What hurts a business?

This paradox turns out: we carry out vehicle inspection every year, at any strange sound we rush to a car-care center, and we check our health only when we press it on. So with the business: we think only at the first loss. Meanwhile, any company is the most complex organism and mechanism at the same time, since it is linked both with the material component and with specific human lives. When it turns out that the business is sick, managers look for effective measures in their opinion. These are cuts, a slaughtered budget, new directions, business sales, liquidation ... In general, it does not work at all, so that everyone can feel good. And sometimes it is enough just to take a few steps: to analyze, review business processes, implement automation. How not to miss a moment between “it's time” and “it's too late”?


The horse did not die, she was tired

We are a vendor of the classic CRS system RegionSoft CRM and have seen a business of any size and in any condition. And contrary to the advertising tirades you are expecting, we will make a reservation that the CRM system, unfortunately, is not a panacea and a magic tablet. Whatever the vendors say, this is an effective means of prevention and a good medicine against some of the symptoms. That is, it can alleviate some of the problems that we will discuss, and free the hands of an entrepreneur so that he can resolve deep-seated problems. But only one CRM-system in one of the "states" can not do. There is no revelation in our words, every entrepreneur knows this. But for some reason, many are driving away these thoughts.

Since we have already conducted a parallel of the state of the business with the state of health, then let's not make a huge list of signs that are unlikely to be universal, but divide all the information into four parts. In principle, we will arrange the states from worst to best so that the most critical moments are at the beginning.
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1. Resuscitation is the most difficult case when business processes either stop or cannot be separated from a common routine. Sad times, when employees quit in fear of suddenly losing their jobs, profit curves creeping down, resources for development are not enough. The worst thing is that at this moment customers begin to leave, and it is difficult to stop at least on the state of stagnation.
   
2. Intensive care is required by the business in a borderline state. In such cases, employees' behavior becomes poorly managed, finance is in a fever, business processes are no longer regulated and are no longer a key element of work within the company. However, in contrast to resuscitation, sales are reduced at a slow pace, and the company's reputation does not incur losses.
   
3. The current treatment requires a business in the event that there are serious problems in the interaction between departments, conflicts erupt, reporting deadlines, tasks fail. Usually, in a business that needs treatment, the number of dissatisfied customers dramatically increases and, as a result, the burden on support services. Financial problems may arise.
   
4. Prevention. Obviously, it is better to prevent than to correct later. This rule applies in all spheres of life, but in business it saves both strength, nerves, and money. It is important to pay attention in time to the smallest signs of violations in order to respond calmly, systematically and effectively.
   

Let's get started

Reanimation: something with my business has become ...

A drop in profits is one of the most critical signals. If the decline occurs outside of the seasonal recession or other reasons that can be predicted, it is time to mobilize resources. And the most dangerous thing is the chaotic economy mode, during which reductions are made, the costs of promotion and loyalty programs are cut, and the remaining money is collected in a pile and carefully guarded from any expenses.
Mass layoffs and layoffs are a phenomenon that depletes a company. It manifests itself in several ways.

• People leave themselves according to the model “it's time to leave the sinking ship” - they are afraid of tightening the screws, delaying payments, or see a common negative situation. In this case, one of the best recipes is to explain, talk and propose a plan of joint action, thanks to which the company can get out of the crisis. Changing jobs for many is a painful process, so loyal measures can have an effect.
  
• Employees "leave at will" - that is, the employee formally leaves himself, but at the request of the manager, while receiving only vacation pay and wage balances. Of course, this is an army (or a grouping - depending on the size) of offended people who can cause significant harm: go to competitors, divert customers and contractors, make a fuss on the Internet.
  
• There are cuts - on the one hand, this is a soft measure, but it is not profitable for almost everyone. Employees do not want to fall under the reduction, so as not to get an entry in labor, with which it is more difficult to find a new job; the company spends money on compensation payments.
  
• Blackmailers appear - workers who threaten to leave or appeal to the labor inspectorate (fire, tax, Hague court of choice) and try to get money for refusing intentions.
  

Well, in addition to all these troubles, the company loses its work force, which in a crisis situation is just better to rally and mobilize.

Intensive customer churn is, in principle, a consequence of the company's internal problems and a direct cause of the drop in revenue. And rarely, what company today can rely on the client flow in any case - there are few monopoly spheres, and competitors are not asleep. Moreover, dissatisfied customers, even with trifles, can “embellish” the story and catch up with negatives in the network.

We do not accidentally separate the sharp drop in sales from churn. The fall in sales may be due to changes in customer quality. For example, the company had large orders, but there were many small ones that could not cover the previous volumes. It is necessary to identify the factors that determined the decline.

