Home
 Register  Sitemap  Help  Conact Information  FAQs  Terms
About The Small Business Consortium  Media Centre
Small Business Journey- The Route Map To Business Value
 The Journey  Businesses On Board  Resource Centre  Region
  Whats It All About
  Practice
  Stakeholder
  Policy
  Business Principles
 
  Defining your purpose
 
  You win when everyone knows your purpose
 
  Innovation
 
  Know the Law
 
  Managing risk
 
  Measuring success
 
  Sharing good practice
Defining Your Purpose
 You win when everyone knows your purpose
What's the Point?  Living Proof  How to do it
 How to get started in a small way

 

  • Think about why you are in business. How does what you do matter?
  • Who benefits from your company's success?
  • Talk to your employees - what do they understand is the purpose of your business?
  • It's a good idea to put your ideas into words. Make the words as relevant as possible to your work.
  • Think about how to incorporate your purpose into your marketing strategy, recruitment and other strands of the business.
  • Consider working on a structured analysis of your business such as the Business Excellence Model which provides an opportunity to match your purpose to structured targets.
 Who can help you go further?
Strengthening the performance of your business in the ways outlined here is really just a matter of common sense. But if you are committed to developing your brand then it often pays to get help.
 Extra benefit to your company

National Help
EFQM helps European businesses make better products and deliver improved services through the effective use of management practices such as the EFQM Business Excellence Model. See SME links at www.efqm.org. National partners in the UK are the British Quality Foundation at www.quality-foundation.co.uk/ and Quality Scotland at http://www.qualityscotland.co.uk/.

The Institute of Directors provides advice on branding and marketing through its members' information service. It runs a course on effective marketing strategies, and has factsheets available on www.iod.com.

Local Help
Check with your local Chamber of Commerce or Business Link organisation for business networks in your area. These will give you an opportunity to talk to companies who have been through this process. www.chamberonline.co.uk (click "find your chamber") or www.businesslink.gov.uk  (England) www.bgateway.com  (Scotland) www.businesseye.org.uk  (Wales) www.investni.com (Northern Ireland).

Online Help
www.allaboutbranding.com - this website has articles, opinion, a glossary - everything you need to know about branding. It includes a free self-assessment questionnaire on how effective your brand is and whether you have successfully embedded it into all parts of your company.

www.cim.co.uk/mediastore/10_min_mission_statement.pdf - The Chartered Institute of Marketing has a free online guide to producing a mission statement. It helps you think through what your business does and guides you in how to create a statement that is unique to you and your business.

 Download the how-to guide in Full
 Each 'How-To' briefing is available in pdf or word formats. To read the PDF document with a screen reader please link to the Access Adobe website which provides useful tools and resources. Adobe also has a free online conversion tool for PDFs.
 PDF Icon  PDF file You win when everyone knows your purpose.pdf
size 162kb
 Word Icon  Word file You win when everyone knows your purpose.doc
size 51kb
The Policy Journey
© Small Business Consortium 2004