A new financial year is an excellent time to step back from the day-to-day of our businesses and look at the big picture

How is your business performing? Did you grow this past year? What are your targets for the year ahead? What investments do you need to make to achieve those goals?
If you have a business plan, now is the time to check your budgets, targets and KPIs against your actual figures.
If you have been working towards your plan all year, hopefully this will be a rewarding task as you see the results of all your plans and hard work in black and white on the bottom of a balance sheet.
If you don’t have a business plan (and we know from our State of the Nation 2022 research that 27 percent of Capricorn Members don’t have a growth plan in place) then now is the ideal time to create one – you are doing your accounts anyway, so review last year’s performance, look at your strengths and weaknesses, decide what worked and what didn’t, and think about where you should focus your efforts in the coming year. Be sure to set goals: growth in business rarely happens by accident.
Capricorn Members who had a growth plan in place told State of the Nation 2022 that they were planning to achieve their targets by improving business efficiency (64 percent), increasing profit margins (45 percent), employing more staff (42 percent), increasing workshop capacity (40 percent) and winning more customers (38 percent). How are you planning to achieve yours?
Set your financial goals and develop your strategic plan, and don’t just stick it in a drawer. You have to work at it and monitor your progress regularly against your budgets and goals.
Good luck with your business plan for the 2023-2024 financial year!
Yours in cooperation,
David Fraser
Group CEO – Capricorn Society Ltd

For more on Capricorn Society membership, visit www.capricorn.coop