1. Systemization – An Overview and Benefits

The Internet has changed the way people think about companies, especially when it comes to owning a small Business. Millions of people have tried to start an online business, with many of them finding success. While there are several reasons why one might fail to get their online business off the ground, one of the main reasons is that the owner was unable to systemize the company and utilize the available resources.

People who have found success with their online business know that they need a great idea, as well as the resources to cultivate a customer base for that great idea. They also understand that the same daily activities that are done in a brick-and-mortar business, also apply to an online business. They know that they will need to take the necessary steps to either learn those skills or outsource them to trusted and reliable sources is about combining the vision with the practicalities of the business world to become successful. The process of systemization is no great mystery. It is possible to learn how to effectively systemize your business and position yourself to run a successful online business that makes a profit on a consistent basis.

What is Systemization?

Many online business owners, when they hear the word “systemization,” turn to the idea of an endless array of meetings that create a ton of action items that must be followed up on at the next meeting so even more action items can be created. In short, people believe that systemization is nothing more than an ongoing, convoluted series of processes that only make running a business more complicated. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Having a systemized business doesn’t mean that you’ll be caught up in so many policies and procedures that you lose all ability to work on anything productive and it’s not about filling time or creating the illusion of being busy. Systemization is not about creating a machine and being dominated by that machine. Systemizing your business doesn’t have to be complicated.

True systemization is about creating a stable functioning procedure that knows what needs to be done, as a way to do it, and gets the job done. When you have a truly systemized business, you free up more of your time to focus on more important aspects of your business, like marketing, strategy, and product creation.

When your company is systemized correctly, the procedures make sense and always have a purpose. With systemization, everyone in the business knows what to do and when to do it. There are no endless meetings to deal with, no complicated policies to follow, and no time wasted spinning the wheels.

This isn’t to say that all the processes within an adequately systemized business are going to be fun. However, when organized properly, the tasks can be completed in a reasonable amount of time, leaving the rest of the day to work on something more interesting, like converting more prospects to buying customers, creating a new product line, or writing new sales copy. True business systemization, frees you, while a lack of systemization creates endless work and stifles your ability to succeed.

Why You Need to Systemize Your Online Business?

There are many benefits that you can gain by systemizing your online business. With a sound system, people in your organization have a clear understanding of the work they need to perform and what is expected of them. Without policies, there are many unanswered questions, and quality and service can’t be guaranteed. Now that you understand why it’s good to have a systemized business let’s explore the benefits that you can gain.

Reduce Costs

Managing your email inbox or reading through piles of mail isn’t the most efficient use of your time. As a business owner, your time would be better spent analyzing new business opportunities or developing new product lines. Delegating many of the days to day tasks that are required to run a business, can free up your time so you can focus your energy on the activities that will allow you to grow your business and increase revenues.

Without clearly documented business procedures, you can’t delegate those daily tasks that eat up most of your time. By recording your processes, you can easily delegate tasks knowing that they will be done correctly, allowing you to free up your time to oversee more projects, which brings in more revenue for your growing business.

Increase Efficiency

Documenting procedures allows you to discover any unnecessary steps that you may be taking. When you record your systems, you provide yourself with the opportunity to improve the process, which can result in cutting costs and freeing up your valuable time to grow your business. It can also help you complete tasks with fewer mistakes. Taking the time to document new procedures and re-document existing procedures can provide you with opportunities to make the daily tasks more efficient and free up your time to focus on growing business revenue. 

Improve Performance

Businesses that lack procedures often have employees that have their own way of handling tasks. While this can make your employees happy, it can also lead to inefficiencies. Not having documented procedures can lead your team to complete the same function in different ways. Recording the best way to perform the task will allow everyone to become more efficient in his or her jobs and improve their performance.

Improve Communication

One of the biggest killers of time and profit in a business is miscommunication. When there are no documented procedures in place, internal and external communication becomes a huge issue. When you have clearly written procedures, there are fewer arguments over how things should be done.

Scale Your Business

Having procedures in place for training new staff will reduce the stress your current staff endures when training new team members. Following documented hiring procedures will allow you to hire the right people for each job and they’ll be able to follow procedures without requiring additional assistance.

When your new hires receive better training, they can become more productive at their jobs. They can be trained in a way that reduces the number of mistakes being made and improve their overall performance. When your employees perform better, you can gain more sales and have fewer errors to deal with, ultimately cutting costs. 

