In your lifetime you know too well the unprecedented human suffering COVID-19 has already caused. As a business owner you are also experiencing challenges likely greater than any before. As horrible and difficult as these both are the time now is to reflect and plan, so your businesses comes out stronger than it was before. We call this process Discovery, and it’s what we leverage with all of our customers.
Running a profitable business is a simple in concept. Spend less money than you make; and keep your customers happy. Continuing with this simple approach there are three key elements to success.
Optimize your processes and cost
Accelerate your growth, and
Amplify your customer experience
Optimizing your processes and cost forces you to reflect on where you are today versus where you should be. Following straightforward Business Process Management (BPM) methods you will learn where the “MUDA” is. By cutting the waste out of your processes, and from your cost, you increase your speed, reduce your friction, and maximize your organizational capacity. The process involves accurately documenting your “AS-IS” environment, and then rationalizing this to arrive at a more effective and efficient “TO-BE” environment.
Accelerating growth is driven by streamlining your marketing, sales and service functions. Employees being forced to work remotely has been disruptive and just plain devastating to many businesses. If your business is are one of them take action now, and do not let your business “return to normal”. The key here is that everyone follows the same set of efficient processes, uses the same shared information, and has access to that information no matter where they are or how they are “connected”. If you were not fully leveraging technology to this end before the crisis you no doubt have recognized the potential to do so now.
Amplifying your Customer Experience (CX) means you serve your customers the way they want to do business with you. This requires you understand Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z behavior and align your business experience to those. It goes beyond accepting that at least 85% of people prefer to use a smart phone as the interface to your business. This implies that you a) have your products and services available via an eCommerce, online platform, and b) you have an effective web, hybrid or native mobile app to serve it up.
There may not be a better time than right now to reflect and take action to improve your business. Those that do will be the business leaders that not only survive these difficult times but actually come out stronger as a result of it.
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