December 11, 2007

Systems and Procedures

After a lengthy and valuable session with my business coach this morning, I have a long list of things I need to organise for Net Secretary. ‘Organise’ is the key word here. Implementing systems and procedures in a business is a crucial tool for increased productivity and streamlining business processes. Systems allow all of that information that you store in your head to be put into some sembalnce of order and method on paper – into a type of manual for your business – and this has many benefits for small business, both virtual and shopfront. These benefits may include:

• Enables you to see where the business is at and where it is going, it gives you focus
• Becomes part of your risk management strategy
• Provides a tool to review current processes and discard those that are not working for you
• More efficient use of your time - you know when, where, how to do something and are not as likely to forget to do something
• Makes it easier for someone to caretake your business if you are ill or away.
• Makes it simpler for new staff coming on board to learn about the processes in your business together with its vision, values and mission
• Allows a process of review to take place – a constant evolution of the systems to maintain best practice and incorporate feedback from clients and customers about things that may not be working or could be improved
• Facilitates benchmarking

 If you are new to implementing systems that work, start off with baby steps. Simply diarising or marking on your calendar the regular things you do in your business (bookkeeping, updating your marketing materials, computer back-ups etc) is a good start. From there, you can start to detail the actual process step by step. Eventually you may want to have a manual for your business in A-Z format which details a policy or procedure for each aspect of your business.

 I firmly believe in the saying “With systems I am safe” – now I just have to live it myself by implementing some systems in Net Secretary!

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Filed under VA Services