Whether you believe in resolutions or not, making a list of action items can help you achieve your goals. Now is the ideal time to reflect on how you and your business performed last financial year and consider how you can make this financial year more prosperous and exciting.
Here’s some tips to get you started:
1. Prior planning = positive performance
Research has shown that business owners benefit from having a business plan. These plans help business owners prioritise how they should spend their time and money, set goals, anticipate obstacles and determine risk. The business plan is also a good opportunity to identify and plan for future needs such as infrastructure and staffing requirements.
2. Consider the true cost
The amount you pay for something is just the initial outlay. It can be easy to forget to factor in maintenance and upgrade costs. Only when these are considered can the true cost be determined. For example, some computers on the market are ridiculously cheap. But how long before they become slow and clunky? A good computer will cost a little more upfront but should last for three to five years when well set up and maintained regularly. Similarly, as a computer comes to the end of its working life it costs more to maintain. At this point you should consider whether you would get better value if you spent the money on a new machine. This is an ideal opportunity to have the computer professionally set up and customised to fulfil your specific needs, which will save you money by giving you greater efficiency and less downtime
3. Keep your knowledge and skills up-to-date
Regularly reviewing the news and happenings within your industry to help you keep informed and educated, allowing you to identify opportunities before your competitors. Furthermore, technology is changing at such a rapid rate that new software and other platforms are constantly coming online and could help your business. Even learning how to use new or better use existing software will help put you ahead.
4. Learn how to delegate
It is easy to become bogged down and spend all your time working in the business (with clients). This is important, but it is equally as critical to spend time working on your business in order to achieve growth. Review all the tasks you do and consider who could possibly take over them. Then do it! A little training may be required but the potential gains for your business make this a solid investment
5. Make the most of technology
Use technology to its fullest potential, to automate and minimise mundane daily tasks. From the introduction of a new system to help you keep you informed of client progress on projects, to even simple tricks like reducing the size of your inbox using rules can have a big impact on your productivity, can help improve your efficiency and effectiveness.
And finally, keep your resolutions handy so you can look at them regularly and track your progress. If we can assist in anyway in addressing these resolutions through our solutions, contact us today. Good luck!