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Are you sure that you know what makes a business successful?
According to some experts, a business is successful only when its owner is always on the lookout for new ideas and ways to improve or upgrade its business operations.
However, that is never an easy task. Finding ways to make your organization better can be quite difficult. And even when you manage to find something, well, the chances are that someone got there before you.
That, of course, doesn’t mean you should give up if your business performance is satisfactory. Remember, all processes need to be improved.
It does not matter if you want to run your business long-term or sell it. When you take your business to a new level by improving its processes, it will be much easier to put your online business for sale later on and show brokers that it is an opportunity worth their time.
Take a look at the five business processes you can improve starting today.
Business Intelligence
Business intelligence plays a very important role in today’s world of business. BI is a technology-driven process meant to analyze data and present actionable information to help corporate executives, business managers, and other end users make better business decisions.
BI covers a wide range of tools, apps, and methodologies that enable organizations to collect data from internal systems and external sources. The data that is gathered then gets prepared for analysis for users to get meaningful info in the forms of reports, analytics, and so on.
To make better decisions at the office, you need to make good use of the data you pull. The first step would be to collect enough data and what follows is the process of adding context, relevance, and purpose.
So, to start the process the best way possible, you have to find a good BI tool, such as ZoomInfo or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. On the other hand, you can pick a ZoomInfo alternative if your budget is still too tight for such an investment. This way, you will get a quality tool with similar features but at a lower price.
Surveys
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Did you know that your company can leverage surveys to better understand its target market?
As we mentioned before, your business collects data from many sources across numerous channels to improve its operations, increase sales, reduce costs, and uncover product development opportunities.
Surveys, logically, are one type of tool for collecting information both from customers and employees. Well-crafted surveys allow a company to efficiently collect honest feedback, opinions, and responses from customers, and then use that information to improve different segments of the business.
Survey responses can confirm or instigate discussions on strategic business decisions and provide unbiased data to guide decision-making.
Keep in mind that there are two main survey methods you can use:
- Interviews – asking respondents a series of questions and following up with an additional question set based on their answers
- Questionnaires – these are made of sets of questions that respondents can answer individually
All in all, questionnaires are a more popular method and you should strongly consider taking advantage of this survey form.
It would be useful to consider online survey options. For a start, that would suffice. For instance, SurveyMonkey is a proven option that is worth considering. There are, however, SurveyMonkey alternatives, such as JotForm or Google Forms, that have proven to work well for other businesses. So, if you want to get the best value for investment, you should definitely look at them.
Speed Up Your Onboarding Process
Around 22% of new employees are confused about what they need to do during the onboarding process. As a result, this creates an unpleasant experience for the newcomers that could lead to a bad employee turnover rate.
People who don’t have decent experience when being hired are more likely to seek a different job opportunity in the near future. And due to this fact, a lot of HR managers are trying to improve their candidate experiences for new employees.
So, consider how you can speed up the onboarding process and where you can make it easier for both the candidate and the whole human resources department.
Streamline Your Processes
Your company should always be on the lookout for processes that can be streamlined.
For a start, you should try to streamline your contract processes. The problem, in this case, is that a slow contract process gives too much time to customers to rethink the whole deal.
This is why a lot of sales agents cite the ‘time to sell’ as one of the most difficult obstacles for them.
Keep in mind that to get a signature on a contract faster, you don’t only have to speed up the process, but also eradicate errors within the process.
Remember, incorrect or lost paperwork leads to an ongoing exchange that delays the final result. Try switching from manual to digital contract processes and that should fix the issue to a great extent.
Improve Purchasing Approval Workflows
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It is well-known that one of the more significant factors that slow down the purchasing process is approval delays. Managers often spend so much time on this that they overlook purchase requests.
At the moment, about 70% of procurement experts are making the switch to digital, while 20% of chief procurement officers regret not having switched already.
So, keep in mind that digitization not only enables you to exchange manual procurement processes for dynamic digital forms but it also automates your approval workflows.
Consider investing in approval workflow software. With it, you will be able to build complex conditional workflows that allow users to route to relevant approvers automatically based on the organizational approval structure and cost centers.
New documentation is automatically sent to approvers, who can sign it electronically from any device. If approvers miss documentation, they’ll be sent another reminder automatically too.
Final Thoughts
These tips should be more than enough to get your business an instant boost.
However, remember that you have to be on the constant lookout for new improvements and boosts. That is the only way to truly become an industry leader and grow as a business.