Business Management

Is your Business Facing Challenges?

Navigating a business successfully today can be tricky. The speed of economic and technological changes means yesterday’s path may not fit today and certainly may not work tomorrow. Keeping pace with change may separate a company that excels from a company that closes its doors.






1. Integrity
Moral challenges to business in today’s global economy are severe. Businesses struggle to be more successful, to beat last year’s earnings, and sometimes for key individuals to keep their job. There is temptation to cut corners, omit key information in publicity releases, and do what is needed to get ahead. Sometimes this is infectious in an organization and it becomes part of the business.
This can erode trust needed between business partners; without trust business cannot compete effectively and may eventually fail.

2. Resource Management
Cash is king! Wow heard that before.
Seriously, healthy profits look nice on financial statements but if capital expenditures or slow receivable collections are draining cash the business can fail. Professional help in managing business accounting and taxes may be a good idea.

3. Market Entry
It has never been easier to start a business. Anyone can buy a domain name and register a business on line. Staying in business is another matter. Finding a niche within which to operate may be a key, differentiating your product or service with a unique positioning is important.
The key battle is for attention, focus and marketing when buyers can change suppliers with a click of the mouse. Businesses that can master the challenge are more likely to enjoy success.

4. Risk
Another challenge is identifying, assessing and mitigating risks. Lack of problem solving skills often leads management to jump from one fire to another depending on the issues of the day and the urgency of the fire starter.
Developing strong problem solving capabilities at many levels is an important key to success.

5. Staffing
Almost without exception finding, training, and retaining key staff is a challenge for most business. In small business particularly key managers can have a dramatic impact on results so great choices by ownership become paramount. This becomes an even greater challenge in industries that rely on changing technology.

These are a few of the challenges facing business. Care to share others? gerry@polarisgroupmc.com

Business Management

Is Time Management an Issue?

Do you feel the need to be more organized and/or more productive? Do you spend your day in a frenzy of activity and then wonder why you haven't accomplished much?
Time management skills are especially important in small business where owners often handle many responsibilities.





Here are a few tips to increase productivity and to stay calm and cool throughout the day.

1. Manage
No matter how organized you are there are only 24 hours every day. Focus on managing yourself and what you do with that time.

2. Time wasters.
It is easy to be side tracked and waste time “surfing the net”, reading emails, interruptions. Track your personal time so you can see where the focus of efforts are and how to improve time usage.

3. Plan.
Develop a plan to focus on changing behavior not changing time. Start with eliminating personal time wasters like taking personal phone calls at work. This will help improve productivity and reduce stress.

4. Prioritize.
Start the day with prioritizing tasks and bench marking performance. If you have a list of 20 items, how many must be done that day? Use the 80/20 rule and spend time on the 20% of activity that generates 80% of results.

5. Delegate.
Every effort should be made to have others share the work load. A review of activity will help determine what can be delegated or outsourced and allow you to focus on priorities. Make sure those delegated to certain tasks are properly trained.

Remember, time is one of the resources business owners have that is scarce, cannot be replaced once spent, and it cannot be borrowed or purchased. Manage it judiciously.