Rapid Business Diagnostic: The Process
Step 1. Initial Consultation
Meet for an hour with one of our expert consultants to discuss your unique circumstances. We will cover the process in detail and ensure you understand how we quickly identify savings and other benefits for delivery. There is zero risk and no obligation to continue after the consultation.
Step 2. Business Health Check
The approach blends interviews, survey information and data analysis to provide an initial prognosis and an indication of the benefits that can be realised. We will produce a high-level report covering indicative opportunities. This phase is exceptionally low cost and enables you to achieve a high degree of certainty over savings, and confidence that improvements can be made.
Step 3. Detailed Diagnostic
A thorough deep dive into Finance, Customer, and Operations aspects of your organisation using detailed analysis to pinpoint specific opportunities that can be delivered for significant tangible benefits.
We will prioritise opportunities for maximum traction and provide you with detailed action plans for implementation. This will equip you with precisely what to do, how to do it, and data backed evidence of the tangible benefits
Financial Analysis, Part of Phase 3 in Detail
Optimising financial performance is paramount to success. One effective strategy to achieve this is through conducting a comprehensive financial analysis, which can unveil opportunities for cost reductions while maintaining operational efficiency. A financial analysis forms part of our detailed diagnostic and in this blog, I will explore the steps involved in conducting a financial analysis to identify cost reductions and improvement opportunities for your business.
You might also be interested in my other blogs which explore the other aspects of Phase 3 of our Rapid Business Diagnostic: Customer Analysis and Operations Analysis.
Understanding the core elements of your finances is crucial to building a clear picture of how your business is performing, and what we would expect to see based on our best practice experience.
We will build a clear picture for you of the specific opportunities we find, how these quantify to improvement benefits, and how these can be realised.
Some of the key elements we will assess are as follows:
Gather Financial Data: The first step in conducting a financial analysis is to gather relevant financial data. This includes a review of all the available financial information regarding income and expenditure, broken down by areas of the business in granular detail.
Analyse Profit & Loss: Analysing this detail will provide a clear picture of the cost of each aspect of your business, and how profitable each product or service line is. Our experience will show any clear outliers or imbalances to your expenditure and income streams, thus highlighting opportunities for cost reduction. We can also assess the profitability of certain products or services, and may make recommendations to do more of, or less of, certain things. This links to our Operational Analysis, where we will be assessing if your business is designed to maximise these opportunities.
Examine Cost Structure: Break down your business's costs into fixed and variable components. Fixed costs remain constant regardless of production or service levels, while variable costs fluctuate with volume. By understanding your cost structure, you can identify areas where costs can be reduced without compromising on quality or operational efficiency.
Conduct Cost-Benefit Analysis: Evaluate the costs and benefits associated with various aspects of your business operations. Identify areas where costs can be reduced or eliminated altogether without negatively impacting productivity or customer satisfaction. Prioritise cost reduction initiatives based on their potential impact on profitability.
Review Overhead Expenses: Overhead expenses such as rent, utilities, travel and administrative costs can significantly impact your bottom line. Reviewing these expenses carefully and looking for opportunities to renegotiate contracts, consolidate services, or implement cost-saving measures such as energy efficiency upgrades can help massively.
Assess Procurement Practices: Review your procurement practices to identify opportunities for cost savings. Explore options for bulk purchasing, negotiating better terms with suppliers, or sourcing alternative vendors. Additionally, consider implementing inventory management systems to reduce cash tied up in inventory, and to minimise waste.
Evaluate Process Efficiency: Linking in parallel with our Operations Analysis, we will assess the efficiency of your business processes to identify areas where costs can be reduced through streamlining or automation. Looking for bottlenecks, redundancies, or inefficiencies that may be driving up costs unnecessarily. Implementing lean principles or investing in technology solutions can help optimise processes and reduce costs over time.
Financial Analysis Action Plan
Once we have conducted the above analysis, we will provide clear opportunities for improvement, all backed by data, prioritised for implementation, together with a clear action plan that shows what to do and how to do it.
These insights from are compiled into a professional, board-quality report, which can be used with your team, investors, or third parties.
This will provide everyone involved with the clarity needed to turn your situation around. If you would like us to help you with the hands-on implementation of the plan, we would also be glad to help.
Find out more about our Rapid Business Diagnostic service and contact us for your free Initial Consultation today.
