Resources for Small Businesses

Best Resources for Small Businesses.

When you start your own business, there is a lot to be learnt – best practises to make life easier, ways to increase revenue, handling clients and employees, every day brings a new learning. There are a ton of great online and other resources available for entrepreneurs, but most of the time you don’t hear about them unless a fellow business owner mentions one. So, here I am, one more time, with a few more best practices for small-business owners. These are easy to follow steps and procedures to help grow your business. All of these are designed to educate you or provide some kind of information.

Five-Fold Technique

Five-fold technique is used to get a better understanding of your level of motivation. It is a psychological technique which can be used in many different situations. A series of questions are asked to get an understanding of how motivated you are. These questions help you know exactly what you want to do to keep yourself happy with your choice of business and your earnings. The technique can also be used in case of confusion. Asking yourself some important questions helps you reach a solution that would be most favourable for you. For example, if you want to buy a bike for yourself, you can apply a five-fold technique and ask yourself- which brand, what price range, etc. This will give you a better understanding of what you really want and will help you reach a solution sooner.

Documentation

Documenting key functions in day-to-day business helps provide transparency and consistency and allows for specific roles to be easily assigned to specific individuals. If a key employee leaves the company, it will be easier to train new and/or temporary employees with thoroughly outlined and documented procedures already in place. Documenting policies and procedures can also help clearly define business operations and confirm alignment with management’s expectations.

Maintaining adequate supporting documentation for sale and purchase is part of the foundation for developing an effective internal control framework within an organisation. Without substantial records, it gets difficult to demonstrate existence of transactions completed, procedures performed, and controls in place. Proper documentation also makes it easier and more efficient to research and respond to questions from customers, management and auditors. Emphasising on the importance of maintaining records helps management reduce risk to employees and business.

Oversight and Review

Small business owners are often so involved in the strategic and operational goals of their business that they find it difficult to also pay enough attention to basic internal controls ad monitoring procedures. Proper oversight is essential to the internal control framework and is an important aspect of fraud prevention and detection.

Reviewing certain key metrics like sales, accounts, cash reports, variance reports, payroll summaries etc. on a monthly basis may help you identify existing problems. Having your finger on the pulse of your business performance can also provide valuable information for key decision making.

Information Systems

Employees are often granted more access to information systems than they actually need to perform their job responsibilities. This may be done for ease of application or because the person granting access (often the IT administrator) does not fully understand the new employee’s role. However, providing such access can expose the business to additional risks that business leaders may not be aware of. To begin with, an employee should start with very limited access to information systems with only the rights to perform functions that are essential to their work. As the employee’s workload expands, additional access rights may be granted.

All user access rights should be reviewed on a periodic basis to ensure that there is a legitimate business purpose for the access granted to each user. Although this approach requires more time and effort, it can enhance the system of controls and security in place. You may contact a local advisor to understand the best ways to run your business, maintain records and find value in the record-keeping system. The attitude of a customer toward a product refers to his or her beliefs about, feeling toward, and purchase intentions for the product. At HyperEffects, our aim is to make small business owners aware of different advertising programmes available for them to change the existing attitude of the customer. Enrol today for our one-hour free consultation program that is specially designed to achieve this.

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