Alisa A. Mitchell CPA PASometimes it’s hard for business owners to know how to take their businesses to the next level of growth and profitability. If you’ve been stuck at the same revenue or profit level for a while, it could be because knowing how to scale your business is not a skill in your skillset — yet.
Enter a classic management book on scaling: High Output Management by Andrew Grove, ex-chairman and CEO of Intel. While it was written in 1983, it has made a recent comeback in Silicon Valley but is still not well-known outside of the Bay area. Many people who have read it say it’s the best management book they have ever read, life-changing even. It is certainly a timeless and invaluable read for business owners and managers.
In the book, Grove applies the principles of engineering and manufacturing production to management. It’s all about process: developing processes and procedures so that you can track what’s going on and measure the results, or output, every step of the way. Only then can you improve the process so that it leads to high output.
Measurement is an important concept in the book. No matter what business you’re in, you can apply the ideas of developing processes, measuring them, and improving upon them in your business.
Grove gets into how managers can motivate their team members and affect production outputs. He talks a lot about leverage, which enables scaling both positively and negatively, and how it can affect employees’ output. One example of positive leverage is when managers can add a “nudge” activity to enable their employees’ work. A negative example is when managers meddle and get in the way of the employee making progress.
In the section on meetings, Grove breaks them down by purpose and lends his ideas on how to run each type better. He touches on other key topics such as decision-making, planning, motivation, performance reviews, and values.
One significant highlight from the book is that if you’re motivated to become a better manager, and wish to improve the output of your organization, then there is nothing more important than training yourself.
Reading this book is a wonderful way to spend time learning new business skills you can use and benefit from immediately.
We’ve been in a pandemic for what seems like five years now, right? All joking aside, if you’ve been lucky enough to work from home this past year, then it’s possible that you are in the process of going stir-crazy. Or maybe you’re simply ready to shake things up a bit.
Working from home has its benefits. Yet, if you are someone who enjoys going to the office every day, chatting with co-workers in person, attending meetings that aren’t all virtual, and having a little spontaneity each week, then we’re here to help. Here are five tips to boost your WFH (working from home) environment.
- Take Short Breaks
Taking regular breaks throughout the day is so important, and more so now than ever before! Without a doubt, these breaks will help you mentally (that is, keep you from going stir-crazy), but they can also help your work productivity and quality. These breaks don’t need to be—and shouldn’t be—long or strenuous.
Walk the dog. Stand up and do some light stretches. Run up and down your stairs. Go outside into your backyard. Dance to a song. Do a quick chore, like emptying or loading the dishwasher. Call a friend. Or choose your own favorite break activity. The goal is to get the blood flowing and the fog cleared from your mind.
- Switch Up Locations
Get creative and switch up your location. If you have a yard or patio of some sort – and good weather — that allows you to sit outside and work, perfect! If not, try working from the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, even the bedroom. The idea here is to change your surroundings a couple of times a week so that you don’t feel stuck or get lost in the monotony of a daily routine.
- Treat Yourself with Lunch
Everyone needs something to look forward to, and what is better to look forward to than food? Depending on your budget, treat yourself to a special lunch once a week, every other week, or monthly. Consider trying new restaurants, different foods, places that you’ve always wanted to eat at but haven’t had the opportunity to do so. Not only will this be fun for you, but you will also be supporting small, local businesses. Win-win!
- Dress for Success
We can probably all agree on one thing: sweatpants are comfortable! As such, it can be difficult to trade in the sweats for jeans or dress pants every day. After all, if you’re working from home and there’s no dress code to enforce, it can be hard to dress for success. Yet, doing so can give you a little burst of inspiration to get through the day. You can keep your outfits casual just as long as you have fun getting dressed. For example, you could have Sandal Mondays or Blue Shirt Fridays. Again, just have fun with it!
- Create a New Playlist
Does music motivate you? Are you able to work and listen to music at the same time? If so, create different music playlists to listen to throughout your day. Try listening to various genres or new artists, anything that keeps you alert and stimulated, even excited about your workday. Depending on the type of music you enjoy listening to, you can even get up periodically and take dance breaks (Tip #1)!
