Starting a business is exciting and challenging; however after the initial surge of activity the day to day running of your business can become routine and repetitive. Once busy and thriving you may then find yourself reacting to requests or supplying when demand dictates and ignoring the proactive side.

That’s when things can take a downturn and potentially go pear shaped if you don’t initiate a few working systems to protect your business and assist you and your staff.

I read an article recently about a medium sized business that was lucky enough to be able to expand. They opened shops in other areas; employed more staff but quickly found that their revenue was not increasing. The reason for this was lack of a centralised system, in effect each area was running its own business resulting in duplication and subsequent costly errors became prevalent. Staff found it hard to communicate and important information was being missed.

When starting a business it is difficult trying to establish systems, it’s like herding ducks, by the time you have everything together the ducks have moved on.

There are however, a few things to consider that make life easier for your business BEFORE it is established and ready to move onto the next level.

From the very start set up an easy to use CRM system; make it central and available to all of your staff. There are many available, choose one that fits well into your working environment, ask around check with other business owners and get recommendations before investing your time and money into anything.

It may be beneficial for some of your tasks to be automated such as customer delivery information, receipts or invoices. Build in reminders into your system that would be helpful to you or administration staff.

Think carefully about your business before choosing any system and take time to consider:

• What is the point of the system that we are implementing or changing to?
• Will it replace systems that are ineffective and time consuming? Will it cut costs?
• Will our company benefit from it? Will it give us an advantage?
• How much will this cost and can I recover it? What’s my ROI?
• How will we determine if it is successful or not? What are the critical success factors?

Good effective systems can save you time and money but only if they work as they should.  Take time to pick a system that will suit your business, involve your staff and try to think ahead. This helps you to work smarter, not harder.

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