Business therapy

• Look at the business plan (budget) - if you have such a document, you will certainly find ways to reduce costs and see the sources of savings. Reduce entertainment expenses, expenses for corporate culture in the form in which your HRs impose it on you, inspect advertising costs.
  
• Talk with employees, but not threatening and not intimidating, but in the form of a dialogue. Discuss plans and possible strategies. Allies must be there.
  
• Well, humanly to part with those who want to leave, to offer to return to better times.
  
• Consider the possibility of a bank loan - but only if there is an adequate business plan and the ability to cover payables at the right time.
  
• Collect accounts receivable. Many companies accumulate unbelievable accounts receivables with the sole purpose of retaining customers or selling goods. Review the register of your debtors - some of them are exactly willing to pay the bills, but they live according to the principle “do not ask and it’s okay”.
  
• Work with the client base. And here in this moment you can greatly benefit from the CRM-system. First of all, protect your customer data so that when you quit, managers can’t take all customers with them with a couple of clicks. On-premise solutions (such as RegionSoft CRM ) are better coped with such tasks, since you can monitor actions on the server, prevent copying, uploading and even screenshots, install hardware protection. Pull from the cloud is much easier - you can quietly pass the password before leaving or quickly copy the data. And secondly, “grind” the base - look at customer profiles, try to make additional sales, re-establish connections, close hung transactions. This stabilizes revenue.
  
• Increase internal security. This does not mean that you need a metal frame or security service in a company of 15 people. But elementary protection of the client base, control of the time of arrival at work, quality control of the service are adequate and timely measures.
  
• Do not sell off. Necessary additional advertising activity will take resources, you will receive less profit, and customers will take advantage of the situation and cover their needs for your product (service) with a margin.
  

The main advice - keep cool and do not panic. You will always have time to break the firewood.

Intensive therapy: do not test the strength of the company

This is an intermediate stage, which already reflects all the negative processes, but they are reversible. In addition to the usual stagnation, which will be described in the section below, this stage is distinguished by additional distinct signs.

The decline in sales in this situation is more smooth, and there is every chance to rectify the situation. Again, CRM does not interfere here, both in terms of customer rotation and in terms of studying the structure of sales funnel in detail to the manager and to the direction.

Disputes and conflicts of employees are no longer resolved without the involvement of management. The head knows about all the problems and often acts as a party to the conflict. Unpleasant questions relate to employee income, bonuses, unfulfilled KPI. Often, there is an open confrontation of departments: for example, they can fight development and sales, development and marketing, sales and marketing, development and support. Outwardly, their disagreements look like a dispute over what will bring more income and need to the buyer, but in fact the problem often lies in the desire to hide their flaws.

Business therapy

• In addition to the main activities that involve improving the situation, it is important to spread the merits of each unit and determine their place in the overall strategy. It is necessary to revise the KPI scorecard and clearly state what numbers each employee of each department should achieve. Let the employees see the progress bars of their indicators in the CRM system and strive to complete the tasks, not to disassemble.
  
• Set clear tasks with tight deadlines and monitor their implementation. So the staff will see that you are involved in the process and are able to influence the situation. There is nothing worse than a self-managed leadership.
  

Current treatment: we deal with a bunch of diseases

Once we already wrote about stagnation in business, and even then the idea arose to write a detailed medical history in the form of a check list. Then it was more about external factors of stagnation, but today we are talking only about internal symptoms, which, alas, can manifest themselves in complete foreign economic calm.

Difficulties with business processes, long coordination - the most characteristic sign that the business is sick. The constant search for documents, shifting responsibility and outstanding tasks within the framework of a common project is a hellish mixture for any company, from an advertising agency to a developer and a manufacturing enterprise. This is a period when business processes are lame or completely absent, productivity is sharply reduced, conflicts arise, customers receive services, goods, and service with a delay. It happens worse: some employees work for three, some do absolutely nothing in the hope that others will get the project for them.

Failure to understand the company's revenue sources is an alarming signal, even if the revenue curve goes up steadily. This is reminiscent of the situation “let's live for one day.” Top managers and even middle managers are required to know the company's revenue structure. For example, 50% comes from software sales, 25% from improvements, 10% from consulting, 15% from technical support. It is important to know these indicators in order to work on weak points and develop strong ones, and maybe even change the income structure. If there is no understanding, then the first recession will lead to a set of chaotic reactions that will aggravate the situation.

Misunderstanding of the cost structure - when everything is fine with the proceeds, managers can spend money unnecessarily wastefully, for example, on coaching services, expensive corporate events, prestigious souvenirs, conferences and exhibitions. At the same time almost none of the listed categories pays off even in the long term. Cost control is a great way to save and form a “airbag” for a business.

