Operations plan for your small business

Last time we talked about the value of preparing a business plan for your small business. We focused on identifying your target market and determining how your product/service is different from your competitors. This week we are going to talk about operations and how to insure your small business can run smoothly at start-up and as it grows.


Many small businesses begin as a one person shop which means the owner tries to do it all. This is often dictated by the amount of working capital available but it can also be a good idea to insure that the owner knows how he/she wants each job performed. Doing all the work yourself allows you to determine what skills will be needed when you get the point where you will hire employees.

One drawback of doing everything yourself is finding the time. We recommend charting out all the tasks that need to be accomplished in your business and then assigning a time: daily, weekly, monthly, etc. We also believe every business should use a calendar and create set times to accomplish these tasks. Pick the times you feel the strongest to get those jobs which you find distasteful done: bookkeeping, collections, bill paying.

We also recommend writing job descriptions for all the tasks you are performing. This allows to get everything on paper and really think about how things should be done. The act of writing out the jobs can help you streamline and gets the work done as efficiently as possible. It also allows you to be ready to hire employees and train them much more quickly.

Setting your business up with a good operations infrastructure will make running your business easier and more fun! Any suggestions out there as to techniques which have worked well in your business?

4 Keys to Setting Goals for your business

It is the beginning of a new year and it is time to set new goals for your business for 2010. Setting goals is an important part of continuously improving your business. It allows the business owner and their employees to be proactive rather than reactive in their dealings. The specific goals for 2010 should align with the long-term strategy of the business. Below are several keys for setting business goals.

1. Goals should be relevant. That is, they should be something that somehow ties into your strategy.

2. Goals need to be actionable and measurable. It is not specific enough, for example, to state a goal of improving customer service. You need to understand how to improve customer service and state your goal in those terms. For example, an acceptable goal for improving customer service is to reduce project turnaround time by 3 days. You will then need to track and measure past and future project turnaround time.

3. Goals should have a timeline assigned to them. If the timeline is a longer period of time, the goal should also have benchmarks. For example, if the goal is to increase sales by $40,000 by December of 2010, then you might set a quarterly benchmark of $10,000 to track your progress toward the goal.

4. Goals should be reasonable. Goals that are completely unattainable serve no purpose toward improving your business operations. They only lead to frustration.

Obviously goals are usually focused on generating greater profits so they are often developed in the areas of customer service, sales, improving operational efficiency, and improving employee competency.

Check back next week when we blog about various items related to goals and operations that are useful for the small business owner to measure and track.