Here are just some of the kinds of work undertaken by Direct Effect. To see more details, you could read through the case studies.

Business modelling

This involves setting up a complex spreadsheet based on variables to model the financial operation of your organisation. This can then be used to plan development, inform management decisions, create a budget, and forecast your performance.

Business planning

Based on a business modelling spreadsheet as well as other inputs such as SWOT and PEST analyses, this should be a realistic document. It should (perhaps with some variation in level of detail) be able to be used internally (to ensure that staff understand the aims and targets for their work) and externally (to communicate your aims to partners, bankers, funders and clients). The best plans use input from all stakeholders, so that everybody involved in the organisation understands and feels part of the plan for the future.

Accounting and other IT systems (Analysis, design and implementation)

There are two aspects to good systems. First, they should enable efficient entry and retrieval of data (contracts, orders, invoices etc) to increase your productivity and ensure clients have confidence in you. Second, they should provide management information so that you can monitor performance against your business plan and budget. Systems that develop organically or in response to ‘oh, we need to do this yesterday’ rarely achieve these hallmarks.

Training & tuition

Our aim is to empower you and your staff through training and coaching. Full documentation and manuals are also important, so that staff can cover for each other, and good working practices are maintained even when staffing changes.

Recruitment

Specialising in best equal opportunities practices, including creating the job descriptions, person specifications, shortlisting, developing interview questions and tasks and facilitating the interviews themselves.

Personnel Procedures

Once you've hired the right people, you need to have the systems in place to keep motivation and performance high. This is achieved by ensuring you have strong personnel procedures such as induction and appraisals, understanding training needs throughout the organisation, excellent internal communication strategies, and good people managment skills in all your line managers.

Restructuring

Sometimes as an organisation develops and grows, lines of communication, delegated responsibilities and line management hierarchies become muddled. A fresh look at how the organisation is structured can be the key to resolving many of the tensions and internal conflicts that prevent the organisation performing optimally.

Purchasing and Project Management

New phone systems, major website developments, IT infrastructure improvements, document management systems - all these major investments need careful analysis of needs and possible solutions, tight negotiation of contracts, and just as importantly, careful management of the implementation.