Measure Your Progress

While the money coming into your business is one way to measure your progress, being able to measure your marketing efforts or the development process of new products will provide you with a better picture of the health of your company. If your business is organized and has clear documentation of your procedures in place, you will be able to quickly check on these things, as well as other areas of concern, and obtain real-time data on how they are doing.

Meet Deadlines

Without having a basic plan in place for each day, the daily activities that are needed to keep your business operating can begin to build up, eventually creating a bottleneck and bringing other essential tasks to a halt. For example, if you aren’t posting your Accounts Receivables and Payables on a regular schedule, you can find yourself with a lot of work when it comes time to pay your employees or calculate taxes for the current quarter. Having an organized, well-documented system in place, ensures that you won’t run into situations where you have to drop other tasks to play catch-up.

Free up More Time

When your business is systematic in its functions and operation, it frees up your time, so you can focus on the activities that will help your business grow. Instead of spending the afternoon responding to emails, you can work on your marketing efforts or promote your business at local business events. Business systemization provides you with the opportunity to spend your time on those endeavors without having to worry that your company operations have halted because you’re away from the office.

Take Time Off

Being able to take time off from the business is one of the main benefits of a systemized business. When your business is systematically organized, you can take a vacation knowing that your company will still be able to run, even in your absence.

Now that you’ve been shown the many benefits of having a systemized online business, it’s time to take a moment to evaluate your circumstance and make a list of what you want to accomplish with your online business. Write everything down, no matter how small, vague, or inconsequential it may seem.

One of the easiest ways to become burned out before your business even has a chance to succeed is trying to master everything yourself and doing it all. No matter how good you are, this line of thinking is just not realistic. Developing a logical and workable business system will allow you to build and run a successful online business.

2: Begin from the Start – Making a List of Most Recurring Tasks

Whether you already own an online business and find yourself constantly exhausted from the daily work, or you are planning on opening an online business in the future, there is still plenty of time for you to get into the swing of systemizing your business. Once you start working on the steps outlined in this guide, you may begin to realize that many of them are simply common sense.

Step One: Identifying Recurring Tasks

To start systemizing your business, you need to begin by listing all the general functions that you do both daily and through the course of the week. It doesn’t matter if you are a brick-and-mortar business, an online business, or a hybrid business that involves an Internet presence as well as a physical site. Here are some of the more common tasks that will apply to every business.

Accounting

When it comes to your business’s income and expenses, you have to create some sort of process for keeping track of what comes in and what goes out. Having business systems in place for your accounting tasks will allow you to ensure that you are profitable, as well as make sure you have the appropriate records to back up your tax filings, that you have paid your vendors, and that your customers are paying you within your set terms. It is also essential to make sure that your paying your employees on time and have the right amount of taxes being deducted from their pay.

This is one of the systems in your business that you have to keep a close eye on. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to do the work yourself. Financial management systems will allow you to keep track of everything from tracking credit card purchases to invoicing clients, to following up on past-due accounts. Here are some of the other accounting systems that can be systemized.

• Purchasing
• Tracking credit card purchases
• Accounts payable
• Accounts receivable
• Deposits to the bank
• Cutting checks
• Payments on taxes
• Profit and loss statements
• Invoicing
• Daily cash out
• Petty cash
• Employee expenses
• Payroll

Putting these systems in place will help to prevent employee theft and allow you to have a clear picture of your business’s numbers. They will allow you to control your purchasing and ensure that you sign-off on each decision that is made.

Administration

Somebody has to ensure that the day-to-day tasks are being accomplished. Depending on the size of your business, this may involve a central manager or supervisor, or several managers who oversee one or more departments.

The administration is an essential area of your business to systemize because of the high turnover rate that most administrative roles see. Implementing a series of systems can help to reduce training time and keep you from having to explain to new hires how the phone needs to be answered every time a new employee joins the team. Here are the administrative tasks that should be systemized.

• Opening and closing procedures
• Phone greeting
• Mail processing
• Office maintenance
• Filing
• Paper management
• Document production
• Inventory management
• Order processing
• Creating orders

Marketing

No matter how good your products are unless people know that are around, there is no chance of ever getting your online business off the ground. Marketing involves creating strategies, learning how to reach niche markets, how to position your product, and writing compelling marketing copy and general marketing collateral. Marketing your business is probably one of the areas where you spend most of your time. You are most likely focusing your efforts on generating new leads and getting more people to call you. These efforts can be efficiently systemized and delegated to other members of your staff. Here are some other marketing systems that you can systemize.

