Management Archives - Business Partner Magazine

Sales Tips: Only Focus on The Sales Metrics You Can Control (Infographic)

April 9, 2018 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

The data-driven world that we now live in as made tremendous advancements in various technologies. This has helped sales managers all over the world in gathering and analysing important pieces of information to make accurate reports and forecasts of the company’s sales standing. Through numerous programs and applications, the painstaking process of identifying key metrics and KPI’s have never been easier.

However, having access to this wide range of data is futile if the sales manager lacks focus on the metrics that matter the most. With so much data in their hands, it’s easy to get derailed and fly off the tangent, entirely missing the statistics that should’ve been the focus instead.

But how can this be counteracted, or avoided altogether? Find out today with this infographic by Kona AU.

Infographic by Kona AU.

What is Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)?

March 21, 2018 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

In the Executive Summary of the Committee of Sponsoring Organization of the Treadway Commission (COSO), ERM refers to the strategies implemented by an organization to handle risk and uncertainty in a way that creates new opportunities that enhance value.

The COSO framework outlines the roles that Management should play in an organization. According to the framework, Management should set objectives and initiate strategies that will minimize threats while at the same time tolerate risks that will lead to growth of the business. To set goals, Management has to follow specific strategic, operational, reporting and compliance guidelines.

Goals of the COSO ERM Framework

Developing risk management strategies and evaluating alternative options is vital to managing risk appetite.

Organizations need flexible strategies that will guide their risk tolerance while reducing unexpected losses and surprises. To determine the best capital intensive opportunities to go after, it is critical to identify and manage risks all across the board. By creating strategic objectives that align with available resources, companies can effectively manage their risk and report to customers.

By determining the risk tolerance of your organization, it will be easy to understand, reduce, avoid and accept the risks of your business model. However, accepting risk also means taking a loss, which you have to consider as part of your ERM strategy.

When evaluating your business risks, consider all areas that could be affected. You can better decide the opportunities to pursue and where to allocate capital when you know the extent of risk you can tolerate.

Components of Enterprise Risk Management

When establishing an ERM strategy, it is critical to consider all your business processes and approach risk in a holistic manner. There are eight facets of ERM that can guide you in the decision making process.

i) Objective Setting

Consider your business goals to determine the extent of risk you can accept or deny. The Management should work together with the Board of Directors to come up with the company’s objectives as well as success metrics for evaluating risk tolerance.

ii) Risk Assessment

Any ERM strategy is built upon risk assessment. Evaluate your organization’s short- and long-term goals and processes to determine what kind of risk management program would be suitable for implementation.

iii) Risk Response

After identifying the core and non-core risks that your business faces as well as their impact, come up with appropriate response measures. The responses can involve sharing, reducing, avoiding or accepting the risk. It’s critical to have clear-cut steps for managing risk.

iv) Internal Environment

Evaluate the internal environment of your organization to gauge how it can contribute to risk. For example, come up with policies that guide the ethics and integrity of your employees. Strive to create a corporate culture that recognizes and encourages ethical operations.

v) Event Identification

After determining the amount of risk the organization can tolerate and the success metrics to measure, review the events that are likely impact meeting of the goals. The events can either be internal or external should be classified as either risks or opportunities and be aligned with the overall strategy of the organization.

vi) Control Activities

All organizations should implement specific policies that would guide them in identifying risk events and responding to them. These policies should indicate the procedure to be followed when initiating responses.

vii) Information and Communication

Employees should carry out their tasks based on their roles and job objectives. You can collect and share information to allow your employees know what is expected of them. Organizational performance information should be drilled down to departments and roles to ensure employees follow the appropriate business practices in their particular divisions.

viii) Monitoring

Monitoring can be done in different ways, including both internal and external audits. Monitoring should be an ongoing experience. Make sure you monitor the ERM and adjust the objectives of your strategy based on changing risks.

Role of the Auditor in ERM

The board and audit committee should constantly be evaluated to ensure they are effectively addressing the threats that the organization faces.

Internal auditors should follow the benchmarks set in the COSO EMR Integrated Framework to assess the ERM processes. For example, the auditors can help with tasks such as evaluation, reporting and recommendations as outlined in the COSO ERM Framework.

The Importance of ERM

Organizations need robust ongoing governance, risk and compliance management strategies. These requirements can be met in different ways through establishment of an ERM program. For most organizations, implementing primary ERM strategies will help them to be compliant with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX).

