Business Problems Are Easier To Prevent Than They Are To Solve

Those of you that have visited your doctor for a physical exam have probably heard them go on about prevention being better than a cure. The idea behind this phrase is that it’s a lot easier to prevent diseases from happening than it is to cure them. The same goes for business problems that can arise at any time during your lifespan. Preventing problems is far easier than trying to solve them when they arise.

As such, learning some key prevention techniques is essential for anyone operating a small business these days. If you understand how to protect your company from potential business issues, it will save a lot of time, money, and manpower should the problem come about in the future. In this piece, I’ve picked out a few things you can do that will prevent loads of different issues from damaging your business.

Image Source

Pre-Employment Background Checks

Employees can pose business problems for any owner. One of the biggest issues is hiring someone and finding out later along the line that they lied during their application. They weren’t the expert they claimed to be, and their poor performance is costing your business. Or, they have a criminal record and have been convicted again, tarnishing your reputation.

Countless scenarios like this can occur and cause lots of issues for you. It may mean you need to train your employee, which costs money. Or, you might have to fire them and hire someone else, which also costs a lot of money. Either way, your business suffers! To avoid this, all you have to do is conduct pre-employment background checks. Do some research into your candidates and check if they have criminal records or check with references to see if they are as capable as they claim. This helps you siphon out all the dead weight and liars, leaving you with a pool of capable candidates to choose from. Now, you can hire them without worrying about potential stumbling blocks down the line.

Insuring Your Business Assets

Another potential business problem is losing some of your assets as the result of theft or something else out of your control. Let’s say you work out of an office and it gets hit with a flood that destroys everything inside your building. It costs your business load of money as you had physical assets there that were valuable. Or, say you own a retail store, and someone robs the cashier and steals your earnings. In either scenario, it creates a huge problem; you’ve lost a lot of money, now how do you get it back?

Finding solutions to this problem can be very hard as you have to think of ways to regain what you’ve lost, which may end up costing more money for your business. But, one simple preventive measure is to insure your business. With commercial business insurance, you can protect your assets in scenarios like these. I’m sure there’s more information about the different policies and how much they cost elsewhere, but the basic idea is that you protect yourself from this problem. If either of the scenarios above happens, everything you lost could be covered by the insurance, and paid or replaced ASAP. There’s no need to find a solution, as you’ve prevented the need for one with insurance!

Addressing Recurring Business Problems

No business is perfect, and it’s likely you’ll succumb to recurring problems with your clients/customers. These can range from things like an outdated link in an email not working, to a fault with a payment system. These problems aren’t massive, and you can usually solve them right away – or with very little effort. The issue is that you’re constantly providing your customers and clients with a substandard service. What’s more, you’re always having to devote time to little problems that keep recurring over and over. You don’t feel like it matters as they can be solved quickly, but all this wasted time adds up!

Instead, you should focus on preventing these issues from happening ever again. Often, all it takes is a quick bit of work to permanently solve a problem and prevent customers from complaining over and over again. Let’s say you have a faulty card reader in your store that plays up from time to time. Instead of trying your luck and keeping it, get a new one that works properly. Here, you’ve prevented future problems from happening and will keep your customers happy. That’s the key here; by preventing common issues, you will reduce the number of complaints you get and provide a better service.

Backup Power Sources

Lastly, we have a problem that seems quite trivial, but is a massive issue in the modern business world. Imagine you’re working away, then all of a sudden the power cuts out. All the lights in your business premises go off, as do any computers people are working on. You speak to the owner of the building, and they tell you it will be out for a good few hours until someone can come and fix the generator. At this point, you stand on the verge of missing out on hours of productive business time. There’s no telling how much this can cost you; what if you were on the verge of sealing a deal?!

Thankfully, you can prevent this from being an issue by investing in backup power sources. There are loads of small backup generators you can buy and use to power computers and all your other essential equipment. This means your office can keep functioning as usual, without losing out on precious time.

 

I hope this article has given you some insight into the power of prevention. When it comes to business problems, it’s so much easier to prevent them than it is to solve them. Some people think that the costs of prevention aren’t worth it as there’s no guarantee any of these problems will ever happen. However, it’s well worth it just in case they do. If they occur and you haven’t tried to prevent them, then you’ll end up spending more money.