Startups, medium-sized companies, and businesses of all sizes are obsessed with improving sales performance, increasing traffic, driving more customers, and crunching more numbers down to the last detail. And given the disruptive and downright unstable economic circumstances faced over the past two years, it’s no surprise why more entrepreneurs are increasing their risk appetite and looking to gain back all that momentum.
However, while some experts strongly agree with the notion of goal-setting and comprehensive planning, strictly focusing on reaching these targets alone without any due regard for overall business progress or infrastructure to follow creates more problems than it solves. So before you jump the gun and give the signal for more aggressive operations at this instant, you might want to know its possible disadvantages and some of the intervention measures you must incorporate.
Markets Are Never Static, and Change Is Inevitable
Markets and industries are volatile. Disruptions are likely to happen with so much happening in the world now from geopolitics, international relations, and the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. These disruptions are either a direct result of these events or as an effect of policymaking to reduce them. As a result, narrowing down your vision on a single goal is counterproductive by nature. If any of these external risks or threats occur and directly impact your core functions, you won’t have much capital outlay to hold onto, even if you reach your objectives. Here are a few ways you can make your business more resilient to change:
- Emerging Demand Replaces Old Trends: First, while some trends are capable of lasting much longer than others, with a select few transforming into an established niche market, emerging demand always manages to swallow the majority of those that have already run their course. And suppose your current lineup of products and services rides on the popularity of current needs. In that case, failure to implement a safety net or a backup plan will only offset your profit margins with impending losses.
- Responsiveness of New Entrants: Second, even if trends persist in the following year, we can’t evaluate the speed and responsiveness of new entrants into the market. And suppose these substitute products and services offer superior features or come at more affordable prices. In that case, they can take away valuable market share from your company and hurt your bottom line. What’s worse, that’s not even accounting for the effects of interest rate hikes on consumer behavior.
- Unresolved Internal Inefficiencies: Last but not least, although complacency towards internal inefficiencies might not seem like the worst offenders on paper, it can lead to disastrous consequences later on that may compromise any earning potential. For example, suppose transaction errors and severe discrepancies in price remain undetected for far too long. In that case, no amount of sales will make up for the time and resources necessary for correcting these mistakes, essentially bringing you back to square one.
Get Creative and Think Innovative
Luckily enough, growth and progress can catch up with your target goals as long as you approach them with the same level of creativity and innovation. And while it may take quite some time to get used to and demand a reallocation of work assignments, the result will be worthwhile. You’ll save a lot of time, money, and headaches you’ll be saving yourself from if you did otherwise. Here’s how you can start getting creative and innovative:
- Always Search For Fresh Perspectives: Talking innovation, it doesn’t get any better than thinking like a brand-new startup and searching for fresh perspectives to reinvigorate new ideas into the business framework. Often, companies overindulge their current thought processes and fail to look at the bigger picture, the one thing everyone learns when navigating through the first stage of small business growth. So rely on customer feedback, take employee input, and don’t take no for an answer.
- Automate Processes Where Possible: An excellent way of ensuring business processes keep up with compounding target goals is to automate functions whenever and wherever possible. Constantly having people working every step through manual functions will become a productivity constraint, so starting earlier will keep your business two steps ahead of its competition. Plus, it also allows for more specialized talent acquisition and technology upgrades in the future.
- Invest In Sufficient Internal Control: Your company’s control environment and control activities maintain balance. To keep all those moving parts from finance to human resource management in sync, you must invest in internal control. For example, cloud data protection enterprise software is becoming increasingly important in this digital age. You’ll also need a reliable process service agency to deliver prompt legal documents should the need arise.
It’s never wise to bite off more than you can chew, and if you want to sustain those target goals, you must first lay the foundation for your business to grow. So, feel free to tailor-fit which measures work best for your company.