• Promotions
• Marketing Calendar
• Advertising
• Direct mail
• Advertising creation system
• Social media
• Content creation
• SEO systems
• Newsletter templates

You can use systemization to create simple systems for your business’s primary promotional efforts. Any of your team should be able to pick up your marketing manual and implement a successful email marketing campaign or create a purposeful advertisement.

Sales

Many people tend to lump sales and marketing together. However, to create a truly systemized business, they must be treated as different functions within the company. While marketing is about getting the general word out about your business, sales are about following leads and converting prospects into paying customers. Some of the sales systems that you can systemize are as follows:

• Referral program
• Customer retention
• Sales procedures
• Lead generation
• Lead management
• Sales script

Technology and Data

It is almost impossible to operate any kind of business without having reliable resources in place that can help you keep your website functioning correctly, your servers running, and your workstations from losing critical data. Your business needs to have clear systems in place for managing both your paper and electronic organization to ensure that your sensitive business information is protected and easily accessible.

Implementing data management systems in your business will help you stay organized. When everyone on your team knows where information is supposed to be stored and how it should be handled, you can reduce enormous stacks of paper from forming around the office. Here are some other data management systems that can be systemized to ensure your business continues to run.

• IT management
• Data backup
• Computer repairs
• Electronic information storage
• Client files
• Project files
• Point of sales system
• Financial data management

You need to ensure that your data management systems include a data backup system. This will ensure your data and business are protected in the event something happens to your server or computer software.

Human Resources

Even if you only have one other person involved in your online business, someone has to make sure that you are functioning within the guidelines and regulations that apply to the kind of business you are running. Managing HR policies and procedures can get very involved, so it is essential that this particular function is controlled by someone else who has an eye for detail and who can assimilate a lot of data.

Along with creating systems for hiring, firing, and training employees, your HR systems will include documented processes for the following:

• Recruitment
• Retention
• Incentive programs
• Employee reviews
• Employee feedback process
• Employee training
• Professional development
• Ongoing training
• Job descriptions and role profiles
• Uniforms and dress code

Employees with clear expectations and clear structures are happier and more productive in their positions. Establishing a clear training manual will save you the time of training each new staff member.

Communication

Communication is an essential aspect of any business and is often one of the most time-consuming pieces. Sales letters, fax cover letters, internal memos, newsletters, and reports are all types of communications that need to be created on a regular basis by different people within the organization.

Most of the time the communication systems that you use in your business aren’t much different from one to the next. However, each one is created by a different person, from scratch. Your communication systems provide a massive opportunity for systemization. Systemizing these communication systems ensures that you will have consistency in your business.

• Internal memos
• Fax cover template
• Letterhead
• Team meeting agenda
• Internal emails
• Newsletter templates
• Sales letter templates
• Meeting minutes
• Reports
• Internal meetings
• Scheduling

Customer Relations

Another critical area that you need to consider systemizing is your customer relations. This includes everything that a customer sees and touches in your business, along with the interactions they will have with your staff.

Establishing a system for your customer relations will ensure that any new employees will understand how your business handles customers. This allows you to maintain a high level of customer service. Theses customer relations systems are perfect for getting your business systemized.

• Incoming phone call script
• Outgoing phone call script
• Customer service standards
• Customer retention strategy
• Customer communications
• Ongoing customer communication strategy
• Customer liaison policies

Purchasing

No matter how lean your run your online business, you will be required to purchase items for your business from time to time. While you may only be buying general office supplies, a software program from time to time, or promotional materials, having a process in place can ensure that you never run out of the items that you need. Some of the purchasing systems that you can systemize include:

• Inventory
• General supply orders
• Shipping materials
• Evaluating pricing
• Policy compliance
• Filing paperwork

It is essential to have someone in your company that is capable of establishing relationships with your vendors and can maintain the rapport to ensure that you are getting the best prices on the goods and services that you are purchasing.

Your initial list needs to encompass all of the essential functions that are related to operating your business. Once you have the list in place, you can begin the next step of the process.

