Planning Ahead for 2016
3 Dec 2015While Christmas is still a couple of weeks away yet and I haven’t even started my shopping yet, my business head is already in 2016.
Planning and preparation is key for any business and the New Year gives a great opportunity to set out the goals for the next 12 months. It is also a good time of year to reflect on the previous few years to get a solid idea of whether your business is on track and where it is heading.
The first thing I started doing is run a series of Reports in OpenCRM that show me a variety of stats for the last couple years – information that, as a business owner, I just need to know.
We’ve also put a lot of hard work getting our own ClicData integration set up and filled in with data from the last few years, so I can also take a look at the graphical representations of some of this data.
I take a look, for example, at how many new systems we’ve created each year (love to see this line going up!). I might check out how many Sales Orders each of my business development team has sent out and how many they’ve won.
It may sound like boring facts and figures, but this information gives me a picture of how OpenCRM as a company is doing and what kind of targets I should be setting for next year.
If I look back to the end of 2014, it doesn’t seem that long ago I was sitting down doing the same thing for this year gone – a year goes by fast.
You might have achieved exactly what you wanted, you might have gone in a direction you weren’t expecting, or it might have been a difficult year full of challenges to overcome.
Whatever kind of year 2015 has been for your business, there is no time to stand still – you need to get ready to hit the ground running in 2016.
I have some big goals for next year, some of them specific and others are a big more broad. First and foremost, though, it is vital that we keep being innovative. That big idea that we started with 10 years ago isn’t the same as it is today.
The customer experience and the service we offer has always been at the forefront of everything we do, and that doesn’t change, but we must keep looking at how we improve it, how we can take it to the next level, and it’s that dedication that will continue into next year.
With these big picture goals, some other specific targets, and all that data, I can go to my team and talk about how we’ve done and what the next year holds for us.
Before I got my start in the tech industry as part of Apple’s UK Mac launch team, I was a professional drummer (notice I didn’t say musician). But once I got in, I was hooked and I’ve been involved in the tech industry, primarily software development, for over 35 years. I founded this company and I now have the enviable title of System Architect (as well as Managing Director) here at OpenCRM.