razorblue’s Jon Anderson on how robust business processes can be the difference between success and failure…
Efficiency is a critical part of any business, it can maximise margins or provide a competitive edge.
Any successful business owner already knows this. But ask yourself… are there areas that may have been overlooked?
I frequently encounter clients that invest in machinery and staff training, but when asked about how they track business performance, it’s often a large collection of spreadsheets with data from disparate sources that get updated by hand – or worse – they don’t know at all.
Many of them struggle to see the value which better information and better processes can bring.
In today’s highly-competitive marketplace it can often be the difference between making a profit or a loss.
When you don’t notice you’re leaking money on a particular product line, or your job costing isn’t accurate enough to guarantee a profitable return every time – it’s time to take action.
Not having the right, timely information or robust business processes is the difference between success and failure.
So how do you go about tackling this challenge?
The best place to start is usually speaking to your own staff. In my experience I have found it surprising how many great ideas come from the dedicated employees that carry out key roles in your business.
Do you have strong business processes already? Are they being followed? Are they cumbersome and prone to error?
Once a clear understanding of the areas of improvement has been established you can start looking for solutions.
There are plenty of options out there, ranging from system integration to reduce manual data input, through to automated Business Intelligence tools to aggregate multiple sources of information into real-time graphs and dashboards; as well as fully bespoke end-to-end software solutions. Each has its own merit and depends on your particular business needs.
The key to success with any efficiency project is finding a partner with both technical and business process expertise that can understand your business and help you unlock the hidden potential.
It goes without saying that both myself and the rest of the business software team at razorblue are very experienced in helping ambitious businesses overcome these challenges – feel free to give us a call to discuss how we can help.
Jon Anderson
razorblue