A general ERM program covers more than the financial activities in your organization. To ensure proper controls in your organization’s structure, you need to implement a strategy that includes management oversight and departmental communication.

About the Author

Ken Lynch is an enterprise software startup veteran, who has always been fascinated about what drives workers to work and how to make work more engaging. Ken founded Reciprocity to pursue just that. He has propelled Reciprocity’s success with this mission-based goal of engaging employees with the governance, risk, and compliance goals of their company in order to create more socially minded corporate citizens. Ken earned his BS in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT. Read more at ReciprocityLabs.com.

10 Warning Signs of Unhappy Employees

February 12, 2018 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

Have you ever had a co-worker who’s always the last one to come in to work but the first one to leave?

That may not be an issue if it’s just a one-time thing, but if it’s habitual, then it can be a glaring sign that your place of work may be causing too much stress and unhappiness. Which is, needless to say, not good as it can lead to decreased productivity among your employees.

It’s often easy as a manager to overlook building a solid office culture. But in today’s increasing workforce, which is made up of a huge percentage of millennials who value work-life balance, the need to address these issues should be a priority for businesses who want to attract the top talent in the industry.

First and foremost, look out for signs of employees that are dissatisfied. You need to spot the symptoms as early as possible so you can look into the issue and root out what is causing the dissatisfaction and unhappiness in your workplace.

Do you know that even your office environment can be affecting your employees’ satisfaction, productivity, and engagement? While the causes may vary, there are common signs that can alert you that something is wrong.

The infographic by Guthrie-Jensen presents ten of these warning signs to help you detect possible issues earlier. This way you can remedy the problem on the onset and prevent it from blowing up and affecting other team mates.

Infographic by Guthrie-Jensen

How Professionally-Trained Managers can Improve Business Performance

January 30, 2018 by Hadyn Luke Leave a Comment

Having a management team that is formally trained in leadership and management, not only helps business operations run smoothly, but also ensures a company looks more professional and competent. Whatever business you operate in, it’s within your interest to make sure your management team are not just ‘accidental’ managers but are professional and qualified managers, for the following reasons.

Give your business a competitive edge

Businesses in the UK are brimming with line managers from all backgrounds and experiences, but only a small proportion of them hold formal qualifications. Having managers running teams and projects with official management qualifications helps companies stand out above competitors, giving them a competitive edge.

Knowing that projects and teams are being run by a professionally-qualified manager provides customers, clients and suppliers with greater reassurance that a job will be done competently and efficiently.

Boosting confidence and morale amongst managers

Encouraging management to formally train in supervision and leadership is an effective way to build confidence and morale within the workforce. Managers that are sufficiently trained in the different aspects of leadership are likely to feel more empowered and in a better position to make more informed decisions.

This empowerment is likely to feed through to the rest of the workforce, with other employees feeling more satisfied about being led by managers and directors who are appropriately trained and qualified.

As author Steven Covey writes in his book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’:

“An empowered organisation is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organisational success.”

Feeling more confident about their job, formal management training can boost morale, not just amongst managers, but through the whole company. Higher morale often leads to a more loyal set of workers and improved staff retention rates, as employees are less likely to look for work elsewhere.

Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, reiterates the many benefits management training brings to a business, stating:

“Good management skills can positively impact productivity, performance and overall employee morale. We see more companies investing in management training programs to develop today’s and tomorrow’s leaders.”

How to train managers

Many small companies don’t have the facilities or resources to train management teams in-house. One option would be to send managers on external management and training courses. There are numerous credible and trustworthy training providers which offer cost-effective and high-quality management and training solutions to managers of all levels and abilities.

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) provides a diverse selection of courses that offer the necessary tools and techniques for managers to improve their leadership skills. One such course is the CMI Level 3 First Line Management qualification, designed for junior managers, supervisors and first line managers. This 3 – 18-month course builds on and develops existing management skills and knowledge.

Many management courses can be conducted online, giving employees greater flexibility and freedom to study in their own time from a remote location.

Training new and existing managers so they become formally qualified in management may seem like a business expense many small to mid-sized companies simply cannot afford. However, the benefits of professionally-qualified management teams, including greater competitiveness, increased productivity, improved morale and higher staff retention, can make management and leadership training is an invaluable long-term investment.

