Pensord managing director Darren Coxon, Real Digital International managing director David Laybourne and Robin Welch, group managing director of GI Solutions Group discussed topics ranging from whether the UK print industry’s management is suitably professionalised, the art of delegation and the challenges of creating and retaining a good management team.
The three business leaders covered areas that would be relevant to companies of all sizes, for example how even the smallest businesses could benefit from implementing 'big company' strategies such as KPIs.
"[Small firms] can still have a big company mentality, you can still measure everything and challenge people to hit KPIs and improve performance month on month," said Coxon in the webcast.
However, Laybourne challenged this in the 60-minute discussion: "Small business owners are probably running three or four separate business functions or they expect their managers to multitask, they don’t have the slack in their day to manage KPIs, but they’re so close to their business that they’re able to have good ‘feel’ for it."
The panel was also asked questions live by the webcast audience during the discussion, including what they thought were the most important external benchmarking tools and metrics.
"We’ve just completed the Vision in Print Snapshot and funnily enough I also use the PrintWeek Top 500, I put what I perceive is my peer group into a spreadsheet and monitor it every year," said Welch.
The webcast, which was supported by Fujifilm, is available as an archive broadcast here.
