5 things I’ve learned running a business: Denise Williamson, BookWise

Denise Williamson is managing director at Burton-Upon-Trent healthcare scheduling specialist, BookWise Solutions, established in 2011. Here, she shares the lessons she’s learned during that time.

People are important

Building great relationships is the foundation of any successful organisation –re without good staff and clients there would be no business. Therefore it’s incredibly important to maintain quality relationships with both, and continue to find ways to improve team cohesion and morale all the time.

We try to meet with our clients face-to-face as much as we can to ensure we’re providing the best service possible, and this interaction is key to building good rapport and a solid relationship.

It’s important to remember that occasionally things don’t go as anticipated and that mistakes can be made. Showing mutual respect for your colleagues and clients is crucial to ensure that any errors don’t happen again, or potentially impact on productivity moving forwards.

As an SME we are a close-knit team and we always try to make the effort to socialise together as much as we can, whether that’s charity fundraising, pub quizzes or meeting up for drinks after work. In fact, earlier this year, we all took a weekend trip to Paris to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the business.

Enjoy what you do

If you enjoy what you do for a living, it’s obvious that you’re going to be more productive, and as a result more successful. If you hate what you do, you’re very unlikely to achieve your goals and succeed as a business as a whole.

As a business leader, I believe passion for the job is contagious. Your members of the team can feed off this so it’s important to set some ambitious (not unrealistic) targets, for your staff to aim for and provide the tools and incentives to go after these. When you love what you do, people take note and want to become part of your success story.

Finally, enjoying your job is key to life fulfilment, particularly in this age where the lines between your social and working life can become blurred at times by the easy accessibility to emails and your desktop.

Never stop learning

BookWise Solutions continues to grow year-on-year and with this growth I have needed to develop myself, in terms of both my skills and management style.

I have learned a great deal about how to manage a business over the past five years and know that I’ll continue to learn an enormous amount more in the years to come as our client base grows and service provision develops.

Training and personal development are critical to creating a strong, savvy and productive cohort of staff and I think it’s essential that all directors of businesses make the provisions available to regularly train their staff. This not only helps to heighten the skill set of your workforce, but it also helps them to feel valued by their management team – crucial for staff retention and a happy office.

Make a profit

Obviously the number one priority for business owners is that the balance sheet is positive at the end of each month. Managing directors need to always be commercially aware; not making money does not help your employees, or customers for that matter.

All key business decisions that are made should always have a financial consideration attached to them, particularly for smaller businesses where every pound can be crucial. I highly encourage all business owners to seek the guidance of an accountant or financial advisor to provide the best guidance and support for all financial matters, particularly when important decisions such as recruitment, office moves or other major costs need to be considered.

Understand where you are going

Finally, it’s important to make sure you put a plan in place as to where you want to be in five years, don’t be afraid to be flexible but don’t lose sight of that end goal.

As a high growth business, the goal posts for BookWise Solutions are critically analysed and adjusted all the time and I believe this is crucial to ensuring you and your remembers of staff continue to remain motivated and passionate about achieving your business targets.