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Leadership is all about being able to take swift, decisive action. It’s about using that perfect combination of gut instinct and relevant information to make the strategic decisions that drive growth and propel you toward success. But sometimes, despite your best intentions, you can find yourself bogged down with operational inefficiencies. When you first started out, you were feeling your way, creating policies and procedures as you want along. But when you fall into familiar rhythms and keep doing things the same way year-in and year-out you make yourself vulnerable to operational inefficiencies.
Busyness can get in the way of business. In order to gain that all-important competitive edge, your business needs to be fast, agile and ready to make decisive changes to better cater to the needs of your market. And that may require ditching some of the dead weight that’s been weighing your operation down.
Let’s take a look at some inefficiencies that could cause you to lose ground to your competitors…
You’re paralysed by Big Data
Don’t be mistaken. Big Data is not another buzz word that you can expect to fade into obscurity in a couple of years. It’s something that you’ll need to grapple with if you expect your business to excel. But while many businesses do a great job of stockpiling data, they can also find themselves struck with analysis paralysis. Their data can become too unwieldy and actually impede effective decision-making rather than informing it. Make sure you invest in the right Business Intelligence tools to help you mine data for actionable insights. Only then can you use it to drive the kind of strategic change that leads to growth and prosperity.
Your supply chain has a few too many links
Great relationships with vendors are essential to success in business. But as you grow and diversify, you may reach out to more and more vendors. And this can eventually lead to a large and unwieldy supply chain that makes it hard to remember who has access to what at any given time. You may find it best to invest in a platform like Inventory Locator Service. This can help you to reduce unnecessary links in your supply chain and make it easier to find what you need when you need it, delivering a faster and more responsive service to the customer.
You’ve got all the gear but no idea
You know that capital investments are essential to growing your business. But a piece of equipment, hardware or software is only as useful as your understanding of it allows it to be. The last thing you want is to have all the gear and no idea. Before you invest in any equipment, make sure you also invest your time, effort and capital in training your team to use it effectively.
You’re trying to do too much by yourself
Finally, as admirable as it is to want to do everything your way, you can reach a point at which this becomes detrimental to your operational success. As skilled and multi-talented as you are, you’re not always necessarily the best person to manage every single facet of your operation. There are some areas in which you may find it more efficient and cost effective to outsource. Such as marketing, HR and IT.
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