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Home | Managing a Remote Team

As a business owner, you’ve undoubtedly faced a great deal of challenges since March 2020. At that time, many businesses made a sudden and drastic shift away from the traditional, office-based work environment to a work from home model. While this introduced many efficiencies and came with a great deal of perks for both business owners and their employees, it also brought on a new set of challenges, including how to manage a team of employees that are working remotely.

 

Here are three tips to help managers and business owners manage remote teams in a way that maximizes their output and efficiency while allowing and encouraging them to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

 

Don’t skip the small talk

We’re all busy, and sometimes small talk can seem frivolous. However, when we manage teams that are working from home, small talk is important in building rapport with your team and making sure they are satisfied in their role and their environment. Take the time to find out what your employees did this weekend or ask about the painting on the wall in the frame behind them. This may not seem important in the moment, but it really helps employees stay connected to their teams, and experience some of the social interaction that is so abundant in the office environment.

 

Turn on your camera

We’re all using video chats more than ever, and it can be tempting sometimes to turn off your camera during these meetings. Resist the temptation and keep your camera on at all times. Tone of voice is important for meaningful communication, but so is body language and facial expressions, and these are lost without physically seeing the person you are conversing with.

 

Ask a lot of questions

Unhappy employees are unproductive employees. Take the time to have one-on-one video chats with each of your team members regularly. This ties back to building rapport. Ask specific questions about their level of satisfaction with their work environment, find out how they are feeling emotionally, if there are isolation issues, internet connectivity issues, ergonomic equipment issues etc. If there are issues, fix whatever is possible to fix. Keeping your team happy is key to a successful remote work environment.

 

Managing a remote workforce is tricky and there’s a lot more to it than these three tips. However, if you commit to these and incorporate them into your day-to-day management strategy, you will build a solid foundation of open communication with your team that will help give you better insight into their satisfaction and performance.

Home | Why It’s Time to Embrace Remote Selling

As industries change gears to succeed in their rapidly changing business-environments, one thing has become clear. Remote selling is here for the long-term, and to succeed is to adapt.

Remote selling means exactly what it sounds like – buyers and sellers make a deal without meeting in person. For some sales teams, this often means attracting and initiating contact with prospective customers remotely before closing a deal, while for others this means remote relationship nurturing and staying on top of their customer’s needs to ensure those needs are met remotely in a timely manner.

The success of remote selling relies heavily on technology – like inside sales, remote selling usually involves making contact via phone or internet rather than sitting in a board room or a golf cart.

While remote selling can have its challenges, it also brings great benefits. These include:

Reduced costs

Think about your business’ overhead expenses, from office space to equipment, salespeople’s travel expenses and more. When your sales team is working remotely, these costs are drastically reduced.

Increased efficiency

Remote selling means less time spent traveling, which allows more time for qualifying leads, making new connections and refining your sales strategies and processes.

Farther reach

When your team is selling remotely, all they need is a mobile device or computer and a reliable internet connection and they can connect with new partners and customers all over the world.

Happier team

When your sales team is empowered to choose their work environment and no they longer have to deal with the stress and pressures on their personal lives of work-traveling, they are happier. Happier employees are more engaged and motivated. A study out of Stanford University reported that remote workers are 13% more productive.

The year 2020 has taught the business community important lessons about agility, innovation, and flexibility, and the success potential of remote selling is one of the clearest examples of these lessons.

For other business and technology articles, be sure to follow our BLOG at ERP Advisers website.

Home | Pricing Strategies Based on Data

Using relevant, accurate information to inform your business’ pricing strategy is key to its success. Proper data analytics as the foundation of your strategy allows a company to see how pricing fits into the bigger picture and helps you determine which factors influence your pricing and when it’s time to make a change.

There are three common pricing strategies:

Cost plus pricing

This simple pricing strategy sets prices as a percentage above costs. A company adds up all the costs associated with providing that product or service, adds the profit margin that they’re looking for, and they have a pricing strategy. Not much data analysis goes into this strategy.

