The Black Entrepreneur's Journal - Vol 2

TECHNOLOGY FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

How to select the right tools to run your business

By: Nyssa Cromwell

you’ve started your business, raised your shingle and you are putting the word out - you’ve even gotten some customers. It does not take long however to recognize that there are some gaps in the mechanics of your operation. So what critical step did you miss?

Many business owners never consider HOW (systems, processes, and tools) to run their business. Too often energy and resources are narrowly focused on the WHAT (products and services) and the WHO (customers). Maximizing service production and profits demands well integrated systems when architecting a business; systems that can grow with your business and produce steady returns on your investment.

Understanding Your Business’ Functional Areas

Every business has a set of functional areas; each area works towards the goal of the business in order to keep it running profitably.

There are many different ways to determine or dissect your business’ functional areas. For larger, more complicated businesses there may be more subsections than would be required for a smaller establishment. Functional areas are also not stagnant and it is therefore necessary to reassess at different stages of development and expansion.

The following list is an example of how one could dissect and analyze aspects of most businesses based on functional areas. Also detailed is a recommended list of items within each area that your integrated technology should be able to track and monitor..

This provides a framework that you can apply to your own venture. It should be noted that this article focuses on service-based businesses; areas such as shipping/receiving, inventory management or other manufacturing or supplychain processes are not captured.

• Human Resources (HR) - The People Factor - this area deals with managing the people working within your business. Any software used for HR should effectively capture private employee data, job descriptions, manage job candidates/applicants, track employee personal files, signed policy documents and performance reviews.

• Marketing - this drives all of the brand management and revenue creation in the business; marketing should attract right- fit prospective customers (prospects) into your sales funnel.

• Your chosen tech should support the management of unique emails, brand metrics, prospects, opportunities/deals, funnel management, digital property management, marketing operations (ops) and website management.

• Sales - this addresses the process of converting a prospect into a customer, ensuring a win-win relationship (best solution for the customer and right-fit for your business). Tools integrated here should track opportunities/deals, closed sales and deal communications (calls, meetings, emails, social).

• Product/Service delivery - this operating functional area deals with delivering the product or service to the customer. This is unique to you - the items you need to track will depend on your given product or service

• Customer Support - this vital component supports customers through any onboarding or any warranty or after delivery services they require. Often tied in with product/service delivery, this tool should cover customer support requests, inter-departmental support requests, and knowledge base of ‘how-to support’ articles.

• Financial - this mammoth category covers the management of all of the invoices, banking, cash flow, investments, bill paying, employee expense management, government filings and much more. Most entrepreneurs are inclined to immediately

source tools to cover these essential areas: paying staff, paying suppliers, vendors and subcontractors, collecting payments, managing invoices, and tracking taxes.

• Legal - Under this umbrella a business, owner manages the legalities of business such as insurance, contracts, warranty disputes, returns etc. Even seasoned business owners often outsource these tasks, which address contract creation and review, dispute management and accessing counsel.

• Information Technology (IT) - this includes tracking and managing the technologies used within the business and the flow of data from one tool to the other. With varying levels of integration, this software covers document management, computer and device management, and email systems.

• Project Management (PM) - this area deals with task management and ensuring products or services sold are delivered on time and to specification. Find tools that can manage projects, manage tasks, assign people to tasks and track time.

• General Administration - this includes office management, facility management, social activities, charitable activities and more. While we don’t give it much thought, certainly there is software and technology that will help business owners deal with reception greetings, managing social activities, oversee office / facilities management, and process / standard operating procedures (SOP) management.

All of these areas interact to fulfill the business’ promises to the market at large. For a well-functioning business, ideally, you have determined the roles, people, processes and tools that will support each functional area - ensuring that they work synchronously.

Working Smarter; Not Harder - Tech Tools

For each functional area the business needs to consider:

• Roles - what skills are needed to perform the processes and jobs-to-be done in the functional area?

• People - who are the best people in the business to execute these roles (it may be you! Or, are you outsourcing?)

• Process - what steps should be followed to fulfill the tasks required?

• Tools - are there systems and software tools that can help perform the roles or even automate some of the jobs-to-be-done?

Generally there are 3 types of tools you can adopt to track all of the items within each functional area above.

• All-in-one systems - they are perfect for small businesses as they contain the ability to track and manage aspects of Financial, Marketing, Sales, IT functions, PM and General Admin items - like Jobber for Home Services, Scoro, Honeybook or 17Hats.

• Platforms to build your own custom all-in-one or focused system - with their building blocks no-code platforms such as Airtable, Podio, Notion, ClickUP Fibery or Monday.com, allow you to build and customize systems tailored for your unique business processes.

• Disparate functional-area systems - These tools are built to manage one functional area well, but will need to be integrated with the others - like many of the systems presented in the below table.

How to Evaluate Tools

When evaluating tools, think about:

• Per-user costs - how much does every subsequent user cost?

• Extensibility - can the tool be extended to handle other functional areas? Or if it is specific to 1 functional area, can it grow as you grow?

• Data-portability - is the data you enter into the tool stuck there or can you export it out as needed? Can you natively connect the tool with the other tools you use?

• Ease/joy of use - although tough to quantify, is theuser interface (UI) pleasing to interact with andintuitive for you to use?

Also think about:

• How well does it keep everyone (who needs to know)on the same page (integration)?

• How do you share aspects of the tool to externalparties? (contractors or temp workers)

• How robust is the security? Is private information kept private and confidential?

While the information may seem overwhelming, takecomfort in knowing that even the largest 10,000+ companiesare also expending significant resources to wrangletheir information management processes and systems.Getting ahead of it before your business expands placesyou in a more favorable position.