Do you have a good business practice agenda in your business?

How do you decide what is good business practice for your own business and how are others doing it?

There is a new online tool that has been created for Australian Small Business providing a platform that will enable small to medium businesses to establish their own responsible and sustainable business practice agenda. St. James Ethics Centre and the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia in collaboration with Australian Businesses, has developed the Good Business Register.

The site is secured by log in and will allow you to build and publish your Responsible Business Practice Profile as a marketing tool that showcases your company’s image and reputation building trust and understanding.

You can print your profile, save it allowing you to use it within any other marketing strategy documents or send or publish the link to stakeholders, customers, suppliers and staff.

Currently this is a free online tool and can be completed incrementally to your time constraints and as your business grows or changes.

The site is based around 5 principles of responsible business practice – Financial sustainability, Inclusive workplace environment, Promoting responsible business through the supply chain, Active engagement with stakeholders and the community, and Minimising the impact of business activities on the environment.

We are all subject to a range of responsibilities and obligations that govern our day-to-day business operations. These obligations define minimum requirements we must meet within our business and information on them is provided within the register. However the register is about encouraging business to go beyond compliance – to be more aspirational than merely complying, and provide you with the platform to showcase this important competitive edge, improving your image and reputation.

Click here to register and use the Good Business Register

What does this mean for your business? How do you manage information and knowledge? There is an overload of knowledge out there, but without context effective management it can become a liability instead of an asset.

There are four dimensions to consider: people, subjects, software and time. No matter what technology we are using, people are still one of the most important reservoirs of company knowledge and all too often when they walk out the door, the company knowledge they take with them may never return. The first step to developing a knowledge management strategy is to identify the key people in your business that provide knowledge and develop a system to retain and share that knowledge.

There are many technology solutions available to implement your knowledge management strategy. The best system is comprises a range of tools. Blogs, wikis and even social networking online enables you to capture knowledge in real time in a way that is tactical rather than academic, whilst developing networks that can last beyond individual people who may come and go.

Social bookmarking such as delicious provide a way of tagging information on the net and sharing it with others. No longer will you lose all those bookmarks and favourites when a computer crashes, and by sharing these bookmarks within a structure, your entire staff can access and add to the information they need from anywhere. I personally often go straight to the delicious bookmarks that belong to a leader in my field and reap the benefits of her research.

Still none of these things are likely to work well without developing a strategy, so locate someone in your business with a high level of company knowledge and work with them to begin to capture and manage this to your best advantage.

What value does your site offer that is distinctive from any other site? Now this is not a very different question from one you should be asking yourself about your business in general – what makes your business different from every other similar business in your area, why will someone choose you?

Is your site well branded? Your branding should dovetail harmoniously into all your business branding – when someone comes to your site they need to ‘know’ that they are with you, and feel good whenever they see your branding.

Is your site optimised for search engines? It is critical to remember that if you want your site to attract new customers, they have to find you, and that happens through a search engine. If your site does not come up in the first 10 results the chances of someone finding you diminishes greatly.

Do you offer your visitors a site that is easy to find information on, easy to contact you for more information and the ability to get exactly what they want on the spot?

This is a harder one as some business lend themselves perfectly to shopping cart services, but maybe it’s information they need from your site to bring them to making contact. Whatever it is you need to identify this clearly and ensure your site provides it.

If you have a web site it must be included in your business plan and treated as a high priority – keep it relevant, informative and updated regularly!

How are you going to do this?

Social networking has become the buzz word for everyone including business.

Like it or not, it is becoming a part of the workplace, but should sites like Facebook be used and how?

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites at the moment and it seems that ‘anyone who is anyone’ can be found there.

Is it ethical to use Facebook to check up on existing or potential staff?

Are you losing productivity to staff being logged into a site like this?

Are they just chatting inanely about their private life or is information about your business at risk?

Facebook is often used as a gossip avenue, and work gossip is nothing new, but it used to be restricted to hallways, staff rooms and telephones.

It can be surprising what people will write on these sites, especially in the heat of the moment.

