Avoiding the Common Pitfalls of Fast-Growing Businesses
Business growth is a welcome sign of success, but it also brings challenges that new businesses don’t encounter immediately upon opening. When your business is starting to take off, avoiding common startup errors may help you to better expand sustainably.
Disorganized shift scheduling and poor inventory management are two issues that business owners deal with — here, courtesy of Loan Wolf Financing, are some essential tips to help you avoid trouble in those areas when business is booming.
Scheduling More Employees and Keeping the Ones You’ve Got
Good teamwork and sensible scheduling become more complex — and more important — when you have more employees. When a business is run by only a few people, it’s crucial that every staff member is reliable and high-performing.
If employees don’t know when to come in, aren’t working the hours they’re supposed to, or can’t communicate their scheduling needs to you or each other, they may become frustrated to the point of quitting. This creates hardship for you as an owner and can lead to low morale and poor service for your other employees.
One way to keep shifts organized and communicate clearly with the whole team is by using shift scheduling software. An ideal application can help you repeat shift schedules, update employees on adjustments made to their shifts, and meet the scheduling needs of everyone on your team without understaffing your business.
It’s a good idea to pair your scheduling software with an integrative time tracker, like a mobile time card app. These tools can notify you when remote workers clock in and out for increased accountability, and some high-quality options feature GPS tracking to keep employees accountable about when and where they work.
Managing Inventory, No Matter the Volume
When more customers are patronizing your business, strategic inventory management can help you avoid overstocking products or running out of them. Both of these errors can happen easily and have consequences: overstocking leaves unsold products lying around until you have to discount them, turning a lower profit, while stocking out can cost you sales when customers buy what they need at other businesses.
Although it’s common to make those mistakes, it’s also fairly simple to avoid them with proper inventory management.
Make sure you’re collaborating closely with everyone on your team and with the suppliers you rely on for consistent, punctual orders. You’ll also want to plan for potential risks and use efficient software for your inventory data.
If you’re in an industry that provides service and not physical products, the growth of your business still comes with the need for enhanced management of your service inventory, which is the work you and your employees do before your customers even arrive to prepare and provide for them.
Although seeing the business you worked hard on flourish is an incomparable pleasure, it can also be a daunting sign of even more demanding work ahead. But if you had been banking on a quick and easy job all this time, you wouldn’t have gotten this far. So, when you implement these staff scheduling and inventory management strategies, don’t forget to also pat yourself on the back for the hard work you have already completed.
Article written by:
Marcus Lansky
Founder, Abilitator.biz
