If your firm's performance has room for improvement, it's sometimes hard to know where to start making changes. We've got you covered! Here are 6 key ways to improve business performance for professional services organizations.
1. Assess Current Business Performance
Analyzing where exactly your business's performance is lacking is the first step to improving it. This won't be the same for every firm, and that's why it matters. Here are a few ways to do this:
Review your data
Review business performance data to determine when and how these problems started. Then gather team leads and perform a SWOT analysis to identify your firm's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the market.
Lacking visibility into your business data? Keep reading for opportunities to increase insights!
Analyze your industry
Conduct industry and market research to benchmark your performance against competitors. How do you stack up?
2. Streamline Processes and Introduce Automation
Operational inefficiency is a common cause of poor business performance. Due to repetitive manual tasks and costly human errors, you can bring in level or increasing revenue yet still see performance decline.
Here's how to assess and improve operational efficiency:
Identify areas for improvement
Ask your team what simple tasks they spend the most time on and/or perform the most often. Then highlight bottlenecks in operations by asking your team what slows them down and who/what they typically wait on to get their jobs done.
Assemble a team to troubleshoot these tasks and bottlenecks for high-quality output with fewer resources and gaps.
What opportunities for automation do you see, but haven't been able to act on? Are your process improvement ideas valuable, but feel too complex to handle internally? Could an expert opinion help to highlight opportunities for innovation, cost savings, and other ways to improve business?
Finally, implement a continuous improvement philosophy for improving operational efficiency: regularly evaluate and streamline processes.
Analyze and refine your tech stack
Just as you may have overwrought processes and an abundance of manual tasks, you may also have too many tools! This can complicate processes and bloat operating costs.
Which tools and platforms do you use most often, and are you happy with those systems? Which tools and platforms can be eliminated or combined?
3. Invest in a Strong Culture
Employee engagement and a supportive workplace can improve employee productivity, leading to happier customers and better business performance. Your employees may also have valuable suggestions to improve company performance. So, to invest in your employees and culture:
Support your employees where it counts
Support employees who feel burned out or underutilized — address their concerns thoroughly first before looking to increase productivity or improve performance.
Don't forget to audit compensation plans to ensure they align with or exceed industry standards and cost of living. Well-compensated employees are happy employees!
Once these are covered, provide additional training and development opportunities such as professional development workshops. This can contribute to increased productivity and gaining new skills.
Implement employee development plans with key performance indicators and work with employees to achieve success.
Encourage transparent communication
Identify strategies to foster open and transparent communication at all levels. And be sure to provide regular communication opportunities for employees to share feedback and ideas for improved performance.
Structure teams and events strategically
Put the right people in the right places — promote from within, but strategically based on each employee's unique strengths rather than just tenure or performance.
And when it comes to teambuilding and company events, enlist the HR department and consult your team! This is the best way to discover their preferences and provide the best experience, instead of leaving it to chance.
4. Focus on Target Audience and Customer Satisfaction
Are you pursuing the right customers — and giving them the service they want? Take a deep look at your clients and target market:
Conduct market research
Seek to understand your ideal customer's needs, preferences, and pain points. Do these characteristics match up to your current customers? Why or why not?
Analyze current clients
What relationships have been the most and least successful for your firm? What do they have in common? Use your CRM tool for this exercise.
Scan your current customers and seek to eliminate any clients who:
- Demotivate or disrespect your team
- Require more time and energy than they're willing to pay for
- Aren't your target market (they don't benefit the most from your services and/or you can't provide what they truly need)
Similarly, look through your client list for upsell opportunities — customers who:
- Regularly come back for more work and/or recommend new customers for you
- Are easy and/or pleasant to work with
- Fit your ideal customer profile and benefit from your services
Increase customer satisfaction
Boost your business's performance through improved customer satisfaction with these tips:
- Empower your team to build strong relationships with customers and increase loyalty
- Surprise and delight your clients at any opportunity — it's far better to under-promise and over-deliver than to over-promise and under-deliver
- Seek customer feedback: a surefire path to better customer service is to listen to your customers!
- Use business data to allocate enough resources to improve the customer experience proactively
5. Enable Data-Driven Decision Making
Have you been stumped by the tips to use data for business performance improvement? You must improve your data visibility to put these tips into action and enable informed decision-making in your firm.
If you can relate, try this:
Analyze data visibility
Map out available data and identify gaps — what information do your decision-makers wish they had?
Embrace custom tech solutions
Leverage technology to collect and interpret data! If you need support to determine the right solution, enlist a professional.
For example, a no-code app development expert can quickly build a custom visual dashboard displaying the information you need in the format you want (Airtable is a great tool for this).
Identify and mitigate risks
Determine potential risks to your firm, such as natural disasters, data breaches, supply chain issues, etc. Don't forget to audit your third-party systems and business insurance coverage to understand your current risks and liabilities.
Then develop strong contingency plans to navigate each issue if it arises.
Finally, ensure IT and data protection, employee policies, and training are in place and compliant with your industry and government standards.
Make data analysis a habit
Start using data to identify areas for growth and maximize performance. Use your newly accessible data to drive decisions going forward.
6. Set and Monitor Goals and Objectives
We put this last for a reason. Why? Because to effectively improve business performance, you should understand everything at play first. That way, you can focus on the most important 3-5 business goals for your firm and hit ambitious targets with success!
Be strategic
Set your 3-5 most important goals. These should have the biggest impact on business performance and align with larger business objectives.
Ensure they're specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals — you need clear measurement criteria to assess and improve performance.
Stay focused
Assign a primary owner for each goal — they don't have to accomplish the goal alone, but they're accountable to keeping it moving.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in setting business goals? Only checking once a month or once a quarter. Your goals should stay top-of-mind on a daily basis.
Still Unsure How to Improve Business Performance? Outsource The Analysis
A common thread throughout these business improvement strategies was data analysis and data-driven decisions. But if you lack visibility into your data, you can't set strategic goals for your business or use data for improved performance.
The fastest and most effective way to get the insights you need is by enlisting no-code and low-code development experts (like us, Crispy Software Solutions!).
We can create an efficient, personalized, and cost-effective solution that gets you the insights you need ASAP.
To see how we've helped firms like yours to improve business performance, check out our case studies.
