Getting your System Started.

Lesson 7

Having a System

Systems are an important element for your business.

Creating systems for your business is one the most rewarding things you can do. It is also one one of the most confusing elements to start,  I spent 12 months walking around my office with my laptop writing procedures, I started with the most important element for any business and that was, accounts management and customer on boarding.

Where to put your system?

The first thing I had to do was decide where I was going to put everything, I already had my organisation set up on google so I decided to use it to its fullest potential. We used google docs to write some procedures but the jewel in the crown was Google Sites, we set this up as an organisational intranet. It is user-friendly and easy to learn, it becomes a hub for your business where not everyone may know every process but everyone knows where they can find out how to do do a process.

• Then we went through and upgraded our terms and conditions, we worked with our solicitor to bring our client contracts into line with the changes we had made within the organisation, we also upgraded our privacy policy to come in line with the changes in the act.
• Then we started to work on our outstanding accounts, it had been a goal to bring the majority of our clients under 45 days, which we achieve quite quickly with our dedicated accounts manager.  We have a few slow payers still, but we have trained the majority of them, those that are slow are usually waiting to be paid by the finance company who issue the work.
• Then we went through and cleaned up all our clients who were out of contract and got them up to date with the new one, this took a while and was only completed this year, this was a task given to my newly appointed general manager.
• We streamlined our renewal process and put this onto our debt collection software, it had previously been housed on our website, making it onerous to manage
• We got our accounting package move to the cloud, what joy this was, totally freed me up, previously I had to go to the office to access it, now I can see what's going on at any time.
• Finally we put in place a flight deck, this is a google sheet that has all the data for the KPIs from my three businesses and tracks the team efforts, new invoices and the receivables.

Make accounts management a priority .

Having cash flow problems is draining, the minute I focused attention on this area of my business everything seemed to improve, especially cash flow. Making my accounts management a priority has relieved so much stress, now that I've put the effort into getting systems they operate organically within the office.

One unexpected benefit from creating this system and especially the flight deck which tracks the KPI'S and finances was that it picked up the moral of my entire team. Everyone knows exactly where they are at, where they need to be and what they need to do.

I can see exactly where we are financially every day and so can my team.