System Four-Seven™  

    Perhaps, you’ve built a profitable, growing business by dint of hard work as well as entrepreneurial vision and energy.  Congratulations!  You belong to a select group of successful business owners.  However, it’s more likely that you’re facing operational and financial problems.  Some of them may be quite acute. On the other hand, you may have reached a stage where you are quite satisfied with the profit you’re now earning.  You don’t wish to have all the headaches that come with the growth.  Indeed, you may have tried in the past to grow your business but decided you were better off by remaining small. Or, like many business owners, you desperately want to grow your business but your efforts are not yielding the desired results.

   No matter how your company is categorized – start-up, stagnant, satisfied, struggling or successful – you owe it to yourself to find out whether your company is running at its full potential.  You want to know if your business is the right vehicle to reach your personal financial objectives.

    Unfortunately, until now there was no way for business owners like you to measure performance of your company and your own performance as a manager.  Sure, you could hire an expert to do a detailed evaluation.  But that would mean large expense.  Plus you would be required to spend lot of time giving information to the consultant and answering questions.  That would mean getting away from your own work.

    Such an evaluation would take several days, if not weeks.  The consultant would give you her expert report containing recommendations for steps you should take to take advantage of the opportunities and to address operational problems.

    There is one problem with this approach.  The report is written by the consultant, not you.  It’s written from the consultant’s perspective, not yours.  It’s based on consultant’s knowledge, experience and talents, not yours.  Since you didn’t do the evaluation and didn’t write the report, you don’t have the confidence and commitment in the recommendations.  In short, you don’t fully believe what the consultant says. Now, for the first time, you have a sure fire method for completing a detailed evaluation and a management tool to take your company to the next level: System Four-Seven.™ 

    System Four-Seven™ is our proprietary management methodology.  By becoming practitioners of the System, business owners increase profit by 20 percent, or even more, within a year.  At the same time, they create conditions for achieving fast, orderly growth. We have developed different versions of System Four-Seven™ for professional practitioners (physicians, dentists, architects, civil engineers, etc.), as well as trade associations and chambers of commerce that have small business owners  as members. We offer System Four-Seven™ to not-for-profit and service organizations including hospitals, police departments, government agencies, school districts that seek higher productivity by optimum use of facilities, money and people.  

Why System Four-Seven™ Was Developed

Small business is a large yet weak sector in practically every country.  At one extreme, thousands of businesses fail every year.  This means total loss of entrepreneurs' investment and billions of dollars in unpaid liabilities. At the other extreme, are  businesses that are successful and continue to grow over the long term.  Their number is small.  Only five percent of small businesses belong to this category. In the middle are start-up, satisfied, stagnant, and struggling.  These businesses continue to operate without ever reaching their full potential. In 1993, we assembled a team of accountants, consultants, entrepreneurs, professional managers and university faculty members to:

• Understand why small businesses fail.

• Find a way to "failure-proof" small business.

• Enable business owners to realize full potential of their companies.

Our team researched management literature of last fifty years and interviewed several hundred business owners in the US and Canada. Their findings are summarized below:

• Most entrepreneurs start new businesses on the strength of sales experience or technical knowledge.

• They are very determined and have high level of energy and entrepreneurial vision.

• Business owners use informal, personality-oriented management where they make most decisions.

• Frequently, businesses don't have enough equity or working capital or both.

• Owners use their businesses as sole means to achieve personal financial goals.

• Since they are so involved in the day-to-day operations, business owners do not always pay adequate attention to planning and measuring.

• Entrepreneurs have to become competent managers.  

What System Four-Seven™ Can Do For You  

System Four-Seven™ is a unique management tool that you customize to suit your personality, management style and unique characteristics of your company.  

You use the System to:

• Quickly increase profits.

• Achieve accelerated, orderly growth.

• Manage much larger or several businesses.

• Achieve your most ambitious financial goals.

How To Implement System Four-Seven™  

It's a two-step process.  In the first, business owners build their individual BusinessCompass™ working in small groups during the course of one day.  You build your own BusinessCompass™ by evaluating management performance of your company.  You do this self-audit under the guidance of one or more facilitators.  For the purpose, you look at over 350 elements, or ActionPoints, of management.  

Benefits of BusinessCompass™  

1.      Time.  You complete the whole exercise in one day rather than several days or weeks it would take a consultant to do that same.

2.      Cost.  Since you are doing the evaluation yourself, you don't have to pay the normal high fees charged by a consultant.

3.      Confidentiality.  Although you do a thorough analysis of your company, you don't share any financial, confidential or operational detail with an outsider.

4.      Believability.  You have full confidence in the evaluation because you have done it yourself.  The results are from your own perspective of the business rather than some outside expert.

5.      Practical.  When it's built, your BusinessCompass™ contains guidelines for practical action on specific items.

6.      Immediate action.  Because the whole area of management is broken down into over 350 "bite-size" ActionPoints, you are ready to implement the action plan the very next day.

7.      Measurable results.  You are able to measure your progress against set goals or benchmarks.  As a result, you are able to remain focused on the scale of improvements you want.

8.      Objective.  You evaluate processes rather than your own performance.  That way you avoid the tendency to show yourself in better light to others.

9.      Personalized management tool.  BusinessCompass™ becomes an effective management tool that you have created yourself to guide your decision-making.  It also has a preliminary business plan for the next twelve months.  

Where To Obtain System Four-Seven™  

Select banks, chambers of commerce offer System Four-Seven™ to their small business clients or members as a confidential, value-added service under the arrangement of our strategic alliance. Currently, we offer System Four-Seven™ in the US and Canada.We have already initiated preparations to bring the System to business owners in Ireland, UK, and sub-Saharan African countries.

Please e-mail to services@businessownersww.com to find out whether your bank or chamber or trade association is a part of the strategic alliance.  If not, we will tell you where to get your System Four-Seven.