One Simple Tool to Help You Grow and Improve Your Business

What would you think if I told you as a business owner that there is one simple tool that used properly will help you grow and improve your business?

And what if I told you that this tool can do that by helping you focus on what’s important in your business by motivating you to take action to drive the performance improvement of your business?

This tool will act as a foundation for the performance reporting and management of your business.

This tool will help you to fund the operations and the growth of your business, and this tool can help you identify opportunities to invest.

So it sounds like a pretty special tool. And yet time and again I hear from business owners:
“Why do I need a cash flow budget? I know where my cash is. I know what I’m going to do with it when it comes in.”

So let’s explore in a little more detail those key features of cash flow budget that can help business owners to grow and improve their business.

Firstly, we focus. The cash flow budget can help business owners focus on the game of business, what’s really important in their business.

Because a cash flow budget provides a foundation for the performance reporting for business owners from a key performance indicator perspective, identifying priorities and monitoring general operational management, cash flow budgets can be a real cornerstone on which to base operational strategies.

A cash flow budget can motivate business owners in a way that may not otherwise be obvious, because a cash flow budget can communicate and quantify the positive outcomes from taking a particular course of action in a way that business owners understand.

So the motivation for business owners by seeing what that result can be, will help drive them to grow and improve their business.

A cash flow budget can also be used to help fund the business growth aspirations of business owners, because it can be used as a key leverage tool when visiting financiers or exploring other ways of funding.

Not only that, it identifies where the needs are from a funding perspective. So if there is going to be cash shortfalls at any particular period in time during the year, a business owner by having an up-to-date cash flow budget will know in advance of when that is going to happen and then can plan and prepare and address the funding requirements as appropriate.

A cash flow budget is a great way of managing the risks in a business because it maps out when a particular cash risk might occur to the business. And again, that is a case of knowing in advance, being able to plan for it, and being able to take action to address the issue before it becomes mission critical or a true risk for the business.

The other really powerful way that every business owner can use a cash flow budget is as a means of identifying opportunities to invest surplus cash flow that a business will have from time to time during the year, either inside or outside of the business.

So if there’s going to be surplus cash flow in particular periods during the year, the business owner can see that and can plan to invest in property, in additional equipment for the business, or even in a personal share portfolio.

Whatever that investment may be, by identifying it up front and tagging it for investment use minimizes the risk of wastage of the cash surpluses being soaked up into day-to-day operations or unnecessary costs within the business.

So why would a business owner want a cash flow budget?

If as a business owner you are truly committed to growing and improving your business, hopefully what I have pointed out here explains why a cash flow budget is a vital cornerstone of your business improvement strategy.

Now at MBR Group, we love working with our clients to develop their cash flow budgets, and then use that as a basis for developing their business improvement plans.

And one of the things that we at MBR Group love doing is getting out with our clients and showing them how this can impact on their business.

So, if you’d like us to come and visit you at your business to explain how a cash flow budget can help your business growth plans, get on the phone now, call (03) 9385 7700 and book an appointment with me or one of our other business improvement specialists to come and spend some time, quality time with you, identifying the opportunities for you to grow and improve your business.

Our “Cashflow Snapshot Session” is normally valued at $497, but will be complimentary for the first five businesses to call our office and quote “cashflow blog”, so call now!