All of us make New Year resolutions. These start at the beginning of December and go on until the beginning of the following year. Some of us stick to these resolutions while for others, it is merely a ritual. It is always good to make such resolutions, regardless of whether or not you are going to stick to them because they allow you to assess your current situation and make up goals. The process itself is worthwhile and if you haven’t been doing it, it is about time that you began to. The same principle applies when it comes to businesses too. It is very important, at the beginning of each year, to assess the state of achievement of the previous year’s goals and to come up with newer ones. The goals that you make, however, needs to be SMART. They need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound. Here are some sample New Year resolutions that you can have for your business in the year of 2016.
Brush up on your Accounting Software
Accounting software is an important aspect of any company. Most accounting departments use software likeMYOB ,maybe it’s time to try a new software that can be more in line with the accounting practices of your company, like Xero. This MYOB to Xero conversion is not the most effortless conversion. It takes practice and training. Most companies delay this conversion simply because they do not want to deal with the bit of hassle that is associated with the conversion. After the conversion, however, you would wonder why you didn’t convert sooner. Setting this up as a goal will force you and your staff to take a process based approach towards this whole project. Start off by purchasing the software and finding a suitable resource person to train your staff at that initial stage. After this, the rest should be like clockwork.
Increase Your Sales Volumes
This is one of those things that you hear at any of the staff meetings at the beginning of the year. The CEO or the head of the department would gather all staff and would sternly say that the sales volumes should go up this year. It is then left at that. What most superiors forget is that it is not enough to simply mention that the sales volumes need to go up. The employees need a game plan on how they can increase their sales. To do this, you should get together with the senior personnel of the sales department and compare the numbers from this year. You can also get the help of the marketing company or local department to when you are projecting the amount of sales for the coming year. Once you have a realistic number to achieve, you may inform your employees, along with the game plan on how to achieve the target.
Open up a New Business Avenue
Many businesses, once they reach a certain level of maturity, do not want to move out of their comfort zone. A company baking cakes, after perfecting their operation and is running on auto pilot, may not want to move out of the baking scenario and try out their hand at catering. The thing with people, and businesses, is that they hate to move out of their comfort zones. This is when their competitors move in on them and outshine them. It is therefore always wise to have a backup plan up your sleeve. The best way to force you and your company to do this would be to set it up as a New Year resolution. Pick up a team and start working on getting into a new area of business. The best would be to go into an area that complements your core area of business.
Reduce Customer Complaints
All businesses have customer complaints. It is, in fact, difficult to find a business that does not have any customer complaints whatsoever. Well, it is okay to get customer complaints once in a while. They provide you with a chance to improve yourself. Too many complaints, however, means that you are doing something wrong somewhere. One of the best goals for the coming year would be to try and reduce the customer complaints to half of that of the previous year. To do this, you will need to take a look at the customer complaints of the previous year and take steps to ensure that the same complaints are not repeated.
