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Problem solving is a large part of being a business owner and if you want to be effective at solving problems, you need to be proactive. Instead of putting out fires as they come up, you need to actively look for issues and deal with them before they start having a negative impact on the business. Unfortunately, there are a lot of business problems that go unnoticed because business owners don’t know how to spot them before it’s too late. If you want to keep a handle on your business, here’s how to identify problem areas that need to be addressed. 

Audit Your Business Finances 

Your business finances give you a very good indication of the overall health of the business. They can show you where you are making money and where you are losing it, and help you identify weak areas that need to be addressed. If you want to know how your business is doing, hire a Chartered Accountants firm and have them do a full audit for you. That way, you can pick up on any departments that are falling behind the rest of the business, identify any financial waste, and assess the overall direction of the business. During an audit, accountants will also be able to give you advice on how to grow the business and head off any potential problems. 

Talk To Your Employees 

Talking to your employees might seem like the most obvious way to identify problems in the business, but many business owners get so caught up in the numbers that they forget about the people. You have to remember that your employees do their job day in, day out, which means that they understand it better than you do. They can tell you if there are things getting in the way and harming productivity, and they are often able to notice the beginnings of a problem before upper management has a clue that anything is going wrong. That’s why good communication with your employees is so important. If you don’t already,  you should host regular one-to-ones with your team. You can also use suggestion boxes to get more feedback from your staff. 

Listen To Customer Feedback 

Customer feedback is one of the most useful resources that you have, so make sure that you actually pay attention to it. Positive customer reviews are a brilliant way to strengthen your online brand and boost sales, but negative reviews can be just as valuable. They pick up on problems that you and your team might have missed, and if you act on them, they give you a chance to constantly improve your business. If you notice that a lot of customers are complaining about the same things, it’s clear that you have a problem area that needs to be dealt with. Once you have taken significant action, you can then respond to those customers letting them know that their feedback was taken on board. 

These are all simple ways to spot problems early so you can be proactive in dealing with them to protect your business.