Strategies to grow your business.
The start of the year is a perfect time to do an organization check across your business. If we’ve learned anything from Marie Kondo, it’s that organization can be cathartic and help you feel more energized and ultimately more productive and successful. And of course, disorganization just gives us anxiety. But even if your company isn’t a disorganized mess, you should still take the time to review your space and processes and streamline them at least once a year. Here are a few steps to help organize your small business.
Start with your physical space
First, let’s start by reorganizing your actual workspace. Your desk, or wherever you spend the most amount of time is a good place to start. Do you have a lot of paperwork? Perhaps it’s time to upgrade how these get prioritized and stored. Find your biggest pain point and decipher a process for dealing with it. By reducing the stress and headaches around reoccurring organizational problems, you’ll have more time and energy to spend working on more important things.
Improve customer experience
Next, step into your customers shoes. Do you have a brick-and-mortar location? If so, consider updating the flow so it feels new. What’s your website experience currently like? If you’re able to, get with someone unfamiliar with your website and ask them to check it out while you watch. You can learn a lot just by watching how they navigate the different pages and listening to the questions they ask. The key to improved customer experience is to avoid overhauling everything at once, so as not to confuse your customers, but upgrade in segments to keep things fresh. Lastly, don’t forget to make sure your contact information, hours, and special offers (like shipping or curbside pickup) are all up to date across your physical space, website, social media, Google Business page, etc.
Check your security
From physical items, like your store front and valuable electronics to digital security, like passwords and confidential customer information, security plays an important role in your business. Give your business a security overview by first identifying security points and then reviewing possible risks or weakness in your current security. One thing to consider if you keep any Personal Identifying Information (PII) for your employees or customers, ensure you’re updating and discarding of it properly – paper records should be disposed of using at least a cross-cut shredder or destroyed using a burn bag. You should not use a recycle bin to dispose of paper records containing PII.
Identify upgrades
Consider the yearly goals you’ve set for yourself and your business and decide if you need to invest in any upgrades to your current set up. For example, if you’ve resolved to improve your health, look at ergonomic work set ups like a standing desk or an ergonomic chair. If you’re looking to improve customer service this year, check into new customer support programs that could save you time, and possibly, poor customer service reviews.
However, you decide to tackle organization, always try to view it through the lens of productivity. Streamlining processes, making improvements, and bringing on new systems may feel like an extra expense or be time consuming at the beginning, but if they make your business run smoother or allows your employees to be more productive then ultimately, you’re making an investment in its successful future.