Launching a new business can be a busy, chaotic time, especially when it means moving into a new retail or office space.
During those periods, businesses tend to focus solely on the most important factors - such as quality of the products/services and the logistics of getting them to customers - while overlooking others.
In truth, there are a lot of things that you can overlook in the initial phase after a business’s launch. You usually don’t need a full-time marketing team, watertight branding, large product stocks, or a picture-perfect workspace on day one.
Those things can come in time.
However, there are some easily overlooked essentials that should be prioritized early on due to their potential impact. We’ll outline some of the main ones and their solutions below.
Robust Hiring Processes
It’s easy to hire an employee, but hiring the right employee? That takes some work.
All too often, new businesses fail to develop the robust hiring processes required to bring the best candidate on board. Instead, they end up hiring an insufficient candidate, which will likely turn out to be an expensive mistake.
It costs a lot of money to find, hire, and train a new employee. By taking a sophisticated approach to your hiring, you can ensure that the right candidate comes your way at the first time of asking.
Insurance Policies
Business owners go into their new venture full of optimism and enthusiasm, as they should.
However, it’s important to remember that things can go wrong at any time. While the risk increases the longer a business has been open, there’s still a possibility that it happens immediately after opening.
For businesses that have failed to take out sufficient insurance, those unfortunate events could prove to be terminal even before the business has really gotten going.
The bottom line? Take a read of the types of insurance that your business needs to be fully protected, and make sure they’re in place as soon as possible once you start trading.
Security Measures
All businesses can be victims of crime, but it’s more likely to happen to new businesses. The reason? Newer businesses are less likely to have robust security measures in place, making them easier targets for criminals.
You can ensure this doesn’t happen to your business by taking security seriously from day one. How you do that will depend on the type of business.
For retail and businesses with high-value goods, it may involve working with a company like Zed Security to provide security guards. For offices, controlled entry (such as swipe cards) may be efficient.
Also, remember that cybercrime is on the rise, so working with an IT company to protect your sensitive data is paramount.
Cleanliness and Maintenance
It’s easy to overlook cleanliness and maintenance requirements at first, but it can actually be one of the first things you notice if you don’t have systems in place for managing those factors.
A workplace can quickly become dirty, after all. Hire a cleaner, and look for a maintenance repair company from day one.
