BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Business development is about availing of growth opportunities within an organisation. It seeks to create long term value from the organisation’s knowledge, resource, market, customer and supplier base. In the technology adopting world of today Business development has become a necessity for all firms as opposed to a luxury for the elite. Someone has said of Business development that you must “innovate or evaporate”. Rather than just sitting back and watching the world go by we adopt the strategy that things are “Better by Design” and we work with clients to manage and accelerate business development with:

• Collaboration

The last 15 years of Internet and the availability on countless pieces of information has changed how many of us regard knowledge. We expect to find the answers to our question with an instant search. Companies have been more reserved in their attitude to sharing information and collaboration but it seems to be changing at least in a measure. The idea of open collaboration, sharing info in exchange for speedier outcomes has become more and more popular even among larger corporates. Many opportunities exist to collaborate at Irish, European and even International level. Universities, colleges and small firms are keen to share and capitalise on their information. We can work with existing exchange platforms to help establish partnerships for collaboration and technology transfer. Sadly within organisations collaboration is not even as alive as it should be with individual team members holding portfolios and silos of useful information. The sort of culture changes required to achieve more collaborative working environments can be difficult but we can work with clients to create better environments for sharing information and engage people in design and decision making processes.

• Sales Development

We have experience of taking established products and services to new markets and establishing contact with key clients. We can also work in existing markets to aid sales teams in implementing improved sales administration and management processes for better visibility and accessibility.

• Marketing

We have experience with outbound and inbound marketing. We have a working understanding of the traditional and online media and are able to design and implement strategies for new and existing markets.

• Cost Models

Many companies compete on market price and struggle to keep a track on the bottom up cost of the complete product or service they deliver. We can work with design, production and financial teams to develop comprehensive costing models. Good cost models will allow management teams to see the impacts that small changes like output volume, material and labour cost will have on finished product. As well as cost models we can develop cost monitoring systems where specific projects are analysed to verify their profitability against estimated costs. Cost analysis can even be achieved where many projects run simultaneously with shared resources.

• IT integration

The range of computing system available is vast and changing rapidly. Its not always the best idea to adopt every new technology that comes along immediately but it is important to get whatever efficiency is possible by adopting the most useful new technologies. Investing in IT systems is a costly business and it is important that the right technology is purchased but companies often underestimate need to integrate various systems across a business to minimise effort and maximise output from It systems. We are familiar with the Microsoft suite of programmes as well as the operation of SQL databases, accounts packages, apps and cloud computing. We can also work with Apple systems and develop bespoke database applications for Microsoft and Apple systems on the Filemaker Platform.