Legal Tips for Small Business Owners

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Small Business Owners|Legal Tips for Small Business OwnersAs the owner of a small business, it is essential that you consider the law in running your business as you will obviously want to make sure that you are operating above board and know how to protect your small business. A small business can struggle if they encounter any kind of legal issue, which is why it is so important to be aware of a few tips which could come in useful when it comes to abiding by the law and protecting your business. Read on to find out the best legal tips for small businesses and how they could help.

Choose the Right Business Structure

First, you need to make sure that you choose the right business structure and one which will protect your personal assets at risk if you encounter a legal issue. You will be able to protect your personal assets by forming a limited liability partnership or limited company, so it is important to spend some time researching what would be best for you.

Create Contracts for All Agreements

Many business owners make the mistake of not creating contracts for agreements, but this could prove to be costly down the line. This is why contracts need to be drawn up for every single agreement, which also helps to clarify what is expected and should stop any misunderstandings from occurring.

Create Terms and Conditions

Similarly, you need to create Ts&Cs in order to protect the business and to outline what is expected when a consumer enters an agreement with your business. Without this, you are putting yourself at risk of uncertainty and misunderstandings, so you need to establish the rules in order to protect yourself.

Protect Your Intellectual Property

You do not want other companies benefiting from your intelligence and creativity, which is why you need to use trademarks, patents, and copyrights to protect your intellectual property. Additionally, when you create a new idea, product, service, or anything else, then you should always do a patent and trademark search to avoid stealing intellectual property.

Find Reliable Lawyers

It is also important to do your research, find the best corporate lawyers in your area, and consider different potential issues. As an example, you will want to find an expert eminent domain attorney in the event of authorized companies trying to take your private property for public use, and they will be able to fight on your behalf to stop this from happening or secure the best possible amount.

Stay Current With Changing Laws and Regulations

Finally, you need to make sure that you keep up to date with changing laws and regulations as these can change and often. HR will help a business stay compliant and make necessary changes relating to employment law, which will stop you from encountering any issues.

Hopefully, these legal tips will be of use and help you to protect your business. In particular, small businesses need to be wary of the legal issues that can arise from running a business and make sure that they have the best protection in place.

3 of the Most Common Legal Issues Still Suffered by Businesses

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Legal Issues|3 of the Most Common Legal Issues Still Suffered by BusinessesRunning a business with employees, especially one with premises automatically grants you a duty of care to your staff. As an employer, you expect a certain level of professionalism from all of your staff members as much as they expect it from you and for their safety to be in your best interests.

But even the best employers and businesses run into legal issues from time to time, whether right or wrong, and even in 2021 businesses still face some of the same legal issues that have been around for a long time:

  • IP Theft
  • Health and Safety Issues
  • Discrimination or Harassment

Many businesses, especially successful ones, are often accused of stealing something from another entity such as a logo, a product idea, or even a name while employees claiming accidents at work have never been higher. Discrimination and harassment is still an issue for employers and great care should be taken to protect everyone involved.

Know Your Property

A developed piece of material work such as a patent, trademark, copyrighted work, or even a trade secret such as a manufacturing process (think Coca Cola) is known as intellectual property. That is a property that isn’t grounded in the physical world such as a car or a house but one that has been creatively generated.

Claims concerning IP happen all the time and many bigger cases include those against songwriters, patent holders, and manufacturers. Pop superstar Madonna famously lost a case against a Belgian songwriter over her hit song ‘Frozen’ while Nintendo narrowly won a case over a patent concerning how a user input device (controller) handles shared data streams.

You can initially protect your IP by identifying it, securing it, and labeling it as such with the use of official company logos, which are themselves IP. But the range of issues concerning IP is very broad and is governed by a complex set of rules so the best advice would be to contact a business law attorney should you find yourself worried about infringement or if a claim has been made against you.

Duty of Care

Business establishments of all kinds are deemed reasonably responsible for the wellbeing of everyone directly associated with them. You may have heard of people claiming accidents at work because of negligent safety measures and receiving large payouts. This happens all the time and for the most part, these could have been avoided.

