For some businesses, once over the initial shock, lockdown became a reflective time. The slow pace of the country's shut down allowed for some much needed planning and development.
As part of our Boost My Business initiative, Fiona Alston spoke to a construction services machinery provider who took the time to do just that.
Martin Hanley is co-owner of CPH which is headquatered in Charleville Co.Cork with offices in Dublin, Cork and Limerick. They provide machinery for contractors from big projects like the Facebook data centre to smaller local project. They also serve the agricultural and DIY sector.
"We were doing very well over the last eighteen months or so, right up to March and the lockdown," says Hanley. But the countrywide lockdown forced the closure of the construction sites having an instant impact on that arm of the business. "We were kept open as delivery only to the agricultural sector - that was a lifeline during the lockdown period – all the big jobs were closed down," he adds.
"It had it had an immediate, heavy impact on the operation, most of our staff were laid off on the TWSS payment. We could keep some on as we were continuing to operate in the agricultural and DIY sectors during the initial period up to the 15th of May," he explains.
Once over the initial shock of the 'devastating impact' the country coming to a halt, had on the business, Hanley got to work smoothing things over with the banks.
"To be fair, within ten days we’d resolved that with the various financial institutions we deal with for the purchase of machinery and they had all given us moratoriums of three or four months – we had to decide do we fix the cut or save the patient? We said we’d save the patient first," says Hanley.
With the financial situation in hand it gave the team time to look into other areas of the business. "We got breathing space in the company," continues Hanley, "we had been chasing our tails for a number of years - we never started looking at the business and seeing where we wanted to go or what our long term direction or medium term direction was."
CPH was granted a business planning grant from Enterprise Ireland and were assigned BDO Ireland, a financial services firm, to advise them on their business plan.
"We did a business plan for the next three years and we did financial projections for the next three years. All of a sudden, everyone became calm, not just myself and my business partner, James Dundon, but all the staff could see we were more organised," says Hanley. "I was updating our banks on what we were doing, with Enterprise Ireland and they got a lot calmer, they moved away back from the table, put no pressure on us what so ever and we began to see the wood from the trees - it was a very positive thing."
Another scheme Hanley found extremely useful was the Government’s Debt Warehousing Scheme which enables businesses to ‘warehouse’ VAT and PAYE relating to the Covid period.
"I think myself, that was the biggest benefit the government did for companies during the locakdown period," says Hanley. "It allowed us the breathing space to pay our supplies because I felt the cash needed to continue to flow in the country. A lot of my suppliers are small local businesses around the Charleville area."
