Networking Event March 2009

How to survive and thrive in tough times

With a lot of talk currently focusing on the deteriorating economy many small business owners are trying to work out where to start when it comes to maintaining their profits and cash flow in the tough conditions.

For each business the issues faced will be different and the impact on your business will vary, but for all businesses there will be some areas that you can focus on to maintain your profitability and attempt to keep cash flow as strong as possible.
The aim is to be well positioned for growth when the inevitable recovery occurs. Well run companies maintain their quality standards and indeed their customer service levels throughout the tough times to emerge stronger and more competitive when things look up.

Areas that will be covered in this presentation include:

• The importance of budgeting
• Review and monitoring the basics
• Efficiency and spare capacity
• Business planning and strategy
• Cash is king
• Benchmark your business
• Value adding to your clients
• Financing your business
• Practical ideas from other businesses
• Business tools that William Buck and their clients use

Attending this valuable, focused and highly relevant keynote presentation will provide you with:

1. Practical ideas to consider and implement in your business
2. Current ideas being used by similar businesses
3. Tools that can assist with budgeting and business planning

All participants will receive three valuable business resources on the night:

• A Business Plan Checklist - which is a guide that can assist with highlighting the areas to consider when developing your business plan
• A 3 way budget template that Scott uses with his clients - this pulls together a detailed cash flow which can help you plan for the highs and lows throughout the year
• A sample benchmarking report that considers some of the KPI's you may be monitoring in your business in a graphical format. 

Don't miss this timely event!

Speaker Profile

Scott Harrington

Scott Harrington is a Director in the Business Advisory team at William Buck in Sydney. Scott has over 20 years experience as a chartered accountant in Australia and the UK and holds a degree in Commerce. Scott commenced his career with a small firm of chartered accountants before joining the business services team of PricewaterhouseCoopers for 16 years, including 4 years as a partner. He has been with William Buck since mid 2007. In recent years Scott has served clients across a broad range of industries including retail, marketing and design, service, technology, distribution and export. Scott focuses on developing strong relationships with his clients and aims to become a key component of their management team. This allows him to share the past experiences and lessons learned when working through the day to day challenges faced by his clients. He has extensive experience in providing strategic business advice to private businesses and their owners, including: advising on business structures taxation planning and compliance cash flow preparation and finance applications business planning  assisting with succession planning providing assistance on development of an export strategy