Best Ways to Improve Your Business in 2016: Look for Low Risk/High Return Investments in Today’s Cautious Times

By Steve Bloom, Owner/CEO, Pragmatek

 

Steve specializes in strategic planning and sales development for growth. To learn more about how he manages change as a business owner, read the follow article – Transforming Your Business Model – from the April 2015 issue of Minnesota Business.

Things look cautious everywhere you look.

As we begin 2016, most every aspect of business is moving forward slowly with caution -- the proverbial yellow flashing light. The market is in the tank, and businesses are slow to invest across the board.

However, this cautionary behavior can have its advantages for those who are willing to bet on the long run. Now is a good time for companies to assess and ask: "Where’s our biggest bang for the buck?" In this era, there are a few areas that stand out: 

Boosting sales via e-Commerce.

More and more, this is becoming the least expensive way of obtaining new clients, and satisfying old ones. There are a few things to investigate in this area:

  • Can your customers order directly from you? If so, have you analyzed how easy that is for them?
  • If your customers don’t order directly from you, yet THEY are willing and able, have you analyzed how to make this investment happen in order to boost your sales? This would apply for those with dealer networks and those who don’t have an online store.
  • How does your internal organization order products from you or the parent company? There are a lot of easy-to-use and inexpensive, cloud-based technologies (see Four51.com) that allow your internal sales organization or stores/physical work sites, to order product, which helps improve turn around, accuracy, distribution and inventory issues.

Reducing waste by leaning out your operations.

  • When was the last time, or ever, you strategically looked at your organization and specific areas such as order to cash, distribution, inventory and logistics, and transportation?
  • While orders/sales might be down, this is a great time to focus internally as to how you can do things more effectively. And once sales pick up, your profits will increase significantly by having made the adjustments internally to reduce waste.

So in times of caution, put the pedal to the medal through that yellow light and look for areas of low risk/high return within your business. When all the lights are green, your ride will be a lot more enjoyable.