5 Things Your Business Must Do In 2023

Economists predict that 2023 is going to be challenging for businesses.

Global growth will drop by 0.5 percent, interest rates will hit a new all-time high, climate change will disrupt business activities, and the very challenging Gen Z will dominate the workforce. All of this means only robust and adaptable businesses will be able to weather this storm.

Here Are Five Prime Things Your Business Must Do In 2023

In this post, we’ll share 5 ways you can prepare your business for 2023. Let’s get started!

1. Hold Tight To Cash

The global economy is slowly making its way to peak inflation, and growth is slowing down.

This is why venture capitalists and investors are backing off. Given the global economic landscape, they know it’s difficult to generate quick and stable cash flow irrespective of how promising a business model sounds. 

So, it’s time for startups and funding-dependent businesses to come up with new plans for current reserves. If you have sufficient funds (either from your last funding or initial capital), revise your cash flow and hold as much cash as possible.

It is expected inflation will peak and then drop — which will then bring about greener days for businesses. But no one can guarantee that yet.

So, how do you preserve your cash reserves?

Here are some ways:

• Switch to hybrid working models. Reduce office & transportation costs for yourself and your team.
• Switch to free digital alternatives of stationary and office supplies.
• Switch to budget service providers. For example, if you use a high-end project management tool, switch to a basic or free tool.
• Switch from paid marketing models to organic growth models like product-led growth strategies.
• Switch to freelance hiring instead of full-time hiring.
• Negotiate for better rates with suppliers.
• Switch to more efficient equipment, such as Smartpay’s credit card reader.

The more cash you save, the more time you will have to figure out a way and keep your business from running into a negative balance.

Also, you should save on operational costs only. Avoid compromising on the quality of your deliverables, as that could lead to a loss of customers. For example, if you reduce the quality of your delivery service, a customer might never order again from you.

2. Revisit Your Roadmap

Reducing operational costs will require greater time stretches between milestones. This means you will need to set new deadlines for each goal.

So go back to your original roadmap and reset the time frames. These time frames should correspond to the measures you recently took to save money.

For example, if you’re cutting down the workforce, your company’s speed and skill will be compromised. You will need to invest more time in finding capable freelancers or learning and doing the job yourself. This means newer mini-goals will spring up on your roadmap. And they will support your big goals.

Apart from making changes as per your new budget, you will also have to make changes according to changing market needs.

We also recommend making your roadmap public if you have a subscription-based business. It helps retain current subscribers and makes your product/service more promising for potential customers.

Plus, if you get enough attention when building in public, there’s a good chance VCs and investors will be attracted to you.

3. Establish Direct Contact With Customers

Several marketing and data-collecting platforms claim that real-time customer feedback will be a game changer for businesses in 2023.

Why is that so?

It’s because:

• It makes customers feel more valued.
• It helps you adjust your roadmap to customers’ wants and vision rather than your own.
• It helps test the A/B hypothesis and direct investments to more profitable endeavors.
• It helps you improve your product or service.
• It helps uncover cross-sell and upsell opportunities.
• It promotes positive and direct customer service.

The best way to get real-time customer feedback is to incorporate fun feedback forms naturally in the user’s journey. These could be in the form of net promoter scores, quizzes, one-click answers, and gamified surveys.

Also, we advise members of the leadership team, business owners, and SaaS founders to connect with customers directly on social media for feedback purposes. You can also create exclusive communities (like a Facebook group) and use them to collect feedback.

4. Prioritize ISO Certification

ISO certification endorses that your product or service fulfills globally approved criteria of good quality. In recent times, the importance of ISO has greatly surged because it secures your business socially, legally, and financially.

Since the market is saturated in almost every industry and the competition is high, cheap winning tactics are on the rise. Competitors might try to bring you down in trying times with false allegations.

However, if you’ve got a relevant ISO certification, your business will be less prone to baseless attacks. And you won’t have to waste money on unnecessary legal matters.

Now, there are several different standards of ISO. But there are four main categories.

These include:

• ISO 9000 – Quality Management
• ISO 27000 – Information Security Management Systems
• ISO 31000 – Risk Management Systems
• ISO 22000 – Food Safety Management

You will require all ISO certifications applicable to your business. Before you head to it, we recommend exploring the benefits of ISO certification in more detail.

5. Take Advantage Of Free Educational Resources

Improving the skills of your existing workforce is the last measure we’d recommend taking to prepare your business for 2023. This will boost productivity and employee morale. And it will contribute to the overall growth of your business.

You can nurture employee skills by creating an internal knowledge base — and you can start with something as simple as Google Drive.

Create folders for each department and each skill. Or perhaps, one folder per employee. And enrich the folder with useful learning material available online. This can include YouTube videos, short courses, PDFs, links to webinars and seminars, etc.

It’s also a good idea to dedicate certain time slots for this learning material during the workday. You shouldn’t expect your employees to learn for you over the weekend.

Read Also:

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• What To Know Before Starting Your Own Business
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