• Is your brand still relevant to your products, services, and customers?
• Design a brand that is up to date and relevant
• Ensure the market knows your full product / service offering
• Design and write an up-to-date website or provide a website developer with the requirements to complete this task
• Keep your website fresh and up to date including a blog page
• Creating or enhancing your digital footprint through the use of social media that is linked to your website
• Write blogs / newsletters that can be sent to customers via Mailchimp.

• Business Planning – to help plan to avoid the daily chaos of what job you should be doing next, through to longer term planning such as future capacity issues.  
• Business Process Improvement – Improve or develop business processes that follow the critical path and eliminate waste & duplication (rework), improve business efficiency and reduce complexity.
• Financial Management – how to read Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet Statements. Reporting by business segment to better identify both segment mix changes and underperforming areas of the business. Develop key financial drivers. These will help to make more informed financial and management decisions.
• Business Systems – identify key business systems requirements and complete a needs analysis to ascertain whether the current systems are meeting your requirements.
• Business Sustainability – helping you to recognise what needs to be done to improve the business’s sustainability in the marketplace.
• Governance (working on the business) – developing better practices to enable you to have dedicated time to work on the business during working hours.
• Procurement – best practices including supplier reviews.
• Resource Management Planning – being prepared and knowing when you need to purchase, replace or release resources.
• Marketing strategy – know your competitive advantage, tailor your marketing to the market conditions and increase your value proposition from a client perspective.
• Customer Satisfaction – Ensure your customer are happy. Good communications are key. Annual customer surveys to get a better understanding of what your clients think of your business.
• Human Resource Planning – Are owner / management and employee cultures aligned? Understanding of Team dynamics. Plan resources to meet customer demand. The subcontractor / employee trade-off in times of skill shortages.

• Help business owners better understand their businesses
• Helps identify both the business’s competitive edge and competitive advantage from robust market analysis
• Provide robust forecasts which can be used to help raise capital for the purchase of new or replacement plant and other assets
• Set realistic and measurable targets including key ratios and benchmarking
• Provide capacity plans to prepare for potential growth and resourcing issues
• Creating immediate workarounds to solve immediate short-term issues
• Create medium-term plans for known up-coming issues
• Create long-term plans based on forecast capacity issues

• Develop employee incentive schemes based on business profit improvement
• Develop a business continuity plan for times of extreme need

• Develop a feasibility study to determine whether the business idea is practical and achievable.
• Develop a 5-year plan which can also be used to form the basis of a project plan and capital raising to obtain a banking facility and other investment requirements.
• Provide specific investor information requirements to raise capital.
• Establish financial management practices including how to setup and read Profit & Loss and Balance Sheets to help you manage the business.
• Business Planning – develop plans to avoid the daily chaos up to longer-term planning requirements.
• Business Processes – develop processes that follow the critical path to eliminate waste (rework) and reduce business efficiency
• Identify key business system requirements that will meet both current and future requirements.
• Governance (working on the Business) – developing practices to enable you to have dedicated time to work on the business.
• Procurement negotiations and supplier reviews.
• Marketing strategy – know your competitive advantage. Tailor your marketing to your target market and market conditions. Increase your value proposition from a client perspective.
• Customer Satisfaction – ensure clients are happy. Communications are key.
• Human Resource Planning – plan resources to meet demand, don’t over-staff. Know the timeline to employ and train new staff plus the subcontractor employee trade-off.
• Into The Blue NZ Limited is a Ministry of Social Development (MSD) registered supplier of consultancy services to Work and Income (WINZ), meaning that we are registered with WINZ to complete Start-Up Business Plans for eligible applicants wanting to create their own businesses.
• WINZ will ask potentially eligible applicants to complete a “Preparing for Self Employment” form. If eligible this will give the applicant access to three funds as summarised:
• Business Training and Advice Grant up to $5,000 to help develop a Business Plan. The money is paid directly to the Business Advisor / Consultant on completion of the Business Plan. A portion of the grant may also be used to help the applicant to complete the WINZ “Preparing for Self Employment” Form.
• Self-employment start up payment up to $10,000 to help pay for essential start-up costs.
• Flexi-wage for self-employment of up to $600 a week for up to 28 weeks to provide financial support and help with costs for viable businesses.
  
• For more information on WINZ Start-Up offerings please click here.
• Into The Blue NZ Limited will cap its fees at $5,000 + GST for helping with both the completion of the “Preparing for Self Employment” application and Business Plan. There will be no charge if the application is unsuccessful.

