SCA

Sustainable Competitive Advantage ( SCA )

What does it really mean ?

"Your company offers your prospective customers a unique or distinctive benefit or advantage, above and beyond that of your competitors or they have no motivation to do business with you instead of your competitor."

or

What do you do to win the hearts and minds of your customers that your competitors will find extremely difficult to imitate in the long term.?

The expression SCA is in all the text books and any marketing guru worth their salt will tell you how important it is to your business.

Do you really know what is it that makes your family business better than all the others in your market space ? Or, maybe you do have a great SCA but you would have trouble articulating it. It is just the way you do things in your business, its your inbuilt business and family culture.

Think about the businesses that you go back to time after time. What would your customers and clients say to me if I asked them what your SCA was ?

Get this right and you are certain to experince success through the next generation or two.

Bill Winter

Your Business Name

Have you ever had a lawyer check the status of your intellectual property?

Start with your brand name. I had a client who operated under a very well known name and logo in his local area. He had never bothered to register or trade mark the logo they used. I sent him to a trusted legal contact of mine and it ended up costing him $15,000 to ensure that his intellectual property was protected. If he had of done this from the start it woul have cost a fraction of that.

Did you know that in Australia your business name is only valid in the State that it is registered in.

This is even more important when you come to sell the business. I was interested in buying into a business about four years ago and found that they did not have their domain name registered. I then went out and registered it in my name and that stopped them ever being able to get the domain name of their business and, in my opinion lessened the value as they could not sell online with their own brand name.

When I did not go ahead and get involved I actually gave them back their own domain name for the cost of what I had spent. ( about $69 ) They were in shock when I told them.

Get some external advice on your brand status.

Bill Winter

Directors Compliance

Being the director or senior manager of a privately owned company has the same resonsibilities and liabilities as those who are directors of large organisations.

I cannot believe how many owners of private companies think that they are immune due to their size. If you have a properly constituted legal company, the Corporations Act 2001 does not distinguish between big or small.

As well as general common law duties, duties under the corporations Act 2001, directors are subject to a wide range issues under various other laws and Acts.

Take a recent meeting with the owner of a private company turnover approaching $80 million revenue. " It's my business and I will run as I want to " was the answer to a question about setting up a formal compliance program.

Most privately owned companies have no written policy on;

1. Intellectual property
2. Trade practices
3. Privacy ( in most areas does not apply to companies with less than $3 million turnover.
4. OHS
5. Environmental law
6. Employment law
7. Anti-discrimination law
8. E-business
9. Outsoucing
10. Taxation

In today's business and legal environment it's a cost of doing business.

Do you go to sleep at night in blissfull ignorance of your real laibilities and responsibilities ?

Bill Winter