This blog post was written by Hadyn Luke, Director of CMS Vocational Training (CMSVOC). CMSVOC offers a vast range of courses and training programmes, including CMI Level 3, Level 5 and Level 7 management and leadership courses.

What Investments Can I Make To My Business To Improve?

January 18, 2018 by Edward Wade Leave a Comment

Traditionally when most businesses think of investing, owners tend to think of expanding the business. This might mean opening up another store, expanding the volume of staff or growing the size of the company as a whole. Even if the money is available for such a large investment, it has to be at the right time for the business too. If it’s not the right time, that doesn’t mean you should necessarily sit on your cash reserves and do nothing. Being proactive is the greatest way to see the business succeed, those always looking to improve usually have the most joy.

For the majority of businesses, there will be areas where you can seek improvements and improve your processes. This could be knowing your market and sector better, or even just improving the equipment you use for an increase in efficiency.

Keeping Up To Date With Your Market

Staying in touch with your market place and what your everyday clients are seeking from businesses, is an essential ongoing process. Investing into market research for your sector can be hugely helpful when it comes to being competitive and successful. It can strengthen your credibility and reputation within the market. Instead of telling a client this is what you ‘think’ will work, you can say this is what the sector wants.

Research into the market and finding out more about your clients, gives you the best possibility to make informed decisions from objective data. Instead of looking at it through the eyes of a business owner, you can use the objective data claimed from the market and make the best decisions for your business based upon what the market wants.

Market places are changing all the time and unless you are able to keep up with the latest market demands, you could get left behind.

Improve Your Equipment

Improving your current equipment might seem like an obvious one, but not enough businesses make the effort to do it. Equipment that works just ‘fine’ wouldn’t seem like much of a concern. But if equipment is slow, then it slows down the whole process of how your business operates. Perhaps more importantly, it slows down your employees. If you’re equipment is faster and more reliable, you could end up producing the same quality of goods, in potentially less time

Although the cost of replacing equipment usually comes at a large premium, the cost of not replacing it could be even more. As processes become slower and slower through the use of old equipment, it costs you time, which in turn adds to your costs.

Investing In Staff

For most businesses, their most important asset is the staff. Without people working for you, the business simply would not be able to function and there would be no business. When it comes to putting your money back into the business, employees should be a huge priority. This doesn’t necessarily mean increasing everyone’s salary, as usually that’s not very realistic. However, you can improve your workforce and increase their value.

Offer employees further training options, give them opportunities to take further courses to enhance their job performances. The more comfortable staff feel within their job, the more likely they are to stay in the long run, not to mention increase their own productivity. Alternatively, if you are looking to keep staff motivated, incentivisng them is a great way of ensuring staff feel rewarded.

The more involved with the business your staff feel, the more they can represent and sell the business. Employees can become and invested and genuinely motivated to sell the business message. If every member of the workforce feels the same way, they effectively become another sales person and through any means possible can sell the business.

Improving Business Processes

When expanding the business isn’t the right option, improving your current processes and systems within the business, is the best way to stay on top. Can you complete your service, or produce your product in a more efficient manner? This can not only lead to a faster way of operating, but it could lead you to finding methods which actually save you money.

Having a positive attitude, open to new suggestions will ultimately lead you down a more productive path. Unless you are constantly adapting to the market as a business, odds are you will get left behind. Although investing into the systems and processes of your business may not appear at first to offer the same ROI as expanding, it can be a long-term investment with returns that might surprise you.

Use Social Media and Digital Marketing In The Right Way

Social media is a fantastic platform to promote the business and tout any potential offerings or discounts the business might be willing to give. Social media in this sense is also free and with a savvy campaign, a business can get in front of the right audience and build up a solid following who are actively interested in what the business is doing.

It’s important not just use social media as a sales platform. It should be regarded as an open line of communication with the ability to share interesting industry information, reach out to big hitters in the sector, even give a behind the scenes on the business, showing how it works. Social media is importantly social, use it as a touch point for your audience and actively engage with them.

Testimonials are brilliant content for social media. People always want to read reviews on what they’re spending their money on, product or service. Incentivise people to leave a testimonial, offer them a discount code, or even small rewards for leaving their comments. This sort of material is perfect for social media.

About the Author

I am a freelance journalist, who studied Business at Sheffield University. Now based in London I produce content online across a variety of different topics.