Is a singular company strategy blocking department success?
The solution could lie with department-specific strategies.
Welcome to The Manual Weekly – LI Edition, the can’t-miss newsletter for small business leaders. You’ll find snackable bits of news highlighting emerging trends, actionable resources, and proven best practices that can help take your business to the next level.
Hot off the SMB press this week:?
Template of the week: Department Budgeting Process
It takes money to make money, or so the saying goes — especially for businesses. From office rent and employee salaries to the cost of raw materials and tools, every business has expenses they have to pay to keep their operations running and customers happy.?
But having the money to spend doesn’t mean it’s there to burn. Smart financial decisions can mean the difference between a successful business and a not-so-successful one, so budgeting is a crucial part of business strategy. And while there are numerous ways to create your company’s budget, one effective way is through departments.
With department budgeting, each team can make informed decisions about their resources and future plans. Plus, with this strategy, your company has a holistic view of where your money is going and how spending is contributing to the goals of your departments and overall business.
?? And that’s why we’ve created a Department Budgeting Process template. With your personal touch, this process will help your teams develop budgets that reflect their contributions to the wider company, the resources they need to reach their goals, and their forecast for future expenses. With this process in place, your company will have a more structured approach to budgeting, setting you up for success.
Want more templates to help you build your business playbook? Check out our entire template archive of free, multimedia-enhanced, and customizable policy, process, and role starters. New to Trainual? Get a demo.
The reasons why your departments should have their own strategies
Picture this: Your company CEO stands up, and says, “We will differentiate ourselves from our competition through superior customer service!” Well, that’s a strategy we can get behind. But what does it mean, exactly? What would make THIS customer service “superior”? A lack of clarity here means that there’s really no way to act on this strategy. It’s just a nice idea that can’t actually be implemented.
Many leaders would argue that there should only be one strategy for a company. But strategy success is something that multiple groups contribute to. So, each department must establish their own “what” and “how” behind a strategy — defining a vision and approach to achieving success unique to their team.
Because when departments outline a strategy for their own area and (most importantly) define the ways they can bring it to life, it provides these three key benefits:
Benefit #1: There’s a more relevant framework to act upon.
A corporate strategy aims to guide an organization in determining what actions should be taken or avoided for success — similarly, a departmental strategy should provide the same clarity and direction. While it might seem obvious, it’s important to form an explicit strategy for each individual department, giving employees an optimized system to work off of on a daily basis.?
Let’s say that one of your department strategies is to get employees on the same page with consistent training — something that every single department needs to do, and something that’s going to look a little bit different for every department. This framework encourages you to push past that generality of “let’s train our employees” and really get into the nitty-gritty for each department.?
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What should training look like? What needs to be changed about your training? What policies and processes need to be a part of training and kept up to date? Answering these questions and developing an in-depth system for training (for every department) will push you past the high-level “idea” phase and into the strategic implementation stage.
The 5 Days of Trainual continued…
Last week we gave a sneak peek of The 5 Days of Trainual — AKA, our “You asked, we listened” edition of over 50 game-changing updates and enhancements. (Five days full, to be exact.)
In case you missed our announcements about days three through five, we're dropping a few of the most exciting below:
Day 3: Enhancements to invitations.
Give your team access to all the information they need when they need it with scheduled invitation sends. When you add a new user, you can choose to send their invitation on a specific day — so they’re automatically set up for onboarding success at just the right time.
Day 4: New customization options.
You told us you wanted more ways to customize your account to meet your unique needs. So now, you can:
Day 5: Updates to branding and exporting.
With new features like company branding on public share, the ability to export your org chart, and more comprehensive employee progress reports, we’re providing more ways to make your company resources accessible outside of your Trainual account.
Phew, that was a lot. And that’s only the beginning of the new features and enhancements we’re releasing in 2024. So get ready for more — because my, oh my, is it coming.