Business Problems – Solving Everyday Challenges Using Technology
Ask any goal-driven business owner, and they’ll tell you that their aspiration is always to enhance productivity, save on expenses, and increase sales for improved ROI. However, the path towards realizing this feat isn’t usually rosy as it has its fair share of hurdles and roadblocks. Such business problems as recruiting the right talent, regulation compliance, customer service, etc., define most businesses.
Luckily, there are several technological solutions that business owners can leverage to eliminate or minimize the effects of everyday challenges. In this post, we take a deeper dive at the most prevalent business problems facing small and medium businesses today and provide viable solutions for them. So let’s jump right in!
Delegating/Outsourcing Tasks
Delegating tasks is as good as ensuring you get the best possible results for different projects in various business sectors. A business is not the place to play the Jack of all trades, master of none. Nonetheless, and perhaps understandably so, many entrepreneurs are always reluctant to outsource tasks due to an unpleasant previous experience; they always get the exact opposite of what they expected every time they do.
Good news: thanks to technology, there are several independent professional bodies solely dedicated to solving specific business problems. For example, if you have trouble operating and maintaining your IT infrastructure, there are several credible managed service providers like Advantage Industries that you can entrust with running your IT systems on your behalf.
Likewise, if your problem is recruiting and retaining qualified staff, you can partner with an HR firm to handle the function for you. It’s OK if you’re not apt with employment laws, administration, culture, employee engagement and development, etc. A top-rated HR firm will handle these strategic processes for you incredibly because that’s what they went to school for.
Time Management (Poor Response Times)
Ask yourself, if your workplace computers were to break down or get compromised in the middle of a business day, would you have the problem remediated promptly and resume operations? If the answer is NO, then that’s a sign you need to take action. Hire an IT services company – before the risk occurs.
Surprisingly, many businesses (whose operations depend on computer systems) don’t have a candid IT department they can consult in case of a network outage or similar issues. That’s probably understandable for small businesses because maintaining an on-premise IT infrastructure is overly expensive.
However, simply having one guy that you call when your IT systems breakdown is entirely unacceptable. What if your “guy” is busy at the moment and needs a day or two to clear his schedule? Even worse, imagine the IT guy shows up after two days, looks through the computers, and sees it fit that you need new hardware altogether. Your staff has been unproductive all this time, remember. And considering the current pandemic environment, it may take up to 90 days just to order business computers.
So why expose yourself to all these inconveniences and potential loss of business? When you can simply contract a managed IT service provider at a fraction of the cost. You want to consider making that move because an IT support company will be at your service 24/7. Eliminating any business interruptions through quick response times. And another thing, outsourcing IT ensures that the likelihood of such attacks as ransomware, phishing, or malware is exceptionally minimal. And if they occur, your MSP will have you up and running in a few hours.
Regulatory Compliance
The other challenge that most businesses struggle with today is complying with laws and requirements set by state, federal, and local businesses. Non-compliance is usually highly costly as it leads to hefty fines and penalties, or worse, closure/suspension of business.
For example, suppose your business handles or processes cardholder data, e.g., primary account number, service code, or cardholder name. In that case, you must comply with PCI-DSS regulations meant to reduce credit card fraud. Other industry regulations that may apply to your business include NIST, HIPAA, GDPR, CMMS, and more.
As you may be aware, the regulatory compliance maintenance process and reporting is a very time-intensive process yet an extremely costly one if you ignore it. However, since it doesn’t contribute to the bottom line directly, it’s wise to delegate the compliance and consulting services to a professional company like Advantage Industries to do all the groundwork.
The best part about outsourcing compliance is that you’ll enjoy an ongoing service to ensure that you’re always on the right side of the law. Your partner will continually update your manual policy, network security and submit regulatory updated reports.
Creating a Business Growth Strategy
Many businesses want to grow by expanding their portfolio, customer base, product lines, and opening new branches. But not all of them have a clear-cut roadmap for achieving that growth. There are several challenges you might face as you attempt to climb up the ladder, and without a definitive growth plan, you might stumble right back to where it all began.
The most crucial step for overcoming the bottlenecks is ensuring that today’s choices don’t create further problems tomorrow. This comes with the need for effective leadership to maximize opportunities, enabling sustainable future growth. And the best way to achieve growth is to approach it organically, i.e., one customer at a time, one team at a time, one product line at a time, etc.
But even as you do so, you must consider your employees as they are the most significant drivers of that desired growth. You need to ask yourself: what’s their opportunity to keep working for your business? Will your company’s growth provide an opportunity for your employees to grow as well? If that’s not the case, then you need to remodel your strategy because one cannot do without the other.
In essence, the best business growth plan should factor in the following attributes:
- Welcoming to change. That your previous model brought tremendous growth and revenue doesn’t mean that’s always going to be the case. You should revisit and update it regularly to accommodate changing market conditions.
- Future-oriented. Again, there’s no guarantee that what worked for your business today will work tomorrow.
- The right systems. You can’t steer growth without adept financial records, regulatory compliance, employee empowerment platform, etc.
- Problem-solving. As your business grows, it’s not uncommon to face new challenges that need urgent resolution. Instead of treating each problem as a one-off situation, you want to develop structures and systems that make it easier to solve or avoid similar challenges going forward.
Final Remarks
Hopefully, this blog was insightful, and it opened your eyes to resolve common business problems we are facing today. Such business problems as outsourcing tasks, complying with regulations, steering business growth, and effective time management only need competent leadership, employee empowerment & training, and leveraging of technology solutions.
Interested to learn how IT support can come in handy in solving your business problems? Schedule a no-cost, no-obligation consultation with our experts today for more information.