Step Two: Organizing and Prioritizing the Functions

Once you’ve identified all the recurring tasks in your business, it is time for you to organize and prioritize those functions. Depending on the size of your business, you might be able to combine some of the tasks into a single, general category, as long as your business remains relatively small. It’s also important to remember that you can always split categories later on as it becomes necessary. Here are some examples of how you can prioritize your essential business functions.

Product Development

Before you can even start a business, you need to have a core product or service that you can offer to potential customers. This makes product development one of the most critical functions in your business and thus should be placed at the top of your priority list. Product development is likely to continue to remain high throughout the course of business since you will need to continually improve and refine your product over time for it to stay competitive in your market. Coming up with new products that will complement your core line will also be a function that you will have to perform throughout your time in business.

Administration and Accounting

For small businesses, combining administration and accounting functions makes sense. You can hire a single office manager who can take care of the day-to-day clerical tasks as well as post credits and debits to the books. As your company expands, you can split these two functions into separate teams. Before you can start selling your product or services, these two areas of your business must be structured and in place.

Tech Support

You can’t successfully run an online business if you don’t have a functioning website or if you have problems with your equipment. Having someone who knows how to build and manage a site and keep your equipment running is essential to have in place before you make your first sale.

Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support

When you are first starting your online business, these business functions can be combined and handled by one or two people. Over time, as your business gets off the ground and continues to grow, you will need to split these functions into their own department and have separate policies documented for the processes that go along with each task.

After you’ve analyzed your list and prioritized the functions according to their importance and need for getting your business up and running, the next step is developing the policies and procedures that will be essential for keeping your business running, even when you aren’t in the office.

Step Three: Developing Policies and Procedures

When you have your priorities in order, it’s time for you to begin developing the policies and procedures that will be at the core of your business. These policies and procedures will keep each of the essential functions of your business running smoothly so you can focus your time and effort on growing your business. It is necessary for you to keep in mind as you work through this step, that even if you are combining several functions under one umbrella initially, each of these functions must be clearly defined with their own specific processes and responsibilities.

Developing policies and procedures is nothing more than creating a logical process that can be documented in a training manual. They must be as relevant for a team of three as they would be for a group of three hundred. Here are some examples to help you begin crafting the procedures for each of the essential functions of your business.

Accounting

You should have policies in place that include guidelines on how frequently posting should be done to Payables and Receivables, when taxes should be determined, how to handle employee payroll, and how to track expenses.

Administration

The administration policies and procedures should include guidelines on how to schedule employees, how to draft letters and general correspondences, how to arrange and maintain the filing system, book travel for department personnel, and ordering office supplies.

Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support

The sales, marketing, and customer support departments will need to have clearly defined instructions on how to interact with the public. Marketing will need guidelines for how to create compelling ads that appeal to consumers while the Sales and Customer Support departments will be representing the company when approaching prospective customers and taking care of existing ones.

Step Four: Documenting the Processes

For your business systems to work correctly, they need to be clearly documented so that there is no opportunity for miscommunication or confusion on what should be done in any given situation. While recording your processes and procedures can be intimidating, there are some excellent resources for managing this.

Your new hires, presumably, will have some experience in the area where they will work. Draw on this experience to help you create the policies and procedures for your business. To cut down on the time you spend writing down the processes, turn to templates and samples found on the internet or obtained from other companies. There is no point in your spending your valuable time reinventing the wheel. A lot of the information that you need has already been written and can be customized to work for your company with minimal effort on your part.

If you genuinely don’t have the time or resources in your company to help you document your policies and procedures, you can always hire a business consultant to help you create a training manual and a workable employee manual. The money you spend on this type of service will be well worth it in the long run.

Step Five: Implement the Processes

Once you have started documenting your processes and procedures, you’ll want to take them for a test drive. Start implementing the processes to determine if the basic structure is sound. Don’t be upset if you run into bumps along the way, no business, no matter the size, gets it completely right the first time. As you do a test run on the processes, consider whether the process has the potential to be tweaked along the way to ensure that your company is capable of running smoothly when you’re away.

As your company grows, you will find it necessary to add positions to various departments, adjust policies and procedures to accommodate new laws and regulations, or create new departments by splitting older ones. If your primary system is sound, these new developments in your company will be relatively painless to deal with and won’t require you to overhaul the way you do business entirely.

Step Six: Diagram the Flow of Your Business

It isn’t enough for you to merely identify and prioritize the functions in your business. You also need to ensure that there is a logical ebb and flow between each of these essential areas.

