7 Best Practices Every Smart SME Should Follow!

It takes a lot of sweat and blood to build to thriving business. While you are small, there are simple things which, if done the right way, can pump up your business growth. We have picked up 10 best practices that all small businesses should follow!

1. Having a Clear Process: It should always start with a process. Whether the operations are big or small, having a clear blue print of what happens when, helps you keep a clear sight on things. Documenting exception scenarios and learnings would help you plan better for future and reduce risk of any last minute surprises. Make sure that your team understands and follows the defined process diligently.
2. Delegate, but centralize: Allocate tasks to your team but ensure that all reports and data are stored centrally. This will help you get a bird’s eye view on everything – information flow, gap areas, places that need more attention etc. Also, this helps in enforcing a transparent work culture and reduces risks of delayed/ lost information.
3. Get the right people:

    Identify and define your employee expectations clearly before you hire them. When you get people on board with a clear understanding of what they have to do, the results are much better. Invest time in training them and ensure that they understand your processes and follow them to the T.

4. Define your e-mail identity: Once your processes and people are in place, make sure that your business has a corporate identity. This is something which a lot of businesses keep pushing to the corner. Having a proper business mail id and web properties like a website adds more credibility to your business name. Moreover, this reinforces the practice of doing all official communication via corporate mail, thus dipping any chances of misinformation or data loss.
5. A for Customer Service: No matter how good your products may be, if customer service is not up to the mark, expanding business would become a challenge. Make sure that you pay full attention to even smallest of your clients. Happy customers would mean more repeat customers (without much sales effort) and goof referrals for new business opportunities.
6. Do not miss on technology: From basic operational softwares to ERPs to business intelligence tools, make sure you are up to date on technology. These are investments that would make your business more agile, scalable and secure. Using technology, you can expedite your operations, improve efficiency and control costs, all in one go. Before you pick your tools, make sure you to talk to some experts about what would work best for your business type and then pick that technology.
7. Build it for future: Think big. Define your 3 year- 5 year goals and act accordingly. Business challenges keep changing with time. Make sure that your processes foresee and cover some of the future pain areas and your operational system is robust enough to sustain the unexpected jolts.

People processes and technology are your tools to scale and grow your business effectively. If used properly, these will sustain your business through all hurdles.