Business owners and managers are invited to enrol on our SME Recovery & Growth Plan - a series of 4 online seminars, delivered by industry experts. covering areas of Strategy, Finance, Creative Thinking and Digital Marketing. It is important in these challenging times to review your business and to pivot and adapt to the new normal. This course will equip you with the necessary management skills, tools and techniques to ensure continuity of your business and that you survive and recover in a post-COVID-19 environment and support you in forming your new business strategy.
Module 1 – Strategy – June 30th – Brian Harney, Associate Professor, Dublin City University Business School
Bio: Brian Harney PhD (Cambridge), MCIPD is Associate Professor in Strategy & HRM at Dublin City University Business School. Brian's research focuses on the intersection of Strategy and HRM, with a particular focus on SMEs, growth and knowledge-intensive sectors. His research has received 15 awards, is widely published including a review of SMEs in the Financial Times Top 50 Human Resource Management Journal, while he the author of 4 books, including Strategy and Strategists (Oxford University Press). Brian is the only DCU faculty member to have won both categories of the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and plays a key role at the DCU Centre for International and Executive Education. He has secured competitive funding in excess of 3 million Euro to understand and enhance SME management and development. A former PLATO Group Leader, Brian has held leadership positions for the Irish, European and US Academy of Management. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of HRM (US), the International Journal of HRM, and Employee Relations, and acts as an external examiner at the University of Warwick and at University College Cork. In 2012 Brian delivered a 24-hour non-stop lecture for charity and was nominated for a President's Award for Civic Engagement.
Strategy: Reflect, Refresh and Renew
Brian’s strategy session will provide insights and frameworks enabling SME owner-managers to reflect on the dramatic challenges their business has confronted, refresh their purpose and relevance, and renew with a focus on capabilities and execution (including in more virtual contexts). The session will be interactive, requiring real-time reflections but also providing a toolkit for on-going strategy conversations.
Module 2 – Finance – Brendan Binchy, Business and Finance Consultant
Bio: Brendan has over three decades experience as a business transition consultant, developing strategies to see businesses through times of major change. In good times that’s fuelling growth in privately owned enterprises – but in bad times its managing and resetting business models as he has done over three economic downturns. He possesses of a unique range of practical ‘down to earth’ business skills that pivot around his core expertise in strategic finance, but that also encompasses the functional areas of operations, sales & marketing, people and systems. As a recognised thought leader in advising SME’s he delivers the finance pillar on the GO Global 4 Growth strategy programme with DCU Business School and Enterprise Ireland. He has served on numerous boards including Voxpro (former Chairman), Windmill Lane Pictures & Twi (current Chairman), in addition he holds multiple advisory positions, across a diverse range of industries.
Finance
Business owners and managers have probably never faced such a period of change as we are currently seeing. Change Carries great risk, but where there is a risk there is opportunity.
There are three principal areas that management must focus on to survive and prosper in this period of change:
- Your Valuable Formula – re-assess the competitive element that generates profit and sustainable success for the business
- Modify Operations – change the way the business works to adapt quickly to the changed environment
- Managing for Cash – establish the absolute priority of cash over profit and investment whilst the storm is blowing
These are inter-related and ignoring any one of them will be detrimental to the long-term success of the business
Module 3 – Creative Thinking – Fergal Brophy
Bio: Fergal is Entrepreneurial Specialist at UCD Innovation Academy. His focus is on providing advice, facilitating and mentoring Innovation & Creativity for Corporates, SMEs, Public Sector and Social Enterprises. He passionately shares his experiences, hosts engaging fireside chats, facilitates high energy thought-provoking problem-solving challenges with great learning outcomes and fosters remote networks that endure using bespoke socialisers.
Fergal designed and delivered an on-demand problem-solving module for distributed students on UCD Masters programmes and has facilitated live online innovation programmes for distributed staff at Enterprise Ireland, ESB, PwC and BDO as well as Exec Ed-type students at UCD Innovation Academy. Fergal has supported in-person innovation initiatives at ESB, MetLife, Roche Pharma, Primark, Adobe, Amdocs, DFAT, DPER, NTMA, Chambers Ireland and many SMEs.
Fergal co-founded the Fintech Open Financial Services in 1999, which was scaled and sold to GreatWest LifeCo in 2014. You can find out more about his work at www.fergalbrophy.com
Creative Thinking
This fresh, playful, immersive and engaging creativity & innovation event has been designed exclusively for members and their clients. We will discuss key innovation concepts and how the innovation community has responded to the pandemic. You will take playful creativity challenges that have great learning outcomes as well as storytelling socialisers. Fun and games guaranteed.
Module 4 – Digital Marketing – Louise McDonnell, Expert Digital Marketeer, Social Media Speaker & Facebook Author
Bio: Louise McDonnell is the author of Facebook Marketing, The Essential Guide and founder at SellOnSocial.Media an online social media training platform for business owners and marketing professionals. She has been training businesses how to use social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn) since 2009.She has trained over 14,000 people in the last 11 years including 7000 over the last 12 months. She has been voted one of the top worldwide 50 Facebook Marketing Bloggers by Feedspot and Springboard.com listed her as one of the top 108 digital marketing experts worth following. BloggerLocal listed her as one of the top 10 worldwide Facebook experts. She regularly speaks at events in Ireland and abroad on the topic of social media and has delivered training for Enterprise Ireland, Local Enterprise Offices and Fáilte Ireland.
Digital Marketing Tactics Post Covid
Covid19 has swept across our globe changing the way we live and work. In this training session, Louise McDonnell will examine the impact on Digital Marketing in terms of consumer and brand behaviour. In this new landscape Louise will give advice on how brands should adapt Website Strategies, SEO, Email Marketing, Digital Advertising and Social Media Tactics.
