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During the holidays is when many business leaders have time to decompress and think about the future year ahead. Strategic plans may or will be in place and growth is at the heart of it all. There are two ways forward to attain growth in a service-based business – use systems and market the heck out of your business!

If you are asking yourself, “how can a system help my business grow?” Or cringing at the idea of spending time on marketing efforts… keep reading! I assure you; you can do both even on the smallest of budgets.

First, let’s define what a system is.

Systems are comprised of processes, applications, people, programmatic interactions, and information collection or distribution. Systems are how businesses can scale, provide great customer experiences, and ensure consistency. They also help maximize profit margins and when done right, help boost brand visibility and loyalty following.

Why should you build a system?

Systems enable you to productize your services, so they are easily understood by prospects and customers. Productizing services is the key to increasing profit margins and improving the lead to customer conversion time. By productizing I mean you should craft messaging that is reusable, create taglines that demonstrate value, brand documents deliver, and standardize service costs by creating marketable ‘packages’ that showcase value. By turning a service into a “product”, you can remove barriers and reduce the time prospects need to evaluate whether they should hire you or not.
Systems create consistency and reliability which leads to brand loyalty. Customers remain loyal to brands they can trust. Trust is built through consistent and repeated experiences that are delivered on time, every time. By using a system, you can automate most interactions your customers have.
Systems add Intellectual Property (“IP”) value to your business. A system becomes a tangible asset for your company. It’s filled with data, automated workflows, and insights. It’s a game-changer if at some point you want to sell your business or need to secure capital.

How can you afford to build a system?

Use no-code and low-code platforms.A no-code application allows you to design and build a system using visual interfaces. Examples include Airtable, Make, Zapier, Power Automate. These cloud-based applications do some powerful stuff on their own. When you start connecting them together to handle automation and data transformations, the opportunities become only limited by your imagination. Most offer a trial period or free plan to get started if you want to try them out before you commit.A low-code platform enables you with more customization features to help craft a system that fits with your business. Low-code platforms include web-based Content Management Systems (“CMS”), Zoho Creator, Amazon Amplify and Salesforce. These quick-to-get started platforms can help you extend the existing powerful capabilities to serve you in line with how you want to run your business.
Use and re-use code from online sources like GitHub. This is for the more advanced approach to building systems and often, free! GitHub is a great resource for open-source code shared by developers world-wide. You can speed the development of a custom system build by tapping into existing publicly licensed code and putting pieces together like a puzzle. I do caution you to using this approach if you have never done any code-level work.
Source freelancers to design and develop a system for you. It’s easy to hire talent with resources like Upwork and Fiverr or through your local tech providers. It’s cost effective to hire someone externally vs asking your team to build the system, and they will get it done faster.
Use generative AI apps to source ideas. Trending apps that provide access to AI generated information, are providing the business world with technological advances that mostly make sense. Simply type into your favorite search bar (like Microsoft Edge) what other companies in your industry use to manage their business and you could save hours on trying to find a best fit approach.

What are risks you might encounter?

You might build a useless system if you don’t plan it out! Before getting started, I recommend evaluating your current systems or build a prototype that will demonstrate the value needed. You may have already done this if you’re using spreadsheets to handle data like opportunities, leads, sales and account information. How that data is linked and used is considered a prototype of sorts. Make sure the results are measurable and insightful to guide you in your plan development.
Your business can get hacked if you don’t take precautions! Cyber threats result in losses that most businesses cannot be recovered from – primarily financial. Make sure any system you put in place is accessed by a privileged user and they have the minimum permissions necessary. Trust is implied but access to all should never be freely given just because of an employee’s tenure or position. Enable multi-factor authentication and train your employees on best practices or policies they must adhere to.
You may lose your business if you don’t have insurance to cover losses! I can’t stress the need to have insurance, enough. Talk to your commercial insurance company about the best type of coverage to minimize the impact of data loss, breach or cyber theft. It’s better to have it than not with the increasing threat of ransomware.
Don’t let scope, creep! A natural occurrence for the dreamers and big picture people to “do it all”. Keep the purpose of the system simple and build out new features iteratively. In a world full of Agile development, iterative approaches, make the most sense.
The system does not align to policies or standards! Many industries have established standards to maintain quality. Businesses will also issue policies that their company must comply with. Ensuring a system aligns to both policies and standards, is a must! Otherwise, a business can find themselves in hot water with the customer or worse, the law.
Poor user experience! A lack of proper design has been the downfall of systems. Your employees won’t use it if it’s a pain in the a$$ and your customers won’t use it if it consistently fails.

