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Godfrey Wasara Business Correspondent
In my last article, I talked about introducing the required amount of capital and how you have to allocate this scarce resource to competing business needs.
The best way is to formulate a financial plan, a vehicle through which you will allocate the money available to capital and recurrent expenditure.
Having completed this exercise you now need to consider what I will term the four S.
The four S stand for Structure, Systems, Staffing and Stakeholders.

Structure
As the business owner, you have determine in advance what shape you business is going to take.
The shape your business is going to take is dependent on what your core business going to be.
The way a grocery shop is going to be structured will be totally different from a fruit juice processing plant.
Let’s consider how the fruit juice processing plant will be structured.

The starting point is to ask yourself the question “What will I need to do in order to achieve my goals?”
You need raw material to be available at your premises or factory for processing
You need to do the actual processing and packaging
You need to make sure that you are giving out to the customer a quality product. Remember there is competition out there and one of the best ways to beat competition is to offer to the market a quality product.

You need to market, sell and distribute your product
You need to ensure that the transactions of your business are properly recorded
You need to ensure that the whole business is functioning properly and according to your plan.

These needs will guide you structure your operation.

Logistics
Logistics will take care of sourcing for raw materials, getting them delivered to your premises, storage of the raw materials and disbursing them to the factory for processing

Manufacturing
Manufacturing is responsible for processing raw product into fruit juice ready for consumption

Quality control
Quality control ensures that the product is fit for consumption and can compete with like products on the market place.

Marketing and sales
Marketing and sales ensure that the market is aware of the product, enough sales to keep the company going are generated and the finished product is brought to the customer.

Finance
Finance ensures financial records are properly maintained, financial reports are timeously produced and financial plans for the future are formulated.

Administration
Administration ensures the general house-keeping is in order.
The above functions can now be operationalised by forming departments manned by people thus our bus will assume the structure illustrated below:

Systems
Systems answer the question “How exactly will things are done?”
How are we going to run the business? How are we going to get the raw material to the factory?
How are we going to disburse the raw material to the factory?
How is the manufacturing process going to be carried out?
How are we going to do our marketing, selling and distribution?
How are we going to maintain our financial records and how are we going to report on the results.
Systems are the soft structures that keep the business intact and functioning.  The best way to come up with systems is by documenting tasks and then formulating processes as to how these tasks will be accomplished.

By designing systems we are actually instituting internal controls that will go a long way in minimising operational financial loses.
As procedures are put in place, jobs are being created so we move to the next S.

Staffing
Human capital management is a complex subject on its own and its origins can be traced back to the industrial revolution when women and children were forced to labour in factories for little or no reward at all.

For the purpose of this article, all I can advise you about staffing is to identify the right people who will deliver. Unethical practices like favouritism, nepotism, sex for a job and all other vices you can think of have no place in the environment of a visionary entrepreneur.
It is also very important to ensure that duties are separated.

For example the person responsible for ordering raw material should not be responsible for receiving it, storing it and disbursing it to the production department.
The person responsible for cash sales should not be involved in banking. Segregation of duties helps to keep check and balances in place.

These checks and balances will minimise misappropriation of business resources.
Depending on the size of your business, you can to decide on which tasks you will carry out as the owner bearing in mind not to overburden yourself with operational challenges instead of concentrating on strategic issues.

Stakeholders
Stakeholders are the environment surrounding you.
The Government has interest in your business because they protect you and in return would like to derive revenue from your business.
Bankers are interested in your financial discipline and strength so that they can extant loans.

Suppliers are interested in ensuring that goods supplied are paid for on due dates. Customers are interest in the value your products adds.
Employees are concerned about their welfare and wages.

The general public is keen to know how much you are giving back to the community and your degree of environmental friendliness.
When you venture into business you cannot afford to ignore any one of the stakeholders.

It is the stakeholders who give you a place in the society depending on the image you create through your dealings with them.
Now and follow your passion with zeal.

Godfrey Wasara is a registered public accountant. He has passion for equipping people with financial literacy so that they can improve their living standards through enhanced appreciation of the best ways of conducting business and financial activities. You may contact him on [email protected]