Keeping your small business in the green

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One of the biggest worries you’ll have with running a small business is keeping it afloat. Will you get all those contracts you’ve forecast? Will clients pay on time? Will you have enough funds in the pot to further expand and develop your company, to take on staff and to create new products and services? It all comes down to running a strong company, planning and strategy – and adapting where you need to. Particularly, if you’re starting with relatively little cash in the bank in the first place.

Feeding the cash monster

Running a small business, on the face of it, may seem straightforward – including with the finances. You make a sale, you take the payment. Simple? Not necessarily. How you run your cash flow is vital in determining the success of your business. There can be lots of costs associated with running a venture, some you may not encounter until they are staring you in the face. Effective financial planning is very important.

If you had some start-up capital to kick off your business, make sure you don’t blow it. As part of your business planning, you need to look at the priority areas for spending – and stick to your targets and goals.

If you’re putting some of your own money into the business to get it going, think carefully. Make sure you’re leaving enough to cover all of your personal bills and expenses. You may want to think about consolidating your finances into one personal loan, to free up a little more cash to invest. Have a look at an online platform like Bonsai Finance, to see what’s out there.

When you’re running a small company, you need to leave yourself some wriggle room. By that, you need to have some cash in the bank all the time. Why? Because your clients may not pay on time, or contracts may get cancelled. But, you still have the bills to pay – and you don’t want to find yourself in a predicament.

Do you need an office?

When you start up your business, have a think about where you are going to be based. If your company doesn’t need a storefront, do you need to have an external office? Could you work from home to begin with? If you have a spare room, why not convert it into an office? If you sign up to a serviced office, for example, you could be locked into a contract for months. And what happens if your venture doesn’t work out? It could be a costly mistake.

If you do need a storefront or other trading premises, make sure you do your homework. Not only into how much it’s going to cost you and for how long, but also the location and nearby facilities. If you’re relying on customers dropping in to buy your products, for example, have you picked the best area in terms of your target audience? Is it the most visible location? Will your location bring in the revenue you’re looking for?

Know who you’re selling to

You would know that selling ice in the Arctic probably isn’t the most profitable business venture. But, joking aside, you really need to know your client base – to keep up your revenues, and to stay in the green.

For all companies, it’s vital that they have a profile of their customers in mind in everything that they do. They are real people, or real companies, and you need to understand their personalities, needs and desires. And, when you have them, you need to look after them – so that they come back time and time again.

This isn’t just about you and your business planning. It’s about equipping any staff you have with the skills and knowledge that they need to sell to your client base.

As with all things now, trends are changing all the time. Make sure you keep up with your marketplace. Your customer profiles and wants may change, depending on all sorts of circumstances, make sure you keep up with them and adapt your approach accordingly.

Get social

A great way to connect with your clients, and new potential clients, is through social media. If you’re running a small business, you need to make sure that you not only have a website, but profiles on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Get your follower numbers up and spread the word about how great your company is.

Social media can be a useful marketing tool, to promote new products and services – and to highlight promotions and incentives. Think about adding some photos and videos now and then. But make sure the standard is good.

With social media, you need to make regular posts to make an impact. You need to be adding content most days, if not every day. Your profiles can also help drive up traffic to your website, so make sure it’s all connected up.

Stand out from the rest

Running a successful business is all about moving forward, not standing still. As well as keeping up with your customers’ changing needs, always keep an eye on the competition – to see what they’re offering. And always think of new ways to win new business. Could you refine some of your existing products or services? Are there some new ones you can offer? And are there any add-ons you can create?

If you’ve been running a small business for a while, is it worth having a re-think about your company branding and image? Does it look tired and out of date? Has your business developed down a different path? Has your client profile changed?

If things have changed, consider updating your website, logo and overall branding. You need it to reflect what you do, and it needs to look great. Don’t think you’re all alone with this. If you don’t have a marketing person in-house, then think about hiring in a consultant for a few days to give you some top tips and advice – it could make the difference when it comes to future sales!

What Can E-commerce Stores Learn from Amazon?

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There are quite a few different things that just about all e-commerce stores can learn from Amazon. If you own an online store and want to increase its profitability, you will need to take a close look at all of the things that this internet retailer giant does right. It can be difficult making it in this world unless you really know what you are doing.

In this article, you’ll get some insight into how you can improve your internet-based business by following some simple but effective tips. Amazon has set the standard for e-commerce, and there are numerous reasons for that.

