If you own a company, large or small, there’s always room for improvement. Whether you’re aiming to boost profits, bring on a few top new recruits, find a new location, streamline your everyday tasks, avoid burnout, or simply beef up your sales and marketing efforts, the good news is that there are techniques for doing so. There’s a trap that some managers fall into when it comes to seeking improvement, such as looking too closely at the short-term and not enough at long-term results.
Some solutions are inherently long term, like seeking out high-quality personnel. In any industry, it invariably takes from several months to a year to bring a new hire up to speed. But good workers are a long-term investment. If properly managed, this sort of improvement project for a company can pay big dividends.
Founders, owners, supervisors, and key managers need to remember that the most effective route to stable, long-term profit is stable, long-term thinking.
Here are seven of the most productive ways to make your company an all-around better provider of goods and services. If you implement them correctly, they have the potential to enhance your bottom line for years to come.
Patch Management
When MSPs (managed service providers) do their job of remotely managing IT systems, they routinely use various technical patches to add security, productivity, and the latest versions of computer programs to their clients’ systems. The entire field of MSP patch management software is broad, encompassing multiple techniques for delivering patches to IT clients as needed.
Proactive MSP’s can remotely solve problems for clients even before that particular customer knows anything has gone wrong. You can add an extra level of efficiency to your company’s operations by contracting with a reputable MSP. That way, your entire computer system will always be up to date, well-armed against hackers, and well protected from viruses and other forms of malware.
Upgraded Documentation Practices
In this era of sophisticated technical systems that are able to store voluminous amounts of data, governmental and industry requirements for documentation have grown. It’s now routine, for example, for mid-size to large companies to retain hundreds of thousands of pages of data about their financial activities, customer relations, and transactions. Even small business owners are discovering the need to retain everything, at least for a certain amount of time.
The need for detailed, comprehensive documentation has never been greater. To put your company on the right track when it comes to the documents, you need to have on hand, you can either outsource the task or have an in-house technical professional do it for you. The goal is to follow industry standards for document retention but also be careful to adhere to federal, state, and local laws that pertain to what you need to have on file for legal purposes.
Burnout Prevention
Corporations and small entities that have burnout prevention programs in place have a better chance of keeping the very best employees, surviving the ups and downs of the economy, and growing consistently over time. What do these programs consist of? In larger organizations, they encompass requirements for upper management and line-level supervisors to visit with psychological health counselors on a regular basis.
This point has met with some controversy but has withstood legal challenges as long as new hires are made aware of the requirement when signing on.
The advantage of this type of proactive wellness counseling is that it helps workers discover when they are showing signs of undue stress. Police and fire departments have uses oversight operations like these for many years with solid, measurable results.
Other components of anti-burnout plans include things like mandatory vacations twice per year, extensive opportunities for company-sponsored fitness classes, social activities for workers and staff, and strict limits on overtime
Annual Marketing Revisions
Want to make an investment in the future of your organization? Regularly change up your sales and marketing tactics. Not only does the same old make our team members bored and under-motivated, but it can strike clients that way, too.
Even the largest corporations in the world follow this principle, to a degree, by routinely opting for fresh ad campaigns, selling methods, and marketing techniques. When it comes to selling goods and services, both the seller and the buyer have to be motivated. At least once per year, you should consider redoing your own efforts in this area. Don’t let stale, outmoded slogans, sales channels, and advertisements get in the way of your success.
Create a Solid Presentation
There’s no substitute for building, from the ground up, a solid presentation. In this case, you should focus on creating a half-hour talk, with slides and graphics, about what your company does and why people need your goods or services. Don’t leave anything to chance in this effort.
Rehearse until you have it down without using note cards, no prompters, and no cheat sheets of any kind. Only in this way will you be able to internalize the speech, understand it from the inside out, and hear it the way your audience does.
Corporate leaders who have excellent, basic presentations ready to go on a moment’s notice are much more likely to bring in new customers year-round, even in difficult economic times.
Outsource Non-Specialties
Unless you have experts on staff, try to outsource as many tasks as possible. There’s no need to go overboard, of course, but consider using outside help for chores like payroll, occasional legal advice, content writing, maintenance, computer programming and troubleshooting, and more. This is the smartest way to focus on whatever it is you do best, and leave the areas in which you’re not an expert to someone else.
Ramp Up Community Service
Make yourself more visible in the local community by volunteering for events, contributing to little league-type teams, putting together company groups to do charity work, and similar efforts. You’ll find that not only do your workers enjoy the chance to take part in these activities, but your organization is in a win-win situation by helping others while you boost your corporate profile.