There have even been many cases of employees losing their jobs through Facebook. There is no accounting for stupidity really – imagine calling in to work sick, then writing on Facebook that you are hung over or have a hot date and have chucked a sickie! Well it happens around the globe and is likely to continue to happen.

What about putting your business on Facebook?

This is becoming increasingly popular and could be a very innovative idea.

However I would strongly recommend that before you do this you analyse – why would I do it, who will look after the profile, what would I want broadcast about the business, how does it fit my business plan, who will become our friends and how much paid time will be needed to keep the page updated? No point in having a Facebook page that is not updated often, people expect regular updates there!

There are a host of brilliant web tools out there for business, but don’t just use them all simply because you can.

Technology does not guarantee you will become organised!

You need to USE the technology in order to achieve this.

For example, one thing I used to find with a paper diary was that some days I got so busy that I forgot to even look in the diary once I left home in the morning - the day seemed to take on a life of it’s own and run away with me.  I was often heard to mutter “it’s not good enough for me to write things in my diary - I have to look in it too…”

This brings me to one the my favourite features of electronic diaries and lists - the ability to set an alert on them.  I can even set multiple alerts on a single entry!

So firstly I had to get into the habit of putting every little thing into my iphone calendar and putting the appropriate alerts onto them.  Secondly I need to carry it with me at all times (an alert can only get my attention if I have the phone with me doh!)

Seems simple, but once I got into the habit of really putting everything in there I have found the tool to be absolutely incredible - if an alert goes off but my schedule has changed, I am reminded and then I can simply change the time on the item, say put it to an hour later or whatever and automatically it alerts me again at the right time.  That used to be a huge issue for me - my schedule changing during the day could cause me to totally forget things to do that I was carrying in my head.

Another fantastic feature is recurring events.

It used to be a ritual that at the end of the year I would have to go back through my old diary and begin transposing certain events into my new one - birthdays to remember, monthly meetings etc.

Now I can set an ‘all day event’ for someone’s birthday and tell the calendar to make it recur every year - I don’t have to do anything else!  I can have it alert me a week before the date even to remind me to organise a card or to meet up for coffee or whatever.

I attend a few monthly meetings and the calendar allows me to set for example the ’second Tuesday of the month’ as the meeting date and set it up for every month.  I love that then there is no chance of getting the date wrong for any month.

I use a setup for all of this too that backs all these things up onto a web site automatically (so as long as I am in range of an internet connection I get everything backed up including my contacts list), and it all synchronises with my computer as well.  One fear I had when I went to the electronic diary was a failure causing me to lose everything and my diary is critical for my business.  Now I have not 2 but 3 copies of everything electronically, so the chances of my iphone, computer and web storage all failing is very remote - less remote than the chance that I could have lost my paper diary!

Still the true key to success has not been so much the technology itself, but USING the technology - every person reading this entry probably has all the electronic management tools they need, but ARE YOU USING THEM?

Small business owners often find that their time revolves around a stream of little things that are necessary to keep a business running, but don’t seem to have anything to do with what they wanted to be in business for.

If you allow them to queue up, it can seem daunting to imagine how you are ever going to get through them all.

One of the most important aspects to keeping this under your control, rather than letting a million things seem to take control of you is finding a way to organise yourself that suits you.

There are many ways to do this, but the principal is preventing all these tasks from clogging up your own brains temporary storage, and into some kind of a system. This system needs to be able to track these small tasks so that you can’t forget them, whilst allowing you to concentrate and focus on the tasks you went into business to perform.

The usual suspects are typically diaries, lists, whiteboards and sticky notes, but maybe you can use technological equivalents?

There are many brands of software that accomplish these tasks for windows, Mac and Linux systems.

I would be very surprised if you don’t already have the tools you need on your computer now, even if you’ve never used them.

Maybe you can add better or more sophisticated products, but some of the very simple tools could turn chaos into manageable.

