Confronted with the question of how to be a better manager, a business person can read a bunch of management books, which may or may not be insightful—or they can actually look at how to make their business run smoothly. People are easier to manage when the work environment gives them the tools they need to do their job. This yet another reason why the decision to accept credit cards as a small business is so crucial. A piece of plastic can’t give you a better management style. What it can do is hone your operations in a way that allows you to look at how you manage from a brand-new perspective.
If you’re like most small businesses, you’ll hand off the less-crucial tasks to other employees, and save the tasks that can affect your bottom line for yourself. In practice, that typically means you do everything yourself. For the brave and trusting who do hand off tasks like inventorying or billing so someone else, this instantly creates an environment where micromanaging is natural. Managers hate to worry about the task being done right. With the proper technology, concerned business owners have an alternative to micromanaging. If you have an integrated solution at your point of sale, then not only is your small business able to accept credit cards, but you’re able to sync all payments and purchases to your inventory, enabling orders to be placed with your distributor automatically. You’ll never again have to yell at someone for messing up or forgetting an order.
When an employee is well trained in what to do, they are less likely to make mistakes, irritate customers, and need more training and management down the road. The proper technology at the point of sale is one solid way to do that. For restaurants in particular, having a solid point of sale system that makes it easy complete a customer’s order, add customizations, and accept any type of payment, ensures that customers get what they want, and employees have the tools they need to do their job without being closely managed. That means you are able to go about and busy yourself with other essential tasks, like meeting customers, gaining feedback, and ensuring that all aspects of the main floor of the restaurant are awesome.
Importantly, as all the processes of your businesses whirl around you, owners are more able to glean actionable insights from this information when processes are streamlined, automatized and digitized. As you learn more about how your business is operating, you will no longer be guessing. You’ll be a decision maker.
Beefing up your tech, and accepting credit cards as a small business opens yourself up to better management by doing just that—turning you into an informed manager. That’s an improvement practically everyone can get behind.