Starting and Growing a Business: Monitoring Your Business

Is Growing Your Business Worth the Risk?

As your business grows so too do the challenges of maintaining a successful business. The key to continued growth and success of your business is strong management in all aspects. By monitoring your business you will be able to track key management areas and identify any gaps in your management structure.

Your business is continually changing, making it very important to stay on top of your day-to-day business operations. Daily tasks such as paperwork, bookkeeping, and manufacturing must also be monitored in order to maintain and improve efficiency of operations.

A successful entrepreneur also develops and maintains good relationships with lenders, suppliers, associates and employees. These relationships must also be monitored to ensure that your business is operating smoothly.

• Business Fitness Centre - Questions management should ask at least annually

• Growing Your Business –This site from Small Business Canada has a collection of small business growth strategies

• Expansion Strategies – This information from Royal Bank of Canada discusses four ways to increase your sales and grow your business

• Business Expansion and Commercialization Division Programs and Services - Alberta Agriculture and Food, Business Expansion & Commercialization Division is a team of specialists who focus on sustaining growth and diversity within Alberta’s agri-processing industry. Division specialists serve as the first point of contact for Alberta’s growing and established food and non-food processors

• Family Business Succession Plans – The Alberta School of Business offers models and information on succession planning

• COBRA - This is a commercial business return analyzer that assists food processors to perform financial planning and budgeting. COBRA is delivered in a workshop format and covers risk assessment, historical trend analysis, cash flow planning, cost of production and much more
  
  For more information on COBRA please contact Ron Lyons - Manager, Commercialization and Business Incubation, Agrivalue Processing Business Incubator

• Managing for Business Success – This site from Industry Canada provides information on legal issues and insurance, regulations, security, fraud and tax

• Regulations for Small Business – Here you will find links to relevant government regulations regarding small business startup and operation in Canada

• Case Studies of Managing for Business Success - These case studies illustrate the business strategies and managment practices new entrepreneurs e,ploy that can lead to success. especially in key aread such as finance, exports and skills development

• Value Chain Guidebook –This purpose of this tool from Agriculture and Food Council is to provide you with a process to develop your own value chain. The value chain development process is broken into three stages; each stage includes worksheets, success factors and tips for facilitators

• Exploring the Concept of Industry Value Chains – Every business needs to understand their industry value chain, identify opportunities therein and consider business arrangements between and among the player in the value chain

• Commercialization Portal – This site from Industry Canada contains information regarding the role of marketing in the commercialization process

• Value Chain Web Links – This page contains links to value chain information, programs, industry sites, research and other related information

• Value Chain Resource Materials – These links will lead you to resources material regarding value chains and marketing

• Productivity Alberta - Your connection to the latest in productivity enchancement tools, programs and services

• Productivity Improvement - This webpage has many tools to help your business grow such as facility assessments, hands-on coaching, workshops, websites, articles, videos, training materials and upcoming events

• Agri-Business and Lean Manufacturing - This financial incentive program is designed to encourage projects and activities that promote value-added growth, diversification and improved competitiveness in the agri-processing industry. It is intended to complement existing programs of other supporting organizations and applicants are encouraged to investigate all options available to them