Business Systems
Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited (1995), made famous the idea of working on, not in, your business. Even if you are the only one delivering your service, you need to create integrated systems to make your business more efficient and provide a consistent client experience. Many small businesses have outdated or inefficient processes that take up too much time.
If that’s the case in your business, do a stocktake of your current processes and technologies to identify gaps and areas of inefficiency. If you’re providing a product or a service that others can deliver without your presence, your business should be able to run efficiently while you’re holidaying in Hawaii.
If you need to improve your technology, consult experts and shop around for the best value for money. You must be able to totally rely on your technology not to let you down and have all your computer systems thoroughly backed up. As my IT supplier says: ‘It’s not a question of if you’ll have a hard disk failure, it’s a question of when.’ Ideally, you should have your back-up in a separate location from your office.
At the same time as making your business systems more efficient, document them so new staff can refer to them and you can review them regularly. Documenting your systems as you go will also save you from spending hours writing up your systems retrospectively when you sell your business. When you write your systems, keep them simple.
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