Category: Corporate & Business Development

What should your company look like in the future and how do you ensure its competitiveness? With active corporate development, you systematically address these questions about the future.

Public funding supports small and medium-sized enterprises in their development. But which funding programmes are suitable for your own company? And how can the right funding be identified, or several funding programmes be combined? Entrepreneurs who deal with this topic quickly realise that getting an overview and making the right choice for their own company is a task that cannot be accomplished in passing. Finding one’s way through the funding jungle is not always easy.

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Without compliance with ESG criteria, it is becoming increasingly difficult for medium-sized companies to attract customers, investors and new employees and to convince banks. However, many questions arise when it comes to the concrete fulfilment of ESG factors. The overarching issue is to take the right approach to ensure that the ESG criteria are optimally integrated into one’s own business strategy and play their part in ensuring that the company acts responsibly and thus remains viable and competitive in the future.

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Comply with regulations, implement ethical standards: Compliance is crucial for SMEs in the highly competitive business environment. Medium-sized companies that decide to professionalise their compliance can make their compliance management processes lean, efficient and transparent on the basis of certification standards. Once a solid compliance basis has been developed according to certification standards, the company is optimally equipped for active compliance management.

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The African continent is in a constant economic upswing and digitisation is advancing in leaps and bounds. This can be a real springboard for small and medium-sized enterprises that are thinking about internationalising their business, further developing their international locations and expanding their networks. In our guest article, which appeared in the 1/2023 issue of the BVMW foreign trade magazine “AfrikaContact”, we discuss the various aspects, advantages and opportunities that Africa’s digital transformation offers German SMEs. Be it online trade, supply chain management or the qualification and further training of skilled workers – the conditions for SMEs have improved significantly in recent years and are better today than ever before. We are convinced that now is the right time for many SMEs pursuing internationalisation plans to look into Africa. Read more

Resilience was the topic of our Event & Dialogue, which we held at our Nuremberg location in April 2023. Together with our cooperation partner stg Die Mitar-beiterBerater, we looked at resilience from different angles with our guests. Read more

In the current economic situation, which is challenging for most companies, we will be devoting ourselves intensively to the question of what makes medium-sized companies resilient at our Event & Dialogue on 19 April 2023. In cooperation with the employee consultancy stg, THE MAK`ED TEAM invites managing directors, executives and HR managers to a joint evening above the rooftops of Nuremberg, which will be dedicated to professional exchange and dialogue. The focus will be on many practical topics related to resilience management. THE MAK`ED TEAM will give an overview of organisational resilience: How can a company develop the right balance between stability and flexibility? We will show management approaches and discuss resilience strategies suitable for SMEs. stg will again look at individual resilience: What can the company do to strengthen the resilience of its employees? The Event & Dialogue “Robust, adaptable, strong: Resilience Management in Practice” offers an intensive professional exchange. The agenda includes:

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The medium-sized companies sector is in permanent crisis mode. That is why the question is more urgent than ever for many medium-sized companies: How can we set up our organisation in such a way that it is immune to external disturbances and emerges from crises unscathed? How can the company grow and develop even in an unstable environment? This requires resilience.

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Current economic developments are increasingly unpredictable and times are uncertain for SMEs: This is why resilience as a strategic principle is becoming an important, even decisive factor for the future of companies.

What characterises resilient companies? Resilient companies are economically robust, resilient and have the capacity for continuous change. Resilience can be found at different levels in a company: At the macro level, it is about resilient processes and organisational structures, i.e. organisational resilience. At the micro level, it is about the individual, i.e. the resilience of each individual employee. The levels interact with each other within the company and in the company network. If the company wants to strengthen its resilience, it is important that both the organisation and the employees are strengthened in their resilience.

Resilience: What does it actually mean?

The term resilience comes from physics. In materials science, it refers to the ability of a material to return to its original shape after deformation. Transferred to a company, a resilient company is able to return to its steady state after a disruption, a crisis or a shock. And not only that: resilient companies can use the crisis to their advantage and emerge from it stronger. Resilient companies are able to react quickly to changes and – if necessary – to carry out the transformations that are crucial to success within a crisis. The word resilience thus includes not only the aspects of “standing firm” and “persevering”, but also the ability to adapt and innovate. In resilient companies, stability and flexibility are in a balanced, individually adapted equilibrium. But how does a company become resilient? In order to be able to offer our customers a holistic resilience concept and to ensure resilience at both levels in medium-sized companies, i.e. at the level of the organisation and at the level of the employees, we have agreed on a cooperation with stg, the employee consultants. THE MAK`ED TEAM, as a consulting firm, accompanies companies on their way to strong organisational resilience and stg supports employees in building individual resilience.

A Strong Cooperation: THE MAK`ED TEAM and stg

In the complementary cooperation at the organisational and individual level, medium-sized companies receive a strong overall package: THE MAK’ED TEAM, with its interdisciplinary team, has a lot of experience in building resilient organisations. Resilience plays a role in all areas of a company: digitality and agility are just as important as good resources, a positive corporate culture, transparent organisational structures or stable supply chain management. This cross-section makes it clear that resilient companies are not only better protected against crises – they are also fundamentally more sustainable, efficient and competitive. As a holistic consulting company, we know how medium-sized companies can position themselves resiliently in the relevant business areas. THE MAK`ED TEAM is rooted in medium-sized companies and works in a structured and process-oriented manner. Our way of working is well balanced between strategy development and concrete action. Companies that want to become more resilient with us at their side are not only resilient on paper, but resilience is anchored in the entire company and lived out in everyday corporate life. How far our resilience concept extends varies from company to company and depends on the individual company goals.

Since a company can only be resilient with a strong team, resilient employees are indispensable. This is where our partner stg comes in: The external employee consultancy strengthens employees with a resilience model. Resilient employees have the ability to adapt to new conditions, to grow in the face of challenges and to emerge strengthened from a crisis. For the development and strengthening of individual resilience, the corresponding mindset is developed, mental health is promoted and metaskills are strengthened.

Together, the teams of THE MAK`ED TEAM and stg develop resilience concepts for medium-sized companies that optimally interlock at the organisational and individual levels to ensure resilience at both levels in the company.

Our cooperation partner stg: Externe Mitarbeiterberatung (Employee Assistance Program, EAP)

“What happens to my customers when energy becomes more expensive?”. How will the high material costs affect my prices or my procurement market? These and other pressing questions are currently being asked by many SMEs. Questions raised by economic crises and changes in many influencing factors. Questions that should be answered at an early stage. Only then does the company have the best possible chance of averting potential risks and crises. This requires transparency in the relevant areas of the company, which can be created by an early warning system.

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Many people first think of environmental protection, climate protection and decarbonisation when they hear the word “sustainability”. But sustainability is much more than that. The wide range is reflected in the ESG criteria. ESG stands for “Environment”, “Social” and “Governance”. It is not only about the “E”, but also about the “S” and “G”. It is only through the interaction of the three areas of environment, social affairs and corporate governance that a sustainable corporate orientation unfolds, which improves growth opportunities and financing advantages and makes the company more resilient. The individual weighting of the three areas differs depending on the sector and size of the company. For example, the area of “environment” can have a much higher relevance for an industrial company than for a service provider.

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