Step 4 to Build a Better Business – Shore Up Your Infrastructure

I often compare a business to a living, breathing human being.

Using that analogy, the infrastructure of a business is like its backbone. Without it, the business is perpetually in a slump. If your business lacks an adequate infrastructure, you’re probably constantly overwhelmed and it shows. It takes too long to respond to customer needs, to fill orders, to collect money, to understand how well your business is performing from day to day and month to month.

There are some variations on what is considered a business infrastructure, so for clarity, I’ll explain what I mean when I refer to it. Essentially, the business insfrastructure is a set of tools or systems that enable you to peform the most common functions or activities in your business with the greatest degree of efficiency. Those functions include:

Communications – for interacting via phone, mail, and the web

Customer Management – for storing customer information like customer phone numbers, addresses, and orders placed

Product Management – for keeping track of how many products you have, the cost of them, their prices, and supplier information (if you’re a 100% service business, your employee management system will perform this function)

Order Management – for taking orders, storing order details, sending invoices, and taking payments

Accounting / Transaction System – for tracking your income, expenses, and assets, and all the transactions in which you either make money or spend it for your business

Employee Management – if you have employees, you should also have something in place for tracking employee’s contact information, employment documentation, salaries, schedules, payroll, etc.

Of course there are more than just these systems that you should have if you want to build the business of your dreams, but if you start with these, you’ll at least have a foundation to build on. Initially, you don’t have to have the most sophisticated or technologically advanced software or tool to perform these tasks. I’ve actually even run a business with a series of Excel spreadsheets. What matters most is that the systems or processes are stable – meaning they hardly ever ‘break’ – and consistent – meaning they’re done the same way each time. Since the tasks that infrastructure processes and systems support are very transactional and happen frequently, you shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel everytime they occur.

Tools I Use:

A simple, self-made Excel spreadsheet for mananging products and pricing

Zoho Invoice with Paypal for invoicing and receiving payments, and basic customer information

LessAccounting for accounting /bookkeeping

HighRise for managing contacts and reminders related to contacts