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Managing a Mature Business – Risk Management Planning

Feb 01 2022

This is the fourth article in our series of Managing a Mature Business. If you haven’t caught up, the other articles in the series, published so far, are:-

In this article, we will deal with identifying, prioritising, and mitigating risk – Risk Management Planning in a mature business.

But first, to recap what a “mature business” is. The business cycle of a business, starts with a new business, then rapidly moves into a growing business, and then eventually morphs into a “mature Business” and ultimately – unless you do something at maturity – goes into decline. Each stage of this business cycle has different challenges.

In a “new” business, those challenges are all about establishing the business – proving the product, finding customers, poor cash flow. In a growth business, the issues are around retiring debt, satisfying demand, larger customer bases and proportionately larger debt-collection problems, control over organisation and business systems.

In maturity, it is about fading demand, older products, reducing customer bases, reduced cash flow. If this is recognised, businesses can “kick-off” a new growth phase by innovating and finding new products and markets through expansion or change. In this way, they can stave off the ultimate slide into decline.

Risk Management Planning is important at every stage of the business, but why is it especially important in maturity?

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Managing a Mature Business – Marketing For Continued Growth

Jan 18 2022

Welcome to our continuing series on Managing a Mature Business.

Last year we published two series of articles on Starting a Small Business, and on Growing Your Business, and we started this current series on Managing a Mature Business. We finished the year with Managing a Mature Business – How to Keep Innovating and in this article, we move on to discuss how to market for continued growth. If you want to catch up, all the articles in all three series are available at Teik Oh Dot Com.

As we have seen before, the challenges in a mature business are different from those of a business startup or a growing business. Activity has plateaued. Your product may have been superseded nor the market may have changed. Following our earlier articles on managing cash flow and continuing to innovate, you may have changed your product or business model and have to attract a new target market.

As you try to reinvent yourself so that you can start the cycle again with a new growth phase, you can no longer rely on past reputations and previous histories with your old customers. Even if you are continuing your marketing activities – these may need to change.

So, what do you have to do to continue effective marketing for continued growth?

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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Dec 24 2021

It’s been a tough couple of years and it’s important as small business entrepreneurs not to lessen your own self-care!

Merry Christmas, have a relaxing break and recharge your batteries!

We are taking some time off and will be back again with a new article on the 18th of January 2022, to continue our series on Managing a Mature Business..

See you then!

Thanks to Valentin Petkov and jeshoots.com on Unsplash for the images

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Managing A Mature Business – How To Keep Innovating

Dec 14 2021

This is the second in our series of articles on managing a mature business.

If you missed the first article, about managing the cash flow of a mature business, you can click on this link.

We have also completed our series of articles on Starting A Small Business and on Growing Your Business, and the links provided will take you to the first articles of those series if you missed them.

In this week’s article, we are (hopefully) going to recognise that your business has reached the mature stage in its life cycle, and look to renew the cycle before it drips into the next stage, which is the stage of decline!

But first, let’s refresh our memories to talk about the four stages of the business life cycle: –

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Managing A Mature Business – Managing Cash Flow

Dec 07 2021

This is the first in our series of blog posts about Managing A Mature Business.

In case you missed it, we completed a set of 7 posts about Starting A Small Business, from making sure you know your Purpose to how to start up, to preparing a feasibility check, planning and hiring your first employee, and you can catch up by going to teikoh.com. We have also just completed another 7 part series on Growing Your Business from learning about Key Performance Indicators for your growing business to marketing, working with employees and making sure you have the systems to scale. You can also look for it on our website at teikoh.com.

In a business, at any stage of its life, cash flow is an extremely important part of that business’ lifeline and will always need to be managed.

However, in a mature business, the cash flow pattern is more challenging. The business is no longer growing, in some cases it is stagnant and while you may have reduced investment needs, the cash that is generated through a mature and stagnant level of sales may not be replenishing the “catching up” of cash outflows that you were experiencing before.

There are four stages of a business cycle, being startup, growth, maturity, and potentially decline.

In the startup stage, sales are low in volume but grow quickly. In the growth stage, sales are beyond the break-even point and both sales and profits are increasing. In the mature stage, the rate of growth slows down and cash flows become relatively stagnant.

If you are not managing your cash in maturity, in order to invest in innovation and new products and services to kick off the next growth phase, you may enter the decline phase where all sales, profit and cash flow decline until you exit the business.

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Thanks to Valentin Petkov and jeshoots.com on Unsplash for the images