Setting up your business for victory is an important part of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Your business model could be flawless and your clients or customers banging down your door, but they may get cold feet if they believe you are disorganized and unreliable. There are a number of ways to stave off these suspicions by getting your ducks in a row from the very beginning. A few things to begin thinking about early are:
- How will you communicate with any future employees or potential clients?
- What will you be using to enhance your company’s brand in the age of social media?
- Where will you track ongoing projects and break down tasks?
- How will you manage all of the necessary documents to go hand in hand with running a business?
Communication
Depending on your tech savviness, you may already know that there are communities out there for people like you to join. Even if your company is just you, Slack is a great place to converse with similar minded people in pre-existing groups that could be spread out all over the world. Another way to up your communication game is to start thinking about security. Your information, as well as your clients and customers, could be communicated via the phone and it may be cheaper than relying on your personal cell phone to get some outside help. 8×8’s VoIP service provides many different calling abilities (long distance, international, etc…) with security you can trust.
Branding
Creating a voice for a company sometimes falls by the wayside. In this day and age, getting your company’s name and brand out there as early as possible is an important aspect of building a business. Websites like 99 designs help businesses get started with their branding by learning about what you’ll be doing and who your client or customer base will be and beginning the design process. It’s important to find a company that works with you and doesn’t just produce run of the mill graphics or websites. In the process of building a brand, some folks can find themselves in a bit of trouble for using images from the internet. It’s important to find images that aren’t copyrighted so a stock photo site is a good website to have bookmarked. While there are many such sites, Pixabay has a wide array of free photos with some paid suggestions as well.
Project Planning
A large part of building a business will be laying out what tasks need to be accomplished, who has ownership of those tasks, and what their priority is when stacked against other tasks. Using something other than a written to-do list can be beneficial, especially when it comes to long-term planning and deciding priority. There are a number of such programs that are available, one of the easiest and most simple to use being Trello. With very minimal set up, all the foreseeable projects can be mapped out. Also, while being easy to get started with, Trello has some more robust features that can allow for more in-depth project management.
Document Management
Every business, from the smallest Mom-and-Pop craft store to a big box provider, has documents that need to be maintained, and at times collaborated on. Document management systems play an important role not only in maintaining proper documents, but also in office security. Without a system in place, sensitive information could be at risk. Applications like Google Docs or DropBox allow the kind of flexibility in managing a wealth of different kinds of documents (word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, etc), while keeping them backed up and secure in the cloud.
Deciding what tools to use for a business can be a daunting task, but it’s key to remember that nothing is set in stone. Even if you’ve been using the same platform for 10 years, it can be a great boost for your business to explore other options that may meet your needs even better than your current suite of tools. That being said, finding “the best new thing” can be distracting and sometimes unnecessary, but weighing the benefits and risks can help make any decision more clear.