Keep your day fresh, and boost your productivity and mood by using your imagination and trying the tips above.
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) signed into law on March 11, 2021 by President Biden contains numerous tax provisions which may affect the tax situation for your business in 2020 and 2021. We’ll provide a general recap of some of the major changes impacting businesses in this article.
Employee Retention Credit
The Employee Retention Credit (ERC) has been extended through the end of 2021, which adds the third and fourth quarters to the mix. It also allows the credit to be claimed against the 1.45% Medicare or Hospital Insurance (HI) taxes.
The ERC can be a significant windfall for businesses that have had a drop in gross receipts or have been shuttered by a government order.
Paycheck Protection Program
While the current March 31, 2021 application deadline for First and Second Draw PPP loans has not been extended as of this posting, the ARPA did add more funds to the program, made COBRA eligible for forgiveness, and expanded eligibility to additional entities, including additional covered nonprofit entities, newspapers, and certain nonprofits.
The Paycheck Protection Program was designed to save jobs by providing forgivable funds to employers and self-employed individuals so they can make payroll and support their ongoing operations during the economic uncertainty of the pandemic.
Shuttered Venue Operators
Additional monies have been allocated to this program which was initiated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act signed in December 2020. Entities that are eligible for the Shuttered Venue Operators program, which has not opened as of this writing, can now apply for Paycheck Protection Program loans.
Paid Sick Leave
ARPA extended the sick and family leave benefits that began with the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) to September 30, 2021. It adds the employer’s share of Medicare and Social Security taxes on qualifying leave wages to the credit calculation and increases the per employee limit from $10,000 to $12,000.
The changes also include time for the employee to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and recover from it if needed. Self-employed sick days limit is expanded from 50 to 60.
Restaurant Revitalization Grant
Certain restaurants, food businesses, and shops located in an airport can apply for a restaurant revitalization grant that will be offered through the Small Business Association. The grant is for $10 million, up to $5 million per location, and can be spent on expenses necessary to keep the business open. A total of $28.6 billion has been allocated.
Businesses cannot have more than 20 locations, cannot be operated by a state or local government, and cannot apply if they received or have pending applications for Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Nonprofits and Venues Act.
Do you have a lot of customer service inquiries in your business? If so, it can be a challenge to manage them all. Being responsive with customer service can make all the difference in your company’s success, so it makes sense to take a look at some tools that can streamline the process.
The most common solution to automating customer service inquiries is to implement a ticket management system, which is also called help desk software. Some of the things that are important to consider include:
- How fast you can respond to a customer
- How well you solve the customer’s problem
- How to track a customer’s issue if it has to be open for a while before it can be solved
- How to do all of this in a cost-effective and efficient, yet friendly, manner
These days, an inquiry can come from a multitude of places:
- Phone calls and voice mails
- Emails
- Text messages
- Social media accounts, for all the platforms you have a business presence
- Posts, replies, and comments
- Messaging
- Any other methods you have set up in your social accounts
- Chat feature on website
- Snail mail
That’s a lot of inputs to organize. When they can all be fed into the same system, you have just unified your messaging input and taken a giant step toward organizing all of these moving parts. A good ticketing system will accomplish this, and the feature you want to ask for is multi-channel accessibility.
Keeping your customer service costs low is another factor, and one way to accomplish that is to help users self-serve and solve their own issues when they can. This requires a robust knowledge base feature. A knowledge base is a set of how-to articles and videos of the most frequently asked customer service questions.
Here are a few very basic topics to consider including in your knowledge base:
- What forms of payment do you accept?
- What is your shipping policy?
- How can I get help if I need it?
- What is your return/refund policy?
- What is your privacy policy?
- What is your guarantee?
- Is my data secure with you?
- How do I update my credit card/address/phone/email?
- When will my items arrive?
- What licenses do you have?
- What are your hours?
- Do you have hours for seniors?
