Building a lean business is a goal all businesses should strive to achieve. Whether you’re a startup or established business, a lean business model helps to achieve success and profitability by creating better value for customers while wasting less resources.
For many entrepreneurs, the nitty-gritty details of running a business can often become an afterthought as the ideals of the products and services takes centre stage. However, there are relatively simple steps all entrepreneurs and business managers can take to create a lean and efficient company.
BETTER USE OF RESOURCES
Using your resources wisely is key, whether is it money, staff, materials or other assets. When deciding on how to use your resources the keyword is efficiency, and it should be a driving factor when deciding how to utilise your businesses resources.
Why enter into a long-term fixed rental contract when you can rent desk space or serviced offices which often provide rolling monthly contracts and the flexibility to upsize or downsize when needed? Why hire 5 full-time employees when you could hire a mixture of full time, part time, contract and outsourced staff?
The alternatives in these examples provide the same opportunity for productivity but allow a more efficient, flexible and cost-beneficial use of resources and such solutions can be found when deciding how to use any resource your business has at it’s disposal.
KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMERS
The more you know about your customers, not only can you provide a better product or service, you can also save valuable resources. By continually learning about your target customer base, all business processes and use of resources become much more efficient. Using this knowledge you can create more focused marketing campaigns and spend money and time on creating core products and services that both meet the needs of your customers and provide greater value than your competitors.
OUTSOURCING BUSINESS SERVICES
Accounting, HR and legal services are just some of the daily business tasks that you can outsource. The benefits to outsourcing such work are numerous. With many firms now offering fixed-fee flexible packages, the cost is lower and the services more efficient than ever before. Not only will knowing that professionals managing such business functions remove many of the worries that business owners encounter daily but it will save both time and money with can be better spent on creating more value for your customers.
We here at Bright Horizon are ready to help you begin your journey to a leaner and more profitable business. Contact us now!