Dealing With Tough Economic Times

Part 3: Now is when you have the time to optimize your business

When times are great, we often hear people say that they'd love to do X, Y and Z - but they simply don't have time.

Well, if your business has slowed a little, maybe now you do have the time. Use it to focus on strategy, re-tooling where needed, or planning and implementing new business tools that will help you in the future

• Take the plunge on implementing technology and other tools to make your business even more efficient and versatile. Every dollar or every hour you can save in transaction processing is another dollar or hour your staff can spend on maintaining customer relationships, collecting from customers, or selling more
• For example, perhaps now is the time to add some self-serve components to your web site so customers can find out what you've got to sell or their account status, or even to enter their own orders for your products. Perhaps now is the time to upgrade your BusinessVision software to the latest version to reap the process efficiencies that have come over the last couple of years. After all, if your business is a little slow, you might actually have the time now
• Look at how you want to be operating when the tough times ease and things start to take off again. Do you want to be lagging behind your competitors when customers want to spend again, or will they leave you behind? We hope you'll choose to be the leaders, because those leaders will be very well-positioned for growth when things pick up
• You MUST maintain your systems properly now more than ever, because you can't afford a costly emergency repair or replacement. Go ahead and upgrade that server that's past its useful life. Keep your anti-virus software current. Make sure your backups are up to par