While this may seem redundant once you’ve figured out what each department is supposed to do, you can think of it as creating the jewels that go into the necklace. They may be beautiful in their own right, but if they aren’t correctly linked, nobody can wear them.

Here are some ideas to help you with the diagramming and definition of the communication flow within your business.

• Start with diagraming how things flow through each department. For example, a new customer order begins with Sales, makes its way to Order Processing, then finds its way to Shipping, and finally ends with billing. At some point, Customer Support will need to be involved in following up and making sure the customer is happy with their purchase.
• Next, identify who is responsible or accountable for each progression in the flow.
• Evaluate how long it takes for the flow of the order to make its way through the process and determine if any areas need improvement.

Taking the time to diagram the various processes will help you in a couple of ways. First, it will make it clear whether or not the policies and procedures that you have implemented are working correctly. Secondly, it will help you and your team spot any areas where you can improve communication, more clearly define procedures, and which steps can be streamlined to save you both time and money.

While this may seem like a great deal of work, it is relatively easy to accomplish. The degree of detail and time that you spend developing these procedures will depend on the size and nature of your business.

While some of the steps will be able to be completed in a matter of minutes, others will take days or weeks to accomplish. Building a solid foundation when you are first starting your business will save you a considerable amount of time and money once you have your company up and running.

3: Systemization Tools for Your Online Business

If you want to build a successful business that is capable of generating steady, predictable sales, then you need to develop systems that will allow your business to continue to run even when you’re not in the office. If you are feeling stressed by the overwhelming number of tasks, emails, projects, clients, and social media marketing that you are tackling on a daily basis, several tools can automate your tasks and free up your time.

The following tools will help you to automate many of the essential daily tasks that are required to run a successful business. By utilizing some of these tools you can free up your time, so you can be more productive and focus on those tasks that you need to work on.

Asana

Asana (https://asana.com), is a tool that helps you move your work forward. It is the easiest way for your team to track their work and get results. Asana can help you free up your email because any conversation that you have with your team happens in the app. While asana was designed to be used by organizations, individuals running their own businesses can also benefit from utilizing the tool in their business. Here are a few highlights that make this an excellent tool if you’re trying to systemize your business.

• It splits your “to do” list into actionable tasks based on when those tasks are due, who was allocated to work on the project and by the project themselves. This feature will allow you to collaborate on larger projects with your team or focus on small, individual tasks.
• It allows you to delegate tasks more efficiently.
• It works with Google Drive and Dropbox, so you can easily share files within the project.
• It’s free.

Ontraport

Ontraport (https://ontraport.com) is an all-in-one business automation tool that brings together all your business tools, customer information, and data into a single application. It is a true marketing automation system that will allow you to market your business using email, postcards, SMS, and more. It also has a feature that will enable you to sell your programs, products, and services seamlessly with a payment processing option for PayPal or the merchant provider for your business. Here are just a few of the reasons why Ontraport is a great automation tool for your business.

• It allows you to map your entire customer journey. While most marketing tools show you either how your email performs or how your pages convert, Ontraport shows how your whole business performs on one single campaign map.
• You can see who’s converting when, where they are coming from, and their lifetime value through the tools campaign reporting feature. The data you receive can then be tied back to your marketing activity, so you know which campaigns are working.
• It allows you to build your campaign from scratch or choose a campaign from its vast library of turn-key templates that include emails, pre-designed pages, and everything else you need to launch your campaign.

Slack

Slack (https://slack.com), is a business tool that allows your team to kick off a project, hire new employees, review a sales contract, finalize your budget, measure an A/B test, and more; all from its easy-to-use interface. The program will help you save time when collaborating with your team by providing you with a single place for messaging, files, and tools. Here are just some of the features that Slack has to offer your business.

• Organized conversations, utilizing channels to bring conversations together. The channels can be organized by team, project, or client and allow team members to join and leave any channel as needed. It also features threads that keep side conversations from derailing the project or topic at hand.
• Slack also allows you to search for conversations and turn them into common knowledge. Users can explore everything that has been posted in channels to see if their problem has already been solved.

