Hallidays celebrates success of their Business Growth Programme

Stockport accountancy practice, Hallidays, are celebrating the success of members of their growth programme, Business AM.

Business AM is a 10-step, two-year programme which brings together like-minded business owners and decision makers in a supportive environment with Hallidays business advisers to take action and achieve their business growth goals.  

Running for almost 20 years, this year the coronavirus brought new challenges and Hallidays responded by transforming the events into webinars. Paul Whitney (pictured), MD of Hallidays explains:

We immediately understood how important it was to continue our Business AM programme. Now more than ever, business owners and decision makers have needed to take swift action adapting their strategies and systems to respond to new challenges and opportunities. Business AM provided all the tools they needed to be resilient and confidently lead their business through these unprecedented times, and with the support of our business advisers I’m proud of what we’ve all achieved!”

Overall, Business AM members reported improvements in their business metric scores by 16% across a wide range of measures, with some of the largest improvements made to turnover (22%), customer numbers (22%) and team happiness (20%). During the programme, members set their visions and goals and confidently took action to grow their business, including new pricing structures, diversifying their business, rebranding and creating happier and more productive teams. At each event, successes were shared and champagne was awarded for the best action.

Brittany Delany, joined Business AM as she took over her family business, John Delany Motors. She introduced business goals, KPIs and monthly management meetings to focus on what matters most for driving the business forward. Restructuring roles, introducing annual appraisals and satisfaction surveys has improved communication and ensures her team are happily and effectively working together to deliver a great service to their customers. Brittany said:

Business AM has allowed me to take time out of my business to focus on making improvements, implement changes and create growth. It gave me much needed time to reflect and meet other business owners with similar challenges. Setting goals and tracking these using KPIs has made a very positive impact on my business.”

Kieren, Director at Avocet Steel attended Business AM to build their premium brand and diversify their business into new markets. Supported by Hallidays business advisors, Kieren reviewed time management and empowered his team to take on additonal responsibilites enabiling him to focus on growing the business. Improved communication, branding and an office refurbishment ensures the whole business reflects their premium products ready to confidently expand with exciting new products into new markets in Europe and America. He explains:

“BAM has been really helpful for my personal development and driving the business forward. I came out of each session with ideas on how to improve our growing business. We have implemented often subtle changes that have had a large, positive impact on many aspects of the business.”

Alex Deakin, Marketing and Brand Manager at Vernon Building Society joined Business AM to develop his leadership skills. As a newly recruited young manager, he was keen to make an impact. The BAM events, particularly ‘Growing as a leader’ supported Alex to develop his own style and ‘Growing the power of your team’ equipped him to motivate and communicate effectively with his team building strong working relationships.

Networking with other business leaders built his confidence and skills. Putting this into practice, Alex led a successful rebrand which increased customers, delighted the board and supported them to win ‘Best Savings Provider 2019’ and ‘Most Responsible Business 2019’. Alex has been rewarded with more responsibly within the organisation and is passionate about becoming a great leader. He elaborates:

I like to think of pies when talking about my leadership journey. Throughout my BAM experience I have been developing a recipe book to make the perfect pie. The moment I knew my recipe had been perfected, was the moment I achieved a full re-brand of Vernon Building Society. I served the pie and it tasted good!”

Hallidays will re-launch the next 2-year series of its business growth programme, starting in September 2020.