How do you use your system to market your business?

Establish a marketing “bank”. Collect quotes, ideas and customer feedback from your system that can be repurposed into social media posts, case studies and website reviews (helpful for SEO boosting!). By creating a centralized system, you set yourself up for an easier time building marketing assets that can be used and reused.
Automate publishing of “banked” content to digital channels. The bank when built using smart cloud apps can do so much more. Each idea posted can be incorporated into workflows that help produce templated documents and posts. Furthermore, you can automate the publishing of the content in that bank direct to digital channels or your website to ensure your posts go out on time every time.
Make sure every experience is a branded on. By including your logo, tagline and messaging on all posts, documents, and assets within your system, you are easily boosting brand awareness with employees, prospects, and customers. Don’t by shy! Brand everything.
Market the system as a value-add reason why customers choose your business. If a customer knows that each interaction, they have with you is going to be consistent and reliable, you can include access to that system as a value-add proposition in every proposal. This demonstrates you have your sh*t together and can deliver.

If you’re feeling like you can walk into 2024, ready to tackle building a system, remember –

Building a system can be affordable with a good plan and thought out approach. Systems enable you to go to market faster, serve customers consistently and automate marketing workflows to ensure your brand is being boosted regularly.
There are risks associated with building any new system, but by being aware of what those risks are and how to best minimize them, ensures you can find success.
Use your systems to market your business, efficiently and consistently. By boosting brand awareness digitally, you can further your reach for new prospects.

Get in touch with me if you want to explore building a system for your business. I wish you the best for the coming year ahead!

2024 Resolution: To grow your service-based business During the holidays is when many business leaders have time to decompress and think about the future year ahead. Strategic plans may or will be in place and growth is at the heart of it all. There are two ways forward to attain growth in a service-based business… Continue reading Grow your service-based business

Designing and Creating Business Apps with Microsoft SharePoint

IMPORTANT: This article was written for the tech savvy, business user creating Microsoft SharePoint sites. If you would like to learn more about how you can build a custom Microsoft SharePoint app by extending features with Power Automate and other cloud tools, get in touch with me!

Microsoft SharePoint has been used for many years to serve up content to organizational users (internal and external). It’s powerful capabilities and native integrations to apps like Microsoft Teams, Outlook and Excel have been advantageous to managers who want to focus their staff on productivity and maximize ROI.

About Microsoft SharePoint Sites

When subscribing to Microsoft SharePoint and creating sites, you can select to use to use a quick start template – communication or team. While each are great starting points, they are just that… a starting point. Before diving into the creation process, let’s review some basic tips for choosing from one of the two categories.

Communication Sites

These are great starting points when you need to create (contextual) content that is served up to staff that needs to consume it. Additionally, it’s a great set up if you want to enable a centralized library of documents and reports you need to manage access to.

Team Sites

For the more interactive teams staffed by contributors of content to #SharePoint, the Team Site is the way to go. Additionally, it allows for the generation of a connected Microsoft Teams channel to provide a unified medium for communicating in context of the site purpose and have visibility into any site changes.

SharePoint sites, regardless of type, are populated by content, just like websites filled with information and files. This content is logically organized and by default, not hidden from anyone using the system so it’s a good idea to understand the concept of a document library – the content “holder”, and how to manage access.

A document library is a top-level folder that serve the same purpose as a Windows file folder to organize files. Libraries can contain sub-folders, various document types, images, and lists.

A great benefit of libraries is giving you the ability to organize content in a hierarchy and to manage access at the library, folder, or file level. It’s a powerful CMS with great tools available in a few clicks to set up advanced uses.

Let’s move on to the first phase of designing your business app.

Design a SharePoint instance

If you have heard the expression “Measure twice, cut once”, trust me when I state it applies here too. Designing your app before you start building doesn’t have to be a lengthy or complex exercise but it’s a good idea to do it.

