With just over 3 weeks until the end of the financial year, it’s time to get organised!

It’s not all about tax time though. For those of us in business management roles – now is the time to set yourself up for the year ahead by reviewing and updating your business, comms and marketing plans and budgets.

Reviewing your business structure and associated budgets is key during this period to ensure your allocations are fulfilled – why not get a head start for next year and use any leftover for content creation, thought leadership or a digital strategy evaluation and get an expert in the field to assist.

By prioritising and maximising your effort to work smarter and not harder, you will allow yourself to make the most of new opportunities as they come your way.

Remind yourself of the business goals and priorities and assess whether your strategies are working. Let’s be honest. This should be happening throughout the year but it’s so important for it to happen now!

Reviewing your communication and marketing costs from the past year and evaluating the ROI and performance of each initiative is crucial. Can you quantify the success or maybe failure of your campaigns? If you don’t have the time, why not hire an external strategist to help with this evaluation and advise on the strategy for the year to come to ensure optimal ROI is reached for the coming year.

Once you have the outcomes of the past years’ performance, setting budgets and plans for the coming year doesn’t have to mean re-inventing the wheel. It can just mean a tweak here and there and then on with the job. But it’s always easier to see from an overall perspective rather than piece-mealed along the way, right?

A review of your business and team structure might also be a necessary activity at this point in the year. Has the environment changed over the past months and are labour costs an area that needs attention? Looking at where you might be over or under staffing from a permanent vs contract headcount perspective could help with the bottom line, department budgets and ROI.

Accessing specialist contractors on bespoke basis can certainly help with headcount and budget pressure, potentially efficiency and also help to identify room for improvement within the overall strategy.

Let’s face it though. We can try to be as organised as possible and have all our ducks in a row at every point in time – but it’s not easy. Things change. Environments. Budgets. Resources. People. Time. The list goes on and feeling in control always is not an easy feeling to achieve – one can only use the resources at their disposal to achieve whatever is possible… And hope that it is enough!

Enquire now to discuss the best talent currently available, their rates and bespoke billing arrangements to make EOFY work for you! Get in touch by emailing us here.

By Luke Achterstraat, CEO of Commtract.