2017 – The Year To Spark Your Business Processes

Most New Year’s resolutions that you hear about, the usual ones such as quitting smoking, cutting down on chocolate or hitting the gym to lose weight, are all based around personal goals. The importance of starting a new year afresh gives us all a chance to not only reflect on the past year and decide what was good and not so good, but to also implement change where necessary to make us feel more positive and set us on a path to greater things.

These goals and the positivity they create, do not have to be restricted to our personal lives, however. Small businesses can also create impactful resolutions, reflecting on their business over the past year and decide on ways to do something differently, to bring about positive effects throughout. The New Year creates the perfect time for putting ideas which will help your business into action. We list a few ideas below of the type of small changes you could make which should have a big impact on your business this year:

1. Take action to update your current digital presence

If it has been a while since you have modified your website, or spent some time to check where your digital presence lies in relation to competitors, take some time to research the best methods that would work for your business. Refresh your content and design if necessary to keep it fresh and up to date.

2. Think of ways you can improve your business processes

Do you have any parts of the business that slow your processes down and are there any ways you could iron out the creases in these? Think about what areas of your business could be improved and allocate some time to find out how you could go about easing the pressure on these areas. May it be implementing a digital system to help with some of your traditional paper systems or refreshing your scheduling system, these changes could have a large effect on the amount of time you save.

3. Get your social media up to scratch

If you have been avoiding this part of your marketing, make sure you take some time to start on it this year. The importance of a media presence is vital to the growth and success of a business these days so it is imperative that you get this set up and make sure it is right. There are plenty of blogs and posts on the right type of social platform to use in your industry/sector and the best ways to set up and maintain these.

4. Move with the times & stay ahead of competition

The competition is strong these days and you have to constantly make sure that your business is staying ahead of the crowd in order to have a chance in growing and going forward. Moving to the cloud or adopting digital methods can be of use to small business, as well as the larger ones. Think of which areas of the business you could do with refreshing and research online the systems and methods out there that will be able to help you with this.

5. Communicate more with your staff & customers

Communication with not just your customers, but your team too is one of the most important, and sometimes overlooked parts within a business. It is easy to become accustomed to the methods and ways things happen when running a business, presuming that everyone is happy continuing as things have always been. It is vital that you maintain communication within your business to find out what your staff are thinking, in order to help you with the points above and be able to maintain the best business processes possible.

One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to go by the phrase ‘We have always done this before’. Continuing with processes that have been used for years may seem like a good idea and the thought of implementing change is often worrying. The enormous benefits of moving with the times and making small adjustments here and there will be overlooked and never realised if a business does not actively make the effort to change and improve.

It is up to an individual company to push forward and challenge themselves, much like with personal goals, in order to aid their business and stay ahead of the crowd in these competitive times. New Years is the perfect time to put these ideas into action and put that spark into your business – so good luck!