How Technology Makes Business Advice More Affordable
The Problem
Microbusinesses cannot afford to buy anywhere enough consultancy time to make a strategic difference to their long-term performance and value.
Accountants and consultants cannot afford to provide anywhere near enough time to make a difference to microbusinesses at the prices they can afford to pay.
To give them enough support to make a permanent difference needs 30 days a year and a £15,000 budget. They actually have £1440-£3500 pa budget.
How, if ever could such a gap be closed?
Analysis
Let’s look first at what a professional consultant does when called in to help a business with problems.
They look at the whole business, dealing with the 5 strands (Marketing; Operations; Systems; People; Finance)
Stage One:
Understand the brief
Investigate – interviewing suppliers, staff, customers
Desk research of the market and business environment
Document review from internal files
SWOT / PESTLE analysis
Situation report
Recommended actions
Board review
Stage Two:
Business Plan & budget
Implementation plan
Stage Three:
Implementation support
Management accounts
KPI reporting
Performance reviews
Stage 4:
Exit or…
Coaching programme
To do less is to risk: diagnosing the wrong problems; recommending wrong strategies; moving the business backwards; fracturing the relationship; no repeat business.
This and subsets of it, happen widely in small business consultancy which has led to the low regard for consultants and reluctance of accountants to potentially sour a good compliance work relationship by tackling ‘whole business’ solutions for clients.
Of the 5 strands they only get 2, Operations from their existing skillset and Finance from their accountant.
For the other 3 they muddle along until something goes wrong forcing an emergency purchase of short-lived consultancy.
Solution
The root can only lie in providing 30 days of value for the cost of 5.
If that can be done, small business survival and UK productivity will leap.
Technology
Considering the 4 stages of a professional consultancy project, detailed analysis has established that stages 1 and 2 are 90% repetitive.
Using AI and Machine Learning these have been fully automated to work from limited client inputs.
Combined with a database of all-industries business performance data and a knowledge bank of practical action plans, the cost of supporting any business, even a sole trader, starts from £1 per day.
Working fully online business advisors can run everlasting performance and value improvement programmes that take one hour per month of their time.
One advisor can handle 100 clients at once with ease and a workaholic, 200.
Problem solved
A new way of working that brings high grade advice and solutions to any business anywhere, sustained for as long as it takes to permanently move its 5 strands into the highest levels of performance for:
Finding new customers
Retaining customers
Operating efficiently
Managing people for productivity
Generating profits
And through these, building capital in a high value business for a nice exit rather than closing it down at retirement.