A Customized Experience

One of the revolutionary things that Amazon did as an online retailer is to personalize each customer’s shopping experience. You can clearly see this when you look at the “Related to Item’s You’ve Viewed” section and others. When you create a more custom shopping experience for each person who visits your website, they are far more likely to keep coming back.

On-Site Reviews

Another great way to increase the likelihood of people buying from your online store is to include a section for customers to post reviews of the products they have purchased. This is something that really helped Amazon a lot, and it will really help the people who visit your site decide which products to buy. These days most people read customer reviews before purchasing an item online, so you will want to seriously consider doing this.

Stay Current with Business News

As successful as Amazon is, they are still always trying to figure out how to become better as a company. It is important that you stay current with business news on a daily basis so that you can make the right decisions for your business. There are many different websites to visit for business news, including Apex Beats.

Learn the Art of Promotion

Amazon is really good about promoting themselves and, more specifically, the deals they offer customers. Almost everyone knows about Amazon Prime and it’s because they generate a ton of buzz for it. If there are certain things that you can offer your customers to save them money, you will need to make sure they know about it.

Make Searching for Products Easier

It should be the goal of any online merchant to make searching for products as easy as possible for those who visit their site. The last thing you want is for your customers to have difficulty locating what they want because they’ll likely get frustrated and go somewhere else. Amazon makes doing this incredibly simple and easy, so you will want to follow suit and do the same.

While it may seem like it’s nearly impossible to succeed as an online merchant sometimes, there are quite a few things that you can do to increase your chances of making it. Every single e-commerce business owner should take a close look at Amazon to see what they are doing right because there are a lot of them.

How Time and Attendance Software Can Improve Your Business

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Effectively managing your business (and most importantly, your employees) makes for a happy, healthy, successful working environment. This in turn generates more revenue. Every business owner knows this – but how is it achieved?

It may be the last thing that springs to mind, but using time and attendance software is proven to have a multitude of benefits for both employer and employee. It increases employee security, ensures fairness, and makes everything so much easier for bosses, managers and HR departments to keep track of.

Find out here the several ways that bringing in this software could help your business run smoothly and improve employee satisfaction.

1. Keep Track of Working Hours

See an accurate timesheet for every employee at a glance, all on your computer screen. No more quibbling about lateness and how much overtime somebody is owed.

Attendance software will show you the exact time, to the minute, that a specific worker signed in and logged out for the day. This way, they can be accurately paid. Everyone feels secure when they know they’re being paid fairly; increasing job satisfaction substantially. The clever software also ensures your employees are paid precisely on time – another big plus.

2. Create Employee Timesheets

Many companies use timesheets to track how much time each person spends on each project, and therefore helps the bosses to calculate how much money is spent and made per project.

Use timesheet software to track the time of your employees and gain the most accurate account of what expenditure is going where. Without doing this, you could be spending way over your budget on minor projects, and undercharging clients. You can also see which employees are doing the most profitable work, and who deserves a pat on the back.

3. Easily Allocate Work

Instantly allocate and delegate work amongst employees in the most efficient fashion. Using your software, everyone can see exactly which projects you’d like them to work on, and who they’ll be working with. You can set precisely the amount of time you’d like them to spend on it, and how much budget is set aside for it. Simple!

You’ll wonder how you ever worked without it. This method hopefully removes the need for lengthy group emails and unnecessary meetings. (Of course, you still need those – but having lots per week whittles down the time your employees spend on projects.)

4. Save Time and Money

No more paper schedules, and spending hours trying to make fiddly timetables with Excel. This software saves you the money of printing off loads of paper and buying heaps of files, and lets you keep the time and money spent doing that for more important things. The saying is true – time equals money!

5. Streamline Your HR Team

Can you imagine the simplicity of this software for your HR team? They no longer need to go around chasing people for information about their accurate working hours, expenses, overtime, holiday, sick days, etcetera. It makes their job far easier, and therefore yours.

Their time is now free to go about conducting interviews and sorting necessary paperwork rather than sending frantic emails and running around the office. This one handy piece of software helps to streamline every part of your business.

6. Eliminates Pay Errors

We’re only human – and with that comes inevitable human errors. Within businesses, there are always times when someone feels they have been wrongly paid; whether they turn out to be right or wrong.

With employee time tracking software, this will never happen. All hours are calculated to the minute, meaning everyone gets paid exactly what they’re owed.

7. It is Mobile Optimised

We’re not always in the office, working at our screens. Most businesses require employees to leave the normal work station every so often, and go out for client meetings or other business matters.

