7 Easy Ways for SMEs to Manage their Rapidly Growing Business December 19, 2011

While most start-up SMEs are working towards the growth of their business to make maximum profits, there are also those who already have a rapidly growing business & only seek ways to manage & control their growth. Following a few careful measures can surely help SMEs give their competitors a panic attack.

Included here are some quick & useful tips for managing growing businesses:

Delegation of Tasks: To keep your growing business right on track & to ensure that you work in line with the original ideas you had chalked out & do not get lost in your stride for success, there is a need for constant & timely directions. Delegation of tasks that others can manage is essential here, since it frees up your time for directing more important processes.

Ensure Staff Satisfaction: It is important for SMEs to understand that happy, passionate & motivated staff is your biggest asset, especially for a rapidly growing company. You look after them & they look after your customers ensuring long-term businesses.

Price Hike: For a rapidly growing business, there is a need to establish balance between supply & demand. While you would not want to upset relations with your reliable & longstanding clients, at the same time you also need to make sure that you are not underselling your efforts.

Have Selective Clients: In order to make sure that your business is on the growth track, you need to be very selective with your clients. It is better to have fewer valuable clients than to devote your time on businesses with false economy. There is no harm in turning down business associations as far as you are honest & not rude.

Track your Cash Flow: The reason for most growing businesses to fail is their poor management of cash flow. Most SMEs end up offering higher credit terms to clients than they get with suppliers. As a result, the cash dries up before you even have a chance to recover. Thus, a regular check on cash flow is mandatory.

Keep Outsourcing Options Open: If you can find options to have your work done at cheaper costs & yet as effectively, you can always go in for outsourcing. However, make sure that you follow up on the work to maintain a similar level of service. This way you can have ample time available for managing other areas of your business.

Shout Out Your Success: There is no harm in letting your customers, competitors & everyone else know about your business growth. In fact, customers always tend to associate with businesses which have an accelerating growth graph. Also, this gives your competitors ample reasons to be nervous!!

Contributed by Sushmita Kalashikar

For assistance in any of the above tips email us on media@smejoinup.com

Time Management Tips for SMEs December 4, 2011

The business world is a rat-race where every SME is looking to pack more than the available 24 hours into the day. As growing businesses, there is an endless list of things seeking your attention leading to a misbalance between your professional & personal life. The worst part is that, in the end you still fail to be on top of things. This is where “time management” as an effective tool comes up for SME’s.

For you to be able to manage your time, it is essential that you first keep a track of your time. Unless you have a clear idea as to where & how your precious time is being spent, you will never be able to identify your time wasters & time management for you will be a complete hit & miss affair.

Record Your Daily Routine

The very first step to effective time management is to keep a record of how & where you spend your day. Depending upon how tech-friendly you are, you may either choose to maintain a handwritten sheet of records or let an excel spreadsheet do it for you. Some other advanced options you may use include, Yast or Toggl that can effectively record the minutest details like minutes & seconds.

The best part about this simple time tracking exercise is that, after a couple of weeks you automatically tend to identify how & where you spent most of your days & weeks. Amazingly, most SME’s conclude having spent their maximum time doing stuff they could have easily delegated or in meetings & conferences.

Here are some effective tips that SME’s may follow for effective time management:

Identify & Eliminate Unnecessary Time Wasters

With a record of how you spend your time already in hand, it becomes pretty easy to identify & eliminate time wasters. Some common daily activities that waste your time include:

• Checking & responding to calls, emails & fax
• Longer than necessary meetings & conferences
• Monitoring social networking & media
• Entertaining drop-in visitors

It is a good habit to set some time aside for checking emails, fax & calls. Choose a time towards the end of the day so that you can cover & respond to most of these.

Strictly follow a “No-Appointment-No-Visit” policy to avoid untimely visits from sales people & other visitors.

Block pop-ups from social media accounts to get your task done well within time or appoint someone to monitor the network media.

Prepare a summary of an agenda before a meeting & stick to a pre-decided time on any particular agenda. This prevents the meetings from turning into social gatherings.

Practice Delegation of Tasks

Be smart & learn to delegate tasks. Measure your workload & identify the tasks like, simple accounting, marketing & sales tasks, etc, that may be delegated to others. Though many SME’s believe so, but there is no smartness in doing all the tasks on your own just because you can do it better. Think about how the simple delegation of tasks can free you off day-to-day monitoring & provide you plenty of time for growing your business.

Get Organized & Techno-Friendly

Though this may utilize your few initial days, but it is definitely worth the time spent. By developing efficient systems like, computerized accounting system or filing system, you can save a lot of time spent on paperwork & documentation.

Create a ‘To-Do” List

Prioritizing your work is one of the most effective tools for time management because this helps you decide which tasks require your prior attention. This also proves helpful in deciding deadlines & keeps you focused on the tasks of utmost importance.

If SME’s can integrate these few simple tips in their day-to-day working, they are sure to be one step-up the success ladder.

Contributed by Sushmita Kalashikar