Lessons for growing SMEs from shoestring budget travel
After I qualified as a CA(SA), I spent a year touring the world. I didn’t have the luxury of big-budget tours or swanky hotels, but my journey was incredible nonetheless and I realised that planning a budget-friendly trip is a lot like doing accounting for SMEs.
Much like budget vacationers who forgo travel agents, SMEs often operate without big finance teams. However, this needn’t stymie your business’s success. Just as an unforgettable trip doesn’t require extravagance, your business can flourish without a big finance team. In this article, I’ll show you how.
WHY FOCUS ON SMEs?
SMEs are the backbone of the economy, providing significant employment opportunities, particularly for individuals who may face challenges securing roles in larger corporations. SMEs employ 50−60% of the workforce and contribute to up to 34% of the total GDP. They fuel innovation through agile problem-solving and creativity.
TIPS
With this in mind, let’s dive into top tips for travellers and SMEs alike.
- Make time − Failing to plan your holiday means planning on the go. The same goes for your business. You decide where to allocate your time – whether in planning and strategy or tackling urgent issues.
- Learn from the past and from others − For a great holiday, you need to think about what happened in the past – both the triumphs and the disasters. You’ll probably consult TripAdvisor and learn about scams to avoid.
When it comes to your business, you should benchmark against others in the industry to determine how you can have the best and most profitable business. Benchmarking needn’t be difficult. With tools, such as Syft Analytics, you can benchmark your business against others in your industry in no time.
- Visualise − Visualising information makes it easier to understand, whether you’re pinning destinations on a map or creating a graph of your top expenses. Visualising data helps you:
• Absorb and share information
• Understand the next steps, and
• Act on findings
There are lots of useful data visualisation tools, such as Excel’s graph function or Syft’s Dashboard feature, which enable you to get a graphical sense of critical business metrics.
- Plan − When travelling, it helps to put a plan in place to visit all the destinations you want to see. Similarly, making a plan for your business can help you:
• Set goals
• Break down problems
• Uncover weaknesses and strengths
• Increase efficiency
• Reduce risk
• Improve decision-making, and
• Promote creativity and innovation
Creating budgets and forecasts can help you by serving as guides for the future of your business.
- Adapt − Spontaneity can be great, but this doesn’t mean throwing plans out the window. Having a plan enables you to be responsive and adaptable to change because you know when you are veering off-track and can, therefore, make quicker and more impactful decisions.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Holidays needn’t cost you a second mortgage, just as SMEs needn’t hire fancy finance teams or expensive tools to grow. With the tips above and tools such as Syft Analytics, we can grow SMEs and hopefully, as a result, our economy.
