Business systems are crucial for the long term success and profitability of your business. Most small business owners can’t afford to think small. They always need to keep their mind on growth strategies to help them achieve long-term goals and profitability.
But becoming profitable in the first place often requires business owners to work long hours on a shoe-string budget. They don’t always have time to implement business systems that will support them when they’re ready to scale. It’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to use free or low-cost solutions that can get them up and running, but hold them back as their needs evolve.
Business systems assist with growth
If you’ve noticed, month after month, your profits are continually increasing, it’s likely time your business takes steps to increase capacity.
Beyond financial growth indicators, at this stage you may have already noticed a need for change. You may have experienced:
- A spike in the number of buying customers, which has put stress on your current business systems, resulting in service delays
- Internal bottlenecks which have negatively impacted productivity or
- Poor cash flow because you’ve fallen behind with outdated financial systems.
If you’ve experienced any of these issues, it may be time to look at hiring more staff, implementing new business systems – or both.
Business systems help reduce errors
Too many mistakes may be the direct result of capacity issues from sudden increased growth – or an indication your business systems weren’t the right fit in the first place.
Errors are a serious problem for any small business, and pose a big risk to your long-term sustainability. A small business that frustrates its customers by losing orders or filling them incorrectly, makes poor decisions because its numbers are inaccurate or fails to maintain adequate inventory, can quickly find itself losing money or even closing its doors.
If you notice consistent mistakes in one or more areas of your business, looking at your business systems is a good place to start. Then you can make appropriate changes to eliminate frustrating and costly errors, and increase overall efficiency and profitability.
Business systems improve customer relationships
How much time do you spend working through paperwork and completing manual tasks? Wouldn’t that time be better spent developing and nurturing relationships with your customers? With systems now making some of these manual and time consuming tasks automated, you’ll have a lot more time to create exceptional customer experiences, which will lead to repeat business down the track.
Implementing new business systems
Change can be challenging for businesses, but without change, it’s difficult to reach your full potential.
The key is to stagger big changes over time and, whenever possible, overlap implementation of new business systems to minimise service disruptions.
Follow these tips when it’s time to upgrade your business systems:
- Review your future plans for your business. Where do you hope to be in a year or two? How will you get there? Getting clear on what your business needs in the short and long term will help you decide on the business systems to implement.
- Shop around for simple to use all-in-one solutions that can handle more than one need – for instance, your online accounting system may also offer inventory management. Take care to choose business systems that integrate easily with each other to maximise efficiency wherever possible.
- Share plans to implement new systems early with your employees. Together discuss the problems a new system will solve so staff are eager to embrace the change – and learn how to make the most of any new business system.
How we can help
Business System Workshops
Start thinking about your business in ways you never have before. Take your vision, develop a plan, and execute. Here are the top 3 reasons you should book into our next Workshop:
- Technology is moving at such a fast pace and is evolving rapidly. Learn how you can successfully implement technology to move your business to the next level.
- Whether you’ve been in business 12 months or 12 years, there are always things you can learn, improved ways of doing things, better systems you can implement. Our workshops will help you unlock the missing potential in your business.
- You may be the only one at the top, but you’re not alone. Whether you work on your own or have a team, sometimes running your own business can be isolating and you can become a little ‘tunnel visioned’. This is your opportunity to meet and learn from other motivated business owners.
Are you spending too much time putting out fires? There’s lack of consistency with your output? You have high customer churn & low customer loyalty? Lack of good systems can mean your business can’t grow to its full potential, and you’re losing money.
Here are the top 3 reasons you should book into this workshop:
- Create the business of your dreams – no longer putting out fires and able to step away knowing things are going nicely without you.
- Keep customers loyal and coming back because they value the consistency your business provides.
- Your business can be more profitable when good systems are at the foundation.
Final Word on Business Systems
Regardless of what your business does, how long you’ve been operating for or the size of your team, every business can improve and thrive when good business systems are in place.
Book a discovery call with Sarah
PS. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you eradicate financial stress in your accounting firm or professional services business – faster …
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Book a time with me privately and we’ll do a deep dive into your Xero file to help you optimise for cash flow, efficiency and growth. Click here to book: Book a time with Sarah