Know-it

As part of the launch of our Guide to Business Resilience, we reached out to a number of smaller business owers to find out what business resilience meant to them.

In this interview, we speak to Lynne Darcey Quigley of Know-it, about what business resilience means in her industry.

What does business resilience mean to you?

Running a business is no easy task, if it was then everyone would have their own business!

There are knockbacks for sure, but these rough spells don’t last forever as long as you have the fundamentals in place such as good business acumen to begin with, a great team surrounding you and hunger!

Being able to dust yourself off and keep driving forward even during tough times is what makes a business resilient.

It hasn’t been easy recently, but I feel the way we operate and the processes we have in place are better as a result.

What kinds of changes have you made to reduce overheads in the current climate (if any)?

We haven’t necessarily reduced overheads, but we have become leaner and much more efficient in what we do, making our money go further.

We run a lot of digital ads across both businesses that I run, so we are always testing and tweaking content, budgets, and bids to maximize our conversion rate, getting more return on our marketing spend.

How has the energy crisis impacted your business?

It hasn’t had much impact; our businesses have to operate regardless so we have continued striving for growth!

What is your approach to debt and finance?

We always ensure that we borrow within our means. This has been fundamental in helping us grow both businesses sustainably.

How do you nurture your customer relationships?

In my line of work, I deal with very personal issues regarding outstanding invoices owed to business owners.

In many cases, not having substantial invoices paid can be make or break for businesses we serve so it’s vital that we nurture these clients and show that we are here to protect their businesses.

Businesses, for their owners, are their lives, having put their savings, blood, sweat and tears into them.

This is why it is so important that they understand we’re here.

We do this with constant communication and reassurance that we will do all we can to ensure their invoices are paid quickly using our tried and tested process.

We deliver updates on our clients’ cases immediately, so they are kept up to speed with all developments.

Once we have successfully gotten our clients paid, we have a team dedicated to following up to ensure everything is okay with their sales ledger and whether they have any other overdue invoices that need recovered or clients they are worried about.

What measures have you taken to attract and retain talent in a tough climate?

We are extremely ambitious and growing massively.

We have plans to scale both businesses internationally soon and to facilitate that we’ve increased our head count during this difficult period to put ourselves in the best position to grow.

Putting our ambition across to people we see suitable for roles we have openings for has been a great way to get candidates into the interview process.

In terms of retaining talent, I’ve made our offices the best place possible to work making sure all my talent feels at home and have everything they need to ensure they can do their jobs to the best of their abilities to best serve our clients.

How important is innovation and technology in future proofing your business and give an example of where you've invested in it?

Data and insight is so powerful and it guides every decision we make.

We’ve recently revamped our reporting, so we analyze every area of each business to ensure we are acting on the intelligence we are exposed to on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis.

Investing heavily in the systems we require has been no small task, but we will certainly reap the rewards.

It has been time-consuming but the insight we’ll have will do wonders for the future of this business.

We operate on a digital-first way of working.

Harnessing technology and the cloud have made both businesses much more efficient and significantly impacted on our ROI.