Whether it’s retail, health or finance, businesses in any industry need to equip themselves with innovative strategies to not only succeed, but compete against increasing competition during this time of economic downturn.
Running a successful business doesn’t solely depend on having an online presence. Flexibility, in-depth planning, organisational skills and clever tactics are just some of the key elements for an organisation to succeed in a post-COVID-19 world.
We’ve compiled a list of four essential tips to help equip your business for success that will aid you in opening paths and taking your operations to new heights.
Encourage innovation
A single major breakthrough or a series of small, incremental changes - innovation can manifest in a variety of ways. At its core, it’s about introducing something new to your business.
For Brisbane-based online lender, Jacaranda Finance, machine learning is at the forefront of their innovative strategies and has enabled them to achieve great success in a short period of time. Jacaranda uses in-house technology to categorise its applicants by their desired loan amount and their current income, all to accurately and quickly assess their creditworthiness.
With new entrants and offerings by the minute, the fintech industry is constantly evolving and experiencing disruptions. Which is why Jacaranda’s machine learning and technological advances help the company to stand out among its competitors.
Set monthly or quarterly targets
Regardless of industry, demographic, or product service, what’s one thing virtually every business does? They set targets and goals. Without targets, it can be difficult for employees of a business to understand their purpose and what’s expected of them. Setting monthly or quarterly targets will ensure employees are staying on-task, driven, and producing work to the best of their ability. Revenue and profit indicators are a great way to ensure your business is constantly striving to grow, improve and most importantly - be successful.
There’s no point setting a revenue goal of $X when you don’t know how to get to $X in the first place. So what’s the trick? Identify your lead indicators first, then work out the numbers you need to achieve in these areas. This will automatically result in your target revenue and profit.
If you’re looking beyond revenue and profit and more at improving your business’ website, Google Analytics is your calling. This web analytics service helps businesses gain insights into their website’s traffic, where the visitors are coming from, i.e. source, referrals, channels, etc, which keywords draw the most traffic, what pages are visited most, etc.
Train employees effectively
When employees have the necessary training, skills and knowledge that apply to their specific role, a business will run more efficiently. At Jacaranda, compliance training is a mandatory requirement for the success of not only its business model, but its employees.
As a responsible lender, Jacaranda dedicates a significant amount of time to educating its employees on the laws, regulations and practices of the quick loans industry. With responsible lending at the centre of the company’s attention and priorities, Jacaranda’s compliance training covers a range of areas, including privacy, record management, bribery, and much more.
This means, up until the stage of an applicant’s loan application being approved, Jacaranda’s employees have carefully assessed their suitability for a loan to determine whether they can repay the loan, without experiencing substantial hardship.
A prime example of this is Jacaranda’s offering of bad credit loans - personal loans for people who have a less-than-perfect credit score and a poor history of paying their bills on time. While there is a stigma attached to this specific type of loan, Jacaranda’s employees are trained to thoroughly assess each applicant’s individual situation, meaning they never lend to anyone they know cannot afford to comfortably repay a loan.
Develop partnerships
Uber and Spotify, Apple and IBM, Ikea and Dreamworks - some of the most successful marketing campaigns we’ve seen were born out of successful partnerships. Developing partnerships is one of the most time and cost-effective ways for a business to grow its market, increase revenue, and generate new leads. Ultimately, it allows businesses to “piggyback” on each other to gain resources that they wouldn’t generally have at their own disposal. So really, it’s a win-win situation and experience.
