Reliability is perhaps one of the most important virtues to curate in business, and also to expect from others. A business is never profitable in a day, nor is it established to make one sale. We structure our businesses to grow into operations, that is close to synthetic organisms that have structure, routine, and timekeeping might.
Any good machine is reliable, and able to function for long periods of time without a vital part of its infrastructure breaking down. This means that reliability is something you cannot put a price on, and it’s something you should always look for when managing your business to business connections.
But what habits, actions and practices can we establish to make use of reliability, and to make this more of a fixture throughout our daily planning efforts? Additionally, despite the priceless value of reliability, what cost should we consider paying for it, be that internal, external, or financial? It’s worth asking these philosophical business questions, because they will help you curate a practical management and leadership style you can, ironically, rely on during your time in that position:
Continual IT Dependence
IT is essential to rely upon in 2020. If your network isn’t regularly maintained, if your data isn’t backed up, and if your security is not only robust and adaptive to threats old and new, you’re going to encounter trouble. Even two hours of downtime can cause you to lose many potential purchases, and it may simply look amateurish overall. This is why using the best IT managed services, such as Evolvtec, is not only a good idea, it’s the most practical and basic business sense.
Additionally, it’s worth using these services as consultants to help work with you towards your best tech outfitting, as every company is different, and yours might hold nuance in tech requirements hard to find elsewhere.
Staff You Can Trust
Reliable staff are some of the most valuable assets you have, though, of course, referring to any human being as an ‘asset’ is somewhat dismissive. That being said, from a purely practical business standpoint, a reliable staff member that sticks with you, takes advantage of your training courses, is trustworthy and able to manage staff correctly, behaves well and can also hold sensitive information with care is one of the best investments you could ever make. They would be the very definition of an improving asset.
That being said, it’s important to both train them in this way, and give them a chance to shine. Reliable staff are forged when working in favorable circumstances and when treated well, and so it’s best to both hire and then curate staff you can trust rather than simply expecting their undying loyalty from the get-go.
Security Measures That Protect
In this extremely complex and interconnected world, it’s important to note that the number of threats we must face is larger than ever. This is because no longer do we only have to worry about physical break-ins, but also online subterfuge. Losing essential and sensitive documents for a new IP development is terrible, losing the personal information of your clients in a breach can be catastrophic. For that reason, you need to not only rely on security measures that bring you some worth in the moment, but also apply them as the needs adapt.
This means using IT services with an understanding of the current tech vulnerabilities your business faces and managing those risks, as well as equipping your staff with the best practices to follow, secured devices, and encrypted connections through VPN software subscriptions. Additionally the ability to catch corporate espionage or rogue employees may also highlight the need for better accountability metrics, even if that means scheduling the use of keycard access throughout your various business buildings. Security is never something we can forgo, but we can always benefit from its structural implementation.
Continual Learning & Growth
We must never take our standing for granted. Even the best business leaders can find themselves out of date after a year of insignificance. For instance, it could very well be the case that Samsung, with their foldable phone technologies becoming more feasible by the day, manage to mainline the next new innovation in the smartphone market effectively rendering Apple, innovators in spirit for the last decade and more, out of the top spot. Continual learning, growth, innovation and market research is essential if we hope to hold and improve our positions. This way, we can rely on ourselves to never rest on our laurels.
With this advice, we hope you never put a price on business reliability.