Step 1

Anytime you embark on creating a new system or changing one, should also include asking people questions to gather intel such as –

Who is this for and how will they interact with it? Will people be updating information, adding information or requesting information?
What does it need to do? How does it need to work? Do you need a mobile version?
Where does this bring value? To internal users? External users? Other systems?
When the information is collected, does it also need to be shared across other business systems? Does it need to be transformed?

Step 2

Once functionality, features and access are determined, mapping of how the data will flow and users will interact at various steps is key. Using visual diagrams such as a flow chart on a whiteboard make for an easy starting point. For more advanced data flow mappings, also figure out if you need to standardize content on the site in lists and library properties.

With SharePoint you can create standard fields to manage the inputs and outputs, so they comply and align to standard terms, data dictionary definitions or to values that are required in other systems you want to integrate to.

This critical step will also help you determine if you need to extend features and functionality within SharePoint during the development phase. If that is the case you may need to engage a specialist.

Step 3

To figure this out, it’s good to understand the difference between the two types of content ‘buckets’.

Libraries are great containers to house documents, images, links and more in a hierarchical way.
Lists are great for tracking tickets, tasks, project (portfolios) and any type of data you may typically track in Microsoft Excel tables. Lists can also be synchronized to Microsoft Excel to further the data use-ability in charts and summarized reporting.

When using content containers in an app, other applications such as Power Automate, you can manipulate the information within them based on rules of engagement, turning your SharePoint site into a very powerful tool for your team.

Step 4

This is critical to ensure the user experience is ideal. Know your audience and the purpose will lead to how you want to organize content. Put yourself in the users shoes and ask yourself, if you had their job, what’s the most important area of the site to them? What type of resources do they need to be available in 1 click, 2 clicks or 3 clicks?

Keep in mind you can’t set things up to meet everyone’s needs individually but SharePoint has advanced features you can check out, that allow you to present context based on individual preferences and group settings.

Developing a SharePoint instance

Pick your ideal SharePoint site template and set the name of the site

Choose a Teams or Communication site to get started. You can change this later but for now create the foundation.

Create a document library structure(s)

Create folders and lists with sample content to make sure the planned structure works before you upload all the content.

Apply security to the library(ies) and lists

By default you can set permissions based on users and the default groups – Owner, Member and Visitors or at the user level (not recommended!). If you plan to create complex security permissions, I recommend creating custom groups to manage permissions and users that they apply to. Keep in mind the most restrictive permissions will apply as a priority.

Customize pages and navigation

Created sites will come with 1 page (the home page) that you can easily edit. By default all content can be shown in web parts on the home page if well organized. For sites with large lists and large document libraries that need to be accessed online vs using OneDrive, I recommend breaking content into pages. Think of how websites are organized to share information and use the same approach if that is familiar to you.

Upload content

Once design work is done, uploading content is key to start bringing your site to life. Mass uploads are possible using the SharePoint migration tools (administrative access to M365 required) or you can authorize users to upload content by providing links and invites to do so.

Activate Features and Extend Functions

It’s recommended you learn about each feature or extended function being activated. If you are not a Global Administrator, you will need to loop in your assigned teammates to work with you on the extension to make sure you have permissions and any integrated application is compliant with your organizational policies and procedures.

When developing a SharePoint site to become an app, this step will always be present in the process.

Test and launch

Testing links, buttons, workflow, navigation and access is critical to ensure your site is received successfully once officially launched and your business app is working. I would also recommend preparing a training video or walking people through the new setup, live, so you can get feedback as you roll it out.

When developing a SharePoint site to become an app, this step will always be present in the process.

If you have been interested in creating a digital workspace but want a head start there are tools on the market. I would check out Mozzaik365 to help speed the process up or get in touch with a SharePoint specialist to help get you started. We can help you with migration and a complete setup.

If you want to tackle trying to create your own SharePoint app for business using the available Microsoft tools with your subscription, I suggest you start here – Create a team site in SharePoint and don’t hesitate to reach out if you need some guidance in moving it forward to becoming a business application that nets maximum returns.

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Designing and Creating Business Apps with Microsoft SharePoint IMPORTANT: This article was written for the tech savvy, business user creating Microsoft SharePoint sites. If you would like to learn more about how you can build a custom Microsoft SharePoint app by extending features with Power Automate and other cloud tools, get in touch with me!… Continue reading Creating Business Apps with Microsoft SharePoint