Having an organized business is the primary job of a business owner, executive, or manager. Read this guide for 11 ways to keep your business organized for better flow as you begin 2023.
Keeping your small business organized isn’t as simple as checking in on your team each day.
Staying organized requires constant attention to detail.
Staying organized means you can monitor your business’ performance, and the more efficiently you track performance, the easier it is to spot potential problems and course correct.
Let’s take a closer look at what it takes to keep your small business organized year-round.
Table of Contents:
- Set Team SOPs
- Invest In A CRM
- Organize Business Finances
- Use Project Management Apps
- Organize Passwords
- Use A Drive Folder
- Declutter Computer Desktop
- Schedule Social Media Posts
- Separate “Urgent” And “Important”
- Create Next-day To-do Lists
- Create A Marketing And Sales Process
- Final Recap Of Keeping Organization For Small Businesses
1. Set Team SOPs
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are your proprietary methods for doing business. The purpose of written SOPs is to document your business processes so that anyone can step in and do their part.
The best SOPs are those that simplify day-to-day operations and thereby reduce risk. When you implement SOPs, team members know what’s expected of them, where their function fits into the whole, where to go when they have questions, and how to report progress.
This keeps your business from heading into chaos and allows you, as the business owner, to focus on the big picture.
Here are areas where you can implement SOPs:
- Marketing
- Customer Service
- Delivering your service
- Training
- Compliance standards
- Safety
- Communication
“Procedures that are not repeatable and inconsistent amount to ‘busy work’ or activities that fail to produce desired outcomes,” warns Dr. Drena Valentine, founder of the Silver Spring-based small business consulting firm Integrative Management Solutions.
2. Invest In A CRM
A CRM, or customer relationship management software, can transform how you and your team manage client interactions.
This software helps you track and store important data related to projects, clients, and sales. CRM details can include contact information, workflows, sales reports, payment history, and project details.
A CRM can help you and your team track your sales pipeline, respond to client issues more efficiently, stay organized, and offer better customer service when appropriately implemented.
There are many different CRM solutions, including cloud-based and on-premises. There are also industry-specific CRMs with tools that fit your business sector.
Here are 5 top CRMs for small businesses:
- Hubspot
- Keap
- Monday.com
- Zoho CRM
- Agile CRM
Shop around to find the CRM solution that best meets your needs. You’ll discover organizing your business gets more manageable.
3. Organize Business Finances
It will be impossible to achieve business success without an efficient system for managing your finances.
Organizing your business finances can start out as simple as using a spreadsheet to track monthly expenses like office rent, employees, and utilities. But online accounting systems are prevalent now, and some inexpensive platforms like Freshbooks and Xero are very small business-friendly.
Organizing your business finances helps you see where your money is going and how much cash you have at any given time.
It also makes it much easier to generate the financial statements you will need come tax season.
4. Use A Project Management App
Tracking multiple projects can be a daunting task.
But the right project management tool will make task management easier.
Project management apps help you – and your team – manage many concurrent projects and track your progress from start to finish.
Many times, you can find project management tools in your CRM. If you don’t need the extra features CRMs have, then a standalone project management tool might be best.
Here are some affordable project management tools to consider:
- Asana
- Trello
- Zoho Projects
- Nutcache
- Notion
By organizing your project workflows better, you’ll find it easier to reliably finish projects on time. This is especially important if your business is deadline-driven.
“Asana has allowed me to launch and run my business for the first few years with a skeleton crew,” said Karen James Cody of The Allyson Group, a content writing firm in Takoma Park. “The team is located in several countries, but today it’s easy to keep everyone aligned and working together with this inexpensive, easy-to-implement project management app that integrates with our CRM and many other tools.”
5. Organize Passwords
Keeping your passwords organized can be tricky, especially if they need to be updated regularly for security reasons.
The best way to organize passwords is to use a password manager that generates strong, unique passwords for each of your logins.
You can then store passwords, which will automatically populate each time you log in.
Some password managers are browser-based, while others come as mobile apps or SaaS services.
Be sure to choose a password manager that stores your passwords in an encrypted format so that the actual passwords are not accessible in the event of a hack. (You can find out whether or not a password tool encrypts by checking their FAQs or by calling them directly.)
Here are some top password managers to consider:
- LastPass
- Keeper
- DashLane
- LogMeOnce
- RememBear
6. Use A Drive Folder
Tracking business information can get tricky when everything is thrown together in random folders. A drive is like a digital filing cabinet, and keeping it organized will support the efficiency of your entire team.
