3 ways to future-proof your small business

Future-proofing your business means planning ahead for contingencies that could derail your business down the line. With it, you can steel yourself for any sort of turbulence. Without it, those same setbacks could be fatal for your organization. There are many ways to prepare your business for the future, so here are just a few ideas:

1. Reevaluate your goals and keep them realistic

Meeting goals — whatever those goals may be — is perhaps the most important thing a business can do. It keeps morale high and acts as proof that your business is succeeding. At the same time, not meeting goals is demoralizing.

You always want to meet your business goals. That's why it's vital to keep them realistic and flexible. You don't want to work toward goals you know you can't reach, and you can't plan for everything that gets in the way of those objectives — so rework your targets to fit what your business can do given the hand you've been dealt.

2. Understand what your competitors are doing

Your competitors are all trying to one-up each other by having the best ideas combined with the best execution. Some of their ideas will work, some won't.

You want to stay on top of what those aims are, how they're working out and why they ended in a particular result. If a competitor has a good idea that was successful, you should be able to explain what the idea was and why it worked. If a competitor devised a decent plan that wasn't successful, it could be the case that their execution didn't meet the mark. It could be that some ideas just aren't especially good. Your job is to identify the whys and hows of all of it.

3. Always train your employees

Your employees may be effective now, but that isn't a guarantee they will be in the future.

If you do tech support, for example, your call centre managers need to be in the know about new developments both in your business' products and in the industry. Training shouldn't be seen as a static goal, but something that keeps your employees constantly learning so they can provide the best possible service for your customers.

There's no such thing as being over-prepared

To future-proof your business, you need an effective intelligence-gathering strategy combined with an understanding of what to do with that information. This way, you can be as prepared as possible for the upcoming times.