Business Administrator: Job Overview

Business administrators are involved in a continuous process of planning and implementation of strategies to improve or streamline their organizations’ operations.

Business administrators may be involved in hiring or reorganizing staff, in collaboration with the organization’s human resources department, to be sure their large or small business has the right talent to support its goals.

When negotiating contracts with vendors, business administrators will strive to purchase services or materials at the lowest possible cost.

With the support of the organization’s accounting or finance team members, administrators may handle this aspect of business operations, tracking business finances and managing the operating budget.

Oversight of the organization’s marketing operations may be included in the business administrator’s duties. In this capacity, the administrator will collaborate with marketing, advertising or public relations teams.

Closely related to another important management skill, problem-solving, critical thinking allows administrative leaders to consider all options and come to a decision they can be confident about. When developed, this skill enables administrators to not only solve problems, but to keep their organizations moving forward.

Leaders need to be agile, adapting to shifting conditions and avoiding complacency. This skill goes hand-in-hand with transparency and accountability with your teams and your organization at large and can also be refined with experience and opportunities.

Teams are assembled to work together toward common goals. An effective business administrator knows how to lead those teams with passion and frameworks that allow for strong and productive collaboration. This often involves identifying and managing team members’ strengths, weaknesses and interests.

From inventive problem solving to the ability to implement research and risk analyses to foster new innovations, this leadership skill helps you in the continuous search for ways to inspire others and achieve more.

Knowing how to negotiate with employees is an important skill that helps leaders project a vision for their organization and motivate its people, while making sure employees are nurtured and feel they are heard. 

It’s important for administrative leaders to develop a thought process that allows them to make difficult decisions while facing time and budget constraints, while remaining cool under pressure.

Gestures, facial expressions and body language all belong to this category. Many opinions or emotions can be communicated, whether intentionally or unintentionally, through non-verbal communication. 

Active listening is interrelated with non-verbal communication in that you’re not speaking much, if at all, but making sure your conversational counterpart knows that you understand them and are fully engaged in the conversation. Nodding, making eye contact and paraphrasing what the other person has said are all examples of active listening techniques. 

Whether you are writing an in-depth proposal or a sensitive interdepartmental memo, or banging out an email or text, strong written communication skills allow you to be clear, concise, grammatically correct and persuasive.

Commonly used in business presentations, this form of communication involves the use of signs, graphics and illustrations to deliver key message points.

The ubiquitous Microsoft applications that help individuals and teams maintain productivity and stay connected include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Proficiency with these tools has become a necessity.

Business administrators and administrative assistants are often called upon to organize information for research, business development, customer relations or other purposes. Familiarity with customer relationship management (CRM) software like Salesforce, Pipedrive or Freshworks CRM may be beneficial. 

With so many team members working remotely these days, it’s important for administrators to be proficient in the platforms that keep them connected and allow frequent collaboration. Slack, Google Workspace, DropBox and Zoom are all examples of this type of platform.

Bookkeeping belongs on this list of technical skills because of the widespread use of accounting software like QuickBooks and FreshBooks. These applications allow administrators to accurately document transactions and quickly work up invoices. More complex financial-related tasks can be left to an accounting professional like a CPA or an outside accounting firm.