The economy may not be ideal right now, but that is no excuse not to do your very best to make your business succeed. Luckily, there are many cost-effective ways you can improve your business to meet current and future challenges. You may not be able to invest in all of these right now, but the key is to plan ahead and strategize which changes will give you the maximum return on investment.
Below is a list of five improvements that our clients have seen great benefit from:
1. Improve Your Website
We’ve said this before, but it’s still true: your website is your company online. It’s how you present yourself to your clients and prospects, and a sloppy website does not say anything good about you. Take the time to research other companies in your industry and determine what functionalities will give you a competitive edge (a fee calculator? a coverage map? etc.) Also browse around other industries to find simple, elegant site designs. Then get in touch with a talented team of web designers, content producers and marketing specialists who can put together a dynamite site for you. You will be amazed at how much this improves your image on- and offline.
2. Develop a Corporate Strategic Marketing Plan
It is very important to have clear goals in mind when developing your corporate marketing plan. If you do not have one in place, now is the time to carefully think through the direction your company is headed and to mold a marketing plan that can help you get there. You should make a list of the channels you will use to market your company, the short- and long-term steps that will move you towards your goals, and the budget that you will allocate for marketing. A robust marketing plan can be the difference between aimlessness and purpose.
3. Invest in Robust Software
Invest in a truly robust software system that enables you to automatically push documents from one step to the next without the need to email back and forth (or worse, use snail mail.) If you already know the right software for your company but have been procrastinating with a purchase decision, go ahead. You will find that the value of a software that dramatically increases your productivity and performance is well worth the initial investment.
4. Go Paperless Today
Have you been putting off that paperless system? Maybe now’s the time to finally get all of your files online. Invest in high-quality, ultra-secure local and cloud storage. Put workflow processes into place that circumvent the need for paper. You will benefit from the peace of mind that comes of knowing that your documents can’t be lost or misplaced (since they exist virtually in multiple locations.) You will also benefit from the efficiencies inherent to a paperless system.
5. Use Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a set of principles and actions which can help you dramatically reduce costs and improve customer service at every stage in your workflow. Six Sigma techniques can be applied in almost any industry, contrary to popular belief, and they are right at home in a business such as title insurance and mortgages. That’s because the workflow processes are long and involve many different people, so they stand to benefit from streamlining and introducing new efficiencies. You can learn more about Six Sigma by reading our previous blog posts on it.
Do you have any other ideas for ways that companies can improve their business in spite of a tough economy? It’s very important to plan ahead, and to consider these types of investments even when you do not have the capital to invest in them yet.
We suggest that you:
1. Create a corporate strategic plan that includes marketing, management, sales and personnel goals.
2. Plan to make small investments over time that allow you to prepare for future economic improvement.
3. Choose what items you are going to act on in order of priority: weigh the need for efficiencies vs. marketing efforts, and make decisions that always keep the long term in mind.
