Guest blog from NG Finance Director, Paul Moore
As the nights have fully drawn in and we await the arrival of the next variant, it can only mean one thing…. Christmas is here!!
Hopefully we will all leave the office 23rd / 24th of December and return 10 days later feeling recharged and ready for the next twelve months will throw at us!
For many of us the return will mean the beginning of planning for the next year and hopefully being able to measure our success by this. Many MD’s, CEO’s (particularly owner managed) let out a groan when their in house bean counter sticks their head around the door and whispers “when do you want to do the budgets?” However, behind most successful businesses there is a plan and budgeting forms a large part of this, once we’ve defined what markets to attack, we need to see how much revenue it will generate and what the cost is, in simplistic terms, whether it’s worth it. Doing this will help us form a guide to our success or a route to adjustment if the plan doesn’t go to plan when we measure against our actual results. There is an old saying that goes, “If it doesn’t get measured it doesn’t get done.“
Its important that we remember the motivational aspects of budgeting also. If the stretch on the revenue figures is too much from the beginning or the expenditure figure too little to deliver the salespeople will give up before its started labelling it “unachievable”. Conversely if the budgets are too soft then we tailspin into self-fulfilling prophecy where we will only ever under achieve.
Here at NG Towers, hopefully DT and the team have (with my assistance) done this with our budgets and we can be robust and reactive enough to bring quality member led events and peer group opportunities regardless of the market or geopolitical factors that seem to be changing on a weekly basis.
With these dynamics changing weekly so do market conditions and the chatter in finance world is that post-Christmas the bounce back honeymoon will be over as Bounce back loan holidays stop, commercial rent and rate agreements will be enforced and civil court actions regarding winding ups will gather pace, coupled with slowing down of goods supplied (which may stop plates spinning), I would implore you all be extra careful on your credit control.
Hopefully I am just being my usual Ebenezer self and will awake from the dream and be wrong.
