Are you Bogged Down in the Administration of Your Business?

Over the past few years I have worked with many businesses whose business systems have ranged from pen and paper to large scale ERPs. My passion for systemising businesses has grown from meeting and working with so many owners that have been bogged down in the administration of their business. These owners have not been able to achieve their goals and focus on why they got into business in the first place.

When I start working with any business, I generally begin with two questions.

1. Could your business benefit from increased data integration and reduced manual input?
2. Could your business benefit from being connected to an advisor with live access to your business systems that are constantly up to date?

It was rare that anyone in business didn’t answer yes to at least one, if not both of these questions.

An integrated business system is no longer only available to big companies with big budgets. The introduction of “the cloud” has created an environment where rapid development of technology has been possible and has provided fantastic solutions for today’s SMEs.

Typically, these solutions are now available as Software As A Service (SAAS) which means that up-front costs are reduced and the cost is instead spread out as a subscription model.

Depending on your business, you may be able to integrate some or all of the following:

 

• Budget
• Reporting
• CRM
• POS
• Inventory
• Rostering
• HR
• Payroll
• Accounts Payable
• Payment
• Web Stats
• eCommerce
• Job
• Accounting
• Budget

If you haven’t looked at your systems and processes in the past couple of years, I recommend taking the time out of your business today, to take it to the next level tomorrow. Engaging an advisor to assist in your decision makes good business sense as generally;

• They will have encountered scenarios/issues that you may not have considered;
• They will, in consultation with you, take a holistic view of the business;
• They won’t be a salesperson, pushing you towards a particular product;
• They will ensure that day to day business is not interrupted by new process implementation.

The second phase of taking your business to the next level involves connecting with an advisor on an ongoing basis. Where it may not be viable to employ a full time senior resource in your finance team, similar to the SAAS model, you can engage an experienced financial advisor at the level and for the amount of time that suits you and your business. The benefits of this model are:

• You can gain insights from an experienced finance professional that you otherwise may not have been able to afford.
• The advisor is quite often supported by a team behind the scenes that you are then able to leverage.
• You are generally able to scale services up and down as business requirements change.

A good advisor will challenge you and keep you accountable to your business goals and will be one of the best investments you can make in your business.