Project Management and Delivery
Project management, (also called business planning) is easy to understand because of its simplicity: it is results orientated and is set in the practicalities of running business rather than in its theories. The complexities of the managers' long term ambitions are often, (but not necessarily) left temporarily aside, (the assumption is that such grand plans and orientation have been discussed or "de facto" settled). Projects are concerned with mapping out strenghts, weaknesses and key influencing factors for putting together an action plan to achieve quantifiable results by preset deadlines in response to those grand plans and identified needs.
The consultant will often spend sometime on the field to experience first hand its systems and culture. This is because the theories are always generic, hence they must be adapted to individual constrain to be effectively implemented. Then, the consultant will diagnose the problem and write up a report with the proposed solutions. The client must decide if they want just advice, or will also ask the consultant to lead the project implementing the corrections onsite until the new improved procedure is tested and ready for a handover to the client.
Project Management and Delivery is completed in the following steps:
Identification of its purpose and the results sought.
Situation analysis & risk assessment
Compilation of a list of alternative courses of actions and their milestones
Analysis & evaluation of the alternative courses of action and their merits, (suitability assessment)
Shortlisting and selection of a course of action
- Writing of an action plan with costs, time scales and contingency recommendations
- Identifying and gathering required resources, (physical, human, intellectual, technological and financial)
- Implementing the plan & monitoring its progress and collecting feed back
- Appraising opportunities for changes and upgrades/corrective action
- Evaluation on finalising the project and recommendations for results maintenance and future action
Project considerations can be induced by changes in activity patterns, new machines with new performance capabilities being available in the market, competitors innovations, managers' views, customers requests for unique services, conflict of priorities and the onset of inefficiencies and unforeseen problems.
Since all businesses interact with stakeholders, (customers, suppliers, employees, tax authorities, etc.); those stakeholders give unwitting coded messages that signal their perceptions. Negative signals are often warnings to take corrective action, while positive signals usually pinpoint to new opportunities. Some of those signals are listed below.
Overtrading
Unsold stock
Sharp increase in costs
Increase in debtors' value or payment days
Removal of credit facilities or other concessions
Customers complaints
Persistent disagreements and clashes, (lack of consensus)
- Competing or conflicting goals and priorities
- Unhelpful suppliers
- High staff turnover
- Regular customers failing to renew their purchase orders
- Enquiries failing to materialise into sales
- Old customer recommending new customers
- Awards given by local authorities or other charitable or professional bodies
When this happens, managers become under pressure to make quick decisions: Shall we take it, shall we expand the line of services? What is the cost and the risks? can we source the stock we need? What would be the opportuntity cost of delaying or missing it altogether?
Of course managers have the entrepreneur spirit to drive their own new ventures, but what about the experience and the resources to roll it out and get it running? Who is going to physically manage the project if the managers are already busy thriving their respective business units!
A FABCP consultant can provide the expertise and leadership to develop and implement it without the need to commit large human and physical resources just to a project. Reduce uncertainty and limit risk by asking FABCP to undertake a risk assessment first! Successful risk assessments may lead to pilot schemes being operated prior to final decisions are made. Suitability assessments explain what difference and improvement, (or not) each plan can make to the bottom line, and helps devising contingency plans by ranking options and priorities.
The list is not exhaustive, but some of the areas and situations on which projects are typically undertaken include:
Please also visit the Examples page for more information on practical applications.
New Business
Setting business up can be done as one project, (as one business plan) with well defined objectives of getting the business airborne and gain a stable customer base.
We can support new business from scratch by advising on how to get the basic right (e.g. choice of partnership or limited company incorporation, memorandum and articles of association, tax implications, premises and licences, employment, purchase of machinery and loan payments). FABCP can then help start ups running by providing early guidance and planning , (e.g. with budgets and setting up appropriate accounting systems, drafting contracts and policies). Larger companies may also need advice on corporate finance and complex points of financial regulation and statutory reporting.
In many cases, our involvement ceases once the busines has tested itself and its owners are ready to take over; in other cases, FABCP can continue to provide guidance and support as needed.
It is worth to mention that after a small business has taken off it can still benefit from project work. But since its client base is typically smaller, project size and fees can be scaled down to accommodate limited financial resources and greater perceptions of risk.