Streamlining Your Business: Make A Change
Running a business is one of the most exhilarating aspects of your professional career. You have chosen to ditch the 9 – 5 and relinquish the security of a steady wage all in an effort to follow your passion, be your own boss and obtain a little more professional freedom. You love your new role as finance bod, marketing manager, reprographics assistant and CEO all rolled into one. However, there’s a little voice inside telling you that you need to move with the times. You and your staff are comfortable in your current business set up. Work is stable, orders are coming in and revenue is up on last year.
This doesn’t mean that you are working at your optimum capability but you are comfortable and the temptation to settle for what you’ve got is all too easy to succumb to. However, you also know that if you refuse to adapt and move with the technological advancements encompassing your industry, your company could quickly become obsolete and your business could fail. This is not an option for you. It’s vital that you take the brave decision to make a change, streamline your business and futureproof your company.
Make A Plan
As with every decision taken for your business, you’ll need to do your research and work out how your company needs to change to keep up or surpass your rivals and maintain its prominent position within your sector. You may need to implement a new staffing structure, purchase a new piece of software or set up a series of training sessions for staff to allow the smooth integration of new methodology into the workplace.
It’s vital that every stakeholder involved in the change is able to voice their opinion. Resistance to change is common as people become content in their ways of working and are reluctant to shift their mindset to a new and seemingly unnecessary challenge. Take a look at paycor.com to gain a deeper understanding as to why your staff may be hesitant to embrace your proposals for change.
By engaging all stakeholders in a dialogue and convincing them of the need for change, you can increase the likelihood of streamlining your business. It is your job as the business owner to show your staff team how the changes that you propose will make their working life easier, more efficient or less time consuming.
Back Up Your Want For Change With Data
It can be incredibly difficult to generate enthusiasm for change within your staff team without demonstrating the benefits to them. Back up your plans with statistics. If a piece of software will integrate admin, payroll, and invoicing functions, show a dummy run of the package to show just how intuitive it is to use. People are innately visual and appreciate seeing a tool working in action.
New software can revolutionize the workplace. Integration is the new buzz word. Whether you sign up for a package that merges all of your accounting documentation or allows all communications to be in one place, you will be enhancing the work life of your staff team and improving your company’s end-user experience.
If you run a small firm of plumbers, electricians or engineers, you might be keen to streamline your field management functions. You could investigate a company like optsy.com that provides the option of managing staff workflow more efficiently, by merging work schedules, adapting timetables on and off site and creating reports all using one piece of software. By initiating a change that makes the lives of your off site workers, office personnel and accounting assistants simpler, you will be freeing up more of their time to work on other aspects of the business.
Implementing Change
Before you begin to drive the change forward, you need to make sure that any pockets of resistance have been eliminated. A lack of desire to change is one the biggest threats to your company’s capability to change. With maximum stakeholder buy-in, your company is much more likely to accept, implement and adapt the changes when they come to fruition.
Setting short-term objectives that are easy to meet can boost morale and stabilize a changing ship. You may want the time a typical invoice takes to generate to reduce from three minutes to thirty seconds or you might want all WebEx calls to go through the new software system within three months of its set up. As soon as your mini goals are achieved share this with your employees and celebrate your success as a company. Send out a weekly update email to show your team that they are valued and ask for feedback on the current changes. Your people on the ground will be able to tell you what’s working and what isn’t. This way you can monitor the success of any changes and adapt accordingly.
Keep Going
Driving your business forward is what will keep it as a market leader and enhance its reputation. After you have implemented a successful change, keep monitoring it and don’t tail off with your update emails. Your staff will appreciate being in the loop early on, should any more adaptations need to be made.
Any change within your business should be well thought through and genuinely needed. It is a huge mistake and often a catastrophic waste of money to change for change’s sake. Just because your rivals are adapting their work processes doesn’t mean you should be scared into doing so. Not every company is the same and you should have the confidence to make changes only when necessary.
Your business is an entity that you have nurtured from its most embryonic stage to its now fully fledged money making stage. It’s up to you to ensure that your business remains relevant to your customer base in an advancing technological age. Take a look at your business vision today and decide whether you can streamline your company and make a change for the better.
