8 Management Priorities when you start your business
- Create a Strong team of advisors
When starting a business, decisions can be tough, especially if you are starting a business all by yourself. To make these decisions easier employee a key team of advisors to help you with your business.
A good team of business advisors should include an accountant, a lawyer, a marketing manager, a financial representative and a mentor. This team will help alleviate the stress and help you to make decisions. Later down the track, you can employ specialists such as technical support, production staff and transport drivers.
- Decide on an effective Business Structure
Ensure you have decided on the correct business structure that will benefit the business the most. Whether that be entering a partnership, operating as a sole proprietor or leasing office space from a third-party entity? Whatever you think is best.
To help you decide it is highly recommended to consult with a lawyer, accountant and mentor as all business structures involve need knowledge of financial, legal and regulatory matters.
- Ensure your business is compliance ready
Make a check list of all the legal obligations, paperwork and proof you need to make sure your business complies with laws and regulations.
Whether this be consulting with government representatives about permits or getting a health and safety officer to inspect the premise. All businesses need to operate by law and make sure they meet regulatory standards. It is also suggested to consult with an accountant regarding tax obligation your business will need to undertake.
- Set up Productive Systems
Make sure your have good systems in place. Draft up exactly how you want things to be done and then follow by example.
By having effective systems in place, it will make training new staff a lot easier. It will eliminate the guesswork and ensure that all staff are being productive.
To make productive systems consider the following:
- Will this help my business to function better?
- Is this easy enough to explain to new staff members?
- Does it meet regulatory standards?
- Does this make the experience for the customer better?
- Employ and operate a good Accounting system
Find a good Accountant who can advise and set-up an effective accounting system for you. We suggest using Perth Tax People, who have help set up hundreds of accounting systems for many businesses in Perth.
For an Accounting system to operate well it must:
- Automatically download and categorise bank statement details, saving time and eliminates manual data entry errors.
- Generate all reports needed for the business. i.e. profit and loss, budget and financial reports.
- Effectively invoice customers and bill them accordingly. Also ensure that the system alerts yourself for overdue payments
- Keeps your cash flow up to date so you can update your forecasts and help apply for loans if need be.
- Utilise Key Performance Indicators to monitor success
KPI’s help businesses to monitor their improvement and help them to keep track of their sales. By implementing effective KPI’s you can closely monitor your business and improve or adjust sections of the business that are not performing well. KPI’S can be for individuals, departments or aspects of the business such as gross profit and should be a source of motivation to perform well.
You can get help from a financial advisor to assist with what parts of the business are core KPI drivers and then set up goals on how to improve those parts. By monitoring KPI’s it will demonstrate control of the business, convey to your stakeholders that you are result driven and allow lenders to see your financial successes.
- Build trust and loyalty with stakeholders
By treating your stakeholders well, in the long run, will help to benefit your business. Stakeholders are anyone whom has an interest in your business, whether that be staff, customers, investors, suppliers, distributors etc.
For example, if you pay your suppliers on time, they may reduce costs on your purchase of goods. Treat your stakeholders well and they will return the favour.
- Try different management styles
Many businesses fail due to their leader or CEO inability to change the way that they manage. Many tyrannical leaders often fail to manage appropriately and often make staff feel isolated and unimportant. Try new ways of management, this can be in the way you conduct team meetings. By taking team meetings to a social venue such as a restaurant or bar you are lessening the pressure from the employees and they may feel more at ease to talk about and share their opinions. Also building trust and respect amongst employees is vital for a manager, to achieve this have an “open-door” policy where employees feel comfortable to share their work-related problems with you.
