06 Nov Getting Your CRM & Business Ready for the New Year – Start Now

As the New Year approaches, you need to start getting your business ready for when the clock chimes 12 on January 1^st 2018. The important thing you need to do to prepare yourself and team, is to start now! GDPR General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, coming into force on the 25^th May 2018. This was designed to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the EU. It is taking over from the Data Protection Act 1998 as a tougher approach to data protection. Those that don’t comply will suffer tougher fines. It gives people more say over what happens exactly with their data which is collected by companies. It will apply to all members of the EU, so during Brexit, the UK still have to comply. However the UK Government put forward a new data protection bill in August, which largely mirrors the GDPR, so it seems likely that the regulations put forward now will remain. It’s something you really can’t afford to not be aware of, so make sure you’re in front of the GDPR deadline! ISO Accreditation 2018 also seems like a really great time to get yourself ISO accredited. What is ISO certification? Well, these certificates come from the ISO, which is the International Standardisation Organisation. They’re a body of people that want to promote the standardisation for specifications and requirements for procedures, formats, information and quality control. If you achieve gaining this certification for your management system, process, service or documentation procedure, it has all the requirements for standardisation and quality assurance. So if you want to add additional credibility to your organisation, ISO certification is definitely the way to go. "Informed Training" have been working with the team at "Standards International" on  joint projects and we can see first hand at how brilliant they are at helping Organisations achieve ISO Certification - Say Hi to Michelle and the team at Standards International  for us, if you want to know more about the standards. We will complement the work achieved with them to build your process into your CRM, Practice Management or Back Office System. Is your CRM customised to match your Business Process Steps?  If not get an independent partner to work with you, to share the load and share their experience to enable you to be even more effective - let them do the "Doing" while you are working with/for your clients. Taking the steps you have finalised by working on your ISO Certification, these can then be embedded into your CRM. By preparing in advance, you’ll save time in the New Year dedicating yourself to more important tasks, and more time for your customers! You’ll also be making your business more effective and productive by concentrating your resources before things become an issue. Preparing now allows you to be more effective and getting your process in your CRM in perfect in time for the New Year. In summary – if your business isn’t ready by the New Year, you’ could be left behind!