1st February, 2018
Understand business systems in the time it takes to write a birthday card.
Just like figuring out what to write on a birthday card, business systems can seem tough.
Before you’ve thought through the message you want to write and find a pen that works, we’ll take you through what business systems are, why they’re beneficial and which areas of your business you can use them in.
That’s about five minutes reading time.
Systems and processes are the essential building blocks of businesses.
A system is a defined set of principles, practices and procedures that are applied to specific activities to achieve a specific result. Basically, it’s about creating a set of shortcuts that will make sure everything still gets done right.
You can create systems for many areas of your businesses. From making sales to building marketing strategies, even to managing the cleanliness of the workspace, systems can make all these tasks easier and more efficient.
Systems are also designed to connect different departments and elements of a business to work together to achieve business objectives.
Effective business systems and processes provide many benefits to the business, its staff and its customers. Here are six major benefits:
Tasks that can be managed by a business system are usually routine and repetitive.
If these activities can’t be automated with technology, a system will mean that staff will have to spend less time and effort doing these tasks, which will save the business time and money.
Having a system that everyone sticks to means that the same task is being done in the same way each time, which should lead to more consistent results.
This will ultimately help your business be more productive, so you can serve more customers and make more money.
Systems give staff a better idea of what’s expected of them, both in terms of behaviour and results.
Developing a good set of business systems that work together to improve your how efficient and productive your business is will allow you to grow at a faster rate.
When systems are written down or set out as a flow chart, it lets you see any double-handling that’s happening. It will also help you find opportunities to streamline processes or remove those that aren’t needed anymore.
Effective systems give business owners confidence that things are going as planned. They provide a way to monitor and control key aspects of the business without having to micromanage.
You can find out more about how monitoring your business systems can help you avoid potential business disasters here.
You can introduce systems to many areas of your business, but here are three that we think are particularly useful:
Every business needs to make sales to make money. One of the biggest challenges when it comes to sales is finding potential customers (or ‘leads’) to sell to.
There are different methods for finding new customers, making sales and automating these processes. These include making lists of businesses that could benefit from your services and cold calling or cold emailing them, or developing expression of interest forms that you put on your website, which develops contact lists for you.
This will save your sales team a lot of time researching potential customers and keeping track of who they’ve contacted.
As you pay your staff regularly, setting up automated payroll systems will save you time and money. They’ll also create records about these payments, which you will need for tax reporting time.
You can find out more about choosing the best payroll system for your business here.
Businesses have many operational tasks, many of which can be automated.
One example of this is stock replenishment. Any business that holds products will have to manage their inventory.
You can manage stock easily with an inventory list that assigns minimum quantities to certain products. If it’s checked regularly and you replenish as required, your business is one the way to running smoothly every day.
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