary or remove the product/service from your portfolio.

The Blenheim business health-check covers all these aspects and more.  Get in touch if we can help your business to a prosperous 2015.