“I know from experience this practical, easy-to-understand guide shows the way forward on almost any question a small business owner or CEO may have. Business Diagnostics helps you evaluate, plan and deliver on the big issues.” – Catherine Holt, Board Chair B.C Transit, Vice Chair ICBC, Former CEO Victoria Chamber of Commerce
The ultimate resource guide to get your business ‘out of the water and back on dry land’.
Business Diagnostics has been written to overcome a significant challenge facing today’s business owners and students, specifically the time constraints in acquiring business management skills. The authors have designed Business Diagnostics to address these concerns by developing a valuable reference book that can be easily read over a weekend or a few weekday evenings.
Business Diagnostics will provide practical assistance to the following target audiences:
- The existing business owner or manager who has growth opportunities and needs to ‘size up’ existing and potential operations.
- The individual planning to buy or invest in another business. That process requires the completion of ‘diagnostic checks’ to ensure that the targeted entity has the required degree of corporate health.
- The individual who wishes to set up a new, yet to be proven, business venture and requires guidelines to assess the likelihood of success and the steps necessary to attract financing or equity.
- A new or existing technology company owner who needs to assess the relative merits of attracting outside equity capital or raising additional debt in order to expand product lines and/or markets.
- Business School students who will use a concise set of practical diagnostic tools to complement generic course materials. At the same time, the material will provide a fast track to understanding the fundamentals and challenges in running and growing a company.
Readers will gain practical insights into the following key areas:
Sections 1 and 2: Instructs the reader how to size-up a business operation, assessing its relative strengths and weaknesses.
The External size-up examines the business environment (political, economic, societal and technological factors) along with prevailing industry conditions.
The Internal size-up then drills down into the individual company’s performance, evaluating its relative health from different viewpoints – Financial, Marketing, Operations, Human Resources, and Technology.
Section 3: Explains company life cycles and how the various sources of funding (equity and debt) can be accessed. Survival and turnaround strategies are also evaluated. Recognizing potential danger signals is increasingly important given today’s rapidly changing business environment.
Section 4: Provides tips and insights on the effective completion of Strategic Business plans.
Section 5: Consists of a short case study of a fictitious company (Marston Control Devices). Readers utilize the size up techniques covered in earlier sections to assess the company’s health and prospects by completing optional size-up work sheets as part of the evaluation process.
Marston Control Devices Ltd. is also seeking investment capital and readers have the opportunity to expand their size-up skills by completing a preliminary company valuation and reviewing the capital raising process by way of a tactical Enterprise Review Summary.
Appendices: Provide the author’s suggested size-up summaries, company valuations and sample Enterprise Review Summary to round out the learning process.
“The Business Diagnostics text provides practical solutions for business professionals and effectively transforms theoretical concepts into real world insight.” – Andy Fraser, MBA, Finning International Inc., Executive Vice President, Customer and External Relations