Get the Answers: Local business organisation a rich source of expertise

Bill Hale. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Anyone wanting to improve their profits should make it their first stop, writes Mike Gibson, chief executive of Rosebank Business Association.

Your local business association can be a goldmine of resources and contacts when you are a recently moved small business. It can help business owners and staff integrate into the local business community and make contacts with a local workforce.

What does the Rosebank Business Association and associations like it do for their local businesses?

The Rosebank Business Association, formed in 2003, has a wide range of member services.

These include excellent networking situations which have been developed to allow for "thought sharing" and provide the platform for the interchange of ideas as well as more influential business CEO focus groups to thrash out challenges facing larger member companies. We also enjoy a relationship with Business Mentors NZ and help members with an accessing service.

Special events for RBA members include influential guest speakers who challenge and inform on a variety of subjects.

There are also functions which vary from the annual fundraising golf tournament to Christmas events. Our newsletter, the Rosebank Roundabout magazine, keeps our members informed and, with our website, is a mechanism for our members to stimulate business within our precinct.

We have successfully got off the ground community educational initiatives such as the Pathways to the Future Trust, which was formed by the Rosebank Business Association and New Lynn Rotary to help give young people working in the area acknowledgement of their efforts and tangible financial assistance to lift their work performance to another level.

The Rosebank Business Association has signed a memorandum of understanding with Unitec. What will this mean for small businesses in your area?

Often tertiary providers work closely with the business sector. However, the intention and scope of this partnership redefines the potential of the relationship. This joint venture will be an innovative answer to the needs of local businesses. Its main purpose is to provide business capability assessment for companies within the West Auckland business community.

Depending on the assessment, the joint venture will tailor training and development programmes, support applied research projects and provide expert knowledge and mentoring, at individual and strategic levels, from across the diverse range of programmes being taught at Unitec.

The management and governance board of the venture will have members from Unitec and the RBA, with Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (Ateed) and local business leaders.

What challenges do small businesses have in your opinion?

Unfortunately, many small businesses are owner-operated and these owners fall into the well reported trap of working in the business rather than working on the business.

This means there's no specific time put aside to allow for thinking time to look at other ways to do things or how to improve the performance. The result is a distinct lack of planning.

When you combine these issues of no proper planning and no time put aside to investigate better ways to do things, this is a recipe for stagnation. The new joint venture with Unite should help the small businesses of Rosebank by providing assessment, input of ideas, processes and generally acting as a helping hand.

Cashflow management, or the lack of it, is the bane of many and this, coupled with many small businesses being under-capitalised, holds them back and undermines their confidence to be outwardly progressive. It means companies can't fully capitalise on the opportunities before them.