Success is not a guarantee, and it never is. Companies should never sit on their laurels. They need to innovate for the times, and they need to do so to be at the forefront of their industry. Even the biggest giants can fall if they don’t do this, and as new tech comes into play every single day, there are only new opportunities to take advantage of. If you don’t, however, you can be sure that a competitor will take advantage of them and start to replace you in the eyes of your consumer.

Not all hope is lost, however. Having a strong brand name and long history can take you far, but first, you need to restructure your company. You can do this whether you are a new director brought on for the job, or the owner, just so long as you follow these steps:

Organise All of Your Data

The first step to reorganising a company for the twenty-first century is to go through your data. Every piece of paper you have needs to be digitised and, more importantly, must be inputted into a system so that automatic reporting can be conducted. It is the best way to actually make use of years of data and progress and allows you to understand when things started to take a turn for the worse and what change caused it. It is also how you can work out new strategies for crucial aspects like your cash flow and budget so that you can finally start to address your company’s core issue – it’s income.

Deal with Your Finances First

Deal with debts and unpaid taxes first and foremost, or at least make plans with these creditors so that you can make the first necessary steps towards paying them off. If you don’t, you could be held personally liable under Australian law. The Australian Tax Office (ATO), for example, could issue you a Director Penalty Notice. There are two types of debt that you can be held liable for that would be issued with this notice. One is Pay as You Go (PAYG) and the other is Superannuation Guarantee Charge (SGC) liabilities. The best way to avoid or deal with these DPNs is to prevent them from being sent entirely. Addressing your finances first can be this prevention.

Note: If you are a new director who has been brought on with the task of restructuring the company, remember that you have 30 days before a DPN could be issued to you. If you see no way of solving the debts and back-tax in your new company, it could be wise to resign before these 30 days are up so that you can avoid personal liability.

Improve The Company’s Efficiency

Once your finances are dealt with and your data is digitised, it is time to improve your company’s efficiency. The good news is that by inputting all your information into the right data management systems, you have already taken the first necessary steps to improve your efficiency. Simply train your employees on how to use these programs to their benefit, and you can cut out admin times significantly. Use this same principle for your customer service, and start to offer automated personalised services without any extra effort on your part.

Restructure Your Digital Assets

Your digital assets include things like your website and social media profiles. Updating them for the future will mean going through, auditing them, and ensuring that they look and work great for all platforms. Remember particularly to make sure that your website is easy to use with mobile phones, as an increasing number of people access the internet through these devices as opposed to desktop computers.

You need to put particular emphasis on ensuring that your website and offsite links are optimised for the SEO practices of today. If your company experienced a big dip after one of the more significant algorithm updates, for example, it is well worth investing in new SEO efforts to boost your website for future success.

It is not easy to restructure and reorganise a company so that it is fit for the future and can start to bring money once again in. You need to not only set up all the systems but convert data. In some cases, this could be years’ worth of information and will take time to accomplish. By following this guide, however, you can get through this necessary restructuring successfully.