Published on: 08 November 2018
Last Updated on: 19 July 2019
Changing courses for a company that is in trouble is not an easy undertaking, but with a sound strategy and some important support, it can be successful.
Here are some expert tips on how to turn struggling companies around.
1. Discuss it:
MBM Investments Corp.’s Michael Beattie says while most companies want to hide any hint of trouble, it is not the right thing to do. “When a company is in trouble, communication is crucial,” Toronto’s Michael Beattie Talk with the board and any key employees about what is happening. Be sure to have your plan of recovery formalized. They will find it easier to rally around the company if they are confident in the leadership and the way forward. Allow them to offer their input into the business plan and future plans
2. Document a future plan:
Stakeholders will want to see that a struggling company has a plan for the future. It is crucial that a company have solid operations, sales/marketing, and business plans documented. It also helps employees, management, investors, and banks, know where they fit into the scheme and how they can help the company turnaround. When you prepare the documents, don’t shy away from including the good, bad and ugly.
3. Revise the plans:
Gather the feedback that has been given by stakeholders and key players in the company and incorporates it into a revised business plan for recovery.
4. Talk with employees:
Try and nip fear in the bud by having a company meeting and letting your employees in on the plan for making the company successful again. This will give them a chance to see what part they can play in the recovery process. It can also be helpful to give employees a chance to offer feedback to the business plan.
5. Be straightforward with customers:
There will likely be rumors about what is happening to your business. You will need to step in and clear up any confusion and let your customers know that you have a plan to turn things around. Give vendors the same courtesy by letting them know where you stand.
6. Get financials under control:
If you will have trouble paying creditors, be sure to call them and be upfront about the situation.
This is one of the most difficult things to do when a company hits hard times, but it is an important move to get the business back on track. This means cutting back on staffing costs. Letting employees go is never easy but you will need to make the tough decision of who is most important to the future of your company.
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The small businesses that thrive are the ones that can meet their customers' needs while keeping their prices affordable. Due to the great advancements in technology, distributors can configure their products to the specific needs of their customers.
Delivering customizable products is a great way to grow your business and your customer base, but you have to have the right tools to get the best out of your team and your products.
Manufacturers and other distributors that develop complex products utilize CPQ software to configure their products to their customers' specifications. With the right CPQ tool, you can enhance your deliverables and offer fully customized products, but not all CPQ platforms are the same. Continue reading to learn how to find the right CPQ software for your company.
Outsource your procurement needs to a specialist:
Running a company doesn't afford business owners much time to gain in-depth knowledge about different products and services they need for their company. They may know that they need a particular service or product like CPQ software, but they have too many other things going on to learn about CPQ tools, which ones are for their industry, and which of those are the best.
By outsourcing your procurement needs to a specialist, you get the benefit of having people who excel at finding the best products and services for your budget and needs. Your procurement specialist likely won't be an expert in CPQ solutions, but the important thing is they know how to find the best tools on the market and negotiate to get the best optimal price for their clients.
A procurement specialist can do much more for you than find the right product configurator for your business, they can help you find all the products and services necessary for your brand to grow and flourish. You simply have to be willing to make the investment.
Do some online research of your own:
Even though you may not have time to dedicate to learning in-depth about CPQ solutions and can allow a procurement specialist to help coordinate your efforts, you should do some research of your own. You should want to know as much about any product as possible, and the internet is the quickest way to gain a layman's understanding of anything.
Configure One CPQ is a product configurator that has a prominent online presence mainly because customers love it and can't stop talking about it. Furthermore, Configure One creates a lot of informational content that will help you learn about CPQ integration and other basic CPQ processes.
Configurable products are the wave of the now and the future because once consumers get a taste of a great thing, they only want more.
So that means finding the right CPQ solutions is essential to growing your brand.
Do some opposition research:
Sometimes the best way to learn more about your industry is to learn from your competitors. Doing opposition research allows you to learn what systems and tools your rivals use to deliver configurable products to their customers and see what consumers like.
Believe it or not, your competitors might be more willing to divulge information to you than you'd expect. That doesn't mean they're going to hand over their proprietary secrets, but most entrepreneurs are down for a mutual exchange of information and ideas. As long as you're willing to share some trade intel as well, your relationship with your competitor could turn into a friendly rivalry.
Finding the right CPQ solutions for your brand greatly increases your chances of growing your market share and profits.
By hiring a procurement specialist, doing a little online research, and tapping your competitors for intel, you can attain the tools you need to grow your company.
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Be it personalized recommendations or easy omnichannel interactions, customers expect only the best of them.
