Streamline your business in 3 easy steps

Small businesses are generally perceived as agile and flexible. But many small businesses still can’t manage to cope with changing the market climate or the emergence of new competitors in their niche. That’s why statistics show that only one-third of all small businesses survive for more than a decade.

Her are three fairly simple, but important areas which small businesses can streamline to increase their chances of securing their place in the market for a long time.

Step one: Go digital

What does going digital exactly means?

It means that you should consider shifting every business process you have to digital channels or tools. Get rid of the paperwork, you can keep all of your documents in the digital format. This can significantly save you time searching for specific documents or files when you need them and everything can be accessed from home, business trip or meeting, or wherever you may be.

Next thing to digitalize is communication. This includes both internal and external communication. Lots of digital communication tools have emerged over the years that can help small businesses transfer information faster. Emails have long been a standard, but instant messaging has mostly taken over in communication between employees.

Many small businesses are keeping in touch with their customers on social media platforms. By making sure your business is on relevant social media you are able to quickly collect your consumers’ feedback about your business and product/services by reading and answering reviews, or by directly communicating with them on Facebook or Twitter.

Having a website for your small or local business has also grown in importance over the years. Many consumers are searching the internet prior to deciding what product or service to choose. By making sure your business has a website that is visible on the search engines and easy to navigate (especially on mobile devices) can greatly increase the number of people that choose your product or services.

Registering your local company in Google My Business is also a must. This will ensure that when consumers search a business close to them they will be able to quickly find you and all relevant information about your business, like phone address, website, reviews and products.

Step two: Use tools

As mentioned before, many business processes have relocated to the cloud. Various Software as a Service solutions have been developed over the years. You can easily find a solution for every kind of a problem your business needs solving. Many of these SaaS solutions can even be a substitute for some types of work you needed to hire employees for. Many business processes can now be managed online even from the comfort of your own house.

You can use:

• bookkeeping software for managing your finances,
• timesheet calculator for time and employee management,
• marketing automation tools for your online marketing campaigns,
• project management software for managing workflow, and so on.

These kinds of platforms can vastly improve cost-effectiveness and manageability of a small business by decreasing expenses you would need for salaries. And also by introducing greater flexibility to your business by having all the important information available at any time.

Step three: Outsource

We live in a more connected world than ever. More and more companies function with remote teams, working together for the same small company but have never met in person. The advances in the information technologies over the last decade have enabled business owners to compose teams consisting of people around the world.

Faster internet speeds and various project management and communication tools are making these teams functional and effective as they are working from the same offices. If your type of business allows for this kind of solution, it can greatly affect its cost-effectiveness due to the lack of office and communal costs.

Conclusion

By following new trends and technologies that are getting more and more affordable, small businesses have a greater chance of success by streamlining their basic processes. New tools, looser business culture and smart hiring can play a pivotal role in business’ survival and growth in today’s modern world.