Harris and Co are Chartered Accountants specialising in accounting, business advice and tax services.
“I did write a business plan. It wasn’t a particularly long business plan, but it helped me articulate the key issues as I saw them and that helped me remain focused on what I needed to do to achieve those objectives.”
Phil Harris, Partner at Harris and Co Chartered Accountants found clear thinking helped him when starting out in business.
As with all new businesses, Phil says that finding customers, especially during the first year, was a major challenge: “All clients come to us by recommendation, so it was important to develop close contacts with some very important centres of influence - people who could steer work towards us.”
He adds, “Inevitably there is a conflict between the demands of new clients and existing clients. The solution to that is simply to invest in more productive capacity as early as possible. However, this does have cost consequences and that comes back to managing your costs as a matter of priority.”
As Phil explains, he had lots to learn when starting the business. “Managing cash flow is an absolute fundamental and important priority for the successful establishment of a new business.”
“I discovered that clarity of pricing and delivery at the early stages of taking an order were of paramount importance. Where payments were slow or late, they were nearly always around these issues, where I hadn’t been clear right at the start.”
And Phil recognises that planning remains just as important to running a business as it is to starting one. “I still have a business plan today and I still get it out regularly, to make sure that the actions we take within the business are focused around the key objectives that we have.”
“A business plan is a very good yardstick that enables you to measure performance of the business and the achievement of your objectives. Because the objectives you set at the beginning of the life cycle of your business may not be the objectives that you have much later on.”
