7 Things SME Leaders Should Prioritize for Success

Izzati KhalidAugust 22, 2023

0 74 3 minutes read

Juggling multiple responsibilities at once can prevent leaders from noticing certain aspects that are actually important to their businesses. This is where leaders need to set their priorities right. When there is no order and flow to plan business strategy, it could disrupt the overall workflow, which may cause conflicts and unwanted issues in the future. The worst-case scenario that could happen is a profit loss that has the potential to lead to bankruptcy.

Here are the seven things that SME leaders should prioritize and start right away to immediately improve business operations and growth:

Cash Flow Management

The most important aspect of business is monitoring and managing cash flow. Without it, it is hard for businesses to survive and grow. Having an adequate amount of cash flow will provide financial stability that will help businesses have enough liquidity to cover business operation expenses during slower periods. Leaders definitely want to avoid missed payments, strained connections with the suppliers and bankruptcy. Setting a clear target and investing in technologies are great for a start. Create a cash flow statement to track income and expenses, monitor cash flows and build a business cash reserve. Also, do not forget to find ways to improve cash flows, such as by using cash flow tracking software and offering customers various payment options.

Financial Planning

While financial planning is related with cash flow, it involves in managing income, expense and savings. This is to ensure businesses to allocate enough amount of resources for the business operation to run smoothly and gives financial stability. Leaders can come up with various types of scenarios, rolling forecasts to adapt and be prepare for any financial circumstances and making critical business decisions. Prevent from silos in financial planning by provide full transparency in the business operations by using suitable technology. For example, ERP software is a quick approach to do financial planning since it provides automation which gives real time financial data through metrics and reports.

Market Research

In order to improve the position of a business, effective market research is needed. This involves gathering and analyzing information about a business’s target market, competitors, and industry trends. Doing this will help leaders understand customer needs, competitor progressions, minimize risks and also be better at tailoring business products or services that align with market demands. Businesses do this by conducting customer satisfaction surveys, interviews, market research focus groups, product trials, competitor analysis and industry trend research.

Legal Compliance

Amazing business reputation attracts potential customers since it is one of the signs of trust and honesty. The purpose for legal compliance is to protect the business from legal issues and penalties for business reputation and ensures ethical business practices. It is done by involving laws and regulations that is relevant to the business industry. To ensure compliance and avoiding overlooked regulation, leaders can consult legal experts or hire compliance to deal with various compliance regulations.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customers drive revenues. Hence, they are the reason why it is a must to maintain a satisfying relationship between customers and the business. Customer satisfactions, retentions and driving sales are the focus for customer relationship management. Through a proper approach, CRM can make customers to love the business resulting from the pleasing relationship provided by the business which increase the sales and provides customer insights through personalized interactions.

Employee Development

Employees play a part within the company, contributing to its functioning and success. Helping employees to acquire, enhance skills, knowledge and capabilities within the organization can help in producing skilled workforce, reduce turnover and enhance job satisfaction. To help in achieving company goals, leaders can provide them and invest in training programs, seminars and opportunities in developing their skill to grow and encourage continuous learning.

Online Presence

Online platforms is where businesses and leaders could showcase their business expertise, values and leadership skills. This brings business visibilities to broad audience which can expands customer reach. The higher the reach, the wider the audience, that could easily get to the targeted audience. Online platform give chances to implement online marketing strategies such as by maintaining active social media accounts and a user-friendly website. For example, through social media profile of the business, potential customers will go to the website and they can start to order the product and services provided.