How Future Proofing Can Help Your Business

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT WITHIN GARDEN CENTRE EXPANSIONS.

It is an interesting word ‘sustainability’. It is a word that is on everyone’s lips and it’s something that is so important to our garden centre industry. I wanted to understand the real meaning of sustainability – especially relating to aspects that can be controlled by work. In reality, sustainability can be perceived different for everyone, depending upon their interests, so I narrowed my thought process down to sustainable business strategy.

I recognise sustainable business strategies can consider climate change, depletion of natural resources, fair working conditions, and pollution. However, when considering the work the team at Pleydell Smithyman do to support garden centre development, my headline conclusion was that sustainability is something that gives us the ability to maintain or support a process continuously over time; particularly focusing on controllable sustainable aspects, and I believe that ‘sustainable development’ is one way we can help to prevent the depletion of natural and physical resources.

So, what is sustainable development? I believe it is development that achieves immediate requirements and aims, without affecting or compromising the ability of future development.

The concept of sustainable development can be interpreted in many different ways, but at the heart of it, there is a need for a thoughtful, considered approach to development that looks to balance the business aims, which can often conflict with each other. These include timescale urgency, or profitability requirements which sometimes can affect aspects such as the environmental impact.

All too often, garden centre development is driven by one particular need, without fully considering future impacts. Many businesses I work with have developed their garden centres with one aim in mind, rather than the whole picture, and this can sometimes cause issues if the future plans are not considered. I see the damage this kind of approach can cause, both environmentally and commercially.

Essentially, I feel that when businesses look to identify their opportunities, they always need to consider future-proofing, and this is a key driver to creating sustainable, long-term, profitable development plans. It involves taking a proactive and intentional approach to strategic planning, adapting to ever-changing knowledge to create a development plan that considers short, medium and long-term aims, how it affects profit, and how each stage of a development may be affected by another.

Only recently I was working with a new client, and we were reviewing their site which included implementing a new bakery. However, a couple of years earlier, the business had put some underground drains on the land that the kitchen was best suited to be built on. If this build were to go ahead, this would cause duplicated groundwork, thus causing negative environmental aspects – plus cost the business a further £30k to relocate the drains. Moving forward, we are now working with the same business, focused on a multi-phased development plan, which considers each stage, and how they might impact on each other, as well as how this can be controlled to help profitably.

I believe that the longer we pursue unsustainable, unconsidered short-term development, we will see more frequent and more severe consequences to the environment. This is why we need to take a strategic long-term approach in every development we work on.

Sustainable development is not always just about building cafes, or extending retail areas, because sometimes this doesn’t need to be done when developing an existing site. One of the things we do at Pleydell Smithyman is to analyse existing performance, taking into consideration the strengths of a business, whilst also helping us to identify opportunities. This doesn’t stop a business considering future improvements once the performance and processes are improved, and further analysis when the time is right may give a different conclusion as to what is needed in the long term. It shows that if a business focuses on its existing layout, processes, and staff development, then this could be the correct immediate action to take, before making any longer-term decisions.

We do occasionally see garden centres over space some departments and under space others versus m² benchmarking, and rather than build extensions, which can have high capital investment costs and could have an impact on the environment; the correct action could be as simple as a department layout change to grow the under-performing departments. Ultimately, what this commercial review can do for a business is to delay them from adding buildings that they just don’t need, effectively meaning that the business may have saved capital expenditure as well as removing negative sustainability aspects.

However, obviously this doesn’t stop considering future improvements once the performance and processes are improved, then further analysis may give a different conclusion as to what is needed in the long term.

One thing I always want to encourage businesses to do, especially in this economic climate, is to consider long term possibilities and plan ahead. To do this effectively, a business needs knowledge and data to help identify its short, medium and long term objectives, and if a business really wants to consider sustainable approaches alongside profit, then this is essential. That being said, sometimes businesses do need to compromise on their approach to projects, but as the old adage goes, if you get your ducks in a row, it will help you to become more sustainable and could help your profit in the future.