[caption id="attachment_147898" align="alignright" width="210"] Ernst and Young Partner and Consulting Leader Arjuna Herath[/caption] Ernst & Young (EY), with reference to its history of working alongside many of the world’s most ambitious entrepreneurs to support them in accelerating their journey to market leadership, has distilled its insights from these cases to create the “EY Seven Drivers of Growth”.  The EY Seven Drivers of Growth is a framework that helps enable leaders to assess their business, build resilience, and refine or completely re-imagine their growth strategy. This framework has been used extensively by EY to develop strategic plans of leading organisations and family businesses in Sri Lanka. The framework directs the focus to key issues in the business and helps in developing a strategic roadmap that would help grow and reshape the future of the business based on leading practices that inspire innovation. [caption id="attachment_147899" align="alignright" width="192"] Ernst and Young Business Consulting Manager Rodney Fernando[/caption] EY has studied the growth journeys of thousands of EY Entrepreneur of The Year™ finalists and winners, as well as other market-leading businesses spanning across all industries and geographies, to understand the capabilities they built to drive growth at each stage of their lifecycle. EY has taken that knowledge and created this framework which assesses the company across seven critical drivers to help devise growth plans and facilitate strategy discussions to help re-imaging the future of the business. EY – Sri Lanka and Maldives Consulting Leader Arjuna Herath, commenting on the EY 7 Drivers of Growth framework, stated: “it is a framework that helps enable ambitious leaders to think differently about their businesses and help deliver their growth strategy. We have been able to help enable businesses to build and align their capabilities with their growth strategy. In today’s disruptive world, realising ambition and growing the business is an exciting challenge. The Seven Drivers of Growth will help enable businesses to unlock their full potential and realise ambition, faster.” EY - Sri Lanka Business Consulting Manager Rodney Fernando, elaborating on the EY Seven Drivers of Growth framework stated: “When most businesses think about strategy, they think about how to manage people, systems and processes to deliver customer value and growth. However, we’ve learned through our research and work with the world’s leading private enterprises – in different market conditions – that the companies most successful at futureproofing their businesses are those who look at a broad set of capabilities, and balance their investments in time, money and energy, as they adapt, transform and grow. This broader view has helped them to sustain their high growth.”  Turn strategy into action The EY Seven Drivers of Growth framework supports business leaders to think differently about the enablers of growth. EY’s research shows that the seven critical drivers that help enable  sustainable growth in a company are customers, people, technology, operations, finance, transactions, and risk. Using the framework, leaders can:

1. Self-assess the maturity of capabilities within the organisation across each of the seven drivers, identifying where the business is today and where it needs to be in the next two to three years to achieve the desired goals
2. Identify gaps across the seven drivers and select actions leaders can take to address them, inspired by the practices of leading businesses around the world
3. Prioritise the actions selected, set deadlines, and assign resources to create a plan that will help businesses execute the strategy

Assess businesses using the framework Behind each of the growth drivers is a built maturity model, which mirrors the growth journey of successful companies, and that helps enable EY clients to investigate each growth aspect during their self-assessments. Therefore, using the framework, leaders will assess the current capabilities against the practices and growth journeys of leading businesses, exploring issues such as:

• Increasing the value of the customer base
• Creating a high-performing team and culture
• Exploiting the opportunities created through technology
• Optimising operations
• Building a finance function capable of acting as a strategic advisor
• Achieving powerful strategic alliances, partnerships and acquisitions
• Balancing risk appetite with risk management

Unlock full potential Conducting an EY Seven Drivers of Growth workshop will give business leaders the opportunity to understand the capabilities required to take the business to the next level to build resilience, and also to build an actionable blueprint to successfully drive sustainable growth. Also, having these workshops with the entire leadership team gives the opportunity to hear different perspectives and innovative ideas from the team, as well as gain full alignment around the plan – a critical step to successfully deliver the business strategy. The EY Seven Drivers of Growth framework will help enable:

• Assess current capabilities relative to the future aspirations
• Gain insight into practices of market-leading businesses
• Clarify strategic priorities, opportunities, and challenges
• Build an action plan to help achieve the next level of success
• Achieve consensus among the leadership team about the future of the business and how to get there
• Validate and refine the business strategy

Outcomes The outcomes at the end of the EY Seven Drivers of Growth framework facilitated strategy activity are as follows:

• A current state of assessment of the business capabilities and an identification of aspired future state across the seven drivers
• A clear understanding of the growth opportunities and future challenges
• An enhanced growth strategy and a pragmatic action plan, prioritised to strategic needs, to help enable the business to achieve the next level of success

Protect your business and navigate uncertainty Herath concluded: “We continue to see that the businesses who struggle most when economies decline are the ones who limit their focus to the short term. The most successful businesses don’t lose sight of their mid- to long-term priorities — they continue to invest in areas they know will be critical for their future.”  “During economic and political uncertainty, business planning has never been more important, and delivering against these plans is critical. The seven drivers can support leaders to navigate uncertainty, protect their position and sustain growth.”