In the last Management Essentials blog, we looked at 5 key sales and profit terms, we will now provide explanations for the basic things needed to understand business cash-flow and the business phenomenon commonly known as “working capital”.

Having worked with hundreds of SMEs through Cranfield’s Business Growth Programme (BGP), for over 10 years now, it is more often than not, a lack of know-how with finance that inhibits business owners and hampers or restricts business growth.These blog...

What could you achieve in 20 minutes? Catch-up on emails, make that call you keep putting off, take a quick look at the figures and see if you're on track? OR, create a 14-page business growth plan that will benchmark you against some of the UK's most successful entrepreneurs?

Guest blog, provided by Sean Singleton, BGP Alumni, Managing Director at Your Favourite Story.

The beauty of digital marketing is it allows SME businesses to punch massively above their weight. However, it's not easy and requires effort and expertise.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for SME businesses to find new effective routes to engage customers at every level. As product lifecycles continue to decrease and brand loyalty is at an all-time low, businesses must re-examine marketing...

When it comes to achieving success in business, the route to the top is not dissimilar to that taken by elite athletes. Top performers in sport and business understand how to optimise their psychological and physical strengths to cope well under pressure.

What gets measured gets managed.

So, if you want to improve the management of your business and/or profitably, manage its growth, you’ll need to get to grips with your numbers and establish some useful metrics (measures of how you are doing).

To do this well you’ll need to get comfortable with a few key financial concepts.

Believe it or not, conflict in the workplace can be a good thing, it can also be a very bad thing. In simple terms, conflict is a form of interaction between parties who differ in interests, perceptions or preferences. It is an inevitable part of organisational life and can take many forms.

Pressure to meet performance targets, lack of resources, rapid organisational change and power differences may all give rise to conflict and as a result, effective conflict handling is a critical management...

Did you know, the single most common reason people switch jobs is because of their Line Manager?

So, the New Year is a great time to make some resolutions associated with your behaviour as a Manager to sit alongside your other goals of getting fit, buying a new house or car or whatever else you have promised yourself this year.

There are some choices to be made as an entrepreneur. First of all, do you want to build a global business, or go for a more lifestyle business?

Both are good – but the consequences of the next steps are very different. Here are 8 tips to consider, if you are thinking global:

This week the 2016 Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 was announced, with one of our BGP Alumni coming in at number 39 for the fastest growing privately owned British businesses.

Family businesses make numerous, critical contributions to the economy and to family wellbeing. This is both in terms of money / income and such intangibles as time, flexibility, control and personal expertise …

... that’s if they work. When they don’t, family businesses can be difficult to manage and painful experiences, at best.

There is an urgent need to help find ideas and propositions that have the capacity to transform people’s lives. The drivers for a sea change in entrepreneurship started in 1991 when the Berlin Wall came down and when India and China embraced open(ish) market systems. It’s been said there used to be two labour forces, one in the Soviet (closed) economic system and the other in the capitalist system with one and half billion working people in each. After 1991, we have one overall system of...

Prospective investors usually require business plans as a first step to assess an investment opportunity. In this way, a business plan serves as a means of communicating a new business venture’s potential to an investor in a logical, accessible, and consistent manner.

A good business plan hence needs to carefully articulate the opportunity, the strategy and resource requirements, outline risks and rewards, and introduce the management team.

Marketing as a little fish in a big pond can be tricky, especially when many businesses are still determining how to effectively reach out to their target demographics.

Over the last 20 years, digital has become the main choice for lead generation, expanding business reach worldwide as well as creating innovative displays. SME businesses have begun to realise how important integrating digital marketing into their strategy is in order to survive in the competitive retail market. SME...