Grow your business – a panel discussion

Default Author • June 11, 2018

Last week, I attended Baker Tilly Hughes Blake’s Tax and Economic conference at the Shelbourne Hotel to hear excellent speeches from three leaders in their fields:

Alma O’Brien – Head of Tax at Baker Tilly Hughes Blake
Fergal O’Brien – Director of Policy and Public Affairs at IBEC
Jim Flavin – Founder of DCC

The final talk with Jim Flavin was a fireside chat with Baker Tilly’s Managing Partner, Neil Hughes, where he discussed starting DCC in 1976, the growth of the business and their investment focus backing entrepreneurial management teams.

He also gave some really insightful tips on how to build a large company and what was key to their success. Being in Mason Alexander and seeing our own growth over the past 5 years, it was great to hear his thoughts. I’ve outlined some of his top tips below:

Keep good people around you i.e. management team
Return on capital employed – forget about margins
Cash generated v low working capital intensity
When growing, whether new offices internationally or by acquisition, you need to have a diversified group. You need the right management structures to develop the diversity and management need to have core knowledge of the area
Board Directors – attract outside talent on to your board
Have good and trusted professional advisers
Have weekly central management meetings – be disciplined; review last week and plan for the week ahead. Keep very good minutes
Team building – have a strategy session each year
Attention to detail – think of your customers and suppliers
Cut your losses and focus on your winners. Don’t waste management’s times on things that aren’t working, put effort in to the things that are and concentrate on that
Technology – someone in management has to always be thinking about technology. Needs to be assigned
Ingenerate belief and commitment in the company
Celebrate success