How To Integrate New Services Without Disrupting Workflow

Bojan Rendulic

March 31, 2020

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So, you’ve started your business and have a steady flow of clients. Good for you!

You’ve set up the bedrock of your agency, and you have solid foundations from which to build onward and upward.

You’ve even started to build a reputation around your services thanks to stirring client testimonials and glowing reviews. You finally feel like you found a footing.

However, like the Roman Empire over 2,000 years ago, your thoughts will soon turn to expansion. It’s human nature! More to the point, it’s smart business instinct. You want to cross the Rubicon, taking your own personal empire into uncharted waters, staking your claim as the best and brightest in your industry. But how exactly do you go about this? Let’s take a look at how to integrate new services while ensuring workflow isn’t disrupted.

How Do You Grow?

Well, if you’re Caesar, the answer is to train your soldiers well, give ’em the best equipment, and pack ’em off to France to massacre some Gauls. If you’re a business owner, however, you have two options – neither of which involves the kind of blood-letting that Caesar promoted.

The first way is pretty simple. You get more clients! We’ve covered this before in other posts (like here and here), so we won’t retread old ground in this dispatch. Like Centurions marching forth, we’re interested in new, untrodden ground. So here it is: the second way to grow is to introduce new services. Today we’re going to take a look at how to add new services to your operation without disrupting the workflow of your agency. It’s quite a balancing act, but with the right strategies, you can pull it off no problem.

The Importance of Adding New Services

Regardless of what industry you’re in, adding new services to your business can be critical to your growth trajectory. If you don’t innovate every once in a while, then you run the risk of stagnation. Yes, your current service might be doing well and receiving great feedback. But your business has to adapt and evolve with the times, both to keep things engaging and exciting and to bring in new clients. If you don’t move forward, you risk becoming stuck in the mud and even (gasp) irrelevant, in the worst-case scenario. 

How to Integrate New Services

So, how do you implement a new process in the workplace? Well, we’ll take it as a given that you’ve already identified the new product or service that you want to incorporate into your company. The problem is maintaining the balance between your existing services and the new one you’re planning to offer. The new service won’t come fully equipped with new customers (though it’d be nice if it did…). You’ll need to go out and look for them, which means spending resources and money. But you don’t want to suddenly put all your efforts into this new element and neglect your established customers. This is not good business.

All that said, here are four key tips on how to add a new service to your business with maximum effect and minimum disruption.

1. Integrate Slowly

Any emperor worth his salt will tell you that success lies in preparation. Even though a battle might be decisive and concluded swiftly, the victory is often the result of being meticulously prepared. So when it comes to a new product or service, you should take it step by step and not rush into it. Remember, while there’s every hope this new avenue or venture will succeed, there’s also the possibility that it might fail. So make sure you don’t neglect what’s making you successful in the first place (the foundation of your business) in favor of a shiny new product or service that represents a gamble.

2. Listen to Your Client Base

In most cases, there’s a good chance that your existing client base can provide some clues about how to integrate new products and services. Look, you’ve done the hard work; getting a business off the ground in the first place is no mean feat. (Once you’ve invaded the first country, how hard can the second one be? And the third? Or fourth?)

Anyway, the point is that you’ll have learned some hard lessons along the way, so why not incorporate them into your new product or service? With a bit of luck and skill, you can convert existing customers into further customers. If you’re aiming for a whole new set of clientele, you should have an edge with the experience you’ve already gleaned.

3. Don’t Go Too Left-Field

Ideally, you don’t want to make any radical changes to your operation, as that would disrupt the flow of what’s already proven to be working. Stick within the parameters of what you know, at least at first. Remember, you don’t want to reinvent your business; you want to build on what’s already there. Going too radical will confuse your brand and make it harder to maintain your position. Introducing new elements slowly, carefully, and fluidly is the way to go.

4. Utilize an Effective Resource Management Tool

If you’re going to streamline new products or services seamlessly into your business, you’re probably going to need some help. You want the best resource management tool in the game, which right now is Productive. This Swiss army knife of an app can help you with bottlenecks that cost money and consume time. Productive with its powerful features can help you with everything from key metric reports to overhead planning. If you’re intent on launching a new product or service, you’ll need to allocate resources and keep track of returns after the introduction. Productive can help you do all this and more in a fluid, intuitive way. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. But if they had Productive’s help, they might’ve got it done in a week.

Bojan Rendulic

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