How to optimise your business: six areas to focus on

Anna Stubbs • December 18, 2024

We’re trading in uncertain times at present. But there’s still a pressing need to refine your business model, add value and look at the opportunities for growth.

 

In this series, we’ll look at some key ways to optimise your business, exploring different avenues to evolve your enterprise and create a legacy you can be proud of.

Six ways to optimise your business

 

Your game plan might have been to sell the business, achieve a great deal and retire on the profits. But in the current market, it’s possible you’ve had to press pause on this exit strategy.

 

However, instead of letting the business just tick over, why not get proactive about improving and enhancing your business model, so it’s a more profitable and viable business?

 

Here are six key areas you should be looking at:

 

Go digital and automate the business

 

Now’s the ideal time to embrace digital technologies. With the latest cloud tech, AI and automation solutions you can streamline your operations, improve your overall customer experience and boost sales. You can also explore e-commerce solutions, social media marketing and digital marketing.

 

Get proactive with your finances

 

Strong financial management sets the foundations for making the business profitable. Switching to the latest cloud accounting software helps you get a handle on your cashflow, a better overview of costs and a more informed view of your overall financial position. Many accounting platforms will also offer integrations with other helpful business tools, such as inventory, invoicing and point-of-sale (POS) tools.

 

Build on those customer relationships

 

Exceptional customer experience helps to build loyalty and drive repeat business. This means getting granular with your customers’ needs, providing excellent customer service and listening to (and acting on ) your customer feedback. It’s the best way to improve your customer service and brand.

 

Diversify into new areas

 

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to your product range and industry focus. One way to shake things up is to diversify and explore new product ideas, new customer audiences and new niches. Diversification can reveal a whole new customer demographic, not to mention additional revenue streams.

 

Nurture your team and employee experience

 

Engaged employees are the foundation of a great business. Invest in training and development to improve your team’s skills and motivation and do everything you can to build a positive work culture. When hiring, look to create a diverse and inclusive team of people, so you have a real melting pot of talent, ideas, skills and experience in the business.

 

Look for strategic partnerships

 

Navigating the market is far more successful when you explore the benefits of business partnerships. Connecting with other businesses can extend your market reach, reduce costs and allow you to share resources. You also open up your brand to a whole new customer audience, boosting sales and growth.

 

Talk to us about optimising your business model.

 

There’s no single strategy for turning around the success of your business. But looking at new ideas, markets, products and business tools can certainly add considerable value.

 

If you’re looking to add some pizazz to your business model and operational effectiveness, drop us a line. Our team will be happy to review your current business and identify the opportunities for a great start to 2025.


By Anna Stubbs October 6, 2025
It can be lonely at the top when you're running your own business. As the owner manager, the buck stops with you and that can result in all the pressures of financial management, people management, strategy and business performance ending on your shoulders.  To ease this pressure, it's helpful to have a business coach. A coach can look at your business objectively as an outsider, will act as a professional shoulder to lean on, and can help you to focus on and enhance your business ideas, strategy and longer-term tactics as an owner.
By Anna Stubbs October 6, 2025
Keeping on top of the financial management of your business can be hard work. It's possible to have a profitable business that is struggling to find the cash flow to pay expenses and fund growth. Likewise, you could have positive cash flow but are not turning a profit, particularly if you are scaling. Turning a profit is at the heart of running any successful company But without an even and predictable flow of cash into the company, you can't cover your overheads, you can't pay your employees and you can't run your day-to-day operations – let alone think about expanding and growing the business. In the end, you need both. But if you’re going to be in control of your financial destiny, it’s important to get your head around the important process of cash flow management.
By Anna Stubbs October 6, 2025
A solopreneur running a complete and viable one-person business is no longer a pipedream. Sam Altman, the co-founder of Open AI, was recently quoted as saying that a one-person, billion-dollar business could be possible by 2026-2028, using tools like GPT-5 and the other generative AI tools that allow individuals to create and manage AI agents. The idea that one person, a solo CEO and entrepreneur, could generate that kind of capital on their own, would have seemed crazy less than a decade ago. But with the power of AI and the accessibility of flexible coding tools and AI agents, it’s actually a real possibility. Let’s look at how a one-person business could work, and how the basic business model differs from the traditional tech start-up model that we’ve known for so many decades.