Structure

(3 Topics)

1.         Downsizing As A Cost Cutting Strategy

Companies consider downsizing and cutting costs for many reasons. A major factor will always be that they find themselves in a period of economic downturn. In this situation, companies will have to scale back on their growth expectations or may even struggle just to maintain their current size. However, companies may need to cut costs even in good years. For example, they may have to deal with increased supplier prices, excess capacity or a fall in client orders.

In order for it to be effective, downsizing should be done strategically. Poorly managed downsizing can hurt productivity. It can leave your organization with demoralized and less efficient team members.

This topic explores the human resources issues with downsizing, how to map your business activities to identify activities you might eliminate or outsource and how to manage the change with your team.

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2.      Failing To Plan Is Planning To Fail

This topic covers the benefits of developing a business plan to gain increased control over business operations and capturing opportunities to step back and work ON rather than IN the business. Participants will learn how to create a complete plan for the business or just a set of action steps covering critical areas of operations.

The business plan is an excellent tool in defining your personal assets and liabilities, describing the competitive conditions in your market, your financial needs, methods of promoting products and services and assessing the skill sets your team requires to be most productive.

Business owners and managers will learn the key steps required to create a plan document for their business and how to use it in their sales processes, to aid in inducting team members, to deal with banks and other capital sources and to educate new suppliers about the nature of the business.

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Franchising has seen a lot of growth in recent years. It's been popular with people who buy into franchises (franchisees) because, while it allows them some of the independence and rewards of a business owner, it also offers a way for them to limit their risk to a relatively low level. And lowering the risk of failure is always a major consideration in tough economic times when starting your own business is especially risky.

Franchising is popular with many consumers who like the predictable level of service and quality that they can find in a franchise outlet. And for the franchise owner (the franchisor), franchising provides a method of business expansion that is faster and less costly than opening a series of branch offices.
So, could your business be turned into a franchise?

This BGR reviews what sort of businesses are likely to be successful s franchised operations and the steps you need to take to get there successfully.

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