53
PRO INSTALLER MAY 2014
PRO BUSINESS
@proinstaller1
LIVING UP TO ITS NAME - PROGRESS
WINDOWS AND PAUL GET THE
RECOGNITION THEY DESERVE
Paul Hines, Managing Director of Hinckley-based Progress Windows has won the Young
Entrepreneur of 2014 at the Business Excellence Awards 2014, sponsored by Action Coach.
The award ceremony
took place in Brighton
in April and with over
1,000 businesses put
forward for the prize,
Paul and his team at
Progress Windows
made it to the final five
companies after a thorough inspection process. As the winner was
announced, Paul was
clearly overjoyed to be
named the number one
young entrepreneur
2014.
Progress Windows has
benefited from matched
government funding to assist their business development. This scheme has seen
Paul working with business
advisor, Mark Jennings of
MJ Coaching of Burbage
over the last three years and
it was Mark who put Paul
forward for the prize. Mark
said: “I have been coaching
Paul for a while now and
I really felt his achievements deserved recognition
so I decided to enter him
into the competition. I am
delighted he has won. It
rewards him and all the
team at Progress for their
hard work and dedication
in running a great customerfocussed business.”
The five finalists made
it to the final stage based
on business performance
and customer satisfaction
levels and just getting into
the final was seen as a big
achievement for the local
Leicestershire firm. Every
year for the past six years,
Progress Windows has
increased the numbers of
windows, doors and conservatories that they have
fitted in the Nuneaton area.
The efforts of Paul and the
company as a whole had
been highly praised by the
judging panel and when
Paul and Progress were
announced as the winner it
was clearly a popular choice
amongst the numerous businesses present. The judging
panel was quick to point
out the clear reasons why
they chose Paul to win. A
spokesman for the Business
Excellence Forum said: “It
was felt that based on the
excellent customer satisfaction levels and tremendous
economic performance in
such difficult times Paul really has an eye for business.
It takes and a lot of hard
work, courage and dedication to run a successful
business and Progress has
done very well and we were
more than happy to award
Paul with the trophy.”
Paul said, “It’s a tremendous achievement for me
and my team at Progress.
We have worked very hard
to develop our core business structure to ensure that
customers are happy with
what we do. We work in
a complex industry where
we are working on people’s prize possession, their
home, so we have to make
sure we are always the best
we can be. Working with
Mark at Action Coach has
seen us develop important
strategies and procedures
which enables us to run an
increasingly efficient and
customer focussed business.
It’s fantastic that we have
won this award. If I am honest it was a lovely surprise
because the finalists included some excellent businesses. But winning proves that
we are doing things right
and that our customers are
getting the best service
possible”.
From its base in Hinckley,
Leicestershire, Progress Windows has completed installations all over the Midlands
including Leicester, Coventry, Nuneaton, Nottingham and Birmingham. The
majority of work is obtained
through recommendations
and repeat business and
the company provides a
performance guarantee – if
customers are not happy
with the product and service
they get, they don’t pay.
It is that dedication to
quality that impressed the
judges – and continues to
impress customers.
www.progresswindows.com
www.actioncoachgb.com
DO YOU HAVE A
BUSINESS PLAN?
The importance of having a business plan has been highlighted by new research showing that over a third of
the UK’s 4.8 million small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are failing to reach their full profit potential.
Independent research,
commissioned by business and finance software provider Exact,
shows SMEs that had a
business plan in place
last year were consistently more profitable
(70%) than those that
did not (52%).
The research set out to
provide a better understanding of some of the
challenges SMEs face in
achieving their business
goals, with ‘increasing
profits’, ‘increasing revenue growth’ and ‘attracting
new customers’ cited as
the top three goals.
Despite these compelling statistics, 34% of SMEs
said they do not have a
business plan in place,
with 68% of those saying
the reason they didn’t was
‘I don’t see the need to
have one’ and a further
10% saying ‘I didn’t know
I needed one’.
Lucy Fox, General Manager UK Cloud Solutions
for Exact, said: “The findings clearly show there
are many SMEs who are
missing out on the added
value a business plan can
offer, the consequence
being that many may be
failing to reach their full
growth and business potential as a result.”
The research revealed
that among those who did
not have a business plan,
many believed it would
take up too much of
their time to do one (‘I’m
too busy’ 23%). Others
appeared unaware that
there were people available to help them create
one, with 8% saying, ‘I
don’t have anyone to help
me’ and 5% saying they
did not do one because,
‘I’m not comfortable with
numbers’.
Howard Jackson, Managing Director of FD
Solutions, one of the UK’s
leading providers of interim and part time Finance
Directors, said:
“A business plan joins
up the dots between sales,
HR and finance and provides a holistic analysis of
a company as well as its
market place. The fact that
so many SMEs do not appear to have a plan is worrying, not least in light of
the fact that much of the
UK economy depends on
their success, representing
over 99% of all private
sector businesses.”