- How do I login?
- How do I access my digital items?
- What are your covid-19 policies for your employees? For customers?
- Are you hiring? How do I apply? What are your employment policies?
A good ticket system will also have the ability to customize the ticket, the customer service agents, the customer records, and the other important parts of the system. For example, you may want to set up your own status items for each ticket. Open, assigned, active, hold, and complete are typical status types, but you may need another one.
The workflow must also be considered in a ticket system. How does a typical ticket flow through your business, and can the system replicate that flow.
Other important features of a ticket system include:
- Support for multiple languages
- Customer response to tickets, as well as customers can view status of their tickets
- Uptime of system – service-level agreements
- Tracking, such as number of open tickets, tickets on hold, and the like
- Reporting metrics, such as wait time, ticket servicing time, and number of tickets handled by each agent
- Ticket tagging and categorizing
- Feedback loop for customer suggestions of product improvements
- Ease of use for customers and agents
- Notifications
A few of the most popular ticket management systems include:
- Zendesk
- Freshdesk or Freshservice by Freshworks
- Zoho Desk
- HubSpot Service Hub
- Salesforce Service Cloud
- LiveAgent
There are literally hundreds of technology options for any size business.
If you want to take your customer service to the next level or just want to get more organized, consider looking into these ticket systems.
A great way to start 2021 is to take a fresh look at your business finances. Many things changed in 2020, and if you are in the habit of spending on the same items year after year, it’s the perfect time to decide what is essential and what can go.
There are only a few ways to increase profits when you think about it in black and white terms. You can either raise revenues or cut costs. Let’s take a look at where we can potentially cut costs.
Publications
These expenses tend to be monthly or yearly, and we tend to just let them automatically renew time after time. But do we really need them? Take a look in your Dues and Subscriptions account to evaluate what you really need to stay informed, and cancel the rest.
Memberships
If you are a member of an organization or two, what benefits are you getting from your investment? Does it raise revenue for you? Do you use everything the membership offers? If not, it might need to go on the chopping block.
Memberships are especially tricky if the organization provides a local meeting component as a benefit and your state or county has been shut down. There’s a tradeoff right now between supporting the organization so that it’s still there when we can freely meet again and being responsible about your own business costs.
Office/Store Rent
With many employees working from home, the question has come up in many businesses about how much space they really need. As leases expire, consider how much space you really need. Some employees may love to work from home permanently, which frees up space.
Retail stores that have moved their business online may be able to cut back on customer-facing space but might need more inventory storage space. A restaurant that has successfully transitioned to pickup and delivery orders might be able to get by with a smaller seating area.
Software Apps
Are you paying for any technology applications that you are simply not using? This is a good place to look for cuts.
Some applications charge by number of contacts. Keeping your lists clean inside these apps will avoid increases and cut costs in some cases.
Office Supplies
Do you really still need things like staplers and scissors on everyone’s desk? If your business is going paperless, you can save a lot on office supplies.
Printing
Do you need to spend money on printing, or can the printed item be delivered electronically?
Shipping/Postage
While information can be delivered electronically, physical goods still need to be shipped. Make sure you have the best deal with your shipping vendors based on your volume. You may also need to consider building your shipping costs into the price of the product or add a shipping fee to the bill if you don’t already.
Marketing
A great way to increase profits is to become more intentional about your marketing costs. Are you able to measure what’s working and what isn’t? Or are you doing the same thing year after year?
Marketing has changed so much, even in the last few years. It might be time to implement digital marketing methods, which can be more cost-effective than older, outdated methods.
Labor
Make sure employees manage their time effectively by providing the right training and supervision. This should help to reduce labor expenses.
Telephone/Internet
Has your business changed? Do you need all those extra features you are paying for? Could you do without those extra lines? Would another phone plan save you money on long distance or international calls? Many telecommunication companies will often bargain with you or offer you a new deal just for checking in with them.
This gives you ten places to look to cut costs and correspondingly increase profits for 2021. If you need help reviewing your income statement, please reach out.