The Six Critical Elements to Building a Successful Business

Creating a business is one thing, but building a successful business that attains a level of profit which represents a satisfactory return on the time and capital invested by the owners and also proves to be sustainable over many years, is a challenge that many business owners fail to overcome.

I believe that six critical elements (the Six S's) must all be effectively in play before any business can realistically become a successful business.

If one or more of these elements is not operating at an optimal level within your business you have some work to do if you want success to eventually come your way.

The Six S's are Synergy, Strategy, Structure, Systems, Substance and Sustainability.

Synergy refers to the alignment between yourself, your role as a business owner, your psychological suitability to the roles you chose to perform within the business, and the actual nature of the business you choose to be involved in.

Strategy refers to the key decisions you make now, as to the future directions you wish your business to take, to get to where you want to be, at a certain point in the future. It is the foundation of all that follows. It also needs to be reviewed and adjusted as circumstances change.

Structure refers to the framework around which you will build your business. It provides the bones around which you will add meat as your business grows. A sound structure holds everything together, and is greater than the sum of its parts.

Systems refer to standardised operations designed to guide the way, light the path, simplify complexity, provide leverage, and ensure consist application of procedures and processes throughout the business. Good systems prevent systemic failure and reduce the overall costs of doing business, hence increasing profitability.

Substance refers to the quality of physical assets, the level of intellectual property present, the working capital available, and the capability of the human resources deployed, or available, to service the growth needs of the business.

Sustainability refers to the longer term ability of the business to continually re-invent itself, remain relevant to its markets, remain profitable, and continuously improve its reputation as a good corporate citizen.

How does your business stack up? Could you be more successful? What more do you need to do?

Opportunity for meeting SME Online needs.

This blog is based on personal experience over the last three weeks. It may provide an eye opener for those who are technically savy and can't for the life of themselves understand why any SME business would resist fully embracing the internet age.

Having taken my own business online over the last three weeks, I now understand more clearly why many SME businesses do not fully embrace the internet and take advantage of all that it offers to them as business owners.

I found that the work involved for anyone who wants to do it themselves is quite considerable, and that is only what is necessary to establish a low level base for a future bells and whistles platform, once sufficient experience in the online business environment is obtained and the funds are available to go down that path.

The work included, but was not limited to, purchasing a domain name, building a complete website, setting up e-mail accounts in the new domain, constructing a comprehensive profile on LinkedIn, signing up for Skype and configuring that system to operate in a personal computing environment, incorporating all Skype add-ons, signing up for a blogging service and setting it up to operate in conjunction with the website, taking and incorporating digital photographs into the website, Skype and LinkedIn, sourcing an online design company to design a company logo for the website and for other electronic forums and then incorporating same where required, selecting and configuring an on-line CRM package, selecting and configuring an e-mail marketing package, and creating a newletter template.

The hours allocated to the tasks listed exceeded three full working weeks and there are still a few small corrections and tweeks which need to be made to finalise the first stage of getting our consultancy business online.

The $ cost involved was minimal, less than $500.00 all up, but without 20 years of computing experience, and significant exposure to online business through other activities, it would not have been possible without calling in specialists to do most if not all of the work.

I would hazard a guess that the cost for a SME business owner to outsource all of the necessary work would see a cost of at least 10 times and up to 20 times what I incurred being charged for all of the work involved.

Having to project managing the exercise would also cause a lot of hassle for the business owner and it would be unlikely that the same result could be achieved within three weeks from first deciding to take a business online if most of the work was outsourced.

Understanding just how busy most business owners are on a daily basis, and how tight cash flow can be especially in difficult economic conditions, I now have a clear understanding of why so many SME businesses have not embraced technologies which we all know they should be embracing.

Perhaps their exists a great opportunity for an IT company to put all of the required elements in one box, include clear instructions, and get it out into the market at a price which would encourage a high volume uptake of the offering.