Today and into the future the SME sector will continue to be the workhorse of Australian enterprises. It is good to see this being recognised by the Federal Government in the 2015/2016 budget.
SME’s employ over 70% of the Australian workforce and contribute 57% of the private sector turnover within Australia. They represent organisation that operate as sole traders right through to organisations that employ 200 people and everything in between.
They cover business sectors that include manufacturing, distribution, agriculture, mining, construction, business services and household services. In short they cover all of the day to day requirements that all household require. Further some organisations are working on the things that we will need into the future. Yet their survival rate of SME’s after 4 years of trading is only 60%. Why is this and what can organistions do to guard against failure. The short answer is that there is never a guarantee for success, but there are things that organisations can do to improve their chances of not only surviving, but growing into a bigger organisation.
My intent with this blog is to try and identify what are the things that successful organisations do, how they execute their plans to deliver success and what the measures are that allow organisations to know when they are delivering what they set out to achieve.
I am also keen to encourage a discussion within the SME community that can highlight issues that can help all SME’s.
Amongst the Success Factors that I think are important are:
- The Stakeholders
- Business Growth
- Liquidity
- Costs
- Profitability
- Investment in Capital Equipment
- Capital Raising
- Branding
- Delivery Performance
- Customer Satisfaction
- Product/Quality Service
- Productivity
- Stock Turns (where relevant)
- HR Competencies
- Staff Motivation/Engagement
- Organisational Culture
- Innovation
I will attempt to explain these success factors in subsequent blogs.
I have been fortunate to have worked for a range of organisations in various roles across a number of industries. My lasting memory is the people who I worked with. Having good people to work with is a definite competitive advantage which should never be overlooked.