Deadline Funnel

Deadline Funnel (https://deadlinefunnel.com) is a program that will allow you to sell your programs live through webinars, as well as allow your customers to enter into mini-launches, which are fully automated, using timers that countdown to the expiration of the cart. The countdown timers that the deadline funnel uses are personalized to each visitor, allowing you to add a sense of urgency to your marketing funnel. With a deadline funnel, you can build real, evergreen campaigns that provide each of your subscribers with their own deadline. Here are several reasons why businesses utilize deadline funnel in their companies.

• You can create deadline campaigns for your product launches, with the ability to set the same deadline for everyone.
• It integrates with several powerful business systems including ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, MailChimp, and Ontraport.

Lead Pages

Lead Pages (https://leadpages.net) helps businesses to build stunning opt-in campaigns easily allowing them to quickly capture leads, convert customers, and integrate their campaigns across all their favorite digital marketing tools.

• Create mobile-friendly templates that seamlessly adapt to your audience’s favorite connected devices.
• Easily build ads with the integrated Facebook Ad Builder that pulls content directly from your page to create compelling ads instantly.
• Fine-tune your campaigns quickly and create maximum impact by testing multiple versions of the ad, side-by-side, so you can keep what works and get rid of what doesn’t.

Calendly

Calendly (https://calendly.com) helps businesses schedule meetings without back-and-forth emails. Calendly allows you to create simple rules and share your Calendly through links via email or embedded in your website. Calendly works with your Outlook, Google, iCloud, or Office 365 calendars, so you never become double booked. Here are some of the features in Calendly that business owners love.

• They have complete control over their schedule. The program allows you to set buffer times between meetings, prevent last-minute meetings, create secret events, and more.
• The program is extremely flexible and supports joint availability meetings, round-robin meetings, and one-on-one meetings.
• It works with all your favorite business apps like Salesforce, GoToMeeting, Zapier, and much more.

GoToWebinar

Webinars have become a massive part of many online businesses. GoToWebinar (https://gotomeeting.com) lets you quickly and more efficiently communicate with employees, prospects, and customers. It can easily handle large groups of people and turn your presentation into a conversation and the conversation into sales.

Both large corporations and small businesses can tell their story with GoToWebinar and reach their audience. The following features make GoToWebinar an indispensable tool for any business.

• The email automation feature allows users to create custom email invitations, confirmations, and reminders. With automated email templates, you can let the tool do all the work for you.
• To indeed make the webinar yours, GoToWebinar allows you to display your company logo and custom image on all the material used in your webinars.
• Add the ability to share videos to make your webinars more impactful. Upload MP4 files or share video clips on YouTube or share a promotional video and more with high-quality video.

DropBox

With Dropbox (https://dropbox.com) business, you can grow your company without limits, while maintaining complete control over your company’s sensitive data and other activities. Flexible storage plans and team storage management are just some of the features of the powerful file-sharing business tool.

• With the administrator dashboard, you can monitor team activity, view connected devices, and audit sharing activity from one place.
• The remote wipe feature allows you to clear files from lost or stolen devices to ensure that all your company files are kept from getting into the wrong hands.
• The Dropbox paper feature is a simple, yet powerful way to create, share, and keep all the members of your team in sync, with the added benefit of admin controls.

Google Docs

Google Docs (https://docs.google.com) is a robust document-sharing and editing tool that allows team members to work on documents in real-time. With immediate syncing capabilities, the program reduces the chances that someone will override someone else’s contribution. Google Docs brings all your business documents to life with smart editing and styling tools that make it easy to format text and paragraphs. Other features include:

• Hundreds of templates that are designed to make your work more professional and your life much more comfortable. With a wide variety of report, resume, and other pre-made documents you can get a head start on all your document creation needs.
• Since Google Docs is a web-based tool, you can get all your documents anytime and from anywhere. You and your entire team can access, create, and edit documents from your favorite devices, even if there isn’t a connection.
• All the changes that are made in documents are automatically saved as you type. The program also keeps the revision history, so you can quickly view old versions of the report and sort the changes by the date they were made or who made the change.

Google Calendar

Make the most out of your days with Google Calendar (https://calendar.google.com). The newly designed app helps you spend less time managing your schedule and more time enjoying it. All of the events that you add to Google Calendar are stored online so you won’t lose your schedule if you happen to lose your phone.

• With the assists feature, you can create events in just a few taps. With smart suggestions, you can quickly and easily generate event titles, and add people, and places to your calendar.
• Get multiple views of your day, week, and month. Easily invite guests to your events and view your calendar on the web.
• Events from your Gmail account are automatically added to your calendar.

