Innovation
Innovation is a term often thrown around by businesses, ranging from small to medium enterprises, right through to the largest corporations in the world. Although a term growing in popularity, many small business owners are still understanding that to continuously innovate your business means to continuously improve your business. Whether it be processes, workplace technology, workflow or customer/client experience – managing change and innovative advancement in the workplace will set your business apart from the rest. Here’s 5 secrets to success when learning to innovate within your small business.
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1. Take baby steps
Innovation is not something that occurs overnight. It must be carefully assessed and planned, based off feedback from your clients, customers and/or staff. Without speaking to the key parties of your business, how will you recognise what innovations will improve your business? This will allow you to assess and understand the areas for innovation. Improvement of processes, workflow and customer experience isn’t an easy task, but it is rewarding – take small steps to achieve your overall goals.
2. Embrace your mistakes
When considering innovation within your business to improve an aspect of it, mistakes are bound to happen, no matter how thorough your change implementation plan is. It may be a small gap in process, or a large unforeseen fault when implementing new technology, but it’s vital to learn from mistakes made, as these will ultimately strengthen your business in the long term.
3. Be patient
You will rarely see immediate time or cost benefits after innovating processes, workflow or other aspects of your business. It takes time to adapt to new processes, from implementing a new SEO strategy on your website, to changing your Point of Sale payment system – results take time, be sure to set realistic goals both for time and outcome.
4. Be agile
One of the greatest strengths of a small to medium business size is agility. If it’s noted that a process isn’t working, it can be much faster to eliminate or modify the process to suit your business. This is an advantage that many SME’s forget they possess, over their larger competition. Within corporations, innovation is something that is led by a change management team, and can take months to change a small process part. Embrace your agility!
5. Understand simplicity
When people say “innovation” in business, it can seem like a scary word as it is often associated with expensive and confusing technology. Innovation could simply be offering a trial period for your products to your customers, analysing customer feedback to make improvements, or storing your customer or client records on a new, improved system. Small innovations add up, and ensuring simple innovations work together is key to success. Innovation is often associated with change in a business, but should more so be associated with improvement. Small businesses focus on many things, and innovation may not be at the top of the list, as it can be daunting, and time-consuming. If you’re looking for an expert team to guide you on your path to financial innovation, contact our forward-thinking team at Minnik Integrated Financial Solutions, learn about our cloud technology solutions, and truly take a step (or leap) towards innovating your business.
Minnik Integrated Financial Solutions are specialists in business advisory and personal wealth management. Contact us today to discuss your financial needs, and embrace your journey to wealth. www.minnik.com.au