Solutions
Solutions
What needs or frustrations do our services satisfy?
Our services are aimed at enabling business founders/owners free up the time currently spent micromanaging their companies through the establishment of clear and documented systems, which ultimately allow them to hire quality staff to manage and operate the systems, as they desire it, and get back the time to focus on business development, innovation and strategy for growth.
Suffering from Founder's Overload?
Many entrepreneurs find themselves continually spending all their time, emotion and money on the business, even after the business is seemingly mature and find themselves overwhelmed by having to be always on, doing everything personally, delegating little, if anything, never able to take a day off or a vacation, making many mistakes due to lack of expertise to support them, and getting physically and emotionally drained by the rigors of setting up and growing a business.
A big challenge for many founders is that majority are stuck on managing the process of producing the product or service they offer, and do not spend time documenting and conveying to their staff their picture of what they want the business to be. They may hire staff but because they do not do this against a well thought out and documented organization chart with clear roles and responsibilities, they continue doing most things in the organization themselves as they sometimes do not consider the staff capable of delivering as they want. Therefore, their vision does not translate to their staff’s mandate every day they report to work.
A big challenge for many founders is that majority are stuck on managing the process of producing the product or service they offer, and do not spend time documenting and conveying to their staff their picture of what they want the business to be. They may hire staff but because they do not do this against a well thought out and documented organization chart with clear roles and responsibilities, they continue doing most things in the organization themselves as they sometimes do not consider the staff capable of delivering as they want. Therefore, their vision does not translate to their staff’s mandate every day they report to work.
Try documenting
We help founders focus on the systems for doing things and setting out step by step blueprints for every task in the organization, including how to greet customers at the reception, produce, keep record of cash or sales, etc, that can be used to induct and train every person hired to work in the organization to ensure they deliver to the founder’s vision, and that if one person leaves, someone else can be up and running and producing the desired identical results and meeting the needs of customers, whether the founder is there or not.
Are your customers sometimes dissatisfied?
Many SMEs in Africa today start out with very good products or service, which address a real need in the market, but are not able to deliver consistently on the product or service. Their customers cannot count on the desired product or service getting to them at the same quality and speed every time they require it.
Balance your resources
We work with founders to help them get clarity about their systems and document them in a manner that allows their teams to do the production their way, consistently. We help founders document answers to questions like – What is the result they intend to produce, whether they are producing that result every time, how they could produce even better results and what system would help them produce the result every time. This then supports the delegation of tasks and quality of delivery of their products or services.
It is also in this space that we look at the manner and quality of engagements(contracts) that the founder has with the stakeholders that are critical to the business including employees, suppliers, customers and other business partners.
We bring founders/owners to the realization that their role is not to remain the sole producer in their enterprise, but to put in place the systems through which their vision is consistently manifested at the operating level of the business and their resources are best utilized.
Struggling to get to the next level?
A good number of small and medium companies just never grow up and die within five to seven years of their establishment as the founders struggle to build a replicable business model and set standards that can be repeated, whether in size or location, in order to expand the business from the initial set up, to new markets or additional locations.
In the absence of robust systems, an organization’s best employees become potentially their biggest obstacle to building a strong sustainable and scaleable business.
Streamline your operations
We work with founders to implement systems in the company, in order to create a machine that can operate independently of them, and they can easily plug and play the machine as they scale through e.g. through the opening of new branches, expansion to other countries, franchising, etc. Such a system will cut across the entire business and map every critical process in the organization to ensure that each member of the organization understands their specific role and how this stacks up to the delivery of the company products or services.
We also assist founders to understand the important of a system in the success of hiring new staff. With systems in place, it becomes easier to fit the right people with skills, personalities and talents that match the jobs that need doing to ensure the whole puzzle that is the business comes together well. It is also then easier for the founder to manage and improve the systems as they grow, set up a development program for employees and begin to consider their own succession.
Does it feel like the government is after you?
While it is relatively simple to set up and grow a small business in Africa today, the challenges of compliance with the legal and regulatory requirements attendant to such enterprise dog many SME’s. These requirements include keeping up to date with filing required by the Regulators and other government agencies, annual auditing of the entity finances, holding and documenting of annual shareholder meetings, filings and payments of different taxes with the local revenue authority, registration and monthly filings required of employers, statutory deductions for statutory social security and health insurance schemes.
Many SME’s starting out find it difficult to meet these obligations and therefore do not comply in part of in full or even completely ignore them. Some do the basic minimum, failing to obtain proper certifications for quality, sustainability or safety standards. That is until the relevant regulator comes along a few years down the line, demanding compliance, which at that point becomes expensive because of the penalties and interest that accumulate on the liabilities over the periods. Many SME’s when faced with this situation, find it easier to shut down their operations and either set up a separate business under a different name, or get out of business altogether, losing the invested resources and the benefit of what they have built to that point.
In some cases, SME’s with great innovative products miss the opportunity to protect their intellectual property owing to the perceived complexity and/or cost of doing such registrations.
Many SME’s starting out find it difficult to meet these obligations and therefore do not comply in part of in full or even completely ignore them. Some do the basic minimum, failing to obtain proper certifications for quality, sustainability or safety standards. That is until the relevant regulator comes along a few years down the line, demanding compliance, which at that point becomes expensive because of the penalties and interest that accumulate on the liabilities over the periods. Many SME’s when faced with this situation, find it easier to shut down their operations and either set up a separate business under a different name, or get out of business altogether, losing the invested resources and the benefit of what they have built to that point.
In some cases, SME’s with great innovative products miss the opportunity to protect their intellectual property owing to the perceived complexity and/or cost of doing such registrations.
Compliance can be much simpler
We offer SMEs simple tools and solutions to enable them meet their regulatory compliance challenges including simple compliance checklists, based on the needs of their specific industry, which can be used to ensure they remain on track with their obligations and make provision for and pay taxes and other charges that may due from their businesses over time to ensure they are not crippled by the burden of compliance in the later years.
We offer a fully-fledged governance and company secretarial service to SME’s to ensure regulatory compliance with their annual filings and keeping their company or entity details up to date and in line with the requirements of the law.
We also have access to a good network of other professionals who can support SME’s with a full range of services including marketing, supply chain, intellectual property management and tax compliance.
