Why You May Need Street Furniture For Your Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Street Furniture|Why You May Need Street Furniture For Your BusinessThe benefits of street furniture for business environments are countless, being a necessity from both a practical and aesthetic perspective. From timber bollards to control access of vehicles to cycle shelters to offer a secure place for bicycles, the addition of street furniture on your commercial grounds can go a long way when it comes to both security and convenience for visitors. By creating a welcoming space with sufficient security measures, this will lead to positive reflections on your brand which make it a place that people will want to return to.

Encourage interaction

Providing an outdoor space for people to enjoy holds some great benefits, creating an area to rest, socialise and unwind whilst getting some fresh air. Whether it is a space for visitors to your business enjoy or an area for employees to use when on their breaks, the mood bosting impact of socialising can go a long way. By allowing people to enjoy the area stay on your site for longer, the prospect of visiting again in the future is much more appealing.

Keep efficiency to a maximum

The more structured your business grounds, the more efficient the processes will be able to run. With a clear flow of traffic being directed through the site and allocated pedestrian areas, the risk of accidents will be reduced and visitors will clearly know where to head. By having allocated areas for seating, smoking and bike stands, the layout of your site will be effective for everyone and ensure the space is kept organised at all times.

Create a clear brand identity

Your commercial grounds are a reflection of your brand as a whole. By creating a tidy space with good organisation, you are promoting your positive reputation to any visitors to the site and ensuring everything runs smoothly. By adding your branding to any street furniture, it can act as a promotional tool as people subconsciously take in the colours, messaging and any designs they come across.

An experience to remember

The more original your space is, the more likely it is to be remembered. By investing into aesthetic street furniture and opting for bold architectural designs that step outside of the box, you are showing visitors how you are different to the rest and creating an experience that is one to remember. Whether you opt for a geometric design with bold steel features or a cosy feel with traditional features, show your brand personality both indoors and outdoors.

Everything a visitor could possibly need

Keep people on your site for longer by providing everything they will need for a positive experience. From sufficient spaces to park or a secure space to store bicycles to plenty of litter bins and rest areas, think from the perspective of a visitor to tick all of the boxes. Creating a space where people feel comfortable and welcomed can go a long way for businesses, creating a community feel and encouraging them to come back in the future.

Critical Factors To Consider Before Scaling Up Your Business Operations

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Operations|Critical Factors To Consider Before Scaling Up Your Business OperationsMany factors can make or break your business, including scaling your operations towards growth. At some point in your business demand could rise rapidly resulting in a sharp spike in sales. Of course, this scenario is good news for every entrepreneur. Still, it can also spell doom for you if orders begin to fall through the cracks because of poor communication, insufficient staff, or inadequate production capacity. But before you jump in full force, you need to consider capacity and capability among other critical factors. Listed here are some keys to successfully scaling your business.

Plan your success

Scaling in business is when a company is leveraging resources and increasing revenue.
Before you scale your operations, you need to plan your growth in that regard and set goals. How big do you want to grow, and what does success look like for your business? Also, set milestones for your business and a time frame for you to hit them. Remember, these plans and targets must be realistic, and the strategies set out to achieve them must be concrete. You should cover what your business offers and if your market is ready for expansion because scaling a marketing agency is different from expanding a restaurant.

Check your finances

You should have an in-depth understanding of your finances. You can involve third parties to handle research and hire a competent team to help you do that. What are the short and long-term funding requirements you need to execute your strategy? Are you sure about the source of funding?

Housekeeping

As you expand, it should be central to your company to find updated customer contacts, and you might need a reliable CRM tool to help. There are other important questions you will need to answer. For example, will you be able to process salaries in a timely and efficient manner? And can your system scale to match a bigger team? Are your accounts up-to-date and accurate? Do you have tools and resources to keep it that way as you scale?

Your apps will not magically become efficient as you scale, so you will still have the same problems you have now. Do all these checks so your business will have a good foundation as you scale operations. You will also need to consider if your business is in a conducive location to accommodate the expansion? If you are expanding your team, is your office space and enough budget for this?

Your employees

As you scale your operations, you’ll probably need to hire more employees and bring specialists for critical positions. You cannot be right or wrong in the way you scale your team, but it is something you may not be able to avoid. Do not be in a hurry to hire because it may lead to even faster layoffs. Also, your brand may suffer, and it may affect team performance and cause financial instability.

Growth can mean huge profits or unhappy customers due to low delivery capacity. What makes the difference is how you do it. These tips are helpful, but you should find solutions that are tailor-made for your business.

Avoiding Business Waste

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Waste|Avoiding Business WasteRunning a successful business is hard work, not least in the post-pandemic era. Consequently, then, the need to avoid the threat of wasting your resources is greater than ever. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a seriously damaging situation.

Here are five simple steps to avoiding waste in the key areas of operation. Getting them right won’t suddenly guarantee success, but it will certainly boost your chances.

1. Implement Operational Analysis

Most business owners like to think that their operations run smoothly. In reality, almost all companies could do better. The Overall Equipment Effectiveness method is a very powerful tool. It can lead your business to greater success by improving production speeds and accuracy. All companies now rely on machinery like never before. So, you simply cannot afford to fall into the trap of assuming everything is perfect.

With the right analysis model in place, you can quickly correct any shortcomings.

2. Seeking Value For Money

In business, you will inevitably make a wide range of purchases. From materials to services needed to support the operations, it’s imperative that you get the best value for money. Getting a better deal on electricity, insurance, packaging supplies, and IT support can yield big savings. In turn, this will remove the pressure to generate more sales or charge larger prices. In turn, this can only put you in a stronger position.

Just be sure to remember that ‘cheap’ doesn’t always mean ‘value’.