Missed and overdue tasks - on the one hand, part of the problematic business processes, and on the other - the acute question of personal and collective planning in the company. If an employee does not set tasks, skips deadlines, forgets about affairs, this indicates his low motivation and effectiveness. When this happens with several employees, a mess is established in the company.

Theft of clients by managers from each other is a pathological situation, consider dedovshchina inside a normal organization. Strong and arrogant managers in an effort to get a personal bonus in various ways pick up clients for themselves, leaving other colleagues to be outsiders. Moreover, not every manager decides to talk about such a situation to a manager in fear of hearing that he himself is guilty and that means a colleague is able to work more efficiently.
Objective customer complaints and customer churn are a sign of problems within the company. Complaints are usually standard: on time, on service, on rudeness, on speed. At this stage, rarely anyone complains specifically about the product and service. And this is good: the personal fault of the workers has not yet had time to spread to the image of the company as a whole. The outflow of buyers is slightly higher than usual and may not even strain the leaders.

Difficult exchange of information between departments and branches, lame reporting. If you notice that employees prepare reports for a long time, and information about the same indicators varies from department to department - it's a pipe. This means that the employees themselves do not work on the data and do not rely on analytics, but only draw figures as necessary to report to the boss.

Business therapy

The stage of treatment is the very moment when business automation (CRM, ERP, BPM) is able to work wonders and lift even the “patient” with complications. And this is the period when the introduction of a CRM system will not in itself be an excessive and painful load, as it can be in the two previous states.

• Adjust business processes. Today there are many systems on the market with embedded business processes that allow you to build chains with automatic start, reminders, logging, etc. - the whole routine will be automated, and all complex processes will proceed as if written (more precisely by notation - BPMN or understandable to any native, such as in our RegionSoft CRM ). But, of course, before automating processes, they need to be analyzed, designed, revised and incorporated into the system. This is not the fastest job, but its fruits will serve throughout the life of your business. The very case when it is better to lose a day in order to fly in two hours later.
  
• Take up the company's business plan (budget) - write down the company's expenses and incomes in detail, inform the departments about the plan and budget of each of them (and not just the advertisers!). Do not confuse this document with the balance sheet, they are not even close. A business plan is a detailed portrait of your company with cash flows and maximum detail. And with the budget you need to work every quarter, planning indicators and comparing the plan and fact. Save all copies by quarter, do not overwrite the data in the same file (MS Excel is best). By the way, we in RegionSoft CRM provide an analysis of the expenditure-revenue part of each project and the entire cash flow is obtained in full view.
  
• But the problems with operational reporting, customer over-pulling and personal and group planning are just solved in one and only way - by implementing a CRM system. Firstly, in any system there are multifunctional convenient planners (we have as many as three in the CRM system , including a planner with a three-week planning horizon - the team’s work is visible for a month, like on that saucer with an apple), secondly, every employee can receive and set tasks for which reminders always come - you want, you will not forget. And these are not personal Google calendars, but a centralized and transparent action plan.
  

Managers lead their clients and can close them from other employees or set up access rights, the problem of "poaching" is solved on the first day. And of course, CRM acts as a central repository of a valuable asset - the customer base.

As for the reports that in CRM systems they are formed in ready-made forms or forms designed for your business needs. The manager no longer needs to collect data bit by bit - just go to CRM and view all the information of interest. In addition, each employee can view reports on his job profile and make decisions based on data, and not on the basis of “it has always been like this, something will come out.”

Tightening the screws and installing total control is always an undesirable option that can only make things worse and lead to an escalation of conflicts and misunderstanding on the part of employees. Therefore, it is necessary to distribute responsibilities between the state and the automated control system so that development is not extensive, but intensive. In addition, the process of introducing a CRM system itself helps to identify and review a huge number of problems and control roughness - without this, you will not get the necessary exhaust (we already wrote about the implementation algorithm ).

Prevention: forewarned and armed

Prevention of negative phenomena - the key to the health of your business. And if things are going well, the team earns, customers love, the revenue is good, and the management is quietly and enthusiastically involved in the company's business, it is worthwhile to preserve to make sure that this state lasts as long as possible. Then small troubles, seasonality and external crisis will not be the beginning of the end for the company. In the meantime, you are fine, it's time to do the perfect order in business, including through automation. So, what aspects need special attention to be in order?

