11 tips to uplift your business in 2023

Published On December 07, 2022

It’s a new year. This is a perfect time to take a look under the hood to see what’s working for your organization—and what’s not. We may not be mechanics, but when it comes to business improvement, we’ve got you covered.

Here are our top 11 tips to help your organization elevate the power of its work in 2023.

1. Begin with a resilient mindset.

From day one of the new year, you want to ensure your team is prepared for anything that comes their way. If done right, strategic resilience leads to significant performance advantages in areas such as customer satisfaction, employee retention and recruitment, risk management, and progress towards ESG (environmental, social, and governance) goals. Break down the silos. When disruption strikes, cross-functional teams can more easily diagnose issues, react, and recover. To drive resilience, the approach must cascade across all levels within the organization. Is your organization as resilient as you think? Putting a strategic resilience plan in place is key to a successful year.

2. Review your enterprise-wide records retention schedule.

Take a look at your record retention policies to ensure they’re up-to-date and meet regulatory requirements wherever you do business. Consider how to incorporate rules for retention—and deletion—as your data continues to grow in volume and formats. Then, make a plan for documents that have met their retention requirements and can now be securely destroyed to meet compliance.

3. Clean up your legacy records.

Once you’ve reviewed your retention policy, you can make decisions on how to handle legacy records. To do this, your team needs a streamlined process for sorting its records and deciding what to retain, digitize, or defensibly destroy. This process can be tedious and resource-intensive, but it provides a strong foundation for digital transformation with streamlined and autonomous work processes. Unsure of where to start? Take our quiz to see if working with a partner can help your legacy records cleanup project.

4. Align with your supply chain partners.

Your sustainability efforts are impacted by the vendors and partners you choose to engage. It’s important to connect with your partners regularly and discuss how you can work together on shared initiatives. Assess topics that are material to your business and incorporate data from your vendors into your own sustainability goals. By including data from your supply chain partners in your reporting, your organization will establish itself as more accountable, comprehensive, and transparent when it comes to your sustainability efforts.

5. Invest in real renewable energy actions.

See if there are renewable energy alternatives to possibly reduce or eliminate fossil fuels. The best places to begin are the most energy-intensive areas, like your data center. And if there are environmentally friendly options powered by renewable energy, like colocation offerings, go for it.

6. Get ahead of data security threats.

Waiting until something bad happens to put a solid protection process in place never ends well. Your team should be ready for everything, including the worst-case scenarios.

To help with this, think about our 3-2-1-1-0 data protection strategy:

• 3 different copies of data
• 2 copies on different media
• 1 copy that is offsite
• 1 copy that is offline
• Use the offline copy (copy 0) as a no-errors backup for data recovery

Also, consider implementing a zero-trust network and multi-factor authentication. You can never be too safe when it comes to safeguarding your critical systems and data.

7. Tighten up data and IT security where possible.

Take a look at your IT asset disposition process. Is it done in a sustainable manner? Is it done in a secure manner? Your organization’s IT assets contain tremendous amounts of vulnerable data that should remain private and secure. However, even when your team sustainably disposes of retired IT equipment, your organization and customers’ data still needs protection. This is why all retired IT equipment must be securely destroyed while being managed in an eco-friendly way once your organization is done with it.

8. Take the social responsibility lead.

Operating with a social conscience today is a crucial component to how organizations are viewed by their customers, employees, and investors. No matter what your role is, everyone can contribute to sustainability (see how it’s now a team sport). In fact, 94% of organizations have already integrated ESG goals and commitments into their overall strategies. Don’t forget to also connect with your vendors to see how their business and operational practices align with your organization’s values.

9. Evaluate your return to office (RTO) strategy.

Work styles have changed and so should your work environment. Employees want support in different ways to be productive, safe, and successful wherever they work. The office should not only provide spaces to collaborate and innovate but also to focus without disruptions. The future of work may look different than it once did, and that’s okay. To fit the needs of how employees work and businesses function, now is the time to reassess and revamp the office no matter where your organization’s RTO strategy takes you.

10. Future-proof your corporate mailroom.

Take stock of your traditional onsite mail system. How much paper-based mail does your organization receive every month? You’ll be surprised at how much of your operations can be automated thanks to digitized or intelligent mailrooms. By digitizing all incoming paper-based mail, organizations can reduce their paper load to bring many of the benefits of electronic mail to today’s “snail mail.”

11. Ready to kickoff your organization’s transformation? Let’s get digital!

To improve productivity, efficiency, and business insights, find ways to unite your physical and digital data. For success in these efforts, take your organization through our five steps to digital transformation. Not only will digitization help your onsite team, but it will also better support current and future remote work options.