GREAT OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT WILL DELIVER YOUR BUSINESS GOALS

Operations management expertise is about doing the little things well every day

You will have no doubt heard of the sometimes over-used saying: “You need to work more ON your business and less IN your business”.

While there is truth in this, the reality of all small business owners is that the vast majority of their time is spent running the business each day. This is unavoidable.

Operations management is where you deliver the goals you want from your business, where you ensure it is delivering the cash flow you need to survive, and where you will spend most of your time. We need to ensure the operation management of your small business is the best it can be.

Unless you get your operation management right, and running your business efficiently, you will be wasting a lot of your precious time, annoying staff and customers, wasting valuable cash, and are unlikely to be achieving your business goals.

Identify where your operations management is letting you down.

To achieve excellent operations management, you must first really understand all the aspects of your business. This will become more difficult the bigger you are, the more staff you have, and the more complex your business becomes.

You need to understand the experience your customers will have when they use your services or buy your products – from the first moment they encounter your business to the time you finish with them.

If your operation management is not up to scratch, your customers experience will suffer. You may not only lose them, but these customers may share their less than satisfactory experience with others.

As small business owners, we can often be so absorbed in our business that we fail to see where we can improve our operation management – we need fresh eyes to help.

Implement the changes to your operations – this is the real challenge.

Once you really understand how your business operates and where you are falling down in delivering an excellent customer experience, you then need to implement the changes to lift your operation management. This is often much more difficult than it appears – you are trying to do this when your time and resources are limited.

Good operations management is achieved through the right systems that have been implemented well.

If you have really good systems that make life easier it also means staff will use them and they will achieve the same outcomes as you. Maybe then you can actually spend more time ON the business.

What are the best software systems for your business?

Could software-based systems deliver the improvements in the operation management you need?

If you are using software systems, are they the most suitable for your business at this stage in its life?

If they are the best systems, have you implemented them correctly and are you using them to their full capacity?

There is likely to be a software system that can deliver on any function you need. Whether it is financial management, inventory control, point-of-sale, project management, time management, customer bookings, customer relationship management or any other function you can think off. Some specialise in only one function. Others do multiple functions.

Cloud based software systems are very powerful but there are so many on the market choosing the best one for your business can be overwhelming and often choosing can be a time-consuming process. No system will fit what you need perfectly. Many over-promise. However, if you get a good system, it’s benefit could be immeasurable.

Implementing systems – the real issue. 

Once you choose a system you need to input all the relevant data and make sure it is implemented well before it goes live. This work can be extensive, detailed and very time consuming. If this is not done well, you could end up with a mess that is worse than what you already have.

We know systems and have implemented many of them.

We can work with you to understand your business with a fresh set of eyes and then help choose the best system for you. We can then help you implement the system or systems that work for you and deliver the overall operation management your business needs.