Ready for Scale

Ready for Scale – A 12-week Growth Plan programme to enable the next phase of your growth

The Ready for Scale programme helps your small or medium business to take a leap on its growth trajectory and assists you to transform your business. Our 12-week Growth Plan process shows you how to critically review your business, asks challenging questions, and thoroughly interrogates what is and isn’t working.

Whether you want to transform your company from a life-style business into a fast-growth business, make sure you can survive the impact of Covid-19 and leaving the EU, or you want to take the opportunities available to grow your business to the next level, Ready for Scale will support you to achieve your goal.

We use the same Growth Plan process used in the highly successful Business Growth Programme, which in its thirty-year history has helped over 2,900 businesses to grow better. We will introduce you to the relevant business concepts so that you can apply these to your business. You will also be encouraged to engage with your fellow business owners on the programme, supporting each other to succeed.

As a result of this journey, you will be clearer about the vision for your company, the next steps you have to take to achieve it, and how to grow your network of support, business advisors and contacts. Going through this proven process will get you the results faster than just working through the frameworks alone.

Why do I need a 12-week Growth Plan Programme?

Research shows that businesses with a detailed business plan are 33% more successful than businesses without a plan and that 66% of the fastest growing businesses in the UK have written business plans.

The Cranfield Growth Plan approach helps businesses to increase their chances of success by providing a framework to answer the following three key questions: 1) Where are you now? 2) Where are you going? 3) How will you get there?

This Growth Plan will enable you to communicate your vision and actions to others, for example, your staff, customers, banks investors, and other key stakeholders. It will demonstrate that you have analysed the environment in which you are operating, that you truly understand your customers and your target markets, that you are in control of your finances and that you have a plan to achieve your goals.

What will I get from the 12-week Growth Plan Programme?

During the programme you will:

• Define and review the purpose of your business,
• Analyse your business to understand where and how to compete in the market and the industry in which your business operates,
• Scrutinise your business’ cash flow to identify the right sources of funding to help your business grow,
• Identify your customer and value proposition to optimise your Business Model,
• Determine what steps you need to take to develop a high performing team, and
• Develop and prepare a comprehensive Growth Plan for your business.

At the end of the programme you will pitch your Growth Plan to an expert panel and will receive personalised feedback.

What does the 12-week Growth Plan Programme look like?

This online programme consists of the following components and the key dates are shown below.

The main programme
The main programme consists of two half-day online workshops and six online modules.

Introduction workshop
The aim of this workshop is to familiarise you with your fellow participants, the programme structure and our programme team.

The Six online modules

• Each module helps you to analyse your business through different lenses. You will work through these modules in your own time. Generally this will take 45-60 minutes per module.
• At the end of each module, you will submit an assignment that will help you to apply the concepts learnt from the module to your own business. The more time you spend on this exercise, the more you get out of the programme.  Previous participants have spent between 45 minutes-3 hours per week on these assignments.

Tutorials
After each module, an online tutorial will be held. These tutorials will help you to summarise the key learnings, share ideas between all participants and give you an opportunity to ask questions. These tutorials will be facilitated by our Programme Delivery Team.

1:1 Mentoring
After modules 3 and 6, you will have a 45-minute 1:1 mentoring session with one of our business advisors. This will enable you to ask specific questions about your business and our business advisor will highlight areas that you should focus on.

Growth Plan Presentation Workshop
After successful completion of the programme modules, you will have analysed your business and defined a vision for its future. To test your plan and your message, you will present your Growth Plan to an expert panel of business advisors, successful entrepreneurs and investors to receive their feedback.

What is the time commitment for the programme? 

The key advantage of this programme is that all modules are online and can be worked on at any point during the time the module is active. 

Day 1 – Programme introduction
The programme introduction will be a half-day event from 9:30am – 12:00 noon.

Six online modules

• On average each module will take 3 hours a week to complete via remote online learning, wider reading of reference materials and completion of assignments.
• After every module there will be a 1 hour live tutorial which is also recorded and can be watched in your own time.

Two 1:1 feedback sessions
45 min online meeting for 1:1 feedback regarding your own business.

Preparation of the Growth Plan
Minimum of 3 hours each week in the final two weeks, dedicated to preparation for the final growth plan.

Growth Plan presentation day
This will be a day event online from 9:00am – 4:00pm.

Programme dates

Cost

How much does the programme cost?

£2,000

I am interested, how can I learn more?

If you have any questions about Ready for Scale, please get in touch and we will be happy to schedule a call with you. 

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