They say a business is only ever as capable as its weakest employee or system. That’s quite a simple analysis, after all, having someone who exaggerated their resume in your marketing department doesn’t mean your cybersecurity is suddenly completely at risk. A business is a complex machine, and the chains linking everything are only one part of it.

That being said, if systems and decisions are links on those chain, the weakest can have a knock on effect on everything else. For example, if your website is poorly rendered, with outdated info, and even an unverified security certificate, your entire marketing department has their hands tied behind their back.

With that in mind, let’s explore three of the weakest links threatening your business chains, devised by the most common affecting most businesses. If you inspect such areas and find the chains well-oiled and appropriately fastened, that’s great!

Let’s begin:

Poor Logistics

If a product doesn’t reach the customer on time, or worse, doesn’t arrive at all, or even more worse, arrives late and battered and damaged, then everything that came before it is undermined. 

Your marketing, sales, customer service teams suffer, as all of their effort loses weight if the supply chain breaks down. Logistics, that is quality logistics, should be worth investing in as  major priority, because it quietly holds everything together, and yet it often only gets attention when something goes wrong. 

Partnering with a reliable 3PL provider can help ease those risks, offering scale, tracking, and better updates and management that many businesses struggle to build internally. Don’t spare any expense.

Staff Social Media Use

Employees represent your brand far more than they may realize, and social media is usually where this becomes most visible. Unfortunately, it’s rare that a great post reflection your business well, it’s usually the other way around, but staff can still fall into it. 

As such, a careless post, an unprofessional interaction, or sometimes an ill-judged comment can quickly spiral into a reputational issue – think of how many businesses have had to disavow staff behavior online. Not fun. Now, some companies take a hard stance, banning staff from mentioning work at all, however some do encourage it under clear guidelines. The healthiest approach is usually somewhere in between, giving employees room to engage positively while making sure they understand the boundaries, just make sure it’s clear and can be pointed to in your staff code of conduct.

Unsuitable Market Research

Guesswork is a dangerous way to plan no matter what business you are, but some businesses do it because it’s easy, and they think they already know or can assume what their section of the market is doing.

However, if your research (or lack of it) is thin, outdated, or biased toward what you already want to hear, then decisions made on top of it are bound to falter.  Businesses sometimes cut corners here because results aren’t immediately visible, but over time the cracks widen between you and competitors doing it the right way. Be certain to assume nothing and make certain you’re continually updating your understanding of the market.