Webinar Jam

Webinar Jam (https://webinarjam.com) offers business owners unmatched flexibility and high-tech precision at a value that can’t be matched. With the ability to invite up to six co-presenters, Webinar Jammer is one of the best collaboration tools on the market. The program is compatible will all browsers, operating systems, and devices, making it easy for anyone to attend your webinar.

• Draw and mark up directly on your screen and turn your whiteboard ideas into reality. You can quickly highlight and write annotations on the screen as you run presentations, training, software demos, lectures, or share mind maps.

Screencast-o-Matic

With Screencast-o-Matic (https://screencast-o-matic.com) you have everything you need to create, manage, and share videos with your team. The integrations allow you to use the platform end-to-end or as video editing and screen recording tools. Screencast-o-Matic is an intuitive, powerful screen recording and video editing tool for businesses of all sizes.

• It features an advanced screen recorder to capture your screen or webcam while you add text annotations, and shapes, or draw freehand. You can also import or export and mix in other video and audio media seamlessly.
• With advanced video management and sharing, you can efficiently manage all of your videos and how they are viewed. Quickly set up channels by topic, set user options like comments and notes, and set permissions for who can see the videos.
• Easily integrate your workflow into your training, communications, support, and learning management system with API.

HootSuite

Do more with your social media with HootSuite (https://hootsuite.com). HootSuite is dedicated to not only enhancing your social media engagement but helping you automate it across more than 35 global networks like Twitter and Facebook. It identifies the social media influences in your industry and automates social media strategies for you.

• Save valuable time by scheduling all your social posts through an easy-to-use interface. Keep your business’s social presence active around the clock by automatically scheduling hundreds of social media posts at once.
• Track and prove your social return on investment (ROI) with the program’s social analytics feature. Quickly measure the impact of your social media campaigns with comprehensive reporting. Measure each social channel’s conversion rates and separate ROI between paid and owned media.

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft (https://infusionsoft.com) is an all-in-one marketing solution specifically designed to help small businesses. It allows you to automate lead scoring and capture a segment with the tool’s powerful customer relationship management (CRM), features. Quickly integrate with hundreds of third-party business services through the expansive marketplace of apps.

• Get more organized with Infusionsoft. All of your customer information is gathered in one place, which allows you to review all of your previous customer interactions quickly. The simple dashboards and reports show you exactly how your audience is responding to your campaigns.
• Get more customers by creating follow-up email campaigns that are targeted to your customers.
• The marketing automation feature allows you to work leads down the sales funnel and build a sales pipeline that works. With easy-to-read analytics, you can quickly see what’s working and what’s not.

MailChimp

MailChimp’s (https://mailchimp.com) primary focus is on email marketing and is one of the most affordable automation tools on the market. Its marketing automation features allow you to target customers based on specific data. Create customer workflows with scheduling and segmentation tools with their application program interfaces (API), and it easily integrates with numerous Web technologies.

• Connect your store to one of the hundreds of e-commerce integrations offered by MailChimp to create targeted email and ad campaigns.
• The robust marketing automation in Mailchimp ensures that your emails are getting in front of the right people at the right time. It allows you to target customers based on preferences, behavior, and previous sales.
• Reach a wider audience with Facebook, Google, and Instagram ads to grow your bottom line in fewer steps.

Needls

Automatically create, target, and optimize all your digital advertising with Needls (https://needls.com). All you have to do to get started is upload your images, videos, and primary message, and let Needls do the rest for you. Stop spending hours trying to come up with the perfect ad. Arm yourself with all the tools you need to turn your visitors into sales.

• Needls will quickly identify your ideal customer as they post their wants and needs to their social media accounts and then display timely ads, so you have the best chance of gaining their business.
• Automatically optimize and retarget your ads, 24/7, 365 days a year.
• Create simple, high-converting landing pages that capture more sales, inquiries, and phone calls.

Salesforce

One of the leading business automation and customer relations management companies in the world, Salesforce (https://salesforce.com) can be leveraged by businesses to enhance your digital marketing campaigns. The powerful marketing and sales automation tools can integrate with hundreds of third-party business apps through its vast market of APIs.

