If you want to start improving your business, it’s tempting to just jump in and make changes. Instead, taking a bit of time beforehand to do some planning and preparation can help you to make changes that are more likely to lead to the better improvements. Here are some of the things that will help make the most of any changes you’re considering:
Assess
Before you can make any changes, you need to know what’s going on in your business. Here’s a few ways you can get an idea of where you are and what opportunities might be available:
- SWOT – Perform a SWOT (Strength / Weakness / Opportunities / Threats) analysis to identify areas that need attention or could lead to future growth
- Benchmarking – Compare your business to others in the industry, or to industry best practice to see where your business stands in relation to others
- Market Research – Perform some market research to check that your business is on the right track
- Trends – Stay aware of industry trends so you can adjust your offerings or marketing to suit
- Ask Your Customers – Use informal feedback that’s given to your customer facing staff as well as putting in place a formal feedback mechanism using something like SurveyMonkey to get specific feedback from your customers
creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by Ruby.W.
Set Goals
There’s no point in making changes willy-nilly without having some idea of what you want to achieve. The best way to do that is to set some SMART goals. SMART goals are goals which are:
- Specific – You need to have a specific target in mind. Instead of having a goal to “increase sales” a specific goal would be to “increase sales by 10% over the next 3 months”.
- Measurable – A measurable goal is one that is easy to quantify, so a goal of $10k in profit each month, or “a 5% reduction on the outgoing expenses from December” would qualify. However “a 5% reduction on outgoings” wouldn’t because you don’t know what you’re reducing from.
- Achievable – It’s got to be achievable, if not there’s no point aiming for it as you know it won’t be met. Make sure you’re realistic when setting any goals, it should be possible to make your target, but not easy.
- Relevant – There has to be a point to the goal. An extra 10k in profit next month is a great goal, but if it’s at the expense of customer service or quality and will therefore be unsustainable in the long term (i.e.: you’ll lose customers because of it) then it’s not a relevant goal. It’s also possible to set a goal to introduce a new product – but if the product won’t bring in new customers or increase customers total spend it’s probably not relevant.
- Time bound – You have to set a time in which to achieve your goal. Whether it’s a month, quarter, six monthly or annual you need a specific time in which to meet your goal.
Plan
Before you make any changes, make a plan. Some of the things you’ll need to consider are:
- Skills/Training – Do you have the ability and skills to make the changes you need? It’s likely you’ll need to either hire in (or outsource) to people who have skills you need, or you might want to train existing staff. Most likely there’ll be a mixture of both.
- Best Practice – What is the industry best practice? How can you improve on your existing processes and bring them up level with best practice? Is there any accreditation available?
- Processes – Are your processes necessary? What is the purpose? Do you have things that “have always been done like this”? Often processes remain the same just because nobody looks at what result is needed and examines all steps to getting there to see if they’re necessary.
- Automation – What jobs or processes do you have that are unnecessary and could be automated? Are there any repetitive things that should be eliminated, or could you have software or machinery made to automate the process? How cost effective is it?
- Resources – What resources will be required to put your plans into action? Consider physical resources, financial resources and staffing resources.
Measure
Once you’ve made your changes you need to be able to tell how well they’re working. Some of the ways you can do that are:
- Statistics – Keeping statistics will make it easy for you to see what’s working and what’s not. They allow you to get a detailed view as well as to monitor trends over the longer term.
- Surveys/Formal Feedback – Contact your clients and ask them how they feel about changes you’re making. Frame the questions to keep answers relevant to what you really need to know.
- Informal Feedback – Undoubtedly, your customers will comment to the staff they come in contact with during interactions with your business. Develop a way to get that feedback recorded and passed to the team tasked with monitoring the project.
- KPI – Set some Key Performance Indicators that will allow you to quickly and easily judge the success or failure of your plans.
- Profitability – Probably the most important measure of success. Are the changes increasing your profitability? If not, then what’s the point?
Depending on the changes you want to make, you might only need to do a few of these things. If the changes you’re making are extensive, it’s probably best to do all or most of them. Once you’ve got the preparation done, you’re well on the way to improving your business.
