Give your business a Spring clean

It’s the time of year when you may typically Spring clean your house or yard, but have you ever thought of giving your business a spring clean? Doing so can uncover inefficient processes, help you pump new life into the organisation, and give you the grounds for innovation to occur.

Here are some tips on how you can apply fresh eyes to your business and its operations, to ensure continuous success.

Audit your business processes

Now is a good time to audit your business processes and figure out what's working for you and what's not.

Reviewing your internal workflow and assessing your procedures and processes will help you spot any unnecessary headaches you could get rid of. A healthy, growing business regularly evaluates where it could cut costs, minimise waste and streamline safety practices.

Evaluate your staffing needs

Take a moment to evaluate your staffing needs and whether your workforce aligns to your company's goals.

Look through your sales data from previous years. Although it's hard to predict how many sales you will achieve during the upcoming year, reviewing previous returns will give you an idea of how many customers you could expect. You can use this information to predict how many staff members you need to fulfil requirements.

Before you decide to hire or fire staff, ask yourself these questions:

• How many temporary employees do you have?

• Are there any part-time employees looking to go full-time?

• Is there an exceptional employee you would like to promote?

You may be able to reshuffle some of your workers and avoid a convoluted hiring process or prevent the loss of valued employees to meet your staffing needs.

Get rid of excess inventory

Although having inventory to hand is good business practice, overstocking has its disadvantages. If you’re holding excess inventory, your insurance costs, storage costs, and risk of damages/losses will be higher. Moreover, products can quickly become obsolete, and you could end up holding inventory that’s of no use. Drop shipping has come into its own in recent years, due to technological advances; there’s now even less need to store numerous crates of stock.

Use Spring as the motivation to reassess and reorganise your stockroom. If necessary, to get rid of excess stock, hold a warehouse sale. Donate items that aren’t sold to charity, if appropriate. Take the opportunity to bring your purchasing processes into the twenty-first century and use previous sales data to buy only what you will sell.

Freshen up your environment

Maintaining a business environment that has irresistible kerb appeal is a good move for any business. It not only gives your company a professional image, it also motivates employees, which enhances their productivity.

Update the landscape, refresh your exterior signage, give the office a thorough dust – perhaps even a lick of paint.

Overhaul your website

Your business’s website is the salient component that can help it grow. However, if it hasn’t been updated for a while and it provides visitors with a clunky experience, it could easily damage your brand’s image.

If your website is ready for a long overdue upgrade or you need to change the content/navigation to provide a better user experience, Spring is the perfect time to do this.

Refresh its design, ensure a user-friendly interface, remove outdated text, and fix those little details that will give a boost to your SEO.

Review your business goals

Business goals are critical to the whole business process. These goals help you stay on track towards success. But the question arises: how SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-bound) are your current goals? Are they helping you to move forward or not?

If your goals are not SMART, your chances of falling behind your competition increase. Moreover, it can lead to chaos within your company that’s difficult to recover from.

Assess your security measures

Threats to online businesses increase with each passing day. Hackers constantly lurk on the internet for loopholes. It would therefore be a smart move to kick start your spring-cleaning efforts by analysing your security measures.

Small businesses are more vulnerable; therefore, investing in some form of data protection is of utmost importance. According to a report, nearly two-thirds of small businesses face cyber-attacks that could cost them between £60,000 and £105,000. Moreover, around 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of an attack.

We’re sure you’d agree that these numbers are quite alarming, and you can see why making your systems more secure should be a priority. If you already implement strong security protocols, ensure that you update these for better prevention.

These are just a few simple, small things that could have a big impact on your business and provide the green shoots of growth.