Business Training Systems Systems Systems
It seems that the definition of the system is a “coordinated approach ;. Procedure” Well I can tell you that in the beginning, there was no system in my company. As I have said from the beginning, I started out with the idea to sell a product online. What followed was a series of ad hock decisions, a lot of trial and error, a lot of errors, which would eventually form a system of my business. There was no “follow” or someone next to me telling me what to do next. My case when it was time to change things and develop better management or “system, the company itself.
For example, as I said at the beginning of the business I was running around like a headless chicken, meeting designers, drive to the printer; I was doing everything. And it was okay in the beginning because it was all new and I was just so excited that my idea was beginning to flourish. But after a while, I realized that there had to be a better, faster way to do things. And as the number of my customers has increased, I realized I could not continue operating the business this way, because I was stretched too far and just not keeping up. It was time to go to the next level and find a better way to do things, so I could be more productive and meet the needs of growing my customer.
An example of one of these systems, the ranking system. The way we get orders was the e-mail, fax and telephone. When I started on my own, I thought, order forms with a series of numbers. And over time, as orders were accurate, and need more information, organization and content of order forms became more complex as a result. When it was launched, the paperwork would go to art designers so they could put together the proof and mail it to the customer.
Without going into too much detail, ranking systems involved step by step process from the order form is filled first, when the customer finalizes payment to them is sent to print, the orders are closed (ie the the customer gets his product), and these orders are then filed away in folders alphabetically company or a person’s name (this system eventually changed over time as well). Over time, this process was constantly fine tuned and I must say I was quite proud of where we ended up with it, because it finally ran like clockwork. This was important because it allowed us to implement another method of following up orders, ie orders were given evidence, orders that were waiting for the completion of payments, etc. When I conduct business training, I tell my clients to systemize their business from A to Z.
We run this ranking system for a while, but then we saw that as a lot of customers were placing repeat orders, it was an arduous task to locate their original order to find out what they had ordered before. The reason I say that it was a time consuming process because by this stage we had collected a lot of archive folders (where we stored all the orders that had been closed off), and had to be stored in another room in our house.
You just wasted a lot of time. It was around this time that I came across a software package called “Sales Force”. It was a database system that we could adapt to suit our company and products. After some initial training, we implemented the system into our company, which meant that when we got the order, the order would be made sales force immediately and it is not necessary paperwork.
This was a much more efficient way to do it because it eliminates the use of paper and all of the order or the company / person who placed the order could be accessed with the click of a mouse. And when customers returned to the series, we could access the series by its name or previous order number. In addition to this, we run reports and do analysis on our sales. For example, if we wanted to find out what customers have placed the most orders, or what products were ordered the most, etc. When the implementation of this database system that became a milestone in our company because I remember we were all so happy and relieved to have a system that was easy to use and allows us to work more efficiently.
Looking back, I found that the modified and developed different areas of activity that their need was. An example of this is in the beginning when I would get endless calls from customers asking the same question: “Where are my stickers?” This is really used to annoy me because even though I had tracking numbers, I just do not have time to track packages each customer. Remember, I was doing everything on my own initially, and if I had to answer every customer call and track specific package, I would get nothing done.
It was not until I employed my admin / sales representatives and warned her about these calls, she suggested, “why do not you e-mail tracking numbers to customers so they can track their own packages and therefore leave you alone?” I remember I thought, ‘What a great idea! ” While it may seem simple, it was something that I probably do not even think that I was involved in every detail of the business. So that, for each package was exported, every customer automatically received an email with the tracking numbers. And this process was formed the second part of the daily operations.
If there is only one rule that you have to take from the business training, systemize everything and you’ll be on track to small business success.