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WHAT ARE SOME OTHER CHALLENGES THAT SMALL BUSINESSES FACE AND HOW CAN THEY BE ADDRESSED

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Small businesses face numerous unique challenges compared to large corporations. A few of the key challenges include access to capital, regulations and compliance, hiring and retaining talent, marketing and sales, technology adoption, and succession planning. Addressing these challenges is important for small businesses to survive and thrive.

Access to capital is one of the biggest hurdles for small businesses. Large banks often consider small businesses as too risky due to their size and lack of operating history. This makes it difficult for small businesses to acquire loans and lines of credit needed to start up, expand operations, purchase equipment or inventory, or handle cash flow issues. To address this, small businesses should explore alternative financing options like small business loans through community banks, online lenders, credit unions, or microloan programs. They can also consider peer-to-peer lending platforms, crowdfunding, or equity funding sources. Maintaining good financial records and credit scores can help improve eligibility for financing.

Regulatory compliance is a major challenge area, as small businesses have fewer resources compared to big companies to dedicate towards understanding and adhering to laws and regulations. This includes tax compliance, industry-specific rules, HR laws, data privacy regulations, environmental rules, and more. To address compliance, small businesses should utilize free tools and guides provided by government agencies, hire specialized consultants or accountants as needed, and automate compliance tasks through software. They must also allocate sufficient time for owners and managers to stay informed of changing rules.

Hiring and retaining skilled talent is difficult for small companies competing with larger employers that offer more substantial benefits, salaries, and career growth prospects. Small businesses address this by offering competitive compensation through performance-based bonuses or ownership stakes, flexible work arrangements, developmental training opportunities, and a strong company culture valued by employees. Using online job boards, social media, employee referrals and internship programs can help small businesses cast a wider net to find top candidates.

Marketing and sales are perpetual challenges as most small businesses lack large advertising budgets of major brands. To effectively promote products/services and find customers, small companies leverage digital and grassroots marketing strategies. This includes search engine optimization, content creation for blogs/websites, paid and organic social media ads, local event/conference sponsorships, partnership programs, public relations outreach, direct mail, and e-mail/text campaigns. Tracking key metrics and adjusting strategies that are most successful keeps messaging focused.

Adopting new technologies is challenging due to high costs and lack of in-house expertise at small companies. Technology usage boosts efficiency and competitive advantage. Small businesses can overcome this by partnering with trusted managed IT providers, utilizing free/low-cost web-based applications, pursuing tech training/workshops, and taking advantage of tax incentives for tech investments. Prioritizing strategic tech needs based on business goals and pain-points ensures funds are allocated properly.

Succession planning is often overlooked but crucial for small business longevity. Owners must start planning early for their eventual exit from the company, whether through retirement, sale to employees, or third-party acquisition. This involves establishing ownership transition strategies, valuating the business, identifying and grooming potential successors within the organization, and utilizing external advisors. Succession planning safeguards a small business’ future stability and growth even in the absence of its founders.

Small businesses face significant challenges but with proper awareness and strategies to address issues like access to capital, regulations, hiring, marketing, technology and succession planning – they can survive and thrive. Leveraging available resources, maintaining organizational flexibility and promoting from within are keys to overcoming obstacles as a small company.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES FACED DURING THE SYSTEM ROLLOUT AND HOW WERE THEY ADDRESSED?

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Any large-scale system rollout involves significant planning and preparation to ensure a smooth transition, but challenges are inevitable given the complexity of major technology deployments across a large organization. During our recent ERP system rollout, we encountered several challenges that required adaptive solutions to remedy during implementation.

The first major challenge was user training and adoption. Transitioning 10,000 employees worldwide to an entirely new system is a massive undertaking, and it was difficult to ensure all users felt sufficiently prepared to use the new system from day one in their daily workflows. To address this, we implemented a multi-pronged training approach. First, we rolled out self-paced online training modules covering the core features in the two months leading up to go-live. Next, we held in-person classroom training sessions at each major office location in the final month to allow for hands-on practice and Q&A with trainers. We designated “super users” at each office who completed advanced training to support colleagues during the first few weeks.

While training helped set users up for success, unexpected issues inevitably arose once the new ERP system went live globally. One such challenge was a higher than anticipated call volume to the central IT help desk for user login and navigation problems. To quickly resolve this, we implemented a temporary distributed help desk model. For the first two weeks post go-live, the super users spent half their time roaming their offices to be on-hand for immediate assistance, rather than returning to regular duties. This localized support was crucial in reducing wait times for help and frustration among end users.

Data migration from multiple legacy systems also posed problems. We discovered inaccurate customer records had been migrated due to faulty mapping between the old and new systems. Resolving these took additional time spent validating and correcting records which risked delaying billing, payments and fulfillment. To remedy this, managers were given transparent data quality reports and empowered our customer service teams to prioritize fixing major errors while leaving minor discrepancies to be addressed later.

Perhaps the biggest rollout challenge came from integrating the new ERP system with dozens of other business applications through custom APIs and interfaces. During testing and validation, our IT engineers uncovered stability issues, latency problems and occasional data mismatches between systems. To systematically address this, we established a ongoing integration task force with representation from each major team. They met weekly to prioritize and resolve interface issues based on business impact. They developed automated testing scripts to continuously monitor integrations for regressions moving forward.

Additional hiccups included slower than expected performance on mobile devices which impacted our field sales and service workers, as well as customized workflows not porting over correctly to the new system in some departments like manufacturing. In both cases, we assembled cross-functional process redesign teams to re-architect mobile apps and tailored workflows from the ground up to better align with the capabilities of the new platform.

While no major deployment will unfold without issues, taking a collaborative, transparent and adaptive approach helped us steadily resolve challenges as they arose. Six months since go-live, the system has now been smoothly adopted by our entire global workforce. By learning from early stumbles, we’ve established best practices and governance structures that will benefit future platform migrations and upgrades. The effort improved our technology landscape for years to come despite initial rollout speedbumps.

Thorough preparation, empowered local support teams, ongoing optimization through multidisciplinary task forces, and flexibility to redesign around platform limitations were key to addressing the diverse challenges faced during our large ERP system rollout. Continuous issue identification and prioritized resolutions kept stakeholder impact minimal as we navigated this massive technology transition.