Successfully implementing change in your business

Research by Kotter International found that more than 70% of change projects within a business fail. Why is this?

The research findings show that employee engagement is the biggest factor. Whether it is a small change to one or two processes, or a company-wide change, it’s common for staff to feel intimidated by it.

So what can you do for successful implementation of change? Here are the principals from Kotter’s 8-Step Program:

1. Get the team onboard

Build support and create momentum behind the changes you are making by communicating the benefits with the whole company early on.

• • Start honest discussions with your team and give dynamic and convincing reasons to get people talking and thinking about the change.
  • Demonstrate what would happen if you don’t make the change and what else it could affect in the future.
  • Request support from customers in this instance who may love the product, outside stakeholders and others known in the industry to strengthen your argument.

Kotter suggests that 75 percent of a company’s management needs to support a change in order to succeed.

2. Form a powerful coalition from all areas of the business

Share the support you have from all areas in the business (not just the leadership team). Visible support from key people within the organization will bring others on board and create a sense of urgency. Give these people key roles in the change process to help progress it.

Once formed, your ‘change coalition’ needs to work as a team, continuing to build urgency and momentum around the need for change.

What you can do:

• • Identify the influencers in your organization for this change, as well as your key stakeholders.
  • Ensure that you have a good mix of people from different levels within your firm.
  • Ask for a commitment from these key people.
  • Work on team building within your change coalition.

3. Create a vision for change

Create an overall vision that helps everyone understand why you’re asking them to do something.

What you can do:

• • Develop a short summary (one or two sentences) that captures what you ‘see’ as the future of your organization.
  • Create a strategy to execute that vision.
  • Ensure that your team leading the change are all on the same page.

4. Communicate the vision

Embed this in everything you do so it is not lost in the day-to-day operation but a powerful part of this.

What you can do:

• • Talk often about vision and change.
  • Make sure the vision is applied to all aspects of the operations. For example, ensure it’s added to the training and induction program and is encapsulated into the relevant job descriptions and evaluations.
  • Address people’s concerns and anxieties about it openly and honestly.
  • Lead by example.

5. Remove obstacles

Check constantly for processes and structures that need to adjust to allow you to execute the vision and help the change move forward.

What you can do:

• • Look at your organizational structure, job descriptions, and performance and compensation systems to ensure they’re in line with your vision.
  • Recognize and reward people for making change happen.
  • Identify, or hire, change managers whose core role is to deliver the change.
  • Identify areas or team members that stand in the way of change and find solutions.
  • Take action to quickly remove barriers rather than letting them fester.

6. Create short-term wins

Create short-term targets – not just one long-term goal. Each ‘win’ you produce helps further motivate all staff, this is crucial especially if it’s a big change requiring a longer process and helps them stay on track.

What you can do:

• • Reward people who help you meet the targets.
  • Look for sure-fire projects that you can implement without help from strong critics of the change.
  • Don’t choose early targets that are expensive. You want to be able to justify the investment in each project.

7. Build on the change

Keep looking for improvements to the system to ensure the long-term goals are achieved.

What you can do:

• • After every win, analyze what went right, and what needs improving.
  • Set goals to continue building on the momentum you’ve achieved.
  • Develop a culture of continuous improvement.
  • Keep ideas fresh by bringing in new people to lead the change.

8. Anchor the changes in your culture

Finally, to make any change stick, it should become part of the core of your organization. Make continuous efforts to ensure that the change is seen in every aspect, giving it a solid place in your organization. It’s also important that your company’s leaders continue to support the change. This includes existing staff and new leaders who are brought in.

What you can do:

• • Talk about progress every chance you get. Tell success stories about the change process and repeat other stories that you hear.
  • Include the change ideals and values when hiring and training new staff so it is enforced from the start.
    Publicly recognize key members and enablers of the change.
  • Create plans to replace key leaders of change as they move on. This will help ensure that their legacy is not lost or forgotten.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

Seasonal dips in income can be highly challenging when you’re a small business. But there are proactive ways to predict, plan for and overcome these dips in revenue.

The key to dealing with seasonal dips is to know when they’re most likely to occur, and to have measures in place to spread your income and revenue pipeline over the course of the year.

