As we came to the end of our last financial year we now 6 years young!
This is something I am VERY proud of.
Our journey has indeed been exciting, educational and fulfilling, something I’d hoped for when founding the company. But of course, this came with the inevitable times of being stressed, overwhelmed and downright scared as all the influences (both internal & external) can regularly knock your plans off track.
“It’s often said that more than half of new businesses fail during the first year. According to the Small Business Association (SBA), this isn’t necessarily true. The SBA states that only 30% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 50% during the first five years and 66% during the first 10. “
Building on our experience from day 1 of helping customers deliver challenging HR Change and SaaS HR Systems projects we found ourselves in 2017 working with a number of loyal customers in these core service areas and spending LOTS of time trying to be selected as one of the partners for that next Global transformation project.
Frankly, we were typically seen as one of the suppliers an Enterprise/FTSE business would work with to spread their risk on a project. While we were trusted and valued by many of the stakeholders we worked with, we were and always would be a small cog in a very large machine.
Driving home from three consecutive days of client work in November 2017 I had my moment of clarity that things HAD to change. I spoke to my team and discussed that moving forward we would ONLY work with customers that we could be long-term valued partners for.
Even though we are 6yrs young…. Rencai in its current form is less than 2yrs old.
Being pragmatic this meant that we had to completely re-think our business model as we identified:
- We’d need to work closely with entire leadership and ownership teams to build trust and ultimately have influence
- This meant working with a few stakeholders as we typically did in our FTSE clients would not work
- We needed to be a valued and trusted partner with ALL the leadership team
- This meant we needed to start working with much smaller businesses, our smallest customer at that point was 2,000 employees..
- The companies we worked with needed to have the desire to innovate and ‘take a chance’ on new approaches, having the agility to make changes quickly
- This again meant we needed to focus on supporting, Entrepreneurial businesses with challenging growth plans
- Our core solutions of HR Change and Programme Delivery of SaaS system projects we not a match for a new ‘ideal’ customer type and desire to provide tangible value very quickly…
.
2018 and beyond!
At the start of 2018 we begin building relationships with the clients we knew we could add real value for. Typically they can be considered by one of these profiles:
- Entrepreneurial and fast-growth businesses
- Businesses wanting to become more successful by putting their people first
- Business with the opportunity to establish a more considered ‘People Plan’ to improve their employee experience
From that point, the journey has been great and SO SO rewarding.
The businesses we now partner with are ranging from 20 – 600 employees, and we are really getting to know what makes each business unique.
Going back to our new vision, we now consistently add tangible value by:
- Building relationships and ultimately trust – with the leaders that are passionate to drive these businesses forward
- Improving leadership effectiveness – through 1-2-1 executive coaching and team-wide leadership development
- Building high–performing company cultures – understanding existing cultures, and enhancing these through improved understanding and alignment around Purpose & Core Values
- Creating Engaged Companies – where employees are supported and motivated to achieve both personal & company success
- Improving the Employer Value Proposition (EVP) – considering and developing the key components that define your EVP and give you the ability to attract and retain the best talent
Our 7th year is already off to a great start with 3 new clients and we’re excited to work with many other ambitious leadership teams over the next 12 months!
