Hot 100 debate: Firing up growth

In association with

Profits are the beating heart of every business. To mark the publication of our annual Hot 100, the index of Lancashire’s most profitable SMEs, we brought an expert panel, including representatives of some of those listed, to the offices of Every1 in Preston.

Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity. How difficult is it for businesses not to get too excited by revenues?

Phil Brown: We’ve never really targeted profit as our key driver. It’s making sure staff are busy, enjoying what they do, working with good clients. Those jobs will make money and at the end of the year we’ll have a nice healthy profit.

Phil Jones: We are very much a social business, our focus is around supporting communities and making a difference to people’s lives.

Ady Hamid: We’re looking very closely now at profit. Most companies make that transition from looking at turnover to looking at profit. With NHS budget cuts our approach now is to be very specific on lean trading.

Simon Clayton: We work with a wide variety of organisations, small and large. It is about making sure that when you’re delivering work it is done on time and on budget and we actually make money off the back of it. It’s about making sure everyone’s working efficiently and that gives teams better morale and in turn brings results and profits.

Tim Smith: We have a well thought out budget which we constantly scrutinise. Key reporting is crucial for us. If anything’s going wrong we can, as long as the data is accurate, pick up the anomalies and respond.Mark Alexander: In terms of profit, for me it’s people and productivity. Having the right kind of people doing the right kind of things on a day-to-day basis in a productive manner will generally see you turn the profit.

• Read the full debate in Lancashire Business View edition #75