Any business, no matter whether a brand new startup or a long-established firm has to adapt to change. Statistics show that sadly, 10% of new businesses might not survive their first year.
How can this figure be turned around? By simply making some small changes to enhance the products and services your startup offers. The changes you make needn’t be huge, but small steps can make a huge difference. Continuous planning and improvement are key to increasing efficiency and reducing costs.
Let’s take a journey to find the proactive steps for continual progress in startups.
Making Steady And Continuous Progress
The importance of this one factor really can’t be overstated. Startups excel when they engage in continuous improvement exercises and processes. They can deliver higher quality, offer competitive delivery times, and lower costs compared to those that don’t undertake in these kinds of activities.
Startups that prioritize continuous improvement have higher rates of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and staff retention rates, too. Happier staff make for happier customers.
Making Sure It Infrastructure Is Solid
Robust IT infrastructure is key. After all, this is what provides the framework for most communication these days - whether between employees and management, or staff and customers.
Effective data management and secure storage of personal details is highly important and IT infrastructure for startups means thinking about ways to:
automate tasks
streamline workflows
improve collaboration
Ultimately, this leads to more profitable and productive operations. Following on from this, startups must ensure that they invest in high-quality hardware and software for tasks.
Old or out-of-date equipment might seem like a tempting way to save money but in all honesty, it can lead to more problems with system downtime, viruses, and hacking attempts which can be costly to solve.
Company-Wide Security Matters
This neatly brings us to the threats every business faces these days in the form of cyber attacks. Startups must make sure they have the right security measures in place to protect sensitive information.
Firewalls, antivirus software, and regular updates and maintenance to systems are key. If staff work from home, they must have dedicated laptops and tech that are security compliant.
What’s Your Disaster Recovery Plan?
There isn’t a single company out there that is completely immune to disasters - whether natural or as a result of human error. A recovery plan for disasters is essential to mitigate loss in extenuating circumstances.
It’ll need to outline what to do in case of data loss, system failures, or other emergencies. Backup plans should be put in place and reviewed regularly, too. This ties into our next point…
Investing In Building Protection
Your business venue (if you have one) is the window on how you operate. Clients and customers may visit you regularly and their safety and security must be kept at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
Whilst no one can guarantee 100% that there’ll never be any accidents or mishaps - startups can do a lot to protect themselves by investing in the right level of appropriate business insurance to keep employees and bricks and mortar protected.
Invest In Your Staff
Invest in your staff and they’ll reward you with real results - that’s what every startup needs. Training and development are essential - especially with all the continuous and diverse changes in industry and technology. Everyone has to be one step ahead of all the latest trends and advancements to remain competitive and efficient - and to encourage healthy competition with each other.
Proper, regular training and development enhance employees' knowledge and give them the confidence to carry out work to the very best of their ability.
Good training and development mean great cost savings for startups too. Employees can better deal with complex issues and work-based challenges. In the long run, this can result in more cost savings, too.
Here’s an interesting fact - a study by LinkedIn, showed that companies who prioritized employee learning and development initiatives were 58% more likely to attract top talent and 86% more likely to keep them on board afterward!
Monitor Network Operations Regularly
Network operations must always be monitored and optimized to ensure that they're running uninterrupted and giving optimal performance. Lastly, businesses must focus on network operations to ensure uninterrupted services and optimal performance.
Regular maintenance means that all startup systems will continue to run smoothly and efficiently.
There’ll be less chance of downtime and disruptions and employees can get on with their jobs without worrying the system will crash and lose important data.
Continuous monitoring and improvement of startups isn’t easy, especially when it can sometimes be hard for them to survive in very competitive environments. However, it’s essential to take it seriously in order to give yourself a viable chance of success.
Taking proactive steps means that brand-new startups make steady progress toward the goals they want to achieve. Combining all these strategies ensures a smooth workflow and much higher levels of efficiency across the organization - not to mention employee satisfaction that they’re doing a good job and are appreciated for their efforts.