The establishment of the Business Advisory Services was driven by the desire to play a major role towards solving an existing gap in East Africa corporate environment where many consultancy firms have focused on compliance driven services (i.e. Audit & Assurance and Tax).
Many SMEs operate in the loss making zones and when profitable, the owners lack capacity to know how much more returns they could make on their investments. Our Advisory Services exists primarily to help businesses to protect, nurture and maximize shareholders’ value. We take a unique approach that gives us an edge over our competitors.
Our Core Business Areas
- Corporate Turnaround Strategy
- Internal Audits
- Forensic Audits
- Strategy and Business Planning
- Risk Management
- Costing and Pricing Strategy
- Performance Management
- Corporate Training
- Business Incubation
Internal and Forensic Audits
Background
Is your organization suffering from unknown malaise (something is wrong but you can’t pinpoint what it is)? Are you incurring unexpectedly higher than normal operating costs? Do you have a general feeling that you have lost control of flow of money in your business? These are pertinent questions facing SMEs today.
Businesses are failing and closing due to revenue leakages, wastage, pilferage, fraud and theft just to mention a few. It is important to arrest and reverse the situation before it is too late.
It may not be doom for every business. In some cases, there is greater potential for improved performance if internal processes are scrutinized and problem areas fixed. These are high potential businesses currently reporting average performance.
The primary reason businesses exist is to maximize shareholders value, internal audits assist in protecting, nurturing and growing of shareholders’ wealth
What We Do:
Value for Money Audits:
We independently review the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of your business operations. It is about how to minimize costs while at the same time maximizing revenue in a sustainable manner. A report is published flagging problem areas along with recommendations based on best practices. We may also assist you with implementation of the recommendations leading to turnaround/significant improvement in performance
Economy: our approach looks at how organizations can acquire resources at lowest cost for the highest quality.
Efficiency: We look at the rate at which resources are input and converted to outputs such as products or services- the target is to minimize input and processing costs while maximizing output quality and quantity
Effectiveness: We examine the extent to which objectives have been achieved by comparing intended action vs the actual action and its impact on the business
Compliance Audits
We conduct independent internal audits to gauge compliance to existing internal controls framework, company policies, laws and regulations. A report is published highlighting the areas of non-compliance with recommendations for corrective action going forward.
As value addition to the engagement, we also scan the business environment for emerging risks that have not been covered by existing internal controls and make recommendations on enhancements or additional controls to be introduced.
Forensic Audits
We carry out forensic audits on a need basis. Some clients will require that besides compliance / internal audit, business circumstances compel for a forensic audit to be carried out.
Many organizations don’t know the difference between a forensic and an internal audit and wonder which they need. The answer to this question is not always easy to determine. In many organizations, members of the audit committee, board of directors, owners, managers or other individuals in supervisory positions have limited (if any) experience with forensic or internal audits. If they are unsure of which direction to turn, they may go seeking the wrong solution.
Whereas an internal audit is prepared to be presented to the company’s governing body or owners to discuss the financial healthiness of the organization, a forensic audit, on the other hand, is designed to focus on reconstructing past financial transactions for a specific purpose, such as concerns of fraud perpetrated within the organization and a compelling need to present such malpractice in a court of law for adjudication and determination.
Forensic audits, however, are not norms but rather exceptions. They are carried out whenever required by the owners of the organization.
Strategy and Business Planning
Business Landscape:
With cut-throat competition, rapid technological change and ever rising cost of doing business; only those entities with the right strategy shall survive and continue to thrive.
Therefore, it is no longer a luxury to undertake business planning, it is now a requisite.
Reality Check:
Do you have a professionally prepared strategic plan in your organization? Does your organization have a Vision, Mission and Core Values? Is the Strategic Plan backed by an implementation plan and robust monitoring and evaluation mechanisms? Are corporate budgets in existence and working effectively? When is the last time the strategic plan updated to reflect realities in the market?
Our experience shows that only about 50% of organizations sampled randomly have strategic plans and corporate budgets, worse still, these plans are only existing as static documents in booklets and not living documents in the business. Most strategic plans and corporate budgets lack ownership within the entities; good number have neither been done nor executed using the best practices.
In these state of affairs, planning does not add value to the business, in fact, it becomes a liability
Strategic Planning
What We Do:
We employ a collaborative approach to study the business environment (internal & external) of your entity and help you develop that cutting edge strategic plan that sets your organization on the right paths towards achievement of its objectives.
As organizations have varying needs, we tailor-make solutions depending on specific circumstances;
Complete strategic planning process, institutional review, past performance, situational analysis, strategic analysis, strategic themes, objectives, strategies and plans, implementation plan, governance framework, risk management, monitoring and evaluation.
Review of existing strategic plan/ Optimization, highlighting areas of improvement in structure and execution. Many organizations have a strategic plan booklet but lack execution capacity
Training on strategic planning equips the managers with the right skills and tools thus empowering them to own and drive the strategic planning across the company (it’s never a one-man show!)
