Support and Advice for Growing Businesses
At PCG Solutions we have a vision that sees New Zealand’s Building, Construction and Property Maintenance sectors operating in a fully professional manner and with integrity.
We offer a range of support and advice aimed at assisting small businesses in these sectors to survive and grow prosperously in what is an extremely competitive and economically sensitive environment.
A high proportion of building trade companies in New Zealand are initially set up as one or two person contracting teams by trades people seeking to establish their own identity and to ‘break away’ from being an employee.
Unfortunately, an excessively high proportion of these ‘start-up’ contractors underestimate the importance of the planning and management component of developing a business that will achieve sustainable growth and provide satisfactory financial returns.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else”
Strategic planning is an organisation‘s process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological), Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organisation’s future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:
- “What do we do?”
- “For whom do we do it?”
- “How do we excel?
In business strategic planning, the third question is better phrased “How can we beat or avoid competition?”.
In many organisations, this is viewed as a process for determining where an organisation is going over the next year or more – typically 3 to 5 years, although some extend their vision to 20 years.
In order to determine where it is going, the organisation needs to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the “strategic plan.”
It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of a company; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan your organisational strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the ‘strategic plan’ have to be a cornerstone strategy for an organisation to survive the turbulent business climate.
The process of developing a ‘Strategic Plan’ for a small business does not need to be complex but it does need to follow a logical and well thought out series of simple steps.
PCG Solutions is able to guide you and your team through this exceptionally important Business process.
Tendering Advice and Assistance
The team at PCG Solutions is very experienced in the area of preparing tender proposals in the building and property maintenance sector. We are specialists in the area of Performance Based Contracting.
In today’s business and contracting environment it is not unusual in major contracts for non-price factors to carry a significant weighting in the tender evaluation process. In other words, even if you offer the best price your tender will not be successful unless you have demonstrated that you are able to meet the other performance requirements of the contract.
We have been closely involved in major tendering processes in both the government and private sector and we have very in depth knowledge and a detailed understanding of the importance of getting the message of your businesses competitive advantage across in the usually controlled and restricted format of the tender document.
If you are a contractor considering tendering for major government or private sector building or facilities maintenance contract we can help.
Many people mistakenly think of branding as simply the logo that adorns a company’s letterhead or vehicle fleet. But brand is much more than this.
The simplest description of ‘brand’ is that it is a set of associations that a person (or group of people) makes with a company, product, service, individual or organisation.
These associations may be intentional – that is, they may be actively promoted via marketing and corporate identity, for example – or they may be outside the company’s control. For example, a poor press review for a new product might ‘harm’ an organisations overall brand by placing negative associations in people’s minds.
So brand is much more than the logo you attach to your letterhead and your company vehicles. Brand defines your business culture and how your company and the services or product you offer are perceived by your target market.
PCG Solutions can help you through a ‘Brand Strategy’ exercise, which will build from your strategic business plan and define your unique point of difference and how you want your customers to perceive your organisation.
Read our feature article on Branding.
Project and Property Photography Services
High quality strategically planned digital SLR and video media records of a project from pre-start through to completion can be of real benefit on some projects.
Garry Boon at PCG Solutions has been a keen and competent photographer for over 40 years and is now offering photography services to the building and construction sector using high resolution SLR and Aerial (Drone) equipment.