Consequently, businesses are turning to data-driven insights to better understand their customers' preferences. Moreover, data-driven insights also help meet evolving expectations and drive the loyalty of the customer.
The role of transformational leadership is quite important here. However, in this article, you'll explore the role of transformative data-driven insights in enhancing customer experience and driving business success.
In addition, you'll learn about the role of flexible data integration, as well as other factors that can help you meet your customers' needs through data.
The Impact Of Data-Driven Insights
Data-driven insights provide organizations with valuable intelligence.
Moreover, it enables them to tailor products, services, and experiences to meet customers' needs and expectations. However, businesses can understand the patterns, trends, and correlations that reveal valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences with the help of data-driven insights.
Additionally, they empower organizations to deliver targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with their audience.
Data-driven insights also enable businesses to pinpoint the areas of improvement in the customer journey. Ultimately, this leads to enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Data-driven insights not only help organizations know their customers better but also enable them to understand the pain points of the customers.
Moreover, by leveraging data analytics, businesses can identify challenges that come to the organization in a cyclic redundant pattern.
Whether it's a complex checkout process, a lack of information on the product, or a slow time of response, data-driven insights can offer the best guidelines on the requirements for improvement.
With this knowledge, organizations can also implement targeted initiatives that help streamline processes.
On the other hand, it helps improve communication channels and fix issues quickly. As a result, customers experience increased satisfaction, smoother interactions, and stronger loyalty, ultimately driving the growth and success of the business organization.
Harnessing Data Integration For Holistic Insights
Flexible data integration plays a key role in optimizing and exploiting the full potential of data-driven insights to enrich the customer experience. However, businesses, through data integration from diverse sources, gather data for analysis.
This includes CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, social media channels, and customer feedback channels, organizations. Businesses can gain a comprehensive view of their customers' interactions and preferences.
Also, flexible data integration allows businesses to aggregate, cleanse, and harmonize data from disparate sources.
Ultimately, it helps provide an accurate view of customer data that can help make strategic business decisions and drive personalized customer experiences.
Personalization At Scale
One of the key benefits of data-driven insights is personalization at scale. By leveraging data and insights from the customers and predictive analytics, businesses can segment their customer base.
They tailor offerings and communications to individual preferences and behaviors. From personalized recommendations to targeted email campaigns, personalized experiences help develop deeper connections with customers and drive loyalty and engagement.
Moreover, by continuously analyzing customer data and iteratively filtering personalization strategies, businesses can cope with changing customer preferences. Market dynamics help ensure ongoing relevance and effectiveness.
Optimizing Customer Journey Mapping
Data-driven insights also play an important role in making the best use of the to-end customer journey.
This also helps analyze the interaction of the customers at each touchpoint. Furthermore, organizations can identify pain points and other issues that detract from the customer experience.
With the help of data analysis, businesses can implement targeted interventions. Also, they can enhance and streamline the customer journey, reduce friction points, and restore loyalty.
Moreover, data-driven insights enable organizations to keep track of the impact of these improvements over time. Ultimately, it helps ensure continuous optimization and customer experience refinement.
Driving Business Value Through Customer Insights
Beyond enhancing customer experience, data-driven insights can also help deliver tangible business value by driving revenue growth. Moreover, it helps increase customer lifetime value.
Organizations can identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities by understanding customer preferences and behaviors. Moreover, they can optimize and forecast demand and pricing strategies more accurately.
By proactively addressing customer issues and concerns, businesses can reduce churn rates and increase customer retention.
Ultimately, data-driven insights enable organizations to exploit customer data and drive business success in today's competitive market landscape.
Empowering Customer-Centric Strategies With Data-Driven Insights
Data-driven insights have become indispensable tools for businesses seeking to enhance customer experience and drive business success.
By leveraging flexible data integration and advanced analytics capabilities, organizations can gain deep insights into customer preferences, behaviors, and needs. It enables them to deliver personalized experiences, optimize the customer journey, and drive tangible business outcomes.
As businesses continue to prioritize customer-centric strategies, data-driven insights will play an increasingly pivotal role in shaping the future of customer experience and driving sustainable growth and success.
How To Create A Data-Driven Culture
By now, you may have an idea of the importance of data in understanding customers and making bold business decisions. However, it is easier said than done.
Creating a data-driven ecosystem is indeed the need of the hour. This section discusses some of the steps through which the organization can make the best use of data-driven insights.
1. Data Drivn Culture Must Initiate At The Very Top Of The Hierarchy
Organizations that have a strong data-driven culture have management who sets high expectations. They, too, need to be data-based and not impractical.
