Helping businesses achieve 100% Growth – Blog Adrian Tripp, CEO of The European Business Awards

by Adrian Tripp

On 17th June we will be hosting the Grand Final Event of the European Business Awards 2015/16, sponsored by RSM, in Milan. This not only gives us the opportunity to recognise and reward the phenomenal success of Europe’s best businesses, but also gives us the occasion to work with over 500 of Europe’s leading business representatives and find solutions to the challenges and hurdles to future success.

During the day on 17th we will be hosting a 100% Growth Conference, whose foundation is a survey undertaken by the European Business Awards in which we asked 560 business leaders across Europe, ‘What were the major hurdles that prevented them growing their businesses even faster?’

Through five interactive sessions, we will address one or more of the specific hurdles to growth raised in the survey, each led by an expert in their field, who will provide advice and insight, and stimulate debate on how to tackle these challenges in order to achieve 100% growth. The five sessions will investigate how to:

• Better harness technology

- We often hear about ‘going digital’, but many are uncertain about what that means beyond buying the latest IT system. Session chair, Dirk Heilmann, Chief Economist and CEO at Handelsblatt Research Institute, will drive discussion on how to put technology to work to grow business, cut through the noise around digitization, and understand the real opportunities to speed up business processes and delight customers.

• Improve sales effectiveness for growth

- Selling is evidently more difficult these days and a significant hurdle to growth. In this session Alex Panou, Director of Sales Effectiveness Solutions at CEB, will talk through the best ways for organisations to improve sales performance.

• Increase employee engagement

- Our recent research study tells us talent is still the number one challenge across the board. Often considered complicated and too difficult to achieve, Dr Peter Baloh, Head of Change Initiatives at the European Business Awards, will strip away the excuses and offer simple tactics to improve employee engagement.

• Break into new markets

- Expanding into new markets can be lucrative and creating an international footprint for a company’s brand is important to a growth plan. The opportunities are strong, but the challenges are plentiful, constantly changing, and different for every business. Chaired by Anand Selvarajan, European Leader of RSM, this session will identify and discuss the main considerations for expansion.

• Fund growth

- Whether creative or traditional, from acquisitions to crowd funding, properly planning and funding growth is vital to growth strategy. However, with the current economic climate and political instability, new approaches may need to be taken to access the capital needed for growth. Panelists for this session include Raffaele Jerusalmi, CEO at Borsa Italiana, Carlo Marini, Executive Vice President at Unicredit and Andrea Tuccio, Partner at RSM Italy.

I look forward to an insightful and important debate, and hope that the many business leaders taking part will leave with at least one potentially game changing takeaway they can use to help them in their quest to achieve 100% Growth.

ENDS