Unfortunately, you can’t simply launch a company and expect business to be booming overnight. There’s a framework you need to put in place, and essential ingredients you’ll want to include that will help you succeed and get through the rough times.
It’s not a wise idea to move forward blindly without specifics in place from how you’re going to get from one point to the next. Always be forward-thinking and coming up with ideas for how you can be improving as you go. Include the following key requirements you need to experience long-term stability, and you’ll be quickly heading down the right path.
A Solid Business Model & Objectives
If you want to make money with your venture, then you’re going to need to have a sound business model in place with a list of critical objectives you’re going to tackle. Pay attention to what sources of revenue you have available to you and if you feel you’re competitively priced or not as you work on your roadmap. Set goals for what you’re going to work toward in the coming years and include specifics for how you’ll achieve each one. This is an instance where you do want to obsess over the details and make sure you’re putting yourselves on a solid course to victory for the long-term.
Policies, Processes & Procedures
Every business needs to have policies, processes, and procedures in place to function optimally. It’s not a wise idea to launch your company and simply hope for the best without documenting and communicating out your rules and expectations. You’ll need this type of structure in place as you begin to hire on more staff and expand your offerings. Efficiency and speed will become even more important as you grow and the only way to do this is by coming up with a framework of best practices. There will be less confusion on a daily basis and more communication occurring between departments and individuals when everyone’s on the same page.
Technology Solutions
Doing your work manually isn’t a good solution for the future because it slows you down and provides more opportunity for errors to occur. You can read more about what your options are for how technology can improve your business such as tracking time and individual projects. This way you’ll know exactly who’s in the office when you’ll save yourself money and can quickly take note of who’s working on what projects. Adopting more technology solutions will allow your employees to be more productive and you’ll be happier because you’ll be achieving your goals at a quicker rate. Bring more of what you’re doing online, and you’ll likely notice that your business runs a lot more seamlessly and there are fewer complications.
Talented Employees
Every successful business needs to have skilled and talented employees who are ready to work hard each day. Hire wisely by taking the time to come up with specific job descriptions, read through resumes and participate in the interviewing process. Be very careful and mindful of who you hire and bring onboard because it will cost you even more money to keep replacing people. Your company will progress nicely when you can depend on the staff who you’ve hired to complete their tasks correctly the first time around and not have to constantly be babysitting and correcting mistakes. Hold regular company-wide meetings and assign your employees individual coaches to ensure everyone feels valued and connected.
Strong Leadership
No business ever made it too far without having a strong team of leaders and management in place to guide employees and execute on the company’s objectives. Surround yourself with good people who have experience working in high-level positions and understand and can help you achieve your vision. Your company needs direction and people who are committed to building a bright future filled with a lot of positive outcomes. This will be especially important in difficult times or when your staff isn’t feeling very motivated. Your business will require strong leaders who will step up in the face of adversity and never give up or quit.
Paying Customers
Your business won’t survive too long without a long list of loyal and paying customers who you can depend on in good times and in bad. It’s essential you pay attention to your clients and offer them consistent and outstanding customer service. Reach out and seek feedback and listen to their viewpoints so you can make any necessary changes going forward. Focus on delivering quality products or services that are innovative and meet the needs of your customers. Engage with them on social media and be available to answer their questions or talk through any concerns. What will help you out the most is continuously testing out new products or services with small groups of people before you go to market with them, so you can guarantee they’re a hit.
A Plan for Problems
You should never expect all to go smoothly and as planned when you’re running a business. There will always be roadblocks, obstacles and unexpected happenings that you’ll need to deal with and manage. Think ahead by planning for problems and determining what it is that could possibly go wrong, so you’re prepared for these hiccups when they do occur. Always spend within your means and have resources available to you should anything get steered in another direction, and you need to act fast. Focus on problem-solving your way out of sticky situations instead of flying off the handle or giving in to these inevitable issues.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the essential ingredients every business needs to truly thrive in a competitive and cutthroat landscape. Work on achieving success in these areas, and you’ll be a lot better off as you continue to develop your company. What will help you to accomplish this goal is if you make a list and then prioritize what you believe is most important that you get done first and continue to work your way through the remaining items.
A VETERAN OWNED SMALL BUSINESS | Call or text now for a FREE consultation: +1 (770) 765-3692 | Website Login
Business Programs
Essential Ingredients Every Business Needs
/0 Comments/in Entrepreneurship /by StrategyDriven+Unfortunately, you can’t simply launch a company and expect business to be booming overnight. There’s a framework you need to put in place, and essential ingredients you’ll want to include that will help you succeed and get through the rough times.
It’s not a wise idea to move forward blindly without specifics in place from how you’re going to get from one point to the next. Always be forward-thinking and coming up with ideas for how you can be improving as you go. Include the following key requirements you need to experience long-term stability, and you’ll be quickly heading down the right path.
A Solid Business Model & Objectives
If you want to make money with your venture, then you’re going to need to have a sound business model in place with a list of critical objectives you’re going to tackle. Pay attention to what sources of revenue you have available to you and if you feel you’re competitively priced or not as you work on your roadmap. Set goals for what you’re going to work toward in the coming years and include specifics for how you’ll achieve each one. This is an instance where you do want to obsess over the details and make sure you’re putting yourselves on a solid course to victory for the long-term.
