Overcoming the Barriers to Success

Every business has felt the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in one way or another over the last 12 months. For most this has meant battening down the hatches and making changes to ensure survival on the other side.

Thankfully though, some businesses have remained open and have even prospered throughout the period. This has either been due to working within an industry deemed essential, or down to quick reactions and clever changes made to pivot the business.

This article will focus on the barriers to success. For businesses that are not in crisis management mode, now is the time to think about capitalising on your opportunities for growth. In this article, we explore how Virgate can help you achieve this.

Trusted advisor

An outsourced model is perfect for cost reduction: no office space required, no training costs or additional benefits on top of salaries. Just one monthly cost going to a company to perform tasks for you. But how is outsourcing conducive to growth?

Many businesses will keep your books, offer services and cover the basics; however, what many business owners are realising they need are trusted advisors. A partner that understands your business and knows how you work, isn’t afraid to get involved and offer advice and solutions wherever possible.

This is an area where Virgate excels. Our team works in tandem with your business, not in addition to. We don’t view what we do as an additional and separate service, rather an extension of your operations. We even offer a direct line that you can provide to suppliers to contact us directly – that’s how closely we work with your business.

Removing barriers

Once you are working with a business that you trust, important barriers to success can start to be removed. Whether the barriers in place are around staffing, cash flow visibility, industry regulations or other countless obstacles: working with an experienced accounts company will help you traverse and overcome these challenges.

We focus specifically on multi-site SME clients and have experience working with these business types across a number of industries. Each partnership builds our team’s knowledge and allows us to not only remove current barriers, but also predict future potholes for your business to avoid. This is key for growth, as it allows you to execute plans with minimal risk.

 

Regulations

One of the major barriers to success is regulatory compliance. Whether these are governmental rules and regulations, or ones specific to your own industry. Regulations are always important to meet, regardless of how your business is performing.

When the going is good and business is booming, regulatory compliance has a tendency to take a back seat. Speed is the focus, and hitting new targets and growing wherever possible becomes the key contributor to success. But ensuring standards are kept and met at all times is very important.

If the correct protocols and processes are in place during your business growth, they are more likely to remain adhered to once the business has scaled. Implementing new processes in a large company, particularly with staff set in their ways, can be a challenge. Tackling it during growth will pay dividends in the long run.

It is extremely important to juggle day-to-day operations and new business processes while ensuring all standards are kept. One way to ensure this is done is by outsourcing the tasks to a trusted partner to review and advise on the regulatory side. These tasks are often highly time consuming and require high levels of attention to detail. Virgate takes on the important duties and ensures all standards are kept, and your processes remain smooth.

Good data vs Bad data

Data and information is another hugely important factor in business growth. No business decision is made purely based on guess work. Analysis of business performance and the numbers allows you to understand areas to improve and where to capitalise.

The barrier of bad data is usually removed by bringing in new technology and business systems. Many current systems are designed for times gone by when businesses would look for monthly or even quarterly reports. These make it difficult to track how your business is performing on a daily basis and does not allow for drilling into details and specifics. This is why you need to ensure you have the latest in cloud accounting software.

Modern accounts partners, such as Virgate, will provide you with software which easily integrates with other business systems. Whether this is their own technology, access to industry leaders or, in our case, a blend of both. This allows you to have access to live reporting and exact figures on a daily basis. Accuracy and efficiency are crucial, and settling for anything less will not help in your growth.

 

The Basics

If you are already familiar with Virgate, you will be aware of the pillars on which the business is built: fair pricing, cutting edge technology and solid relationships. We work as an extension of our clients’ business, always assisting with our expert industry knowledge. These are the basics we provide every client on our roster.

And they are equally important. A survey from CPA showed that most of the accounting firms which feel they have responded successfully to the pandemic utilise cloud accounting technologies. The businesses which can adapt and prioritise their client service and clients’ needs are flourishing. Reports like this back up our ethos, and positive testimonials from our clients help us remember why we do what we do.

—

If you own a business that is prospering during these unprecedented times, then you will naturally be looking at ways to increase and maintain this revenue.

Removing barriers for business growth is our speciality. We have helped a range of businesses achieve higher revenue and afforded business owners more time by outsourcing time consuming finance jobs.

If you are looking to outsource your current accounts department, or are looking to introduce an accounts function due to business growth, then contact Virgate to learn how we can help.

 

Tel: 01452 226111

Email: hello@virgate.co.uk