Steps Towards Being a More Proactive Business

In many economic climates, a business enterprise can be seen as having its own manifest destiny. If things are good, operations are focused on growth and objectives related to increasing, well, very objective goals. If conditions are not so good, operations are still focused on primary goals that fuel a business.

This can leave many firms in the position of being reactive to market conditions rather than proactive. To avert this, there are several steps behind promoting the change a business needs.

So How Does a Business Become Proactive?

1.  Engage Stakeholders in What Matters to Them.
Whether internal or external to a firm, the stakeholders in an enterprise can be trained to tell you what is going well at your company and what is going bad. Getting them to give you this feedback is essential to understanding the challenges that are most relevant to your company.

2.  Make Technology Work for You.   Too often technology can be a burdensome process that becomes the master of the employees, and not the other way around. Every business should be looking at the analytics that drive their business. Whether it is financial or operational, every piece of information used in decision making should be fully analyzed to determine its effectiveness and relevancy.

These two steps together can make a meaningful change in any operation.

As your first step towards becoming more proactive, I suggest signing up for this upcoming webcast on Business Activity Monitoring and Alerts. It’s a great example of a simple, inexpensive, yet effective tool that will put you on the road to being more data-driven and highly responsive.