SMBs often struggle to compete with big brands. Apart from having bigger budgets, the main reason for this is big brands have discovered a secret — something that SMBs are still figuring out.
Modern and successful New Zealand businesses have three things in common:
- More productive than others
- At low risk of getting hacked and breached
- Laser-focused on their customers
As you may have noticed, the successful ones don’t fight fires everyday. They focus on the future, rather than on simply surviving the now.
While the idea is easy to grasp, it’s difficult to achieve.
First, there has to be systems in place — for everything. That’s how McDonald’s or Starbucks can simply open up a new store and produce the same burger or Frappucino the same way, no matter where you order it.
Next, this takes time to develop. You can’t achieve these qualities overnight. You have to put in the time and effort. You need to invest in people and the right infrastructure and systems. And you need to make it stick.
With that said, let’s explore the three qualities more of modern and successful New Zealand businesses below.
3 Qualities of Modern and Successful New Zealand Businesses
1. Increased Productivity
Modern and successful businesses — those who’ve developed an unfair advantage — are more productive than their counterparts. Apple and Google have employees 40% more productive than the average company. While there are a lot of factors discussed in that research, what’s important to note is that this increased productivity gives them an edge over other companies.
According to a Bain & Company partner Michael Mankins, “They get more done by 10 a.m. Thursday morning than the others do in a week, but they don’t stop working.”
Questions to ask yourself:
- Are you constantly hitting your deadlines or missing them?
- What about campaigns or product launches — are you on time? Or always late? Always remember to consider opportunity costs.
- If you’re set to launch a product/service on March, but got delayed for 3 months, you lost any potential revenue you could have earned during those 3 months. And this doesn’t even include the additional costs you spent during those extra 3 months.
- What’s causing inefficiencies in your organization? Is it because of the people? The tools and systems?
- Can you work on-the-go? Or do you have to stay in your office in front of your computer in order to do anything?
- Are duplicate files and multiple file versions an issue you face each day?
- Can you easily find other documents, or do you spend hours tracking and locating them?
2. Reduced Security Risks
Another quality of modern and successful businesses is they have reduced security risks. In other words, they are not in danger or at risk of getting their data stolen or hacked.
As you may already know, cyber security is always in the news regardless of industry:
- Collection #1 data breach that leaked over 1.2 billion unique combinations of email addresses and passwords
- Canva and PDL Data breach which gives hackers
- Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica Scandal
- Car manufacturer getting locked out of their email system
Whether in the personal or social setting, manufacturing or automative industry, or even healthcare — these hacks and breaches are only going to increase over time. That’s why it’s important to have systems and processes in place to prevent and reduce the damages in the event of a cyber attack.
Questions to ask yourself:
- In the event of a cyber attack, are you prepared to deal with it?
- Ransomware — where your files get locked up and you can’t access them
- Data breach — where sensitive data (yours or your customers) is stolen and leaked to the public
- DoS — where you can’t gain access to your systems (e.g. getting locked out of your email server, or your website stops working, etc.)
- Are your staff knowledgeable on the most common cyber attacks and trained to discern them?
- Do you have the technology in place to help you thwart such attacks?
- How will you communicate to your customers when their sensitive information gets stolen?
- How are you going to recover your data when they get deleted or gets encrypted (ransomware)?
- How long will it take you to resume business after a disaster? Do you have backups and recovery systems in place?
3. Customer-Focused
Finally, the third quality of modern and successful companies is they have the ability to focus on their customers instead of worrying something that isn’t in their core business.
Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management thinkers of the 21st century, said that “results are only on the outside.” This was in the context of most leaders tend to focus on internal processes and systems vs what happens on the outside — customers, partners, the economy, trends, etc.
Successful companies focus on the outside, not on issues within the company like inefficiencies and frustrations brought about by legacy systems.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Are there recurring issues that you and your staff face daily? Like printers not working, computers slowing down or not opening at all, internet connectivity problems, etc.
- Do certain activities take more than necessary to accomplish certain tasks?
- Are internal issues — IT, accounting, or reporting performance — keeping you from serving your customers?
Final Thoughts
Modern and successful New Zealand businesses all have these three qualities: they’re more productive, low security risks, and customer-focused. They don’t spend their limited resources fighting fires.
Instead, they focus on what really matters. They focus on their customers. They focus on the future.
To succeed in today’s highly competitive environment, you need to be forward-looking. Instead of doing more of the same, you need to adapt to changes in the market.
If you need help in how you can future proof your business, or want to learn more, you can download this white paper.
