According to a Gallup study, roughly 50% of employees leave their companies because of poor management.
In addition to exemplifying the vital role that leadership plays in motivating, inspiring, and driving teams forward, this study highlights how companies can improve employee retention.
High employee retention is associated with increased revenue, innovation, and efficiency. With over a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and business management professional, Jeff Ber cannot stress the importance of effective business management enough. Working directly with entrepreneurs to help them grow and scale their businesses, he is sharing the fundamentals of business management, including how to effectively manage a business for increased revenue, employee satisfaction, growth and innovation.
What is Business Management?
Jeff Ber defines business management as the process of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the activities and resources of an organization or company to achieve a goal in an effective and efficient manner. Business management can also include motivating people to work together, fine-tuning budgets, and defining achievable and measurable goals.
Business management is the glue that holds a company together. If you imagine all of the activities your company conducts on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, consider business management the finely crafted, intentional web that holds it all together. Business management is concerned with the past, present, and future of a business. Jeff Ber explains that he helps his clients develop a well-structured plan that utilizes their strengths and anticipates their weaknesses.
Business Management Fundamentals
Six fundamental elements compose business management: people, operations, accounting, strategy, finance, and marketing/public relations. A business manager will keep all six in mind when building a strategic plan for a company. Ber explains that ‘people’ (or human resources) are your company’s greatest asset. Human resources are how you lead, motivate, and inspire your employees and drive innovation. The management of people is vital to building a sustainable business.
Your ‘operations’ include everything from supply chains to communications. The management of your operations ensures that products/services meet client expectations and needs. Some key aspects of business operations include capacity planning, productivity analysis and improvement, and quality assurance.
‘Accounting’ can be defined as the proper management of day to day finances. As you can imagine, this is vital to running a successful business. Learning how to read, analyze, and prepare financial statements can help a business plan for the future. Tied into accounting is ‘finances’, which is more closely aligned with the growth and maintenance of your business. Jeff Ber explains that this includes major purchases, investments, mergers and acquisitions, and smart financial planning.
Surprisingly, business management also includes ‘marketing and public relations’—the way your company drives traffic and connects with customers. Jeff Ber states that this can include segmentation, targeting, differentiation, product positioning and much more. All of these elements tie into our last business management principle: ‘strategy’. Strategy is a thoughtfully composed plan that anticipates any threats or weaknesses to ensure long-term viability.
The Goals of Business Management
What are the goals of business management? One of the goals of a business manager is to be able to ensure an effective utilization of resources. Whether you are a B2B, retail business or restaurant, it is vital to maximize your current resources. Resource management is the process of scheduling, planning and allocating resources in the best possible way. Resources can include everything from employees to machinery and facilities. If your business is going to operate in a competitive environment, it needs to ensure that no stone is left unturned. As a result, resources can be used to their maximum potential, keeping projects, tasks, and assignment on time and on budget. The proper utilization of current resources can have the benefit of reducing costs.
Business management helps a company cut unnecessary expenses to maximize profits. Jeff Ber states that this might mean streamlining business processes, combining different departments, or rearranging work schedules. Depending on the nature of your business, cutting unnecessary expenses can mean a whole host of things. Jeff Ber explains that one of the common mistakes he sees is hiring a third party for a job that can be done in-house.
As a business manager himself, Jeff Ber understands that your company needs to be running like a well-oiled machine to be successful. Every separate component should be working towards a common goal, every branch of the business complimenting another.