With the month of July falling exactly the middle of 2021, now is the time to conduct a mid-year review for your business. This review is important to amend any processes that aren’t working and gives you the chance to incorporate new protocols to continue evolving as a business.
Covering a broad range of business factors and elements, a mid year review provides insight to performance in key areas. Now is the perfect time to review achievements and ensure objectives and KPI’s are on track. Furthermore, it’s recommended to request feedback on what needs to be improved and how employees can receive the right support to make these changes.
What business areas should you focus on during a mid-year review?
While monthly plan reviews serve best in incremental improvements, a mid-year review can be used to update your strategy and forecasts for the remainder of the year. Here are a few key areas worth focusing on.
-
Training
For any sized business, sustenance remains a vital element for overall success. Ongoing training prevents the “one and done” mindset which can prevent your business from keeping up in this continually advancing business world. Without making progressive efforts to ensure those in your business possess today’s necessary skills, both current and upcoming competitors will come out on top. By dedicating time and resources to train team members on new platforms, techniques, and technologies, you provide a fundamental basis to work faster and more efficiently.
To thrive in today’s market and encourage long term improvement, continuously re-evaluate your current business model to determine any new platform or process requirements. Likewise, pinpointing the employees who need specific training will directly improve their efficiency when entrusted with relevant tasks. Set up mid year meetings with your team to assess their comfortability and listen to their concerns on issues which may have arisen in the first half of the year. Understand that while this may initially take some time, it benefits your business for the remainder of the year.
-
Time Management
During your mid-year review, encouraging communication and team feedback is key. In regards to time allocation, your employees know best about their productivity. Up to this point, there should be some level of project tracking. Request that employees seek out gaps in processes and how they suggest filling these gaps. Give members a set amount of time to list some pointers on how productivity could become more efficient and then group together to discuss.
The remainder of the year should be when you implement these changes to improve your businesses or specific departments.
Platforms are an effective way to optimize processes, especially with technological advancements and the thousands of options available online today. Profit should be top of mind when analyzing productivity. As a rule of thumb, the more productive employees are, the higher the profit margins will be.
Some time-saving benefits to consider when vetting platforms are streamlined document filing, automated reports, and offline availability. Purchasing technology and platforms will initially cost you but it should pay off in the long run, by saving a substantial amount of time automating tasks.
-
Sales
When it comes to sales, the mid-year point is the time to take a look back at trends and patterns that arose in the first half of the year. Are there certain clients or customers that could benefit from your additional products or services? Who are they?
Take the time to pinpoint any sales gaps and ask questions involving the return rate of your customers. Could your customer service be better, or are you losing them at checkout? Analyze potential customers’ needs and either promote your current offering or tailor your offerings to suit them.
-
Marketing
In an increasingly digital world combined with the post pandemic effects of Covid-19, more people are home than ever before. This is the perfect opportunity to position your business products or services on the screens of engaged targeted audiences. To ensure maximum effect, analyze your online presence as a whole and that each marketing area is covered until next year.
Recognize that preparing in advance is even more important for marketing. For example, SEO is a long-term strategy that boosts Google’s ranking in the future- where marketing materials require time to create.
Carve out time for marketing strategy sessions to plan the next six months of techniques for your website, social media, advertising, email marketing, and SEO. Begin by analyzing your performance for the first half of the year and determine the messaging/channels methods that worked. How much budget is allocated to marketing expenditure and where are the areas to either expand or cut back.
By determining the areas you want to make more sales in, incorporate them into your strategy. Next, set goals for the amount of marketing material you need to create and the amount of work aimed to be published for 2021 and leading into the new year.
-
Operations
To understand the mental states of your employees, this time of the year should be the stage you check in on your workers. This task can be completed by HR or General Managers, allowing for honest and transparent communication within the team. Workers are more likely to feel comfortable reaching out on their own accord throughout the remainder of the year, to suggest changes.
The operations review also covers an analysis of situations of concern, where the operations of specific tasks didn’t run as smoothly as they could have, and therefore, exploring why and how to prevent this in the second half of 2021. Lost time troubleshooting errors or simply spending too much time on tasks results in less profit.
You can either incorporate your operations conversation into your additional mid-year review meetings or set out one meeting which specifically discusses operations efficiency.
In order to better your operations, schedule meetings before and after a project to ensure everyone understands what is expected of them from the client or customer. Leverage communication to prevent errors and continually check in throughout tasks. With this you can deal with smaller issues before they turn into larger, more complex problems.
Your mid-year review should help you optimize performance
The mid-year review serves as a perfect opportunity to look into these 5 key business areas for the remainder of 2021. Training, productivity, sales, marketing, and operations each contribute to the overall success of your business and for that reason, communication and planning in these sectors will directly generate results.
With only six months left in this year, ensure that your business is making effective strides to compete in the marketplace while meeting growing customer needs. Providing a deeper look into the performance of key areas, many businesses shy away from the mid-year review in fear of unfavorable reality or complex issues. Don’t let this be you!
If you are struggling to conduct your mid year review-or feel overwhelmed and unable to deal with matters at hand (i.e. how to improve your operations) contact our team at MCDA CCG, INC. today. Our industry leading experts apply our wide range of skills and extensive experience to successfully position your business in a state of control. Don’t wait until the end of this month, call us today!