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Compliance in SMEs – Achieving the Objectives Pragmatically

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A frequent experience in our customer projects is that our medium-sized customers react to the topic of compliance with the critical question: “And who is going to do that? Of course, a medium-sized company does not have the same resources as a group of companies, where a compliance department with several members deals with the topic. Nevertheless, the same legal framework conditions apply to SMEs and group companies.

Multiple crises, international interdependencies, challenging political developments. The risks for companies tend to increase.  The business world is increasingly difficult to assess, more dynamic and more complex. Compliance has become an important basis for SMEs to safeguard the company, protect it from potential risks and thus create a foundation for the long-term success of the company. Good compliance can protect the company in the best possible way and indicate emerging crises and problems at an early stage. For effective implementation of compliance management, it is particularly important in medium-sized companies to use resources wisely and to sensitise everyone in the company to the issue. All too often, compliance is still perceived as a secondary task and the risks that actually exist are massively underestimated.

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Change Management as a Success Factor in Digital Transformation

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Change management means planning changes in an organisation and implementing them in a structured process. Selected measures are defined to transform departments or even the entire organisation from an initial state to a defined target state. And this is particularly important in the case of digitalisation. Many companies focus on digitisation projects. But they can introduce the best systems: If the employees are not involved in the change processes at an early stage and thus acceptance for the planned transformation is not promoted from the beginning, the system will not work in everyday life.

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Targeted Lead Generation Between Push and Pull: B2B Customer Acquisition

Companies that want to acquire customers in a business-to-business (B2B) context in order to build new business relationships rely on the right mix between push and pull marketing. The goal of B2B customer acquisition is to identify potential business customers, address them and win them as customers. For the development and implementation of a sustainable marketing and sales strategy, the individual points of contact with the customers are systematically analysed, evaluated and optimised.
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Promoting Progress: State Support for SMEs

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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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A Homogeneous IT Landscape Tailored to the Company: ERP Systems in SMEs

Planning, controlling, monitoring – ERP systems are becoming increasingly important in the course of digitalisation in medium-sized companies. ERP solutions are at the heart of the digital transformation in the company and have an impact on all business processes. At the same time, ERP transformation projects present companies with numerous challenges.

ERP – what does that even mean? Behind the acronym is “Enterprise Resource Planning”, which can be translated as “operational resource planning”. ERP stands for software that is used in companies to digitalise all relevant business processes from A to Z and thus to manage and control the multitude of business transactions. Be it in logistics, sales or purchasing. Here, the right preselection, the professional system check and the correct configuration are decisive for the success and profitability of the ERP systems.

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Consolidated Financial Statements for SMEs: A Focused Look at your Group of Companies

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Do you have a majority shareholding in other companies? Are there economic interdependencies between parent companies and subsidiaries? Then your group of companies has reached a level of complexity where it is worth considering consolidated financial statements for the group of companies. Viewing all the companies in the group as one company (consolidation) shows the economic situation at a glance. This makes it easier to control the group of companies. In many cases, banks or investors demand more comprehensive reporting in the form of consolidated financial statements when the group of companies reaches a certain level of complexity, since individual observations are time-consuming and can lead to incorrect assessments without detailed information. And if a group of companies reaches a certain size, § 290 ff. of the German Commercial Code (HGB) applies. German Commercial Code (HGB), the obligation to prepare consolidated financial statements applies.

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We invite you to: Our Event & Dialogue on Resilience Management in SMEs

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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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A Balancing Act between Stability and Flexibility: Resilient Companies

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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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Resilience – Management in SMEs: Resilient Companies. Resilient Employees.

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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)

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Driving Change: Managing Talents & High Potentials

High-performing junior staff and high potentials are vital for the survival of any company. They fill key positions and shape transformation processes. Thanks to their outstanding performance, the company can react faster, more creatively and more nimbly to the challenges of the time. Their productivity is particularly high, and their skills are critical to the success of the company. But these special team players are rare on the labour market. The term “war for talents” is well known. It was coined in 1997 by the management consultancy McKinsey and is more topical today than ever. The competition for talent is fierce. Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, which must compete with large corporations on the labour market. To find and retain talent and high potentials, to empower and promote them, strategic talent management is a core task. And some even see it as the top issue of the future for companies.

Talent – what is that anyway?

“Talent” is a word that smacks of the elitist. After all, who has talent? Isn’t there hidden potential in every human being? Even if the definition of talent varies among scholars, there is a consensus on one point: a talent excels through special achievements. The Latin “talentum” translates as a special gift or ability. But having the potential is one thing. Using it in such a way that it generates the desired and potentially significant added value for the company is another. This requires a holistic and strategic talent management that is closely interlinked with competence management.

Implementing Talent Management Systematically

Talent management is about filling the most important key positions and thus about the future viability of the company. It is developed from the corporate strategy and is not only the task of HR managers, but also the responsibility of the company’s management. The development of a suitable talent management concept is based on qualitative and quantitative personnel requirements: Which talents does the company need for which key positions? Which retirements in critical positions are due and when? Are expansion plans to be considered? A systematic approach is used to analyse which specific positions and roles need to be filled by high potentials in the short, medium, and long term. The required competences and requirement profiles are defined for the needs. Once a company knows the current and future demand for talent, the search for talent begins: How does the company find the right talent? And which talents does the company already have on board?

Finding, Promoting and Retaining the Right Talent

The search for qualified and suitable talents is about finding the employees and potential future employees who fit the company’s requirements with their special performance and high potential. The goal of talent management is to systematically and in a focused way find the special employees that the company needs to achieve the set company goals. Talent and position in the company must be a good match. To achieve this, the focus is on the achievements, the current performance, and the individual goals for the future. With a clear profile of the requirements and the key position to be filled, the necessary transparency is created to find the right talent for the company. Systematically identifying and integrating high potentials is an important basis for succession planning. Especially for critical roles and positions in the company, it is important to act with the appropriate lead time. If it is foreseeable that a key position will have to be filled in the future, the suitable successor should be identified at an early stage. Sufficient lead time can prevent valuable knowledge from being lost in the succession process.

Challenges in medium-sized Companies

Recruiting new talent is also about the external impact of the company: Does the employer brand have the desired external impact? Is the company attractive for talents? This is where medium-sized companies face challenging competition for talented employees from large corporations, as their brand, product or service is less well known. With a well-thought-out employer branding strategy, they open up the best possible opportunities to attract talent. In addition to the right personnel marketing, suitable personnel planning and development also pave the way.

SMEs have a wide range of instruments at their disposal for developing and retaining the talent they have acquired, such as transparent career paths, regular feedback interviews, specific on-the-job training, targeted management development or suitable further training measures. Development plans tailored to individual requirements and needs, non-material rewards and meaningful tasks are important criteria for long-term talent retention. THE MAK`ED TEAM develops a holistic talent management concept for its medium-sized clients that has proven itself in corporate practice. Our HR experts know how to efficiently design the interfaces of needs-based personnel development processes within personnel management. We implement structures that enable medium-sized companies to identify, optimally promote and retain talent in the long term. Because one thing is clear: talent management is not just a topic for the big players. It is also a decisive competitive factor for medium-sized companies.

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