Modern Money: Big transformations for your small business

It truly does take a village to transform to a business model that reflects current demands. Business owners need to continuously evaluate their operations, workflows, products and even workspaces to ensure it is meeting the needs of their customers.

As we enter year 3 into an evolving pandemic, businesses are facing a different set of challenges which include a changing workforce, evolving workflow and upgrades in technology which accommodate hybrid workflows and multi-faceted customer interactions.

Let’s face it, making a shift because we thought it was temporary is much easier to handle than facing a transformation, which is a long term commitment with serious financial implications. Not only as a business owner or manager, are you adapting to a new environment, but also managing the emotions and dilemmas of your staff.  It can become very overwhelming very quickly.

During the pandemic, our customers were patient with us and understood. As the months went by a new normal set in. Online meetings and virtually negotiating deals was an accepted way of conducting business.

But, as the world slowly resumes to an in-person environment again, as a business, will we pivot again?  If we don’t continue to evaluate and respond to the changing business environment and the needs of our customers, we can get left behind. 

So what do you do, when you know your business must undergo a transformation to survive? How do you begin, gather information and figure out your starting point?

Here are 6 steps to help you identify and re-establish a plan for your long-term business goals. You don’t have to do this alone. If you don’t have the time or right-inhouse expertise, bring in a consultant to assist. The beauty of this is you can decide to what extent, you wish to have external involvement.

Step 1 – Business Segmentation

Pen to paper or a whiteboard, create some categories to help segment your business into buckets. This will help highlight the current gaps in your business. For example:

1. Workflow from sales to service
2. People vs. tasks vs. departments in your business
3. Your current or future technology
4. Products or services that require modifications vs new products or services.

When you begin to fill in each bucket with what you do today and add in what you need to start or modify, it will help you gain a perspective of what changes need to happen both strategically and with operations. This will be different for each business but generically speaking, the above points are fairly typical to most businesses.

Step 2 – Identify areas that need change or improvement.

Knowing the bottlenecks, in process or technology, that hinder your growth really help you evaluate next steps. Bottlenecks can also include individuals refusing to adopt change.

Write specific questions that you want answers or insights into, such as what new technology can make my day easier, which of my departments can go remote, what products or services are key to my business.

This is also the time to think more focused about your wishlist. This could be new staff, new services, new technology or change in workflow. This helps one to establish a direction.

Step 3 – Prioritize the changes

Knowing which changes are immediate and which could wait for a certain period of time can really help ease the burden and help form a strategy for transformation. Once you have a good understanding of what needs to happen, the implementation plan becomes a little easier to create with an end in sight.

Step 4 – Engage your key stakeholders

Engaging them before you implement your strategy is very important for two reasons.

A. Your core team can immediately tell you what’s working vs what’s no longer working and help identify the gaps mentioned in Step 1.

B. This helps you ensure your strategy aligns with the needs of your business, staff and customers.

Easiest way to start can be through a survey or small team meetings with your staff. Be clear on the objective, stay focused in obtaining answers to your questions, be a good listener and take lots of notes. Just make sure that any meetings don’t lose focus and turn into a complaining session.

Step 5. Connect with your key vendor partners and customers

Your vendor partners and key customers can give you great insights into similar businesses or competitors in your industry. They more often than not, are observing many different trends in your specific niche and can even suggest the latest technology out there that might be better suited to your business. A casual lunch meeting can lead to great suggestions on how you can change without placing too much pressure on your business.

Step 6 – Create your transformation plan

As you begin to receive information from all your important stakeholders including vendor partners, ensure you evaluate this information with steps 2 and 3. Now that you have covered all aspects of the information gathering stage and have prioritized what needs to take place to transform your business. You can now create a strategy and implementation plan that includes a timeline with an end date.

The above steps are a great way to revisit your strategy, bring about the right changes and most importantly to plan financially for growing your business. Be flexible with your implementation strategy and remember, priorities can change. Continuous evaluation is key to any successful transformation.

There are business apps and cloud based solutions that can really help automate your workflow and introduce efficiencies. Or perhaps, hiring people with new skill sets is the answer. Before undertaking any of these, ensure you have a plan in place and whatever new additions you bring on, whether people, process or technology, do make sure it aligns with your plan, can be incorporated within your process within a set time frame and most importantly, train your staff to not only adapt to the change but adopt the change.

My biggest recommendation here will be to not be afraid to bring in the right expertise – whether new or from within the company who can offer a new perspective as well as the micro strategy to tackle the immediate needs of your organization. Investing in organizational consultants or staff members who are solely focused on your operations is instrumental to business owners making the right shift at the right time at their pace. Furthermore more, a progressive organization also attracts great talent and hiring opportunities.