• Identify the long game and establish a strategic plan
• Identifying the 1 or 2 critical issues to achieving your business’s required goal(s)
• Identifying points of difference to create new business strengths
• How to develop your competitive advantage
• Align business model to strategic plan
• Write Action Plan to meet strategic plan objectives which includes identifying and committing the required resources
• Take required actions as identified in the Action Plan

• Develop a business / 5-year plan as this will give you a roadmap of potential resource requirements to meet your actual and forecast growth
• Review both capacity and capital requirements on a regular basis
• Business valuations

• Implement processes to ensure that the maximum amount of cash can be collected during a given period.  These processes should include customer invoicing and procurement.
• Create clear management performance indicators and identify key business drivers
• A cash requirements plan including timings to ensure that either the required cash or facilities are in place when needed

We are working with business owners (owners) to provide one-on-one advice and support on Employee Relations, Health and Wellness, Business Continuity Planning, Marketing, Digital Enablement, Finance and Cashflow Management, etc.  We will be looking to test both the owner’s and their business’s resilience and to provide advice and support on how to increase that resilience.

This support can take place by way of video conferencing, telephone and face to face meetings.  It will also cover the effect of the current longer-term restrictions being placed on New Zealand i.e. border closures, restrictions on gatherings and the impact of a reintroduction of lockdown periods.  We will work with you to come up with methods to both manage and minimise the financial impacts and stresses of running a business.

This support and advice will cover the below areas with an aim to increase both the owner’s and their business’s resilience to the significant effects that Covid-19 has had and will have on the New Zealand economy and its social fabric:

• Digital Enablement Services – Alert Levels 3 & 4 have illustrated the need for a digital presence to survive whether by video conferencing to hold meetings or online sales to provide a level of turnover.  We can help you to update or create a digital market presence including websites and social media to promote and sell your products and services; setup online newsletter mailouts; implement video conferencing to hold remote meetings with clients, suppliers, work mates, etc to reduce travel costs and lost time.
• Human Resources – includes identifying all key staff and to provide cover for them if they cannot work, making plans to allow staff to work from home, how to cover mission critical activities, business restructuring i.e. redundancy plans to allow businesses to survive in a smaller market, etc.
• Health and Wellness – covers the need for business owners to stay in contact with their employees while working from home and during lockdown periods.  It includes the setting up of employee networks to check and stay in communication with each over.  And will include helping the owners to set up or join networks to ensure that they are able to cope with the effects of this crisis on their business.  As a Business Advisor it is also one of our duties to stay in contact with business owners during times of business stress. 
• Business Planning and Business Continuity Planning – short, medium and long-term recovery plans which include how to cope with the immediate issues i.e. additional Covid-19 restrictions; the longer term issues of the significant impact on the economy, people’s health and social conditions; plus the recovery plan once New Zealand comes out the other-side of Covid-19 restrictions.  This will not be a quick recovery and strategies will need to be developed to reinstate critical business activities in the shortest possible time frames.
• Financial Planning – this will include the impact of a downturn in your business from reduced production caused by staff and material shortages plus decreased demand from a slowdown in the economy from lost or reduced market segments.  Additionally, the costs and benefits of changing market strategies, cost cutting, cashflow management, refinancing loans, staff redundancies, etc.
• Cashflow Management will include full cashflow planning including refinancing loans at lower interest rates, mortgage holidays, use of Government subsidies, loans and tax deferments.  The combat of Covid-19 will not mean an instant return to business as usual as our borders will stay either closed or tightly controlled until there is a global all-clear.    
• Potential Government Funding and tax relief – checking what funding is available and when.  This is a moving target in favour of business.
• Financial Review and Analysis – this will show how the business is currently operating (good or bad), allow for the implementation of key drivers to better understand the business and provide the basepoint, if required, for any potential government claim.
• Market Analysis and strategy – identify every sector that you currently operate in and any new sectors that you could operate in.  Analysis the effect of Covid-19 on each sector and then implement a strategy to target the least affected and fastest recovering sectors.  Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing.  A competitor analysis is key to keeping your competitive edge and developing a competitive advantage in a smaller marketplace plus building your business’s resilience.

This programme will be tailored to the specific needs of the business owner (no two businesses are the same).  The cost of this programme will be fully funded up to an amount as agreed by your local Growth Advisor.  Our costs are worked out on a time and materials basis ranging from $50 + GST per hour for basic digital enhancement services to a maximum of $200 + GST per hour for Business Continuity Planning.  Call now tel:021 625 871

• Identify the key strategies to make your business more attractive to potential purchasers (grooming)
• Establish a framework to allow all parties to achieve desired results
• Identify the exit alternatives including family succession, internal sale and external sale, and then identify the opportunities and the viability of each alternative
• Identify the exit issues
• Articulate defined exit strategy program
• Market Analysis including identifying potential business sale target markets
• Business Valuations
• Monitor progress

Read my Exit Strategy Brochure