How you organize it, specifically, will depend on the nature of your business. But think about project based, client-based, priority-based, or date-based systems for your top-level folders as possibilities. And consider creating a folder specifically for items you need regularly.
These may be…
- Important documents
- Meeting notes
- Due dates and deadlines
- Agreements and contracts
Tools like Google Drive or DropBox are excellent digital filing cabinets that, when set up correctly, make it possible for many people to work together on many projects and stay on the same page. Both are easy to use.
7. Declutter Computer Desktops
You might not realize it, but your desktop can be a serious distraction.
While it’s essential to keep your computer organized and tidy, having too many icons and images on your screen can make it difficult to focus and get work done.
It’s a good idea to clean up your desktops regularly, especially if you’re an avid “digital hoarder.”
The best way to keep your desktop tidy is to periodically set aside time to eliminate unnecessary icons and folders – maybe once a month. If there’s a folder you don’t often use but still need to hold onto, you can store it in a hidden folder to remove the visual distraction from your desktop. Alternatively, you could make it someone else’s job to monitor and clean up shared folders that sometimes get unruly – perhaps a virtual assistant.
This kind of “digital decluttering” can also be a best practice to share with remote employees.
8. Pre-Schedule Social Media Posts
Most social media platforms enable you to schedule posts in advance, which is a great way to keep your posts consistent and on-brand even while logged out of your account.
Scheduling your posts in advance also helps ensure you stay up on your posting schedule. (Staying consistent is especially important when managing a client’s social media.)
Here are 5 popular social media scheduling tools:
- Hootsuite
- Buffer
- Social Pilot
- Loomly
- Sprout Social
You can schedule your posts to go out on certain days and times, even choosing the timezone. If you know when your audience is usually online, you can schedule posts to publish at the time you’ll get the most engagement.
9. Separate "Urgent" From "Important"
Achieving a work-life balance is one of the biggest challenges small business owners face.
When your to-do list is an endless stream of “urgent” tasks and projects, it’s easy to forget that there’s a world outside work.
To prevent this, separate your “urgent” tasks from your “important” ones. If you are visually oriented, use a tool like the Eisenhower Matrix to make this an easy task.
Whenever you take on a new task, ask yourself if it’s urgent or important.
Urgent tasks are essential but have a shorter time element, so they need priority.
If it’s urgent, act on it immediately – that day. If it’s important, add it to your to-do list and set a date for when you’ll work on it.
Separating “urgent” from “important” keeps your business organized by helping you focus on the critical tasks you need to do now that move the needle.
10. Create Next-day To-do Lists
New business tasks tend to spring up out of the blue.
Having a system that allows you to quickly and easily take action on your future to-do list will keep you from falling behind on your obligations.
Productivity apps like Todoist and Structured help you create next-day to-do lists. You can refer to your next-day lists while reviewing your list of important tasks.
If there are some items you haven’t finished for the day, you can move them over to the next day.
11. Create A Marketing And Sales Process
A good marketing and sales process gives you a predictable way of landing new customers. Successful sales is all about metrics.
What steps does your team take when marketing and selling your products or services? Create SOPs to quickly onboard new people, and OKRs to let them know exactly what they are supposed to do.
The more detailed your sales and marketing process is, the easier it will be to track essential activities, stay abreast of what your customers want, and keep your sales team focused and productive.
There are many ways of marketing today. Each one requires a strategy and a process:
Digital marketing:
- Paid ads (on Facebook, Google, and Tiktok)
- SEO
- Cold outreach (using email, Facebook groups, and LinkedIn)
- Text marketing
- Content marketing
Offline marketing:
- Radio, newspaper and TV ads
- Referral programs
- Flyers
- Direct Mail
- Billboards
- Word of mouth
Here are ways to improve your sales process:
- Organize your potential deals in a CRM
- Set sales targets
- Collect and use customer stories
- Know your ideal customer inside and out
- Increase leads
- Publish testimonials and case studies
- Follow-up
- Offer an attractive performance guarantee
- Ask for the sale
Create a dynamic sales and marketing process that can be updated as your business expands or diversifies. Keep your process as simple and easy to communicate as you can.
Increase Overall Efficiency By Keeping Your Small Business Organized
Keeping an organized small business will have a lasting positive impact on the direction of your operation. As small as some adjustments may seem, they will work together to compound your team’s efficiency more quickly than you might imagine.
Inefficiency is expensive! Whether it leads to staff turnover, losing clients, or missing deadlines, eventually those costs add up. But so does the compound effect of keeping your business organized.
It will keep your people working in sync and support their success at every level. This will lead to retention; when people see that they can win together, they tend to stick around.
We hope this guide on how to keep your small business organized will help you all year-round!