Your business is your baby! Remember those sleepless nights while planning it, then naming it, growing it, and going the whole hog to make it reach the heights?! The business remains alive and kicking – is all you want and strive for. And if I say it’s not that difficult, would you believe me? Cultivating the habit of doing some tasks periodically can actually do the trick! As they say, success does not come easy—it takes a lot of hard work, consistency, and patience. You might want to check off of the list of 10 monthly tasks mentioned below to make sure your business is in fine fettle. The checklist will not just help you evaluate the fitness of your business but also have control over it.
1. Study account statements from suppliers
When in business, every single dime matters and there is nothing wrong in expecting good value for money. Reviewing the suppliers’ account statements allows you to be sure your suppliers are charging a fair price so that you know when is the time to rummage around for new suppliers.
2. Revisit annual sales.
Looking at your year-on-year sales can do wonders. You should analyse whether you are doing better than at the same time last year. It is important to check costs and profit levels to ensure they are intact. Take help from your business plan to make the required changes.
3. Perform a financial overview
You’ve gotta pull the strings of your finances to survive in business, which can be achieved by:
- Quickly paying off the bills to not hurt goodwill
- Checking invoices to find the late payers and chasing them all
- Managing the payroll and keeping staff records up-to-date
- Paying taxes on time, every time
4. Analyse your website traffic
Your website does all the talking! You should keep a close watch on the traffic. Google Analytics gives you the free tools you need to analyse data for your business in one place, so you can make smarter decisions. Keep checking every month the performance of your marketing, content, products, and more. You may also consider hiring a web developer or SEO expert to work on the pages that are not performing as expected.
5.Monitor your stocks
This one is for retailers or manufacturers! Remember, your stock is your lifeblood and to keep your business on track it is vitally important to:
- Match stock levels to sales forecasts with kid gloves
- Develop special provision for perishable goods
- Ensure storage is safe and secure
- Work with your accountant/bookkeeper to figure out the optimum stock levels
6. Do not let your customers forget you
In a marketplace bursting at the seams with similar businesses as yours, it’s not your customers fault if they can’t keep you in their mind while shopping the next time. Better you remind them all the time of the services or products they were/are in love with.
- Keep your customers and partners on the ball by giving away the news about your business using tools such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or MAS (Marketing Automation System)
- Treat them as individuals, acknowledge their comments on blogs and social media, send them newsletters, wish them on their birthdays, offer sneak peeks, ask for feedback, etc. Try to use every possible communication method to keep in touch with your customers.
7.Know industry news to stand out
Find ways to stay ahead of the curve! Stay on top of industry trends to recognise and then take advantage of new opportunities. Keep yourself abreast of industry news and government updates and spare at least two hours every month to review them. One way to accomplish this is to sign up for Google Alerts and subscribe for email alerts to get the relevant news delivered right into your inbox. Another way is to customise your business’s feeds on social platforms so that you can easily scan the relevant and trending topics that day. Leveraging your team by starting a companywide email alias, WhatsApp group, Slack community, where team members can share interesting findings or articles also can work like a charm. Furthermore, subscribing for trade journals is a great way of staying in the know about specific issues in your industry.
8. Ensure your data is safe
Data is everything for your business! Keep it safe by all means! Ditch hard drives and embrace cloud-based applications. While former can make you helpless in the face of burglary, fire or natural disasters the former is a Godsend in such situations. Cloud-computing provides your crucial data a multi-level protection within the network infrastructure against information breaches, unauthorized access, DDoS attacks, and so on. Plus, it allows you to ensure the information is always available and automatically backed up as well. If you still wish to rely on your hard drive for data storage (due to your own reasons), it’s highly recommended that you perform backup online or to an external device at least once in a month.
9. Be regular on social media
Social media can be a very powerful marketing channel if you use it on a regular basis. And the best part is they are all free! Spread the word about your business through social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and even the Johnny-come-lately TikTok. Publish blogs with fresh content on Facebook and LinkedIn and keep tweeting creatively on Twitter.
10. Arrange monthly meets with your advisors
The last to-do on the list you should do to make sure your business fit as a fiddle is to talk with your accountant or bookkeeper, board of directors and investors. Review business performance for the last one month and quarter can be the agenda. Office or a coffee shop, the meeting venue doesn’t matter! Make sure the meeting is brief and businesslike. Just half-hour discussion over a cup of coffee or two is something you need to be firing on all cylinders.
For professional assistance in Dubai
These monthly checks can sure keep your business in good health. Easier said than done! You might think. That’s where the concept of outsourcing comes and help you. In case you need kind of assistance in dealing with the day-to-day operations in your business from accounting & bookkeeping to registering for VAT & claiming VAT refund to preparing your company for the upcoming UAE corporate tax to scaling up your business. Meeting us is easy! Just click here and book your free consultancy with the one of the best business and financial advisors in Dubai (or financial consultants in Dubai) at Adam Global.