Policies, Processes & Procedures
Every business needs to have policies, processes, and procedures in place to function optimally. It’s not a wise idea to launch your company and simply hope for the best without documenting and communicating out your rules and expectations. You’ll need this type of structure in place as you begin to hire on more staff and expand your offerings. Efficiency and speed will become even more important as you grow and the only way to do this is by coming up with a framework of best practices. There will be less confusion on a daily basis and more communication occurring between departments and individuals when everyone’s on the same page.
Technology Solutions
Doing your work manually isn’t a good solution for the future because it slows you down and provides more opportunity for errors to occur. You can read more about what your options are for how technology can improve your business such as tracking time and individual projects. This way you’ll know exactly who’s in the office when you’ll save yourself money and can quickly take note of who’s working on what projects. Adopting more technology solutions will allow your employees to be more productive and you’ll be happier because you’ll be achieving your goals at a quicker rate. Bring more of what you’re doing online, and you’ll likely notice that your business runs a lot more seamlessly and there are fewer complications.
Talented Employees
Every successful business needs to have skilled and talented employees who are ready to work hard each day. Hire wisely by taking the time to come up with specific job descriptions, read through resumes and participate in the interviewing process. Be very careful and mindful of who you hire and bring onboard because it will cost you even more money to keep replacing people. Your company will progress nicely when you can depend on the staff who you’ve hired to complete their tasks correctly the first time around and not have to constantly be babysitting and correcting mistakes. Hold regular company-wide meetings and assign your employees individual coaches to ensure everyone feels valued and connected.
Strong Leadership
No business ever made it too far without having a strong team of leaders and management in place to guide employees and execute on the company’s objectives. Surround yourself with good people who have experience working in high-level positions and understand and can help you achieve your vision. Your company needs direction and people who are committed to building a bright future filled with a lot of positive outcomes. This will be especially important in difficult times or when your staff isn’t feeling very motivated. Your business will require strong leaders who will step up in the face of adversity and never give up or quit.
Paying Customers
Your business won’t survive too long without a long list of loyal and paying customers who you can depend on in good times and in bad. It’s essential you pay attention to your clients and offer them consistent and outstanding customer service. Reach out and seek feedback and listen to their viewpoints so you can make any necessary changes going forward. Focus on delivering quality products or services that are innovative and meet the needs of your customers. Engage with them on social media and be available to answer their questions or talk through any concerns. What will help you out the most is continuously testing out new products or services with small groups of people before you go to market with them, so you can guarantee they’re a hit.
A Plan for Problems
You should never expect all to go smoothly and as planned when you’re running a business. There will always be roadblocks, obstacles and unexpected happenings that you’ll need to deal with and manage. Think ahead by planning for problems and determining what it is that could possibly go wrong, so you’re prepared for these hiccups when they do occur. Always spend within your means and have resources available to you should anything get steered in another direction, and you need to act fast. Focus on problem-solving your way out of sticky situations instead of flying off the handle or giving in to these inevitable issues.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the essential ingredients every business needs to truly thrive in a competitive and cutthroat landscape. Work on achieving success in these areas, and you’ll be a lot better off as you continue to develop your company. What will help you to accomplish this goal is if you make a list and then prioritize what you believe is most important that you get done first and continue to work your way through the remaining items.
Leadership Inspirations – Committees
/0 Comments/in Leadership Inspirations /by Richard Long Harkness+“What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.”
Richard Long Harkness (1907 – 1977)
Washington Correspondent for NBC and The Philadelphia Inquirer
Stunning Strategies to Help Your Business Ace Health & Safety
/0 Comments/in Risk Management /by StrategyDriven+If you are compromised at all with health and safety, you are going to find that your business will be suffering from accidents, lawsuits, and a damaged reputation. This is why you need to do what you can to ensure you are the most safe and secure company you can possibly be. These strategies are going to go a long way toward helping you get the best health and safety mandate possible.
Understand Health & Safety
You have to understand how much health and safety matters in the world of modern business. It is important that you take a look at health and safety and understand what it is, and why it affects the business. Health and safety is how you protect your employees and the future reputation of the company. Businesses with poor health and safety mandates are the ones that wind up struggling.
Ensure Your Employees are Protected
It is also important that you make sure your employees are protected on a daily basis. This means that they need to be trained properly so that they understand what health and safety risks there are in the business. They also need to be taught what they can do to make themselves safer on a daily basis. It is also important for you to get online and look at what you can do to make the workplace safer. You might consider digital security, or here is some protective gear you may want to introduce into the business. Ensuring your employees are protected and kept safe is one of the best ways of acing health and safety.
Fire Drills are Important
You also need to do as much as you can to ensure you have proper drills in place. A fire drill is an essential part of the business health and safety mandate. If a fire breaks out in the business, this can be very destructive, so you need to know how to react in the event of a real fire. This is something that makes a fire drill so important for the business and will allow you to keep your staff safe, and the business assets protected.