This strategy is challenging to manage as a company grows, because costs rarely remain static. If the cost of one supply that’s necessary for business to continue increases, the profit margin decreases. Adding a solution that includes data analytics would help with this as it would alert the business owner as soon as profit margins drop below a pre-set level.

Competitor based pricing

This involves setting a pricing strategy based on the pricing of competing products/services. This strategy can use data analytics for modelling to help determine the volume of product/services they need to produce in order to receive the preferred rate.

The problem with this strategy is that is ignores the unique needs and benefits of your company. Creating your own strategy independent of your competitors’ helps you focus on improving your offering and adding value for your customers.

Value based pricing

This strategy involves looking at customers rather than competitors and setting prices based on how much they are willing to pay. It involves a deep understanding of your customers’ wants and needs and offering top value and a low price. Gaining this understanding is largely based on data analytics.

This strategy helps companies increase their prices as they innovate their products, because they already know what their customers are willing to pay for added features/improvements, but it also takes a lot of time and research to gain intimate knowledge of your customer-base.

Using data to decide

Data analytics helps companies increase their profits by setting ideal pricing strategies that help them bring in more business and provide unique value. Using analytics to set a pricing strategy helps empowers leaders to use data to learn and analyze every factor that impacts a company’s profits, whether those factors are internal or external.

ERP Advisers can help your company leverage data analytics to set a pricing strategy and increase profits. Click here to set up a call.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home | Meeting Your Match: The importance of finding an IT Systems Consultant

You wouldn’t build a house without consulting an architect—so why would you lay the foundations for your business’ computing structure without expert advice?

In our technologically-driven world, it is essential that your company’s IT operations are running at peak capacity; otherwise, you’ll be rendered obsolete. This is where an IT Systems Consultant comes in: with their industry experience, they can ensure that your data storage, network function, and computer-based client services are functioning optimally.

Why hire an IT Consultant?

As mentioned, IT Consultants can provide the specialized knowledge you need to enhance your technological capabilities—and improve your overall functionality.

When you hire an IT Consultant, they’ll:
• Teach you how to best achieve your business objectives via your IT systems. This can boost your efficiency, performance, and bottom line;
• Provide exclusive, objective expertise backed by years of industry experience;
• And eliminate the need to hire a permanent employee—their services can be used temporarily, allowing you to save money in the long run.

What can an IT Consultant do for my business?

Through their work, IT consultants can augment your business’ offerings in a number of arenas.

IT Consultants can:
• Improve your productivity. By upgrading your IT systems, they can enhance your ability to effectively service your clients, securely manage your data, and remain agile in an increasingly fluid environment;
• Enable the full potential of your current IT infrastructure by identifying areas for improvement, critical function, and value;
• Help your business scale its IT infrastructure throughout growth, implement cutting-edge tech as it is released, and plan the long-term IT strategy of your business;
• And provide a sound IT governance framework for security and compliance.

At ERP Advisers, we are fully equipped to help you derive the highest value from your IT investments. With 30 years of expertise in this sector, we can assist you with the deployment and administration of new apps and platforms, optimize your current landscape, and ensure your IT infrastructure meets your unique needs.

What are you waiting for? Click here to get started.

Home | How to improve your business operations and bottom line

All small and large scale business owners are constantly presented with various opportunities to improve their business processes, get more customers, become more visible, and increase productivity. Improving your business processes also helps you save a lot of money and run your business more effectively.

