With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/838617
JULY/AUGUST 2017 BCBUSINESS 117 BCBUSINESS.CA of his specialists in San Francisco, who introduced Drohan to a select group of venture capital rms and helped him build a pitch deck tailored to their inter- ests. "I think having that experience, she knew what people were looking for," Drohan says. Taking growth to the next level Di•erent advisory and consulting rms offer different kinds of service and expertise. But most other advisers work with clients on larger e•orts that last for weeks, months or even years. They'll charge by the project or by the hour. €€ Tara Landes is founder and president of Bellrock Benchmark- ing Inc., a Vancouver- based ma nagement consulting rm that spe- cializes in helping small businesses—t y pically those with between 10 and 100 employees— get to the next level of growth. "We help them pretty much with what- ever their biggest prob- lems are," Landes says. Those problems usually lie in back-end systems such as ‰inancial con- trols, production pro- cesses and team management. Many small businesses gain early suc- cess through their founders' technical skills but lack the business know-how to take their companies to the next level, Landes observes. "We're not experts in any industry—they are," she says. "And so we can take our business skills and marry them with their technical skills." A big part of Landes's work is helping clients implement her recommended solutions. Big consulting ‰irms often advise larger corporations, which have professional management teams to put their recommendations into action, she says. "But in small businesses, typically the managers are also the people who do the actual work," Landes explains. "So any implementation is going to require them to work the extra 105 per cent o• the side of their desk. We help bridge that gap and help them get those systems in place." Grant Thornton International Ltd. is one of the world's largest multina- tional accounting and advisory rms, but it focuses on helping businesses in what Vancouver-based partner Robert Reicken calls the middle market— privately held, owner-managed compa- nies with $10 million to $100 million in revenue. Its bread-and-butter advisory services cover mergers and acquisitions, transaction due diligence, succession planning and risk management. Companies of any size should feel comfortable asking Grant Thornton for help, Reicken says. "Don't be reticent to reach out and request a meeting," he says. "Any strong rm is going to be very open to an initial meeting that more often than not is going to be an off-the-clock meeting that gives you as a business owner an opportunity to tell us a little bit about your business and allow us to assess whether we can play a role in the business and add value." With a team of member ‰irms span- ning 130 countries, Grant Thornton can call upon experts who can handle almost any business-related issue. A question of scale Consulting rms aren't the only place to turn to for expert advice. Entrepreneurs shouldn't ignore the growing number of accelerators, incubators and other busi- ness-support organizations throughout the province. Many are backed by vari- ous levels of government, in partnership with industry groups. Organizations like Accelerate Okanagan, Discovery Parks, Futurpreneur Canada, the Victoria Innovation Advanced Technolo™y and Entrepreneurship Council ( VIATEC), Basin Business Advisors and Wave- front provide startups and small- and medium-sized enterprises with knowl- edge, resources and industry connec- tions. Accelerators typically focus on specic sectors or geographic areas. The Sout h Isla nd P rosper it y Project ( SIPP) formed in 2016 to help speed S H K L A W C O R P O R A T I O N 604.687.0727 "When we did the research, we found that the majority of job creation actually comes from helping scale companies that already exist" — Emilie de Rosenroll, South Island Prosperity Project