Posted: 02 July 2020

Developing Strategies For An Uncertain Year

Empowering SMEs (Issue 065)

Friday, 3rd July 2020

Want to learn more about ESS Small Business? (Click here)

Greetings from ESS Small Business – "Strategies Include Systems and Adequate Funding for Your Business".

A lot has happened in the last few months. On 18th June 2020 the “Financial Review” published an article “Accountants Become the “Centrelink” of Business World” – “The accountant of the future will need to be a compliance expert who can grapple with fast changing rules while providing broader advice to clients about their business”.

There is no doubt that many accountants have been offering a wider range of professional services over the last 4 months. Hopefully, you've received excellent service from your accountants during this period. Wouldn’t you like to be receiving a broader range of services, on a permanent basis, all centred around a monthly or quarterly business review meeting where you would meet with your leadership team and your accountant to review all aspects of your business, not just taxation?

There are many accountants all over Australia who are happy to offer this type of service. Why not contact your accountant and have a conversation with him/her about the types of services you'd like to receive to assist your business in surviving the challenges of 2020/21?

In next Wednesday’s (8th July) “COVID-19 Survival Panel" webinar, Andrew Geddes, who was the chairman of a top 200 Australian Stock Exchange company Greencross Ltd for 9 years and who is a leading Australian accounting trainer and mentor, will discuss the processes that outstanding businesses implement to develop strategies and then to implement those strategies to ensure business success. This is the approach that will be necessary for businesses all over Australia, if they are going to survive the challenges that 2020/21 is going to present.

This is your opportunity to hear a very experienced business leader who has worked with thousands of accountants and small business operators and an outstanding public company who will give you his thoughts on what businesses need to be doing to ensure ongoing success.

Andrew’s presentation will centre on the “scaling up” processes that are so important for small and medium-sized enterprises to implement, if they're going to achieve success. His comments will centre on:

Team
Leadership Team
Development of Strategies
Implementation of Strategies

The other guest presenter is Anna Guenther, Director, PledgeMe Pty Ltd (a Crowd Sourced Funding Intermediary) who will discuss the achievement of the all-important 5th scaling up process – “Funding of the Business".

There is a very strong expectation in the marketplace that it is going to be very difficult for businesses to be able to raise loan funds from banks and other financial institutions from October onwards, once the JobKeeper funding programme has closed for most businesses and the Coronavirus SME Guarantee Loans, which are being funded by special loans made by the Reserve Bank to the banking industry, cease at 30th September 2020.

Businesses which need funding of more than the $250,000 limit for the Coronavirus SME Guarantee Loans or discover that they need funding after 30th September 2020 will find it very difficult to borrow from banks and should have an awareness of capital raising opportunities that are available, primarily centred on Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising.

Anna is an expert in Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising and will make comments on the experience that PledgeMe has developed from its involvement in the New Zealand and Australian crowd source funding markets.

There is an expectation in the marketplace that Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising could become very popular for Australian SMEs during 2020/21, similar to what happened in the United Kingdom post the global financial crisis when thousands of companies gained an awareness of crowd sourced funding and were able to raise funds from the market which enabled those companies to continue in business.

You can register for the free webinar on Wednesday 8th July at 12-noon AEST by clicking here.

In last week’s webinar Paul Barnaby, a very experienced Predictive Accountant and the Asia-Pacific Representative for PlanGuru, gave a very interesting overview of a case study on the utilisation of three-way financial forecasts utilising PlanGuru software, to show viewers the process that every business can utilise to develop its Budgets, Cashflow and Predictive Balance Sheets that originated from the decisions that had been made by the directors which are reflected in the Business Plan.

Peter Towers was the other keynote speaker and discussed “Business Advisory Services Contribute to Business Success”. This discussion included comments on SMEs' working relationship with their accountants and the benefits for broadening the services being offered to go beyond taxation services so that all aspects of the business are included.

This is the type of service that accountants can provide in 2020/21 and there is a strong expectation that a large number of SMEs require this type of financial assistance to negotiate the challenges that are confronting all businesses.

You can view the PowerPoint slides utilised by Paul Barnaby and Peter Towers in last week’s webinar by clicking here.

We would like to invite you to visit the ESS Small Business website è Survival in Difficult Times è Learn More where you will find details of the products ESS Small Business has developed to assist small businesses and medium-sized enterprises to gain a better understanding of strategies which will assist you to survive in your business during 2020/21.

If you would like to have a discussion, please don’t hesitate to contact us.