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The experts at PricewaterhouseCoopers share their best business ideas for success:
Again, I think growing your business, you have to grow it profitably. A lot of people will think actually, the main thing we need to do is grow our business. You can take short term decisions to get revenue, to get new customers. But in the long term, you need to make sure those customers are actually giving you profits. So having good analytics on understanding the margins you're making in your business, and the margins you're going to make when you're doing a deal, is critical.
If you grow your business too fast, there is a risk that you'll run out of cash. And debt is less available now, so actually managing your cash. And we heard it in the dot com boom, everyone saying cash is king. but cash, in a downturn, really is king. And if you run out of cash, it's going to be very hard for you to actually raise any funding to make up for that. So actually retaining your cash, understanding your cash flows, and managing the cash is pretty critical.
It's a tough competitive environment out there. And when you are a small business with a small name, up against larger and more branded competition, sometimes it is sort of head in the sand, ploughing your lone furrow. Which you may well be successful at. But actually, sometimes it might be easier to partner, to join up with some other organizations. To actually use other organizations to develop part of your product, or part of the distribution system as well. So trying, again, to think of what is the most effective way, not necessarily to deliver your product today, but also the best way to deliver it in 12 months time with volume.
And that may actually mean partnering with people, and forming alliances with others. Sometimes that's quite difficult, because you feel that maybe you're giving part of the prize away, part of the cake away, in your activities. But actually if it works and it works well, your overall success will be a lot larger, I believe.
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