For example, through analyzing data from the last couple of years and the present market scenario, you can set a target of 20% growth in the coming financial year. You are now based on the set target you make decisions and policies. You can not set a target arbitrarily and without research, as it will fail for sure.
2. Select The Metrices With The Care
The leadership within an organization needs to pinpoint the right metrics to measure so that it facilitates ushering in the changes within the organization.
For example, the leaders of an organization wish to ensure its network works to provide the customer with the highest user satisfaction. However, it extracted quantitative data and statistics on network performance.
Hence, by creating metrics on customers' experience, the operators could make quantitative assessments of network upgrades that impact customers. To make it happen, the management has to look at consumption and provenance-related data.
3. Fix The Basic Data-Access Issue With The Ultimate Alacrity
By far, one of the most common complaints that we tend to hear is that the organization struggles to extract the most grassroots data. However, the situation sprouts, notwithstanding the democratized ambiance of data transfer. Yes, that is one of the problems.
The best business organizations use the simplest strategies to obliterate the logjam. Instead of restraining key data and insights, they engage actively in the democratization of data access.
4. Offering Specialized Training To The Workforce
The success of an organization depends quite a lot on using the best data and insights. Moreover, the employees writing the organizations must have adequate knowledge of the data so that they understand where the organization is heading.
Therefore, it is essential to train the organization in skill development. For example, coding must emerge as one of the most fundamental aspects of training and development.
5. Use The Analytics To Assist Both The Employees And Customers
It is quite easy to forget the potential role of data fluency in making employees happy. However, if you empower the employees to handle data themselves, it enables them to be more proactive within the business.
For example, you could automate redundant tasks with the help of Python. However, if the idea of learning new skills is presented before them, they will be proactive about learning the new skills.
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Running a paperless business is now almost possible due to the rise of technology. However, there are still some who are having a hard time sticking to the program. Either they are not comfortable with the change, or it’s just plainly out of habit. Nevertheless, some businesses are still looking for ways towards a paperless office and discourage the use of printing in order to reduce overall operational cost.
So if you are looking for ways to stop spending so much on printing in your business, check out the strategies listed below.
1. Placed networked printers in the office
Move to shared printers instead of using personal printers per employee. This eliminates overprinting, over usage of paper and not to mention the cost of maintenance for repairs.
Reducing the number of printers can help limit outright expenses and minimize frivolous printing. Have someone to be in-charge of maintaining and restocking the cartridge and paper. A person assigned to regulate the usage of printers can help discipline the employees for overprinting.
2. Follow printer policies
Printer policies are great for supporting sustainable and environmentally-friendly workplace by reducing printing costs. Use printer management controls to limit late-night printing or heavy use of color per page. Different printer policies could be applied to various levels of the company. You can state there your purpose, exclusions, and procedures to follow for every employee to see.
3. Adjust the default setting on all the printers
To limit more waste in printing, change the default setting on printers. You can set the printer to double-sided printing from single-sided. Change to grayscale instead of colored. Utilize the draft mode and shrink-to-fit mode to save more on ink. Rutgers University used this system to reduce the use of paper, and it gave them wonderful results where they were able to save 55 million sheets of paper in the first three years of implementation.
4. Reduce margins and font sizes
Change the margins to 0.75 to 0.25 inches instead of the standard 1 inch to 1.25 inch. This can greatly affect the reduction of paper usage. Another tip is by using smaller fonts that is readable to utilize more space. You don’t need to follow the standard rule we use way back in college for formal documents. If you want to save on paper, make use of the space as much as possible.
5. Change fonts style
Aside from using narrower margins and font sizes when printing, you can also change the font style that uses less ink. Like for example changing the Arial font to Century Gothic since the style is thinner. You can save ink and also money just by following this simple tips. Writing concisely can take up less space on the page too.
6. Opt for more digitize paper notes
The way to support paperless offices is by using technology. You should think before you print something. Is the document you are about to print that important, or this can be sent online. It does make it easier for people to share documents online through emails, instant messaging and cloud storage. So opt for more digitize notes and documents and support the paperless community.
7. Awareness is the key
Let your employees be aware of the importance of reducing paper use. State the benefits and implement changes accordingly by posting informative signs and having staff meetings about it. Let your employees be disciplined in reusing and recycling papers as much as possible. By educating them about the importance of paper reduction in your office, implementation would not be hard to follow.
If your business requires printing various marketing materials such as business cards, leaflets, brochures, and many other things, you should hire a professional printing company to get a cost advantage. You can also get the finest quality printing as both designing is done by professionals and printed using the latest technologies.
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