Corporate Budgets
You cannot control what cannot be measured. The journey to successful cost management begins with establishment of a reliable corporate budgets which become the reference point to measuring progress against targets and controlling costs
What we do:
We employ best practices in helping your organization to come up with an effective and efficient budgeting and budgetary control system. This entails:
Linking corporate budgets to the strategic plan
Establishing and implementing Activity Based Budgets (ABB) complete with cost, revenue and profit centres for recurrent expenditure (OPEX) along with day to day control mechanisms
Establishing and implementing Zero Based Budgets (ZBB) for capital expenditure (CAPEX)
Integrate approved Corporate Budgets in ERP/Accounting software
Set access rights and control approval of expenditure in ERP/Accounting software
Implementing variance reporting and variance analysis
Training staff on budgeting and budgetary control- thus ensuring internal capacity
Risk Management
Background
Risk
Every business faces uncertainty with regard to achievement of its set objectives. Risk moves in the same direction with return; given that all businesses aspire to maximise on their returns, management of risk to protect the investment becomes a priority.
Reality Check
How effective are your business risks managed? Do you even have a documented risk management strategy? Is risk management included in the business planning process? More importantly, is the risk aware culture embedded in your business?
Our experience reveals that most organizations have some kind of risk management mechanisms in place; these tend to be bureaucratic, cumbersome, static, misaligned and out-dated
What we do:
Internal Controls Environment
Using risk based approach, we scan and interrogate the internal controls environment of the business then access adequacy of existing controls resulting to:
• Enhancement of existing controls
• Introduction of additional controls
• Elimination of bureaucratic, non-value adding controls
Publication of the updated Internal Control Manual
Training of key staff for smooth transition and continuity
Ultimate objective is to implement robust internal controls that safeguards organizations’ assets against waste, misuse, pilferage or theft
Enterprise Risk Management (ERM):
Why ERM?
Rather than deal with risks when they occur (reactive), the latest shift in mind-set is to anticipate what could prevent businesses from achievement of goals and planning on ways to minimize the impact of these risks (proactive)
What We Do:
Using a collaborative enterprise –wide approach and being cognizant of the fact that risks are embedded in business processes, we assist your entity to develop plan based business strategy that aims to identify, access and adequately prepare the entity against exposure to potential risks that may interfere with achievement of its business objectives. Target outcomes:
Risk registers aligned to business strategy
- Risk heat maps
- Risk Dash boards
- Risk aware culture
- Business continuity plan
Costing and Pricing of Company Business
Background
Is your business making losses or just struggling to break- even? The main reason is likely to be lack of proper costing and pricing of company products and services.
Many SMEs have never established their true costs of doing business, this is akin to running blindly. Secondly, pricing in many cases is a random decision based on gut feel and what the competition charges. As a consequence, businesses make losses either as a result of costs exceeding revenue from product sales or in other cases due lack of critical sales volumes occasioned by over pricing of products
It’s the objective of every business to realize and grow profits year after year; loss making is therefore the undesirable outcome but remains the hard reality for most SMEs today
Costing
What we do:
Assist business entities to establish their standard product costs using Marginal Costing and Activity Based Costing (ABC) methods
Quantify the direct costs of doing business at Gross Profit level and all other costs of doing business that impact the bottom line (Profit Before Tax).
Prepare customized costing templates where direct costs are apportioned to company products to establish unit standard costs
Integrate the standard unit product costs in ERP/Accounting software
Set access rights and control costing activities in ERP/Accounting software
Training of your key staff on costing for pricing to ensure smooth continuity post consultancy period
Pricing
What we do:
Assist your business to develop;
Company product/service pricing strategy that takes into account cost and market based pricing approaches
Company product/service pricing portfolio that maximizes revenue by driving margins and volumes based on market dynamics
Competitive product/service Mark ups that absorb the business overheads leaving the desired margins in target range
Integrate pricing policy in ERP/Accounting software
Set access rights and control pricing activities in ERP/Accounting software
Margin analysis reports and dashboards which trigger management action on real time basis
Performance Management
Background
Is your business on track towards meeting its objectives? What is the overall health of your business? Are there mechanisms to flag problem areas and take corrective action?
Many SMEs grapple with these questions without authoritative answers. The main reason being that most SMEs do not have business performance management systems and if they have, the systems are not effective
Business performance management is the act of setting corporate goals (aligned to the organization’s objectives), executing strategies, plans and activities, monitoring the methods used to achieve those goals, and then creating ways for managers to more effectively achieve those goals. The aim is to shift organization culture shift to performance driven mentality based.
The Balanced Score Card:
What we do:
We utilize the Balanced Score Card to help your business manage its performance effectively. This is a business management tool that helps organizations to communicate objectives they are trying to achieve, align day to day activities to these objectives and measure/monitor progress towards achievement of strategic objectives.
Unlike other performance management tools, the Balanced Score Card takes organization wide approach by looking at the following pillars:
• People
• Internal Processes
• Customer
• Finance
The Balanced Score Card system considers both qualitative and quantitative measures of performance in the organization. It also considers both leading and lagging indicators in the business
We assist your organization to;
Set up the Balanced Score Card System aligned to strategic plan with clear linkages between the objectives, strategies, plans and daily activities
Develop organization wide Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Link and align the Balanced Score Card system to employee performance appraisal system
Develop visual Dashboards on vital health of the business on real time basis
Track and measure actual performance vs KPIs with reporting mechanisms for management action
Develop human capacity by training management and key staff on performance management using the Balanced Score Card System