• Manage all your contacts and track opportunities from any desktop or device.
• With predictive scoring, actionable insights, accurate forecasting, and intelligent automation turn your customer data into closed deals with Sales Cloud Einstein.
• Build a single, comprehensive view of every one of your consumers to power one-to-one journeys.

IFTTT

Standing for “If This Then That,” IFFTT (https://ifttt.com) is a streamlined automation tool that allows businesses to create recipes that perform specific actions based on triggers that are predefined. There are currently more than 240 third-party app connections for you to automate your business across the web.

• Get all your apps and devices talking to each other in new ways with a touch of a button.

These automation technologies enable you to free up the time you spend on completing redundant processes, so you can start to focus your attention on those tasks that are needed to grow your business. With team collaboration tools and tools for documenting, you can easily stay on top of projects and work seamlessly with your employees, no matter where they are located.

4: Documenting Your Processes – Creating SOPs

To truly systemize your business and ensure that it continues to run smoothly, you have to document your processes and create a Standard Operation Procedures Manual, or SOP. Standard operating procedures are an essential part of the operating system for any company. The idea is simple and is used by the US military and successful businesses like McDonald’s.

The SOP guidelines are created to facilitate the entire way that you do business. They are designed to make things run smoother and more effortless and help to prevent costly mistakes from occurring. Not only do SOPs simplify and formalize every task in your business, but they also make it, so no process in your company rests solely in the hands of a single member of your team.

The lack of SOPs in your business creates a condition that if key people were to leave, their knowledge and expertise wouldn’t disappear with them. Without these systems in place, you are running the risk that your business may eventually be crippled because you have an operational reliance on the expertise of a handful of individuals who are the only ones who know the “secret sauce” of your business model. Having SOPs in place means you won’t have to worry that losing key people could cripple your business.

How to Document Your Business Systems

When documenting your business systems and creating an SOP, it is essential to include both how the task is done and the reason why the task is done, and the importance of the task to the overall success of the business. Your employees must understand that no matter how menial they might think a function is, it is, in fact, an essential part of the overall design for the success of the business. The initial draft of each procedure should include the following:

• The Title of the SOP
• The reason for the SOP
• The specific action steps that are required to complete the task

These three items must be covered in the draft for the process to be successful. The method of drafting the document is simple. You want to think about it as having a conversation with a person that you want to complete the task. You are essentially having a written communication and covering every step of the process from inception to completion. You may find it helpful to include photos in the document. Illustrating the tasks could be essential for the person to be able to comprehend the task. Videos of the process can also prove to be helpful in showing a multi-step process. Your goal, when documenting your methods is to completely illustrate the task to eliminate any potential questions that might be raised as to the how and why.

Develop Naming Conventions

The first thing you need to do before you even put pen to paper, is to develop a standardized naming convention for the documents you are going to create. Having a standardized naming convention will allow you to remain consistent and will make it easier for employees to find the correct material. While you may only have a few documented procedures to start with, as your business grows, so will your SOP. Here are some tips for developing naming conventions that will help you control how procedures are written, reviewed, published, and archived. 

What are Naming Conventions?

Simply put, naming conventions are how you name your documents in a structured manner. The key is to have consistency across the SOPs. Your primary goal in adopting a naming convention is so that you and others can quickly identify the type and purpose of all the SOP documents. You want to make sure you use a naming convention that is easy to follow, understood by everyone on your team, and that is meaningful. You want to avoid using obscure or cryptic terms because if they aren’t practical, those tasked with writing the SOPs may stop using the guidelines. The following are important guidelines that you should follow for naming your SOP documents.

• Client Name or SOP Document Owner – e.g., RAM
• Project Name – e.g., PUR for Purchasing or ADM for Administration
• SOP to show that it is a standard operating procedure
• Abbreviated Title – e.g., ReceivingProducts
• Version Number – e.g., v1_0, v1_1, v2_0
• Document Number – e.g., 21

Using these guidelines, the official name of the SOP would look like this:

RAM_PUR_SOP_RecievingProducts_v1_1_21

Before you start writing your SOPs, it’s essential that you give some thought to how they will be managed in the future. You need to consider how hundreds of documents, with different versions, and status controls will be managed. Be sure to create meaningful conventions and document them so that if someone takes over the process of creating SOPs, he or she will be able to use the same standards and keep your documents uniform.

Writing Your First Procedure

Your standard operating procedures are nothing more than instructions for completing a given