Save!

Take the plunge and review where you and your business are financially. Review your budget: are you on target?

From there, you can look for the obvious and immediately tangible ways to cut costs. For example, hidden expenses such as stationary or software.

Revisit Your Goals.

You should be reassessing your goals (both short- and long-term) at least once a year. If you’re having a hard time with that, go back and draw from the inspiration that you had when you first started your business.

Be sure to implement key metrics to assess and evaluate your progress, and to ensure you are staying on track. If you use these metrics consistently, they can be easy indicators that allow you and your management team to adjust, pivot, or adapt to changing conditions in the market by seeing early indicators of challenges.

Motivate

Allow your team to participate in the business’ evolution, allow them to feel that they have a say and their voice is important. It will increase their dedication to you and your business by having them feel as though they are an integral part of your growth – because they are!

Formalize Processes

As a standing business you tend to repeat operational tasks quite consistently, and may rarely look at ways to improve or enhance. This is often an area of oversight for small business owners. However, if you have a formal process in place you can be sure you’re providing a consistent experience to your customer.

Creating a clearly written procedural document outlining things such as, project management phases and responsibilities, staff calendars, suggestion boxes, etc. will take a large burden of yourself as the business owner.

These policies in the end will also give you something to reference when you are required to make a difficult decision or judgement call.

Take the time to sit down with your team to see what they think, their input is valuable!

Cyber Security

…is huge nowadays. With cyber attacks, scams and devious activity on the rise it’s more important than ever that you protect yourself from online and digital security threats.

• Back up your data, either to a hard-drive storage device or an off-site server. There are a variety of options, at all levels of security and cost.
• Keep up-to-date anti-virus software.
• Ensure your firewall network is set up.
• Teach your team about security best practices. They can be your first line of defense, or your Trojan Horse, if they are unaware of how to defend your business.

Purge!

Go through filing cabinets, drawers, stacked boxes, derelict papers laying around. If it’s older than 7 years – get rid of it!

It’s good to be hyper-cautious when it comes to your files and records, however most businesses are encouraged to keep their files, tax returns and supporting documents for 6 years from the date they were filed. When in doubt, contact KBH!

Be sure that any documents you choose to get ride of that you shred them. This helps keep any personal and business information secure. If you really don’t feel like getting rid of all your files, scan them so you still have a digital copy on file.

It’s easy to go into a haze while cleaning and start tossing everything without considering the implications. So what should you keep? As mentioned any files and records that are younger than 7 years, but also things like property deeds, original contracts or agreements for things like partnership or ownership, wills and powers of attorney, etc. These things should always be stored securely in their original physical format in a safe deposit box. They can also be scanned digitally so that you have these records on hand, but then be sure they are behind a secure network and a firewall to protect yourself.

For more tips and business advice, contact a KBH trusted business advisor: info@kbh.ca