2017 has come and gone and 2018 is here! Life goes on for most business leaders and for most businesses all the employees are looking to leadership to provide direction. As a business leader what are the resolutions you have made for your business to survive in the New Year and to get ahead of your competition?
While I don’t claim to be an expert of every business out there, making sure you have the following in place will improve your chances for making it in 2018:
Make sure your Business Systems are up to date and you are using a supported version of the system
Many businesses run on old systems that are no longer supported by providers such as Microsoft and are not compatible with the operating system. While this may sound like a shrewd move as far as saving on upgrade fees, it is a costly mistake that puts a business at risk. Because of the requirement to run on older operating systems which are also no longer supported, most of these platforms can no longer be updated with the required security updates, and hence are vulnerable to security breaches and threats.
Find and Implement a good Business Intelligence tool, analyse your data
Most businesses collect so much data about their operations but no effort is expended in analyzing and understanding the data and turning it into useful information for decision makers. Make it a point to spend time trying to understand data and what it means for the business and how you can use it to get ahead of the competition. In this day and age if a business is not able to analyze their data, they will not be competitive. Knowledge about how your products are performing and which supplier is providing you with the fast-moving products allows you to make the right decisions for your business.
Implement a CRM tool, know as much about your customers as possible
Giving your sales and customer service teams access your customers’ information and about their behavior provides the best chance for your team to keep on top of your competition. Tools such as Dynamics365 CRM and Click dimensions provide you with unlimited amount of information on how your customers are behaving from your website to making orders and any issues a customer might be having. While the idea of recording all customer interactions may sound daunting to an average business, there are now a lot of tools available to assist in automating some of these interactions, such as unified communications platforms for integrating your CRM platform to your phone system.
Invest in Security
If you haven’t yet invested in a proper security system including monthly checks with signed SLAs, you not only are putting the company at risk, you are also putting the livelihoods of your employees in danger. Most companies assume that responsibility of taking care of their systems lies with the provider of their ERP System. Unless you are getting a monthly bill that contains a line on security updates and backup testing or your SLA contains details of all this, you are still responsible for your own data and security. While most providers claim to be big businesses because of the number of employees they have, always ask for a provider’s security framework before doing business with them. That is when you can determine whether a business is worth dealing with.
If you would like to be assisted with implementing any of the above for your business please contact us at Eagle360 Consulting.