Foundational Business Practices

What are foundational business practices? These are the concepts that build the direction, structure, and stability of a business, they assist in growth and development and are detrimental to the longevity of your business, and there are multiple layers within the foundation and building of your business.

Think of it this way would you live in a house if there was no foundation or framing. This answer is obviously No, because as soon as the first storm comes along your house would fall apart, well it’s the same for the foundation of your business, if your foundation is not put into place before you start building you have a higher probability of it falling apart during hard times. With this article we are going to go over the different aspects of foundational business practices, you will find break out hyperlinks that will take you to a more in-depth look at each foundational point. If you would like to discuss anything in particular regarding your business, please contact us through our contact form. Now let’s move on to the purpose of this article.

Financials understanding your financials is key to your foundation, this lets you know what areas you are spending too much and or if you are not charging enough for your product or services, your financial records form the basis on your company’s worth, whether you are using a software or manually tracking your financials, understanding your bottom-line is important.

Policy and Processes are utilized to ensure that specific areas of the business are being performed within the standards set by the business in order to uphold efficiency, they would include the company’s vision, and mission, selection and hiring practices, expectations of work ethic along with customer and vendor relations, the, who, what, where, when and why of how things are done within the company.

Employees, this foundational area is designed based on the company’s needs and then broken down into departments and positions and within the positions you have defined the tasks and within the tasks you have defined the skills, knowledge, abilities and other characteristics that are needed by any individual in order to perform the job to the company’s set standards.

Customers or Clients what and or who is your ideal client or customer, do you have expectations of repeat sales, will you offer terms or cash basis only, what about warranty or returns if you are selling products, what you present to your customers in the form of product or service including your employees and how they represent your company will influence the perception of your potential customers or clients. Think about it how many times have you left a business establishment because of bad service or no service, or hung up with customer service because they were rude or not assisting you with your issue or concerns.

Vendors or Suppliers where will you be purchasing your products from and what are your expectations from them, purchasing supplies and materials for your business can get costly if you have not done your research to find cost efficient, timely delivery schedules, reliable products, warranty and or returns policy, and dependable service. Why, because their service to you will reflect on your service to your customers or clients.

These are all a part of your foundation and framing of your business and anyone of them could cause significant stagnation or loss to your business.