With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting almost the entire world in the last year or so, more and more businesses have been converted to online activities.
This has given an extra boost to the remote working industry. It has also ultimately led to a need for a new range of skillsets and tools in order to successfully run an online business and be able to compete and to manage different streams of work.
According to a recent McKinsey Global Survey of executives, Covid-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point and transformed business forever
Their survey highlights how this pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies by several years and how many of these changes could be here for the long haul. Moreover, it seems that most of the executives interviewed agreed on the fact that technology must not be considered just a simple matter of cost efficiency but as a critical component of business strategies, able to fill gaps and boost innovation and implementation.
How does all of this affect small teams and online solopreneurs? Does it have the same impact?
Let’s consider this simple starting point. Can we all run our businesses with pen and paper? Yes, we can. But what does this entail in terms of efficiency and innovation? How does this impact our time management and our productivity?
How can tools, optimized to our needs and with some sort of automation, give us more freedom and let us live a higher quality of life? How can the implementation of systems and processes produce a higher standard of services and higher quality outcomes?
To fully appreciate the impact of all of this, I would like to draw your attention to just a couple of the numerous samples that I have been dealing with my clients:
Email Management
- For those of you that receive enquiries, task assignments, membership management requests and similar things in their inbox, how much time does it take you every day to read those messages, sort them, give them a priority and delegate them to your team for appropriate management?
- Now, let’s imagine having a system that sorts each different request type to a different folder or a different messaging system. Let’s imagine that every message is automatically forwarded to the right team member. Let’s imagine we have appropriate templates that automatically match with custom fields and prepare a perfect reply in seconds. And let’s say that this automated system saves you 15 minutes every day.
- Do you like maths? I love maths and data. They give you a proper insight into what’s happening. So, 15 mins a day, 5 working days a week, 4 weeks a month, 12 months a year, equals 3600 minutes a year or, actually, 60 hours!
- How much is your time (and your team’s time) worth in terms of money? How much money are you saving? But, more than this, what does this mean in terms of business efficiency? How does this impact the quality of the service you are giving your clients? You are faster, reply in a more professional way, have branded messages and a high-quality message composition ( just to name a few of the benefits).
CRM tools and on-boarding process
- Did you know that the first days you on-board new clients are the most critical ones? Research has proven that immediately after taking the decision to invest in themselves, people regret spending the money and start questioning if they made the right decision. This is why you hear business owners talking so much about the on-boarding process. In this first phase of your relationship with your clients, you need to give a strong professional message and make your client excited about working with you. This process needs to be carefully prepared. It entails high-quality details. Can you imagine the impact of on-boarding your client with poor communication, poorly edited documents and the lack of a system built around them and their needs? Can you imagine how starting a new relationship in the wrong way may affect your reliability, prevent you from having the right boundaries in place and being unable to guide your client through a long-lasting, trusted and happy working relationship?
As a Certified Online Business Manager and a System Strategist, I cannot stress this enough. You don’t need tons of tools to succeed in your business. You don’t need huge investments. You don’t need complicated strategies. You need the right systems, you need processes tailored to optimize your needs and you need the right mindset. So simple!
Are you an entrepreneur working alone or with a small team? If you are looking for someone helping you setting up ClickUp for your business or if you want to discover if ClickUp is the right tool for you, I am here to help
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