Understanding seasonality in your sector

If your business is seasonal such as pool supplies, or a ski gear specialist, you’ll be used to the peaks and troughs, but many ‘non-seasonal’ businesses experience times during the financial year where sales and revenue peak – and, on the flipside, where sales and revenue experience a pronounced dip.

When income is low at certain times of the year, it makes for challenging times.

So, what are the key ways to plan for this kind of seasonality?

• • • Forecast your seasonality – it’s vital to know WHEN you’re most likely to experience any seasonal dips. Looking at benchmarking reports for your industry is one way to predict the seasonality in your niche or sector. But you can also use your own accounting data to great effect. Look back through your profit & loss reports and spot where the peaks and troughs have occurred over preceding years.
    • Charge a premium in peak time – one straightforward approach is to apply premium pricing for your products/services during the busy season. By increasing your pricing, you boost your overall revenue, giving you more working capital to see you through the leaner months when sales and income are at their lowest.
    • Offer additional peak-time services – offering added extras and other additional service lines during peak time is another way to maximize the season. In the months where customers are most engaged, look to upsell these premium services and offer more value. Satisfied clients will be more inclined to pay for added extras, giving you an increased revenue stream from the same number of customers.
    • Target other markets – exploring other related markets is another useful tactic. When you’re experiencing downtime, look for other ways to monetize your existing assets, products or services. For example, if you’re a hotel where sales peak in summertime, offer discounted conference space in the winter months to boost revenue.
    • Diversify your products/services – if one product/service has a known seasonal dip, look at adding an additional product or service to offset this downtime. For example, a ski resort could promote bike-riding or hiking breaks during the warmer summer months to keep revenue constant. Likewise, a pool maintenance firm could establish an outdoor fireplace business for the colder months.
    • Have a regional e-commerce strategy – If you’re dependent on a small local market, broadening your marketing and e-commerce strategies can help to attract a wider customer base – and bolster sales. Paid advertising through Facebook, LinkedIn or X/Twitter can easily target new geographical markets, bringing in new customers and giving your revenue a much-needed uplift during seasonal troughs.

Talk to us about planning for seasonality

If your business is struggling with seasonal dips, and the resulting impact on cashflow, come and talk to us. We’ll help you identify the timing of your seasonal downtime and come up with a clear strategy for stabilizing your income across the year.

Get in touch to start beating those seasonal dips.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

Trying to get perfect the work/life balance can be a cause of stress in itself.

If you are feeling the strain of building your business and maintaining your life the good news is that stress and a productive existence can go hand in hand. Be mindful and you can find the balance that’s best for you.

How much stress is good for you?

The Yerkes-Dodson law shows that an individual’s performance increases with stress (arousal) until cortisol levels get too high and then decreases again just as sharply – the secret is to stop your stress levels sending you down the other side of the bell curve. How much is too much varies for everyone but by understanding and managing your stress levels you can use them for good.

How to manage your stress

• • • Take Control – Feeling in control can decrease stress from negative levels by presenting the stress causes as surmountable challenges. Get a handle on your project, your tasks or your day by breaking them down into achievable goals and making choices about what to prioritize.
    • Get positive – Your perception of your stress is important, rather than leading to panic and inertia recognize the first quickening of your heart rate calmly as powerful, making you more alert and capable.
    • Connect – Social support reduces stress so good relationships within a team and the wider office environment make everyone more resilient to stress.
    • Exercise – A good workout reduces bad stress and is good for the brain as well as the heart and lungs.
    • Sleep – Poor sleep is bad for stress levels and health so be disciplined about getting a good night’s rest, being exhausted will increase susceptibility to further stress and damage productivity.

If work stress is getting too much, talk to us.

We can help with managing systems, technology, payroll or other financial and administrative management. We can help with your business worries so you can get back on track.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

The average business owner needs an additional four hours in their working day to complete their admin, according to recent research by OnePoll.

If your people are spending 20 hours per week wading through tedious and unproductive admin, that’s bad for the business and for your efficiency. Fortunately, technology and software automation can go a long way towards automating these low-level admin tasks.

