Step 1 of 5

Map out your situation

Your business is doing well until the customers fail to return. Your turnover dwindles. To turn the tide, you first need to find out where you and your company stand.

How are you doing?

You experience a lot of stress and worry about the difficult financial situation of your business. You would prefer to keep these worries to yourself and fend for yourself. After all, that is a characteristic of entrepreneurs. Still, it is advisable to turn to those around you for advice. Then you will find out that you are not alone and that there are other entrepreneurs who also have financial problems. Talking to organisations will help you cope with stress caused by financial problems.

Business strengths and opportunities

With a strengths and weaknesses analysis or SWOT analysis you can see at a glance where opportunities lie for your business and what needs extra attention. Name the strengths and weaknesses of your company. These are internal factors, such as your product or the expertise of your staff. Then identify which environmental factors are opportunities or threats for your company. These are external factors. Think of increasing digitalisation, declining customer loyalty and rising energy prices. Put all the strengths and weaknesses from both the internal and external analysis into a table.

You can go one step further: give the points from your SWOT analysis a relative weight and put them against each other in a confrontation matrix, a combined table. This table confronts the most important strengths and weaknesses of your company with the most important opportunities and threats from the market. It shows you how your company connects to the market. In the final step, you draw conclusions and determine your strategy.

Financial state of affairs

To decide on the next steps, a financial overview is necessary. Chart your company's current financial situation yourself or with the help of your bookkeeper or accountant. An in-between overview using a profit and loss account will help. Also, list your debts.

A financial overview gives you a first indication of the viability of your business. You can calculate key figures yourself or with the help of a bookkeeper or accountant. Think profitability or profitability and solvency, an indication of your long-term ability to pay. Liquidity is an indication of your short-term payment capacity. In subsequent steps, you examine how the new business model improves these indicators and the viability of your company. The video below tells you more about how to determine the viability of your business.

Video: Determine the viability of your business

KVK Advice Team

Do you have questions about a new business model or the Business model canvas? Call the KVK Advice Team Bel 088 585 22 22.