Four Things You Could Be Doing For A More Sustainable Construction Biz

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Sustainable Business | Four Things You Could Be Doing For A More Sustainable Construction BizThe construction industry has always been well respected while also being at the center of a global focus for pollution. Poor air quality is a big deal, and the construction industry is always in the spotlight due to the way the pollutants hit the air. It’s construction that is a number one polluter, and yet there are so many things that companies in the business could be doing to clean up their act.

The air we breathe and the grounds that you work on all need to be cared for properly to avoid adding anything more to the environment than is necessary. Your strategy should take into account the space your teams work in around the country, too. Taking all of that into consideration, you can check out the four things that you could be doing to build a sustainable construction site from today.

  1. Look At Your Premises. As a lot of pollution comes directly from the building sites and the transportation used in the business of construction, and it’s important that you get as much information about zero valent iron and other safe remediation products to remove pollutants from the soil outside. Your site should be energy efficient, and you should be able to use as many renewable sources as possible while you and your team work.
  2. Remove Waste Safely. Construction sites often emanate waste, and the contribution to waste streams means that construction is never really considered as sustainable. An effective waste management policy is essential for your business, and if you want to combat the sustainability issues with your company, you need to look deeper.
  3. Make Your Transport As Economical As Possible. At the moment, transport on the road is a significant contributor to carbon dioxide emissions. If your drivers aren’t efficient on the road or with the vehicles on site, you will not be as eco-friendly as you would like. You can switch to cars that are more efficient with fuel, and if you source as many materials locally as possible, you can reduce the impact on the environment, which will be a positive thing in the long run.
  4. Efficient Equipment. As well as making sure that you are using the right materials to remediate the grounds you are working within, you also need to ensure that you are using renewable options for equipment where possible. This also means using fuels of a high-quality, and this means choosing the right equipment for your site from day one. The equipment here can include the generator, as you want to use generators that fit your needs.

The construction industry is working hard to remain responsible in the industry, and your business should be taking a stand, too. Operating a carbon reduction strategy is just one of many ways that you could do well for the environment, and you can get started today to do better for the world.

3 Ways To Run A Successful Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Startup| 3 Ways To Run A Successful Business Starting a business can be the ideal path for some people. It offers freedom, a sense of achievement, potentially more money than if they had been working for someone else, and it can improve the work-life balance substantially. However, although many businesses startup, not all of them are going to be successful; many of them fail or don’t do as well as first hoped. Read on to find out just some of the ways that you can run a successful business and make the most of your self-employment.

Do Your Research

One of the most important elements of running a successful business is to know that you will be successful from the start. This doesn’t mean having a ‘gut feeling’ about doing well; it means doing plenty of research to show that your idea is something that is needed and can grow. The more time and effort you can put into your research, the better it will be as you will have answers to all the questions that might be asked of you, and that you might ask of yourself.

Not only do you need to know that your products and services are different (or different enough) to what is already available to make a difference, but you also need to know who is most likely to buy from you. If you know this, you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly, and give yourself the best chance of being seen.

Have A Good Website

A website is all-important when you run a business. You might choose to set up an e-commerce site to enhance your sales, or even to be the business itself. Alternatively, your website might be more about offering information to your potential customers and showing that you have all the relevant knowledge and expertise that they want and need you to have.

Whatever you use your site for, it needs to be well-designed and easy to navigate, with enough information on it to satisfy people’s requirements, but not so much that it becomes cluttered. This can be a difficult balancing act, especially when you factor in SEO. Using SEO Fuel’s consulting experts to help you rank well with search engines will ensure that your website is helping you grow your business rather than damaging its reputation.

Provide Amazing Customer Service

Your customer service will need to be the best it can possibly be if you want to have a successful business. No matter how interesting or useful your products and services might be, and no matter how much of an expert you are regarding them, without good customer service your buyers will look to other companies – those that do have good customer service – to help them instead of you.

There is a lot of choice for people these days; they can buy products from all over the world, and no longer have to use a business just because of how close it happens to be to them. This means there is a lot more competition, and if the customer is not treated in the way they feel they should be, you will lose out.

3 Types Of Responsibilities All Business Owners Must Meet

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneur | Entrepreneurship | 3 Types Of Responsibilities All Business Owners Must Meet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a business owner, your primary responsibility is relatively straightforward: to ensure that your business is as successful as it can possibly be. You are the captain of your ship, and you have to chart a course to profitability and success, navigating the occasional choppy waters but nevertheless always advancing and covering new ground.

However, as well as shouldering the responsibility for the business’ ultimate success, there are other types of responsibilities that business owners will also need to meet, as we have expanded on below:

1. Environmental Responsibilities

Modern consumers expect companies to be as eco-friendly as possible, a tendency that is likely to only continue in future given the environmental focus Generation Z are becoming known for. As a result, it’s well worth investigating the various ways and means of switching to more environmentally-friendly methods in your office. You could, for example, consider going paperless in your office, working to reduce your business energy usage, and opting to use local suppliers wherever possible; with just these small changes, your ability to meet your responsibilities to the environment will be greatly enhanced.

2. Compliance Responsibilities

Regulatory and legal compliance is one of the best ways business owners can meet their responsibilities. After all, regulations and legal requirements are put into place because they are deemed necessary to offer protection to someone or something – be it your employees’ well-being, the finances of your investors, or the safety of any visitor to your business. It’s therefore well worth taking the time to go through a SOX compliance audit or requesting a health and safety assessment regularly; not only does this ensure you meet all compliance requirements, but all aspects of your business will be better protected by your complete adherence to all important legislation.