Time and attendance software developers know this, and so have created their products to work on mobile and other devices. This way, even if you’re out of office, you can update your timesheet with the touch of a button.

How Can You Keep Your Talent In-House?

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Your most important assets in the business world are not your customers, your market strategies or even your social media followers. They are your employees. Indeed, your team is the core of your business success, from productive performance to customer-focus behavior. It doesn’t matter how clever your business strategy is: If you can’t keep your talent in-house, you can’t succeed for a long time. But ultimately at a time where Millennials, the largest generation in the workplace are described as job-hoppers, it can be difficult to imagine how best to retain your staff. Here are four smart employee-centered strategies that reduce staff turnover to help you build a strong and loyal team.

Enable internal mobility

As your company grows, you naturally need to bring in new talent into your team. However, it can be challenging to keep a strong team when you’ve brought in a new manager. After all, it’s a challenging situation, especially as the subordinate element, the team, is industry-savvy and has a long experience of your products. Understandably, people might feel unvalued if an external professional is trusted with all business decisions. That’s precisely why a lot of companies use Rolepoint to facilitate internal progression. When there’s a chance of promotion, your employees are more likely to stick around.

Create a team spirit

More often than not, people leave companies when they don’t feel involved in the decisions or the everyday processes. Ultimately without a sense of belonging to a team, there’s no reason why people would want to work for a company more than another. Consequently, it’s the responsibility of the manager to make employees feel part of the business. Simple things such as asking for their feedback and including employees in brainstorming sessions can make a great deal of difference. Additionally, creating cross-team projects, where their skills can be assigned to a different team can help people to see the big picture and work together toward a common goal.

Give them amazing perks

Some employees might find satisfaction in building a professional career. But there come a time when you need to be realistic. People don’t work because they enjoy it but because they have to. So there are more likely to want to stay with companies that give them the most exciting perks. As surprising as it might sound, these perks don’t always relate to their end of month pay. For Netflix, it’s one year of paid parental leave, for both mothers and parents. Other companies offer Friday off every week, for example.

What perks come with the job?

Help them maintain a healthy work/life balance

The workplace can be a stressful environment. As a result, employees value businesses that encourage a healthy work/life balance. Options are varied, from introducing gym facilities at work to relieve stress to building a family-friendly environment with on-site childcare services. Although, for a lot of employees, remote and flexible work options remain a favorite as they allow people to work when they are the most productive throughout the day.

In conclusion, the secret to a talented team is not to only to recruit the best candidates, but also to be able to keep them through attractive perks, making them feel valued, and helping them to move their career forward.

There Are More Ways To Reach The Top Than You Think

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You might be at a point in life where you are unsure how to progress in your career and how to reach success. This could be at the beginning of college, just before leaving school or even at a time later on in your life. At one point or another, we are all stuck with how to proceed. You may even feel pressure to make the right decision because you don’t want to be in the situation where a few years later you feel like you made the wrong choice.

We have a few options on how to proceed here.

Find A Basic Job

You can complete this part-time or full time depending on your situation. This is also a smart move if, for whatever reason, you find yourself out of work. People are often wary of taking a basic job because they think that it means a low level of pay. On occasion, it can, but a basic job can also be seen as the first stepping stone. Slowly but surely, you can rise through the ranks to the point where you will be able to grow your paycheck, your responsibilities and indeed, your position in a company or sector. This is a smart move if you are completely unsure of what direction to take. For the time being it does set you on a path that with hard work will lead to great success.

Choosing A Degree

You might be in a situation where you are choosing a degree. This could be a post grad or your first time in college. It is important to understand which degrees open what doors and the type of thing you can expect. For instance, a law degree doesn’t just open up the possibility of working as a lawyer. Most people with law degrees can find a job operating in human resources. Human resources can be another high paying position that could prove to be a useful backup. While an online social work degree is something that can indeed help you find a position in social services or even in the health industry. By knowing you have more than one route available to you, you’ll find the right path.

Get Yourself Out There

Of course, if you take the necessary steps, you can make sure that the right career finds you and avoid searching for it yourself. You can let a business owner or business headhunt you for a role that you would love. Doing this is all about making sure that you are active on social media. Make sure that you have a Linkedin Page and that you are staying active across social media. You don’t have to use this for personal use. Instead, use it purely as a way to build up your own personal brand. In other words, who you are and what type of business interests you have.

Do this and as well as the possibility of being headhunted, you could find yourself getting far more job offers when you send out your CV and attend interviews.

We hope you see now that there are more ways than it seems to reach the top with any career path.