Here are 6 ways to improve business operations and bottom line:

  • Plan your day: Before stepping to your business premises on a daily basis, it is imperative to create a time when you could jot down your plans for the day and review what your activities will look like. Write down your marketing strategies, product lines, new projects that you intend to embark on, details on how to expand your business, names of your competitors are and strategize on how to stay ahead.
  • Review your business plan: It is also vital to review your business plan monthly. So many business owners tend to forget about their business plans a few months after establishing their firm, some even digress towards other areas. That is why it is essential to find your business plan, review it, and get it updated. Look at the changes you must have introduced into your business since its inception and get them included in your business plan.
  • Make use of the latest technologies: At present, there are so many technologies that can help improve your internal systems and communications. Making use of various technologies in your firms helps to automate tasks, simplify processes, and make things easy for your employees.
  • Engage with your customers: What keeps businesses running are the customers, quality of products, and customer satisfaction. Therefore you must engage with your customers on a daily basis: get their phone numbers, emails, contact information from your database and send them messages reminding them that your business is ready to serve them better. Remember to ask them to leave feedback about your business.
  • Get your employees involved: Employees are an essential element in every business. You must make your employees part of your business; help them understand their role, review your relationship with them, and find new ways of getting them motivated to avoid any form of friction.
  • Review your business performance and pricing: It is also vital to set up new metrics that can be used in reviewing your business performance at least twice in a year. Take stock of all aspects of your business operation and write down the areas you will like to initiate some positive changes. In addition, try to know the prices of goods set by your competitors and ensure that yours isn’t too low or high; before increasing your prices, ensure that you get your customers informed ahead of time.

Finally, as a small or medium scale business owner improving your business operations and bottom line can help increase productivity, save you lots of money, get you more customers, make your business visible and keep your employees motivated. Using the steps listed above can help you stay ahead of your competitors while improving your business processes.

Home | Improving Business Processes

At present, various companies are in search of new ways of making their businesses more efficient due to the recent advancement in technology all over the globe.
One of the primary ways that have been adopted by most businesses is conducting regular business process improvements. Business processes are a series of steps deployed by a group of stakeholders to achieve a common goal; these steps can be manual or automated.

Steps to improving business processes
For a business process to achieve an objective, it requires a series of action. Some of the steps to improving business processes include:
Mapping out the process: The first step to improving business processes is to determine the process you would like to improve, document each step using a flow chart and explore the steps in detail. Note that some processes may involve sub-steps you are unaware of.
Analyze the Process: After determining the processes, it is vital to use your flow chart in determining what the bottlenecks are in the process. Some of the critical questions to consider when doing this include:
• Which of these steps creates a problem in the organization?
• Are team members frustrated by any of these steps?
• Which of these steps causes a delay in the organization?
Also, remember to speak to people who are affected by the processes and listen to their suggestions on how to make an improvement.
Redesign the process: After identifying the problems, it is vital to redesign the processes in order to eliminate the problem. One way of doing this is to work with people involved in the process, get their ideas, and ensure that everyone understands what the process is meant to do. Then narrow down your list of possible solutions by considering how the ideas made by your team members will affect the process in real life.
Get the required Resources: The next step is to secure the right resources needed in implementing the new process. Start by listing out all you need to do this; this may include seeking for advice from colleagues, senior managers, IT and HR department, ensure that your properly communicate with everyone involved in the processes and that they understand how this new process benefits the organization as a whole.
Implement the redesigned process: While implementing the redesigned process, it is vital to note that improving business processes may also involve changing some existing systems, protocols, and teams members. For instance, you may have to hire new staff, retrain your colleagues or even purchase new software; therefore it is vital to plan and manage this carefully, also allocate time to deal with challenges that may arise while implementing the processes.
Evaluate the process: After rolling out the new process, ensure that you evaluate it and monitor how things are going in the weeks or months that follow. Doing this will enable you to know if the redesigned processes are meeting up with the required expectation.

Finally, remember that making changes in a business is not always easy; some employees may resist the redesigned processes, and other challenges may occur. However, small changes made regularly will ensure that the process remains efficient and relevant to the organization.
If you’d like to improve the current processes in your organization, seeking a professional help is a way to go. ERP Advisers has many years of experience in helping improve processes and technology with small to large businesses. We would love to work with you. Give us a call to get started!

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