Better productivity through automation

Automation is an important way to ease your business workload, with a host of different business apps and cloud solutions offering ways to automate your admin.

With ‘smart business tools’ increasing in number and choice, software is utilizing automation algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cognitive solutions to help remove the mundane admin tasks from your workflows.

Core processes that will benefit from automation include:

• • • Automated bookkeeping – Simply take a photo of your receipts, expenses and invoices and ‘optical character recognition’ (OCR) technology will digitize the output and pull it through to your accounts software. No data entry, no human error and no lost receipts! We can do the rest to ensure your records are accurate.
    • Automated credit control – chasing up debts and late-paying customers takes time. Automated credit control apps track your debtor numbers and automatically sends out customized chaser emails as soon as an invoice is late. This reduces your credit control time, speeds up cash collection and cuts your aged debtor figure.
    • Automated payment collection – the easier it is to pay you, the faster your customers will pay. Automated card payments and cloud-based Direct Debit solutions allow you to automatically take payment from a customer as soon as an invoice is due. Some solutions will even automate the invoice matching and bank reconciliation process.
    • Automated reporting and forecasting – the better your reporting and business intelligence, the easier it is to make informed decisions about your company strategy. Accounting platforms and fintech tools now offer automatic, real-time reporting and forecasting, giving you access to the important numbers and metrics, fast.
    • Automated digital marketing – digital marketing is key to raising your brand’s profile. Marketing platforms offer important time-saving ways to create, schedule and post social media content, or email automations to send a pre-programmed cadence of emails to specific target audiences within your wider customer base.

Talk to us about embracing the power of automation

If your admin is holding you back, come and talk to us about how automation can pick up some of the heavy lifting as well as giving you the metrics you need for decision making. We can review your business processes and identify the automation opportunities, helping you choose the best apps to drive your business efficiently.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

Facebook Business is an excellent platform to raise the profile of your business, build up a customer following, sell your goods and market your brand to your selected audience.

Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world and, it’s about more than sharing pictures of your latest family barbecue. Facebook Business provides you with all the tools you might need to run and market your business online.

For many smaller, micro or freelance business owners, it’s the ideal way to start marketing your company in the online space and reach your target audience.

Key reason to get proactive with Facebook Business

For business owners who are just starting out, a Facebook Business page may be all you need to get your venture off the ground. And for established businesses, Facebook’s huge reach and level of engagement makes it perfect for communicating with your customers and driving prospects to your new content, product pages or news stories.

Setting up a Facebook Business page is free, and will get you set up with the basics. But there are additional features that you’ll need to pay for – so it’s worth factoring these social media costs into your monthly marketing and social media budget.

These are the key ways to get up and running with Facebook:

• • • Create your Facebook Business page – creating a page for your business gives you a company hub on the Facebook platform. You can describe your business, upload your logo and company branding and include all the relevant address details, contact links and opening times that customers will be interested in. This is also where you post your updates, content, videos and new stories. If you’re looking to get started with online promotion, this could be your first step into marketing your business.
    • Post regular fun, interesting and engaging content – posting frequent content is critical for success when using social media. So, try to post something on Facebook at least a couple of times a week, or daily if you have the time available to commit to your social strategy. Post about your latest offers, share videos of your events or case studies, run competitions or include links to your latest blogs and news updates. The key here is to post regular varied content, and to keep your followers engaged and interested. Try to leave the corporate-speak and ‘professional persona’ behind and make your Facebook page a fun place for customers and prospects to visit.
    • Boost your posts and extend your reach – once you have a decent following on Facebook, you can reach a large number of people through organic posting and everyday updates. If you want to extend the reach of your marketing, you have the option to ‘Boost a post’ and promote the content to a wider audience. This is a paid service, but it can be a worthwhile way to target your content to both a larger global audience, or to target a very specific niche audience. It can be tempting to boost every post, but be strategic about the messages you want to promote.
    • Use Facebooks Ads – Facebook Ads will help you to get truly granular with your advertising. This is a cost to factor into your marketing, but it will help to widen the scope of your Facebook presence. Create custom advert copy, add call-to-action buttons, include images/video and target your ad to a very precise target audience. You can filter by age, location, gender, interests, occupation or even by income bracket, making it very easy to hone in on exactly the demographic who will be most engaged by your products and/or services.
    • Set up Facebook Shops – selling online has become the norm in recent times. Facebook Shops allow you to make your own online shop. You can also set up an eCommerce function, through a provider like Shopify, to allow you to take online payments and send out purchased items to customers. With very little set-up time, you can start to generate whole new revenue streams from your online shop, increasing awareness of the brand and boosting your sales and income.
    • Go live with Facebook Live – one way to connect with your followers is to run a Facebook Live session, where you stream live video and audio directly from your page. This could be used to run a product demo, to report from your latest event or to give a face-to-face update on your latest plans for the business. Streaming live is an excellent way for your followers to get to know you and your business – and people buy from people, so becoming a more human presence is a brilliant way to humanize your brand.
    • Be smart and review your Insight analytics – one of the most important parts of any digital and social media marketing is to understand your return on investment (ROI). Facebook’s Insights section shows you analytics covering most elements of the page and your audience engagement, allowing you to see where content and campaigns are working, or where there’s room for improvement. By tracking these metrics, you can go a long way towards improving and evolving your social media marketing strategy.

