Building business strategies that actually work to promote productivity has to be a core consideration for every business. Some business owners will try about anything to get there, and their stories will get other business owners to try them out, often with much less success. One of the best ways to build more productive and sustainable business processes is to ensure that they are repeatable. Today, we’ll discuss how building more consistency can really benefit your business.
The security of your business’ digital assets is extremely important, which is why it is disheartening when we see so few organizations taking the steps they need to sufficiently protect them. We thought we would go through some practices that will help you protect these assets and start you on your way to developing a security strategy of your own.
Businesses deal in relationships. They have to create a relationship with their clients and customers to keep them coming in the door, whether they are serving other business needs or consumer ones. Of course, it can be hard enough to manage all of the relationships in one’s personal life… how can one possibly add business relationships into the mix?
Employees are without a doubt the most unpredictable resource within your business. Nothing can be more catastrophic to data security than a careless or untrained worker. Enforcing safe practices and policies doesn’t have to feel like a chore, if training is handled properly. In fact, employees typically become eager to learn how to avoid the latest and greatest cyber-related threats. These threats plague not just our work lives, but our everyday lives as well. Today, we will discuss what you and your employees should be aware of in today’s connected world.
There are many obstacles that any business owner needs to avoid in order to keep themselves from backsliding like Sisyphus did in Greek myth. Some of these obstacles may not be the first that come to mind, either. Here, we’ll review six mistakes that a business owner can make that can prevent them from reaching their goals.
Business owners have a lot on their plate. Even the smallest businesses have a lot of moving parts that need to be attended to, which all add up to a mammoth amount of stress for their owners. Perhaps most obviously, financial matters contribute greatly to this angst.
Every business has a considerable amount of money flowing in and out at any given time, which means that the owner has a considerable amount to keep track of. Simultaneously, there is the need to make sure that any money that is owed to the business is coming in, while the money that the business owes to its employees and uses to pay its bills must be tracked as well. After all, it would be hard to run a business without electricity, which is exactly the situation a business would find itself in if the power bill wasn’t paid.
In addition to financial concerns, there’s managing the human side of the business itself. Business owners have to balance so they can be both a resource and a disciplinarian for their staff members. In order for a business’ staff to be effective and productive, it helps if they are satisfied with the circumstances of their employment. Good employees will seek professional growth, growth that a business owner will want to do everything to encourage for the benefit of the company. Problematic and lax employees need to be addressed by management, ensuring that they aren’t slacking and wasting valuable company time. Oftentimes, if these employees create a human resources issue, it travels up the chain to the owner.
A business’ clients are also an important consideration. After all, the purpose of the business is to provide a good or service to these clients, so it is essential that these clients are treated well and professionally. A business owner needs to make sure that all processes are being followed as their team interacts with their clients, delivering what has been promised and following up promptly.
This is all without mentioning the technology that supports a business, and all the processes that need to be completed to keep this technology up and running. Any software patches need to be applied, all security solutions need to be kept updated, and the company backup needs to be tested.
Finally, there’s all the responsibilities that a business owner has that don’t actually pertain to the business. Family matters and personal concerns also come into play in anyone’s life--and of course, all these concerns aren’t organized so nicely in real life. It is almost as if these concerns were all thrown into a blender and pulsed, making business and personal life that much more difficult to manage.
BEI can help a little by taking over some of these responsibilities. By managing your information technology, our services allow you the confidence that your IT will be ready for your business to use--and that you have a trusted resource to lean on if things go wrong. Give us a call at (844) BIZ-EDGE for more information.
There’s no denying that the numbers on an IT invoice can be intimidating, to say the least. However, when making important decisions about your IT, you need to also look deeper than the numbers, to what you are actually going to gain by making one investment over another. This is the difference between comparing cost and comparing value.
Analyzing Cost
The word ‘cost’ is one that is familiar to most. In essence, it is what you have to give up in order to receive something else. While it is perhaps most familiar in the financial sense, cost can also refer to time, effort, or any other finite resource. By analyzing cost, you are directly focusing on how much less of one of these resources you will have, in the exchange for more of another.
Don’t get us wrong, it is important to factor in your costs as you evaluate your business’ plans. The problem comes into play when cost is the only factor that is considered, as cost only tells half of the story.
By its nature, analyzing cost strictly focuses on what you lose. What resources will you be sacrificing to do this? How much money will doing that put you back? What will you be unable to do if you take this course of action?
In order to properly make a fully informed business decision (or any decision, for that matter), you have to also consider the other half of the story as well: that decision’s inherent value.
Analyzing Value
Counter to the analysis of costs, analyzing the value that a decision will bring you can help you determine what you gain. While again, it is perhaps most often seen in the financial sense (“Is this purchase worth it?”), value can take many different forms. Sometimes, making a particular decision will boost your standing with a prospective client, or will open you up to more opportunities down the line.
So, rather than focusing on what a new workstation will cost you financially, compare that cost to the potential benefits that the new and improved workstation will be able to bring to your business. Will it increase your productivity? Will you have access to improved solutions that ultimately translate into improved employee satisfaction, and therefore, greater talent retention? Will you be able to better serve your market, fostering loyalty in new and existing clients?
Calculating Your IT’s Value
In order to establish how much value a certain endeavor or initiative has brought your company, it helps to compare it mathematically. Not only will this help you to track what you have invested into a given initiative, it will also help you to calculate the optimal outlay for maximum value.
To calculate this, it may take a little trial-and-error, with some simple tracking of the results. Using a simple “x=y” equation, insert your invested cost for “x” and the result for “y.”
Let’s assume you’re determining how much time to spend on a particular initiative. If, for example, you figure out that your investment into your technology increases productivity, you can track the ratio of productivity-to-investment until the benefit tops out and starts to fall again. Let’s further assume that you observe that investing $25 extra into a workstation increases productivity by 10% and investing $30 extra will increase it by 17%. If investing $31 only increases productivity by 16%, you’ll be able to narrow down your optimal spend to between $25 and $30, maximizing your value.
BEI can offer you the solutions that can provide you with maximum value. Reach out to us at (844) BIZ-EDGE for more information.