Business Management in Freelancing: 5S meets Freelancing

Business Management in Freelancing – There’s something about order-in-life which has helped business leaders to be what they are today. Toyota, Honeywell, Mahindra, Hero Motocorp, TCS, BYJUs etc. Everyone’s got their little secret sauce, most have a set of business standards, and some find modified versions of established practices beneficial for their unique business operations. Here’s a lesson for beginners in freelancing from Content and Marketing Management Organisation which has been here for the last 5 years.

Not just another Business Management lesson…

I can feel the hearts of Management scholars (present and passed) twitching that this is going to be another one of those articles about some Management theory they mugged in B School. Indeed it is. But this one’s about how those homebody, happy-go-lucky, masters of their own, one-man-job; dreamers and doers. So this one might not be as mundane as those in our books were. This one’s about applying 5S theories to business management in freelancing.

Matching a Freelancer’s might with 5S magic

No matter how big an ‘Urban legend kinda’ Uber Cool Guy’ or ‘Girl with a dragon tattoo’ type professional you are (maybe a little exaggerated huh!), but keeping the business together is always a matter of ‘Order’. Knowing your business is one thing but using that knowledge to your advantage is other. Business management in freelancing can help you in keeping the processes together.

You don’t want to end up like those people who play low games of the town and end up with a decent backup, lots of experience and no one but dogs to howl at your grave. And for that my able-blooded readers you’ll need a fool-proof process, one that kicks the high-end, deep-pocketed competition out of the line.

5S Advantages- Business Management in Freelancing Solutions

Let’s know a few trade secrets of the business. How 5S in Freelancing helps you?…

Wolf of the Freelance Street

The one issue with both amateur and seasoned freelancers is payment accords. Unless you have a rock solid contract you aren’t going to find yourself absolutely free from negotiations at the closure of a project or gig.

Having marked and coded documents help you to ace those negotiations like a pro. No need to scour through your all correspondences to find a quote, invoice, receipt etc. A well-maintained repository and you’re done. That’s Business Management in Freelancing 101 for you.

Clearing out space made easy

If you’re not doing it already, then you might be facing a lot of difficulty with space maintenance either on a cloud or your device. Having an unordered drive is no better than having a piled up wardrobe. You need to pull everything out to find that one thing you’re looking for. This can work out for cupboards but not for content ranging thousands of pages/files/backups. Managing business starts from small steps. As Admiral McRaven said ‘If you want to change the world start off by making your bed’

The most cringe-worthy moment comes when you have to re-order your wardrobe (drive) once in a while. Because then, with an unorganized room; you have a high chance of losing what’s important and keeping what’s not. Tagged files/folders help in cleaning obsolete project files in one go.

Turn-around-time: faster than ‘Flash’

If you’re one of those people who have a rather larger ticket size but equally larger consumer base. Despite all the help that you could gather from a paid CRM membership (i.e. if you’ve surplus cash resources to afford one), your turn around time always sucks in the moment of needs when a customer wants some older version and you have to look through emails or your drive to find one. Business Management in Freelancing with 5S is the 1st step towards process mapping. To solve a problem you need to know there is one.

Besides partially outsourced work and super-imposition of your layered work makes tracking the sources very tedious at times. But 5S assisted processes never fumble in such cases in fact, they thrive in such circumstances developing an even extended business repute.

Not just a File Management System

5S is not just a file management system, you can also apply it to the business end of your processes. Freelancers need Business management to not only upkeep their operations, they need it to improvise and expand.

If all jobs were the same-mundane, we freelancers would have probably left our jobs and gone recluse to the Himalayas. The sheer level of customization in our gigs demands a dynamic action plan every time. But having an instantaneous one is the sure shot way of losing on the timeline, or perhaps the quality.

I’m not suggesting you jot down a timetable as our fathers would do every time they see us stressed out. Lean management suggests utilization of least available resources to get the most optmised results.

Instead, having a process flow, a matrix of calculated estimations; with all the dynamism left for the leverage thereon; makes you achieve a certain head start from other competitors. You don’t find yourself a loss of actions once a random request generates out of the blues or a random addition/omission is shot from the client. Just find the suitable process header for the requested action and follow the due process. Functional and profitable at the same time.

Money, Moolah, Green crispy Ben(s): Save some with 5S

Business Management in Freelancing has a direct impact on a freelancer’s financials. It all comes down to saving money. Some of us might as well have profound enough businesses to employ a file management system, or campaign management system; some might even have a book-keeper employed apart from a regular tax consultant for finance and stuff. With 5S application and a little perseverance, one can get rid of these exaggerations.

One can maintain ordered books for the reference of tax personnel by using simple file management tactics, find stuff more easily with a personalized coding system (rather than get acquainted with the system generated codes) or perhaps maintain a better line of ordered campaigns than any campaign manager could do. All this for far less cost and another feather to your cap for being a great manager.

Learn more about 5S compliance in Freelancing Business

Business Management in freelancing needs an active outlook, only diligence can yield an organised process. In the next article of this series, We’ll inform you, how you can apply the theories of 5S effectively to your freelance business. Try to do an audit of your process and suggest us in the comments if there are any 5S methods that you already follow.

Learn and Share: WWC Six Sigma Lessons

Wit Write Creative Solutions is going to run a series of Six Sigma & Lean enabled Freelancing lessons, starting with 5S techniques. We’ve got a team of highly trained and enthusiastic professionals trying to give as much as we can to the community either via our WWC services or by sharing with fellows our 5 years of experience via WWC Lessons. Keep watching this space or visit Wit Write Creative Solutions for more such insights.