Archive for November, 2009

The Recession. Is it over?

November 19, 2009

What a funny world we live in. The credit crunch has turned everything upside down in the last two years and where there was belief, enthusiasm and confidence and profit was the name of the game, everything has changed. Now, there may still be belief and some enthusiasm, but still very little confidence and profit is an aspiration to most.

Those of us who are still here are hell bent on survival. Costs have been reduced and then reduced again and there is just a little hope that future prosperity is just around the corner. In the UK, technically we are still in recession, but the government insists that recovery is just around the corner. But why have we in the UK had to wait so much longer than most other developed countries?

This blog entry is about taking advantage of the recovery and is not meant to be a blatant criticism of our national governments economic policy, but you can’t help but think it a little ironic that everybody else seems to be growing and yet our economy is still shrinking. You could argue that the UK is unusually dependant on the service economy, rather than manufacturing or production and that makes us different from other major economies. The trouble with that argument is that the service sector is now effectively in growth. Whatever the reason, it is clear that some sectors of the economy are in growth and some are still in recession and depending where you are and what you do, you are either on the positive side or the negative.

SME’s are the life blood of the UK economy and those that are surviving the economic downturn are now leaner and much more effective than their cousins who fell by the wayside. Prudent evaluation of costs, good marketing and control of processes means that the best companies survive. But that does not mean that they still need a little help.

There are literally hundreds of resources available to SME’s in the UK today. There are consultants, advisors, funders, trainers, web resources galore. The trick is to determine if you need help, what you need, how much you are prepared to pay, how soon you need it and who has got it.

Whatever the government claims, the recession will be over soon and we can all look forward to growth again. Maybe not the megabucks boom growth of the first half of this decade, but sensible, controlled growth, where business owners begin to make cautious business decisions once again rather than sit on the fence and wait to see what happens. The businesses that do the best will be the ones who are best prepared. Are you?

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