Building your Business Roadmap

Someone once said to me "the quickest way between A and B is a straight line" which sounds obvious right? Of course it does, but as with most things in business, not everything can be predicted accurately and that journey sometimes needs to take a slightly different or even a circuitous route.

I have built businesses from a concept through to sale, bought businesses to add to a bigger business' portfolio and also sold large businesses to VC's as part of the Executive - a common theme amongst all of these businesses was that the ultimate destination was pretty clear but the journey to get there would never actually reflect the initial coordinates due to a number of factors.

My senior team at Reep recently said that they wanted to capture my vision for the future so that they too were clear on what the road-map looked like and what relevance some decisions being taken now would have on our ultimate destination. Sounds easy right? Well I took on the challenge and decided to see if I could map out the next few years, identify some of the key milestones in our businesses and when and how we get there.

The actual sketch was mainly a visual one and one that I managed to create in a relatively short period of time. There we a number of key assumptions and milestones in that document (which also helped me to gain a clearer view on where we were going so a useful exercise).

We sat down and analysed some of the finer detail of what we saw this rather special business becoming and why we would look to do the things we were going to do. We also debated some of the changes we are seeing culturally, economically, financially and politically and with the obvious changes in the next generation that will ultimately affect how we interact with our clients and partners going forward.

Our ultimate ambition is to be unique in many aspects, better, faster, stronger, more creative, more responsive to change, pro-active, thought leaders, financially robust and above all have a culture of success for all of our people.

One of the major things we did agree on was that Reep Group has grown so quickly that we focus on our key objectives to get us to that end game and final destination - oh wait - is that a final destination?

A-B are only the first two letters of the alphabet - there are many more after B!

We agreed therefore that we could only try and plan ahead so far and that year by year our planning should be adjusted (and in real time) to reflect all of the factors we faced at that time. Milestones can be identified as can aspirations too but we will ensure that we re-calibrate each year when we agree the strategy for the following year.

That being said, I am so happy we decided to look beyond the first bend - racing drivers are taught to look way beyond the apex on a race track so they can see where the car will end up after that apex - business is similar - look beyond the here and now and you can be fairly accurate in where you see the direction of your business - the decisions you make today will not only affect the immediate but also can affect where your business ends up in years to come. Trust me though - if you want to create something special, it will involve twists, turns and hairpins!

ENDS

Chris McDonald is the CEO of The Reep Group of Companies.

An organisation that specialises in surface technology - Sales and Service on a Nationwide Basis.

Reep works within Automotive - Marine - Aviation - Commercial and Residential Sectors

Wax, Nano, Si02, Ceramic, Paint Protection Film, Windscreen Film and Vinyl coatings

Our client base consists of B2B and B2C clients across the UK and Ireland. European and Overseas expansion is on the roadmap!

Automotive clients include Rolls Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, JLR, BMW, Overfinch, Maserati, Koenigsegg and many more.