From Structural Steel to a Structured Advisory Board
In 2016, NZTE funding was awarded to an engineering workshop to receive coaching with Advisory Boards NZ. The funding was awarded because they were growing at a rapid pace which can cause small businesses to experience growth pains. Business owners at this time may need to seek expert advice, as the way to run their business well has suddenly changed parameters. (See our coaching services under NZTE.)
The Advisory Board setup
Advisory Boards NZ worked with this company to set up their Advisory Board with a focus on supporting growth and establishing a scalable and practical management processes.
The board consisted of:
- The business owner
- A finance and reporting role (the CFO)
- An industry representative with extensive experience in business growth
- A Marketing and Chairperson (for which we provided one of our inhouse experts).
Quick results
Because Advisory Boards offers a flexible approach to governance, this allowed the company’s Advisory Board to run for a period of only six months.
Within this short time, huge progress was made on this business, allowing them to invest in future growth. Their Advisory Board achieved this by focusing on:
- Business strategy
- Marketing strategy
- Financial reporting
- Recruitment of new staff
- Growing clients
Constructing success
Much of the business and marketing strategy involved targeting revenue streams and specific customers and work that would bring in a much higher return on investment.
By identifying how each current customer contributed to revenue and profit, they were able to phase out those jobs that were insufficient to running the workshop. In turn, this freed up time for the larger scale work they needed to target.
The marketing strategy focused on attracting profitable, long term and interesting projects across the Wellington region.
The work done by this Advisory Board resulted in doubling the size of both the workshop and staff, while investing in new machines and a variety of custom modified vehicles.
After the disestablishment of this Advisory Board, the company continued to receive support from external and independent experts. We also continue to support them in their marketing activities through our sister company, Synthesis Marketing. This involves working on their marketing strategy, online presence and communications each month.