Flexibility is a key factor in overcoming challenges in any aspect of life, including business. For small business owners, achieving growth means learning the most successful strategies, tools, and techniques, and flexibility is one of them.
Let’s use the current COVID-19 pandemic as a prime example. This world-changing event completely disrupted business on a global scale. Small businesses, lacking the same financial buffer that their larger, often corporate counterparts had, were hit the hardest. Nevertheless, those small businesses that demonstrated the most flexibility were able to face the challenging circumstances head on.
Small Business Flexibility in a Crisis
While a large-scale crisis can cause major problems for small businesses, those that face the challenges head-on with flexibility and agility can become even more successful. By looking at big changes as opportunities, not roadblocks, small business owners can more easily adapt and thrive. If you can pivot and be flexible in organizational goals and strategies, working conditions, products, or anything else, you may have found the secret weapon for small business success.
How Flexible Can Small Businesses be?
You may think that large organizations are in a better position to be flexible, given their extra budgets and person-power, but their sheer size and scale can stifle their flexibility, while smaller businesses can respond and adapt swiftly to shifting circumstances.
Small businesses often benefit from less stringent processes, with less people in the decision making chain. Feedback loops are generally tighter, so the business can act more rapidly to make changes. And it’s easier to take chances and make changes on a smaller scale before rolling out new products and ideas.
Why Small Business Flexibility is Important
It’s worth improving your business’ flexibility for a variety of reasons:
- Business flexibility often involves employees, so it makes the business a more attractive employer.
- Similarly, it increases morale and loyalty in existing employees.
- In a crowded market, it can be just what you need to give you the edge over the competition.
- It helps you meet the needs of customers, who prefer to deal with businesses that are responsive to their needs.
- Your business can adapt to changing market conditions and needs.
Flexible and/or Remote Working
The ability for employees to work in different ways was gaining in traction even before the pandemic, and it’s not just a benefit to employees. 83% of employers say that moving to remote working practices has been a success for their business.
Depending on your type of business, remote working might not be the best option or even suitable for your industry, but flexible working has proved time and time again to be not just a possibility, but a better option all-round. Policies and culture changes like job-sharing, cutting down on unnecessary face-to-face meetings, setting core hours with flexibility around working hours, and more.
Flexible Innovation
Flexibility breeds innovation, a crucial ingredient for small business growth. Allowing and encouraging everyone from everywhere in your business to think about new ways of working, new products, and new processes will encourage a culture of innovation.
Rather than operating the traditional way of owners/managers making all the decisions and coming up with all the ideas, getting everyone involved is likely to be more successful. Why? Because it’s the people on the ground who are more likely to spot the pain points and opportunities that will kick-start the innovation process.
And it’s important not to stick too rigidly to innovation processes and communication chains. Be flexible, and encourage employees to investigate, innovate, and share their findings. Remember, shorter, faster feedback loops are one of the advantages small businesses have over larger ones!
A Flexible Business Credit Card
One of the things that small businesses don’t have as much as larger organizations is limitless budgets. That’s where different types of small business funding comes in, and a flexible business credit card can be the key to small business success.
A business credit card lets small businesses be more flexible by giving them extra purchasing power when cash flow is tight, and offers a financial buffer during slower revenue periods or where unexpected expenses crop up. And choosing a flexible business credit card makes things even easier, offering benefits such as flexible financing options, soft searches during the application process (so no hard credit score hit), and solid customer service that makes you feel like your card provider is working with you, not against you.
Get Maximum Flexibility From Your Business Credit Card
Whether that’s your small business or your small (but powerful) business credit card, small can actually equal flexible. If recent global events have shown us anything, it’s that flexibility is key to small business success. On top of offering more flexibility to your business strategies, choosing the most flexible business credit card gives you the edge as you face the challenges and seize the opportunities in today’s business landscape.
Check out flexible small business credit cards from Capital On Tap to find your business’ new secret weapon.
