Start-up Strategy
Strategy is a small businesses’ game plan for surviving; it maps out the moves a business must make to outwit the competition, captivate customers and increase value. Effective strategy not only inspires and informs the collective actions of a small businesses’ executive team, but all helps mobilizes employees.
Calacles has helped all type of clients, in every industry, develop and deliver on their strategies. We’ve enabled companies to find new sources of profitable growth, reposition their businesses for the future and sharpen their competitive advantage.
Our methodology for small business consulting includes the following components:
Strategic Planning
Small business strategic planning takes a holistic look at a small business’ aspirations, and corporate objectives. This plan includes mapping a self-correcting process to achieve new levels of small business performance. This plan helps small businesses decide where to focus, where to compete and how to allocate resources.
Surprisingly, most small businesses fail to take a long-term view in strategic planning, mistakenly believing it does not necessarily lead to higher returns. Calacles helps clients incorporate a complete perspective into their strategies, while focusing on the biggest issues they currently face, immediate needs in terms of results, and the best way to get succeed in doing so.
Throughout this process, Calacles reviews and challenges our small business client’s assumptions. Calacles works to identify the largest opportunities to build value within the small business and develop an understanding of how its current performance compares with its full corporate potential. Calacles help small businesses identify gaps and marketplace opportunities and set up goals and tracking systems that ensure that the small business grows out of its small business classification.
Capital Management
Low overhead costs are essential to profitability; often they’re closely tied to industry leadership and high monetary returns. Yet eliminating excessive overhead can be tricky for small businesses. Often, costs are “hidden” or duplicated in business operations and at the corporate level. Rapidly growing companies can lose control of costs.
Calacles studies companies in industries ranging from consumer products to financial services to energy to determine how strategically trimming and reconfiguring support functions such as outsourcing Human Resources, Finance, and Procurement, can lead to smarter capital management and free up resources for growth initiatives like marketing. Done right, it can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of critical processes while also reigning in costs.
Calacles takes into account each small business client’s strategic goals and customer requirements. We run each cost line item through a set of proprietary models, which includes benchmarks and best practices, to find and rank opportunities for savings. There are three broad areas of focus: reducing use by determining which support services are important to the customer or business; redesigning services by dissecting essential processes and eliminating steps that don’t truly contribute to the business; and, restructuring support services so that they can perform the most effectively at the lowest cost. This is the hardest to do, but usually has the biggest impact. Tracking systems ensures that results are not only on target but lasting.