One of the things I personally love most about using an electronic diary is the reminder alarm feature. You wouldn’t believe how many tiny tasks I put into my diary - everything from making a critical phone call to getting milk on the way home, allowing me to work through my day without so much clutter in my head.

Ah the written word!

There is something about the written word that makes it seem valid, authentic and reliable. It can be comforting to read something, and know that if you are unsure of any content you can go back and read it again!

I believe that we used to weigh our words carefully before putting them into writing. I’m not so sure that holds as true today.

We live in an age where anyone and everyone not only can, but probably does publish, to the degree that maybe we don’t give so much consideration when putting something into print.

Communication via email has become so completely integrated that very few of us can imagine a business world without it.

Does that mean we are using the written word well as a communication vehicle – just because we are using it?

I must admit that even though I send and receive far more emails daily than I would like to count, I often find it a frustrating vehicle for a few reasons.

Firstly if I ask more than a couple of specific questions via text I find it is rare the receiver will answer more than the first couple anyway.

Secondly if I send more text than can be read on screen without scrolling, I probably wasted all that text below. That’s important as it means if I don’t say the critical things in the first section they risk being missed altogether.

Thirdly if I ask for confirmation by the receiver of important attachments in my email I rarely receive this.

I often ponder on the reasons for these 3 main points, and as I teach email communication and netiquette we discuss just such issues.

If you consider the communication issues you have had with text in your business, I wonder if you can supply the answers?

Being open and adaptive to new technologies can be an important business strategy. Technology can assist your business to effectively operate flexibly and encourage creativity from your employees.

Yet every piece of technology you introduce comes with some hidden and not-so-hidden costs – installation, maintenance, training, repair, patches, upgrades and more.

The way you address this tension between innovation and costs will depend on the size of your business and its organisational culture.

A standardisation policy that fits your situation is a strategy that can bring benefits to your purchasing and keep sweeping changes in check.

Standardising hardware is often one of the most difficult tasks as technology changes in individual components happen so rapidly and prices fluctuate frequently.

Operating system standards can make a surprising difference as you need to stay on top of updates and patches, and supporting multiple operating systems complicates this task. (eg XP and Vista)

Standardising the software in use can be more difficult as some users feel comfortable with old versions of software that they know well and can resist upgrading. However there are advantages to the organisation for keeping software versions standard that can be more effective than simply always having the latest.

Buying in quantity can provide access to lower prices and make installation and setup easier if everyone is receiving the same hardware or software at the same time. All equipment can be upgraded, tested and training given at the one time, and staff are able to support each other in learning the new system.

Keeping a technology inventory is often overlooked by smaller businesses but is a vital tool. The inventory should includ hardware, software, upgrades, updates, patches, issues and solutions, and maintenance carried out.

If something goes wrong with a piece of equipment having an inventory with a history is the most useful tool for the techie to correct the problem.

Even the simplest mobile phone can be used as an effective business aid.

The power of text messaging should not be underestimated!

Companies are using text as a cheap, simple and non-invasive way of communicating with clients.One of these methods is to confirm appointments. Imagine that you make an appointment some days or weeks in advance.
	The day before the appointment you receive an sms message reminding you of the appointment and asking you to confirm it. Many people receiving these messages don’t realise how much money a business can save by these confirmations.Staffing levels are affected by the workload, and it is astoundingly surprising how many people fail to show up for appointments with a business.
If you had 4 staff rostered on one morning and they were all booked up for the whole morning, then you know that your wages are covered and some profit is to be made. Imagine if even 10% of those appointments fail to show. This could result in losing the entire profit margin, and if the percentage is higher could mean that the business does not take enough in to even cover the wages and expenses for the morning.
The simple text confirmation could allow the business to schedule other clients in to fill those slots, and at the least allows them to schedule effectively.There are systems available that allow your customer management system to generate automatic appointment reminders by sms. This means that you do not need to dedicate time to going over each appointment and creating messages.
Businesses also use messaging for marketing. Personally I am not a fan of receiving marketing to my mobile, but I know others that love it.It is important that the business first establishes permission from the client to market to them this way. Otherwise it is just another form of spam.