3. Customer Responsibilities

When customers choose to buy one of your products or use your services, they are placing a huge amount of trust in your business. They are trusting that any product you deliver will be safe to use and any services provided will be effective and delivered as promised, and that the money they have spent with your company will be well-used. As a business owner, it is incredibly important to honor this trust and do all you can to meet your customers’ needs; treat every order you receive as if it is vitally important to that customer, and go above and beyond to ensure that their order proceeds exactly as it should. If something does go awry, then it’s always worth doing what you can to provide compensation – even if you are not required to by law, as you are far more likely to salvage an ongoing relationship with an unhappy customer if they feel their issue has been fully addressed and rectified.

In Conclusion

By ensuring that you take account of the three types of responsibilities as listed above, you can be confident that you, your employees, and your business as a whole can look forward to a bright, productive and successful future.

Making Your New Retail Shop A Hit

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Retail Shop|Making Your New Retail Shop A HitMany businesses start from home, but often the issue with that is at some point, you need to be able to expand and move forward. A business idea can outgrow your small home setup fairly quickly, and while you want to keep the costs as low as possible, you might end up getting to the stage where things change and you need to move on. Many entrepreneurs consider opening up a retail shop. It gives you a business location to work from, but also gives you the chance of dealing with face to face customers and making sales in a different format. So how do you make sure that your new retail shop is a hit? Here are some of the things to consider.

Think about the location

One of the first things to think about would be the location of the shop. You will want a decent location to attract customers into your store and also to be easy to find, but you also need to be aware of the costs involved. A prime location on the high street might be great for business, but it will also hurt your business financially in those early days. So you will need to find a happy medium that you are comfortable with but us yet still worthwhile. It might also be worth thinking of a smaller premises for better location and seeing it as a stepping stone to the next level.

What about the layout?

The layout of the shop is just as important as the location of it. You want people to walk into the store and feel comfortable and able to see things clearly. This is when the shop fittings and things like shelving will be important. Of course you may need to spend a little time looking for a slatwall for sale and finding a decent shopfitter to put it all together, but the hard work will be worth it in the end as you start to see the difference between a good shop layout and ones that put off customers coming back.

Would there be a theme?

The next thing you need to think about would be whether or not your shop would have a theme. This might have a lot to do with the things that you are selling and who you market toards. For example, a woman’s clothing brand might want to make the shop and layout appeal to women. A children’s store might be bright and colourful, or an outdoors shop might have set ups of tents and gear. Think about the theme and make it part of the experience in entering into your store.

Customer service

Finally, customer service is a huge thing for customers and so you will want to ensure that the experience in your store is a positive one. That means that your staff are presented well, that they look the part and make people feel special. The store should be an inviting place and not an awkward environment.

Let’s hope these tips help you when it comes to making your retail shop a hit.

4 Reasons Your Business Should Move to Office 365

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Office Technology|4 Reasons Your Business Should Move to Office 365Lots of companies are still using outdated technology, despite there being plenty of new solutions and platforms that can fully transform and improve the way that they work. There are a number of reasons why many are resistant to change, including the need to re-train staff to learn how to use new technology, and the belief that it will be a struggle to migrate data from one platform to another. In many situations, though, the pros far outweigh the cons. In this article, we’re going to explain why an Office 365 migration is a good idea for your company, no matter its size.

1. No Need to Worry About Maintenance or Servers

Office 365 is fully hosted in the cloud, so there’s no need to worry about investing in local servers or performing maintenance either. The Trust Center that comes with the platform ensures that your data remains in safe hands too. Cloud services are becoming increasingly popular with businesses of all sizes, as they offer so many benefits that you just can’t get from hosting software locally. Plus, the software can also be seamlessly linked with many on-premises solutions if needs be.

2. It Can Grow with Your Business

One of the best things about Office 365 is that you only need to pay for the programs that you plan to use. And, if at any point, you think an additional program could help your business, you can easily add it to your subscription. The same goes for data storage. Unless you need tons of storage right away, you can simply opt for the cheapest plan, and increase it later on as your storage needs grow. OneDrive offers a large amount of storage for a very affordable rate too, so you’ll never be left struggling for space again.

3. Take Advantage of Updates and Features as They’re Released

If you currently use any Microsoft Office products, you probably choose to invest in the newest version a while after they’re released. This could be for cost reasons, or simply because you don’t have the time to re-install the software on all your devices. With Office 365, this is no longer a worry. You will instantly have access to the latest updates and features the second they’re released, and won’t be stuck in a cycle of waiting for the next large update to launch.

4. Workflows are More Collaborative

Office 365 is designed to make collaborating on documents easy. When all of your devices have Office 365 installed on them, colleagues can quickly leave comments, make edits, and access documents in real-time. This completely eliminates the need to email documents between different departments, download them, make edits, and then email them back. Not only does this improve efficiency, but it means that different team members can collaborate on one document all at the same time.

Office 365 is the number one product when it comes to data and security. Most large and medium size business owners prefer Office 365 migration services from a reliable cloud hosting provider which provider impeccable support. If you value your business, want to improve efficiency, and want to spend less time performing server maintenance, migrating to Office 365 is definitely something you should consider.