Whether it’s changing your customer service processes, adopting a new CRM or completely altering your product offering. Business change means moving your company from where it is now to where you want it to be.
Any form of change is likely to affect your daily operations. In the short term it may slow productivity, but it is the long term change that’s important to keep in mind. You’ve identified a part of the business that isn’t working as effectively as it should. Whether it’s costing you money, affecting staff moral or creating a business risk, the start of a new year feels like a good time to make the change happen.
A major part of any business change is to talk to those being affected. Understanding their frustrations, listening to their views and getting their buy in will make any transition easier. If staff aren’t on board, the changes are likely to fail, costing time and money.
Tips on Business Change
- Demonstrate the importance of the change you’re trying to make. It could be giving customer feedback to your team, showing how they’ve been disappointed with service. Providing evidence the impact of lost invoices has had. Or give a break down of costs to show that too much money is being spent in a particular area.
- Appoint someone to lead the changes. Having a trusted member of staff who can lead by example and who others can approach with fears or questions will be valuable.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate. Do this early and often. Employees who feel left in the dark and don’t understand the benefits to them could cause barriers.
- Celebrate the progress you make and acknowledge the wins to prove the change is working.
- Monitor the effort and the results of business change and make any adjustments where needed. Let staff know the positive impact the change is having on the business, and get feedback from those involved.
Business change won’t happen overnight, but don’t lose sight of why you’re doing it, long term gains will outweigh any short term problems.
If you’re looking to change the way you store and access documents, improve your accounts payable process or need a better way to manage your emails, speak to us and understand how we can help.
