Considering Making an Investment in Your Business?
Are you considering a business investment to make your business more productive or streamlined? With a tight labour market, everyone’s time is at a premium. So finding ways to maximise productivity has never been more important.
But it can take considerable funds to pay for a new website, eCommerce platform, software system, or automations. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when you’re weighing up the costs and potential benefits of a significant investment.
What are the upfront costs – and the ongoing expenses?
A website, for example, has a large upfront cost for the design, content creation, and build. You might think that the costs are then done, but it must be updated and maintained. You can do that in-house, wherein, someone needs to be assigned to that work, or you can outsource it.
Always consider the ongoing costs, because these are vital considerations when deciding whether to make an important investment.
Which of your current costs will disappear?
Some of the costs you currently incur may vanish with a new system. It might be as simple as no longer paying the cost of an old subscription. Or it might be time saved that is spent manually entering data, processing payments, or dealing with customer issues that arise from an outdated system.
Financial costs are relatively easy to add to the calculations. It’s trickier with time, but try to put a value and quantity on what time might be saved if you can.
How will this change your costs in the long run?
Think about how your business will operate five years from now. Will this new investment allow you to increase your profitability without growing your team? Will you be able to spend more time finding outstanding high-value clients and less time on processes?
Any significant investment should make your company run more smoothly, allow you to boost your output, and easily pay for itself.
When will this investment pay for itself?
Once you have all these numbers in hand, you can formulate some idea of when the business investment will pay for itself. We can help you estimate a likely timeframe and some best-case and worst-case scenarios. You don’t have to make big choices on your own – let us help you analyse the costs and benefits to give you more confidence in your decisions.