Young business is a prerequisite to start working well from scratch: build relationships in a team, implement end-to-end automation, earn respect and customer loyalty. By the way, about automation. In Russia, CRM is introduced either when there is money, or when Excel is piling up - rarely does this happen at the time of the creation of the company. The logic is simple, like a wooden ruler: “Suddenly it doesn’t take off, but have we spent it?” Thoughts from the category “spend money to take off” are rare. At the same time, abroad, 65% of companies implement CRM in the first five years of their existence, 18% - before the end of the first year, 20% - in 1-2 years, 23% - in the first 3-5 years. They just have a different IT culture: software for foreigners is not a luxury, but a means of making more profit. Do not be afraid of automation in the early life of the company and wait for the growth of requirements for CRM: in the case of growth, the system easily scales.

The mobility of staffing is the first sign of the need to protect the customer base. If your personnel changes quickly (call center, sales people, telemarketers), then you should take care of very good data protection for your customers - when a person is not morally tied to a company, he can steal customer lists without a hint of conscience, and then sell them at a similar price Do not believe? Look at how many specific customer bases are in the free market and remember how many times those companies that you have not contacted called you. This is all from there the legs grow.

A formed sales team needs excellent work tools. As salespeople themselves joke, it is enough for life to have right hand, ear, tongue and sometimes liver. And if the protection of the liver lies outside the leadership, then for hands, ear and tongue you need a reliable set: CRM, VoIP-telephony, equipment. Moreover, choosing CRM, it is better to pay attention to the fact that managers do not have to rush from one interface to another: cool, when telephony, customers, transactions, documents on the client, funnels and reports, KPI and planning in one place. When developing our CRM system, we took into account our experience and the experience of our customers in order to create a single convenient solution.

By the way, the best way to discredit your business is when several employees interact with a client and do not know what their colleagues told the client. A well-thought-out CRM strategy can solve this problem by giving all customers who have contacted employees access to the history of relationships, from the first contact to the last interaction.

Heterogeneous clients of the company need segmentation and careful customization of offers. Be sure to work with the client base, develop individual offers and loyalty programs. Clusters and customer segments require a lot of work, but they are more than repaying due to the growth in sales revenue. At the same time, segmentation forces mailings to work, which even at the peak of the company's heyday can hang fruitlessly in mailboxes.

A large and variable assortment is a sign that it is high time to put a warehouse program (WMS) or a CRM with a warehouse management module. This will kill three birds with one stone:

• reduce the chances of warehouse workers to go unnoticed when stealing products
  
• Accelerate the processes of acceptance and shipment due to automation and quick work with accompanying documents
  
• You will be able to control the speed of purchases of various items of the range, take unpopular goods from sales in time and avoid overstocking.
  

Complex manual but manageable processes must be unambiguously revised, optimized and automated in order to speed up work and minimize the human factor.

Disputes and conflicts of employees that do not require management intervention have been, are and will be. The task of line managers, project managers and top managers is not to escalate conflicts and prevent them from moving into the working life. Arrange informal conversations, meetings, easy to celebrate small victories, reward staff, build a culture of loyalty to the company. All these funds do not require special material costs, but time and moral forces take a lot. But it’s the teams that earn money.

Tabular slavery of the whole company is a very bad sign. We wrote a detailed article about this , during the discussion of which on Facebook pages it turned out that there are more table lovers in the country than one can imagine. Microsoft Excel is a wonderful, powerful tool in which you can work wonders. But it is designed to be used ideally by one person, well, online - a few, but not the whole company. If more than one person works on a spreadsheet, in a short time it will turn into information trash, since there will certainly be someone who spoils the file or mixes the data. Yes, and steal such a database is easy.

Lack of or lack of understanding of KPI is a big problem for any business. Someone uses KPI as a coercion tool, someone counts only the number of sales or the length of calls. These are retrograde approaches. Review the indicators based on the reality of their implementation and importance to the business. How to do it - we also wrote .

The mountains of business cards on the tables of managers and managers are an indirect sign that the work is poorly organized, and all the owners of business cards, in the event of the manager’s dismissal, will leave with him. Therefore, as soon as you see this situation, think about the introduction of CRM - so you save the base, acquired at your expense, within the company. By the way, an additional sign that your base does not belong to you is the high importance of each employee’s mobile phone . Calls should be received and made through the CRM system: you save the history and contacts, and you can monitor the quality of service, if necessary, pick up and listen to telephone conversations (by the way, one of the RegionSoft CRM chips is the ability to record and listen to telephone conversations made employees from their mobile phone).

If you have read this post, you probably wondered or are wondering how to make everything good in business, how to invest in development, and not in a void. There is no universal recipe for saving companies - everyone has different symptoms and their causes. But, as experience shows, both the manager and the employee always feel ahead of time that something has gone wrong. So, you need to get together, discuss, choose a strategy and protect your business with the help of reasonable and firm measures. In general, business, not pain. And then the answer to the question in the title fits into one apt word.

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