There are businesses out there that keep things so informal that they don’t even use databases. Even businesses that do use databases might not be using enough!
Here are the most important factors you need to consider in your business. These sorts of things need to be collected in databases if you want to grow successfully.
Customer relations
What’s the lifeblood of any business? Some may say money. Well, maybe we could consider that money the cells of the lifeblood of your business. After all, who provides all that money? The customer, of course. A customer relationship management database can help you keep track of extremely important details. Essentials like contact information and payment history must be included. Even a record of their previous communications with you will be very helpful.
Employee records
A lot of businesses seem to do this rather inefficiently. When they need to check employee records, they often seem to have to refer to physical documents. A lot of the time, they may not even have the complete records. I’ve been in many a job where an employer asked me a question about me they should already have known the answer to. (Sometimes they’re questions I didn’t even know the answer to – the answer would have been in the employee records!) Keep your employee records comprehensive and easily accessible. Something as simple as starting a spreadsheet online can help you work through that data much more effectively.
Payment
Are you keeping track of the hourly wage of each employee? Of how many hours everyone has worked so far? Can you tell within a few minutes if you’ve underpaid an employee or even overpaid them? What’s their salary, and how does it match against people in similar positions at other companies? What’s the value of the benefits you’re giving them? Have you given them this month’s payslip? How much can you tell them about their contributions to their retirement plan or health insurance plan? You should be able to answer all of these questions with a confident “yes”.
Inventory
Not keeping track of your inventory can lead to a lot of what I would call “rookie mistakes”. If you don’t know how much stock you have in a warehouse, then you won’t know you’re running out until it’s too late. If you don’t know how many laptops you have in the office, then how will you be able to tell if an employee steals one of them? Keep a close eye on your inventory, regardless of what professional field you’re in.
Overall business analysis
All of the above data, and more, can be combined to see how well your business is doing. If business is going great, then you definitely need to know about it. You need to be able to know why that is, and how you can make things even better. If things aren’t going so well, then it’s even more crucial that you know about it! Being able to perform a thorough business analysis is important. Productivity reports will help you adjust working hours so as to get the best performance from your employees. Customer behavior analysis can help you determine if you’re going to be growing in line with incoming trends.