Incident Reports
There are a lot of things you can do to improve the way you conduct health and safety in your business. But, one of the major things you can do is to keep logs and incident reports anytime something happens. This is important from a legal perspective, but you also need to refer back to it and understand why the incident might have occurred, as well as how you might be able to prevent it in the future.
As you can see, these are just a few of the wonderful strategies in place that you can use to help boost health and safety. Try to focus on what you can do to improve the working conditions for your employees, and make the working environment safer. These are some of the things that will go a long way toward helping you run the business faster.
How Data Management Can Help You Get More from BI
/0 Comments/in Decision-Making, Organizational Performance Measures /by StrategyDriven+To show how business intelligence can be improved via better data management, let’s take a look at how proper data management procedures can drive positive resolutions.
Data Management Suites to Handle Automated Processes
Manually gathering, sorting, and analysing relevant data for your business can be a monumental task that requires a massive amount of manpower. Having the ability to more quickly and efficiently store and retrieve your information in a format that is easy-to-understand and reliable can set you apart from the competition.
Without a proper data management tool such as ZAP Data Hub, you risk missing out on a lot of important data that just can’t be obtained using traditional methods. This reduces your chances of making intelligent business decisions. Data management suites and services are offered by a variety of vendors to meet any industry’s requirements.
Expanding BI Availability Within Your Organisation
If you’re not using information gathering and data-driven decision making across all departments, then you could be missing out on increased productivity and metrics. Lower-level management depends on reports and statistics to be able to do their job effectively; their efforts are hampered by the lack of a fast and simple way to acquire the data they need.
Putting more power into the hands of those who actually use business intelligence to make important decisions can liberate their reliance on other groups and allow for much faster solutions.
Real Time Results Can Make for Quick Decision Making
The slow turnaround time from the request of a data report to its delivery can be a huge roadblock that deters the ability to make speedy resolutions on the fly. The time it takes for a team of people to collect, analyse, and extrapolate real information from a chunk of data is monumental compared to the relative ease in which automated systems can process the same data. Lightning-fast collection and reporting – in real time – allows for far greater flexibility for decision makers and speedy response times.
Automation Allows More Time Spent on Examination
Traditional methods of reporting usually rely on IT or executive branches of your organisation to do the heavy lifting when it comes to data acquisition and publication. In today’s heavily data-driven environment, the need for expedient delivery of records is paramount to success. Following traditional procedures puts your organisation at a disadvantage compared to those who understand the importance of proper data management. It has never been easier to automate these laborious data collection and reporting tasks with modern data management solutions, thereby giving your IT department more time to work on their primary tasks.
Companies live and die by the fortitude of their data management and governance principles. Those that have a tenuous grasp of their data and what it really means are doomed to make poor decisions. Getting the most out of your BI tool requires modern methods and technology-driven protocols.
Customer Service: Are You Doing Enough?
/0 Comments/in Customer Relationship Management, Entrepreneurship /by StrategyDriven+Time is of the Essence
If there is one cardinal rule in business, it would be that time is money. When it comes to customer service, it is vital that anyone running a help desk has instantaneous access to any information the customer may need to resolve their issue. How many times have you been transferred from department to department only to find there is only one person who is able to answer your question, even though it may not be something they would ordinarily handle?
With an IT solution such as SysAid’s help desk, this would not be an issue. It’s only a matter of accessing a user-friendly dashboard to find the solution or department necessary to answer the customer’s question or resolve their issue. Rapid resolution is a way to save time and, consequently, money. Time is money and every minute lost equates to dollars and cents down the drain. Don’t forget that the customer’s time is also valuable. Are you resolving issues or answering questions in the quickest, most direct manner? If not, then you are most definitely not doing as much as you could.
No One Likes Getting the Runaround
One of the most important tools you can give your customer service reps is the information they need to handle calls quickly and efficiently. As mentioned above, altogether too often customers call in to a help center only to be transferred to a wrong department or person. Are your customer service reps equipped with the IT they need to efficiently route calls where they need to go? Do they have the information at hand to answer questions which are not overly technical?
Given the right help desk platform, any customer service rep should be able to answer tier 1 questions quickly and accurately without the need to transfer a call unless the question is beyond what they are legally or professionally allowed to answer. While wasted time is the number one customer service complaint, being given the runaround with repeated transfers comes in at a close second. No one likes getting the runaround which is both frustrating and time consuming.
The Value of Customer Retention
Unfortunately, altogether too many businesses are so wrapped up in customer acquisition that they fail to realize that customer retention is even more important. It takes a lot less marketing money to keep a customer than it does to find a new customer, and this is why customer service is so vitally important to any business.
If you are experiencing a higher than average turnaround in customers or clients, you probably aren’t doing enough in terms of customer service. Although no customer service rep can be expected to be an expert on every level of a business, there are IT tools to give them what they need to satisfy incoming calls. Get this right and you will notice a growing customer base, higher profitability and a customer service desk that does just what it’s supposed to be doing – serving the customer to keep them happy and loyal. In the end, that’s the key to success.