3. Fully Utilize All Available Space

When looking at overheads, the commercial property rentals or purchases will naturally sit at the very top of the list. As such, it’s imperative that you learn to make the most of it. Click here to learn more about the best storage solutions for warehouses, store floors, and factories alike. On a side note, you may wish to consider outsourcing some jobs as this will conserve valuable room for other tasks. IT and customer care are two common options.

When you make the spaces work harder, it can save you from premature expansions.

4. Know Your Audience

Building a customer base is a difficult but very rewarding task. While every entrepreneur knows that they must spend money to make money, you can’t fall into the trap of simply throwing money at it. The harsh reality is that a lot of demographics won’t be interested. Identifying your place in the market allows you to prevent marketing budgets being spent on the wrong people. As such, conversions should soar even with reduced spending.

Better still, you’ll find it a lot easier to work out which marketing plans have worked.

5. Tax Requirements

Meeting financial obligations is non-negotiable. However, many entrepreneurs make the mistake of doing it in-house. While it may seem like a cost-cutting strategy it’s not. Accountants know where deductions can be made, which will easily cover their fees. You can click here to find business accountants for your firm. When the financial savings are coupled with the fact you can spend more time actually working on the business, it’s a no-brainer.

When time, money, and resources are used in the right way, success will follow.

Pushing Your Business Through a Period of Growth and Change

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Growth|Pushing Your Business Through a Period of Growth and ChangeYour business must change, and it must grow alongside your customers, marketplace, and industry. Suppose your business does not evolve and change over time. In that case, it will struggle to maintain its place within the industry and within customers’ and clients’ hearts, which could be detrimental to the future success of your business. To ensure that your business does not slide down the slippery slope into oblivion, it is important that you focus on change and growth and that you embrace and nurture it wherever possible.

Why Your Business Needs Change

If your business is to compete and grow, then change is required. You cannot expect to keep going the way you are, not changing a thing and in return, expect to reach new target markets and audiences. You have to be flexible and adaptable to your new target audiences and customers; you have to change to meet new growing market concerns. If you do not adopt change, then you will stay stagnant.

Seeking Adequate Funding

You can go down the route of organic growth, but this can be quite slow and unpredictable, and is this really what you want? Organic growth can be cheap, but cheap isn’t always the best route to take. To get the best results, you will need to seek adequate funding. Having funding in place will allow you to plan your business growth and change and be in control of whatever gets thrown your way. Having adequate funding and finance behind you can ensure that you can reach the new target markets and audiences you want to and, most importantly, need.

Adapting and Moving Forwards

Having a plan for growth and a plan for development is necessary no matter how much funding you are seeking. Understanding where your new markets are and how much cash it will take to reach them is essential for growth success. Having a plan in place also acts as a blueprint to which you can refer in periods of change. Change within business is not always welcome or appreciated, but change happens for a reason, and if you plan to welcome it, then you can be prepared to adopt it no matter how it changes your business.

Why Accurate Reporting is Essential

When you put together a plan for development, it is important that your report contains accurate data. Having all of your information together and collated in one place makes planning and execution a lot easier. Utilizing business intelligence and getting a provider on board to focus on training and consulting is essential if you want to achieve success. Inaccurate, difficult to read, or just downright messy data can put you off growth and change, which is not what you need in an everchanging world.

Staying Focused and Motivated

Driving your business through a period of change and through growth can take a lot out of you as a business owner, so it is important to remain motivated and focused. Keeping in mind what you want to achieve and why will help keep you on the track to success.

A Smarter Approach for Upgrading Your Business Technology

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Technology|A Smarter Approach for Upgrading Your Business TechnologyTechnology is incredibly important for all of our businesses. No matter what kind of company you run, there’s probably some kind of technology that helps you manage customers, advertise your products and shorten the amount of time you spend on administrative tasks. Sadly, technology can get extremely expensive over time. With many companies switching to a subscription-based business model, it can be difficult to keep track of all the costs of keeping your business up to date.

So here are a few tips to help you approach your technology upgrades with a smarter and more streamlined strategy.

Identify problems before you consider upgrading

First, make sure you identify problems in your workflow before you go spending your company’s money on solutions. It’s extremely important that you take a slow and steady approach when it comes to upgrading your company’s technology, especially if your workflow is already well-defined. Attempting to upgrade portions of your work processes can lead to disaster if you’re not planning it correctly.

While technology can help you innovate, it needs to address a problem or challenge that you’re facing. For example, if you find that your employees are spending too much time on a particular task, then you need to focus on ways to assist your employees to finish said tasks. If you don’t identify a problem before you invest in new technology (or worse, you actively create an issue in order to “buy” a solution for it) then you’re going to end up wasting money and time.

Identify the companies that can help you innovate

It’s a good idea to identify what companies you can work with to help you solve your business challenges. There are some companies that operate at the forefront of technological innovation, constantly producing new products, machines, and software that actively solves challenges that real businesses are facing.

A good example of this would be Blue Iron Foundations & Shoring, LLC. The Giken Silent Piler is their latest machine that enables piling to take place with drastically reduced vibrations and noise. This has allowed construction companies to operate very close to homes without disrupting the neighbourhood. This has helped construction companies garner positive feedback from local communities, and it’s solved a challenge that is currently plaguing many companies in the same industry.

Find consultants that you can trust

One of the issues with hiring a consultant is that they’re often given a bit too much trust. It’s very easy for a consultant to abuse their position by introducing a problem and also suggesting a solution. This is something that entrepreneurs tend to do by accident because they’re not presented with the data that shows a problem in the first place. Instead, they blindly trust their staff or a consultant because they have too much faith in them.

If you’re the one in charge of decision making in your business, then you need to look at the data that points to a problem in your business. From here, you can start making smarter decisions by actually calculating the return on your investment and if it can make your team more productive.