Start exploring the benefits of Facebook Business

Getting started with social media marketing may seem daunting. But a Facebook Business page can be a straightforward and simple introduction to the benefits of social media.

Start by creating your business page and then gradually explore the options to post, boost and advertise your marketing content. Over time, you’ll build up a growing following of customers and prospects, giving you an online hub from which to run and grow your business.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

As a business owner, it’s never been more important to have a good grasp on your finances.

For many businesses, priorities have changed, customer behaviors have mutated and revenue streams have had to evolve and pivot in order to maintain a profitable business model.

To track, monitor and drive your financial performance in this updated business environment, it’s increasingly important to have a handle on your key financial reports and metrics.

Getting to grips with your financial reports

Whereas in the past, extra cash in the business may have been seen as a surplus that needed to be spent on something, recent years have shown us that having reserves is vitally important for the survival and long-term health of your business.

To truly be in control of this cash, it’s vital that you can dip into your accounts, financial reports and dashboards and ‘see the genuine story’ behind your financial position.

Here are the key reports to focus on:

• • • Budget – your budget is the financial plan that’s tied to your strategic plan. In essence, the budget is your approximation of the money it will take to attain your key strategic goals, and the revenue (income) and profits you hope to make during this period. It’s a benchmark you can use to measure your actuals (historic numbers) against, allowing you to see the variances, gaps and missed targets over a given period.
    • Cashflow Statement – a cashflow statement shows the flow of money into and out of your business. Understanding these cash inflows and outflows in detail allows you to manage this ongoing process, allowing you to aim for a ‘positive cashflow position’ – where inflows outweigh outflows. In this ideal positive scenario, you have enough liquid cash in the business to cover your costs, fund your operations and generate a profit.
    • Cashflow Forecast – forecasting allows you to take your historic cash numbers and project them forward in time. As such, you can see where the cashflow holes may appear weeks, or even months, in advance – and that gives you time to take action, whether it’s increasing your income stream, reducing your underlying costs, chasing up unpaid invoices (aged debt) or going to lenders for additional funding.
    • Balance Sheet – the balance sheet shows you the company’s assets, liabilities and equity at a given point in time. In a nutshell, it’s a snapshot of what the business owns (your assets), what you owe to other people (your liabilities) and what money and profits you currently have invested in the company (your equity). The balance sheet is useful for seeing what stock and equipment the business owns, how much debt (liabilities) you’ve worked up and what the company is actually worth – all incredibly useful information to have at your fingertips when making big business decisions.
    • Profit & Loss – your profit and loss report (P&L) gives you an overview of the company’s revenues, costs and expenses over a given historic period of time. While the balance sheet is a snapshot, your P&L is more like a moving video. It shows you how your finances are progressing by demonstrating how revenue is coming in and costs/expenses are going out (rather than cash coming in and going out, as you see in your cashflow statement and cashflow forecasts).

Talk to us about accounting and financial reporting for your business

We’ll run you through the key reports in your accounting software, and can help you track performance, take action and position your company for growth.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.