Protection from claims of this nature is essential to a business as while some may be genuine, there is a culture of falsely claiming injury towards organizations which has led to some businesses becoming overly cautious, such as McDonald’s and their rigorous labeling of hot products. The cost of a successful claim against you could potentially run into hundreds of thousands of dollars, which for most companies would be unsustainable and could lead to loss of jobs, decreased productivity, or closure.

The best thing to secure against these kinds of claims is to actually develop strict health and safety procedures. Ensure all your staff are fitted with any safety gear they need and have been trained to use them, label and mark safety concerned areas of a building, and reasonably discipline staff members who don’t follow safety guidelines. Do all that you can do to adequately profess that any claim against your health and safety standards is due to the claimant and not yourself.

Everyone is Equal

The last few years have seen very high profile cases against celebrities such as Harvey Weinstein but what of claims of discrimination or harassment against companies. Well, it does happen. Recently, Viacom, the parent company of CBS, has had to suspend two executives over claims that they created a hostile work environment for women and people of color.
It boggles the mind to think that this kind of behavior still happens in this day and age, especially from grown and professional men, but the sad fact is that year on year, the US Equal Employment Opportunites Commission (EEOC) hears over 100,000 cases of discrimination in the workplace.

It would be a very sad day indeed for any business owner to hear that staff members are being discriminated against, for any reason, so you should go out of your way to educate all staff about issues of discrimination whether it’s racial, gender, religion or disability related. Proactively enforcing a “Not Safe for Work” campaign can help since everyone is going to have different beliefs and conflicting personalities, but they should be left at home and aren’t welcome in the workplace.

Boost The Efficiency Of Your Business

/in /by

If you’re just starting up a business, it’s vital that you know how to run it as efficiently as possible, you can’t afford to waste even a penny on a poor investment. Knowing what you can do to make sure you’re getting the most sales and income while spending the least amount of money without sacrificing customer and employee satisfaction is key to growing efficiently!

Outsourcing

If you’re looking to take on more work so you can grow, you might find yourself struggling with the idea of all the new workload. Not only would you likely have to hire more employees, but you may even need to invest in new or more equipment; which isn’t always the best course of action! You may find that outsourcing your work to another business is the more cost-efficient way to go about things, and it can be almost anything. If you need deliveries handled, there are services that offer that, if you need chemical testing, there are services for that too! You don’t need to handle the work that’s out of your comfort zone, and it can be passed on to someone who’s already equipped and trained to do it!

Customer relations

The better reputation that you manage to build with your customers, the faster you’re going to be able to gain new ones! Your business can grow from word-of-mouth, and giving your customers something to talk about is a great way to encourage that! Being known as a business with great customer service can take you a long way! There are a number of ways you can nurture and encourage this, but mainly you need to focus on customer service for it to be effective. Encourage your customers to leave feedback after they’ve shopped with you, open up a way for people to publicly view reviews of your business, accept and use feedback from customers to grow in the future!

When buying online, a lot of people will use the reviews to determine whether you’re a reliable business or not, so it’s best you do what you can to make sure those reviews aren’t negative or a deterrent for potential customers!

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Boost The Efficiency Of Your BusinessMeetings

If you have a busy workday, the last thing you want is to be constantly interrupted with different problems, it can really slow down your work process. You can deal with this by holding meetings at the start and ends of the day so people can bring up problems there, meaning your work won’t be interrupted during the day. Not only this, but it allows you to make plans for the next day, and it can be handled effectively without getting in the way of anything.

Management

Proper management is essential if you have many people working in the same place, as it can be difficult to get your work done when you have to make sure everyone else is on track too. Always make sure you have enough management to make sure everyone gets their work done properly, without miscommunication.

Overcoming Challenges within your Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Challenges|Overcoming Challenges within your BusinessRunning your own business can be tough and challenging at the best of times. There are always obstacles and hurdles in your way. How you deal with problems and how you overcome challenges says a lot about your personality and about your leadership style. Tackling problems as soon as they happen and working out solutions is just what good business owners and leaders do. Here’s what to do to make sure you’re overcoming challenges effectively.

Facing problems head-on

Whether you run a bricks and mortar based business or an online-based business, you will have daily challenges and problems to overcome. These could be smaller problems like running out of office stationery, or they could be bigger problems such as sourcing last minute suppliers’ or making sure pallet rack protection is in place for your next delivery to ensure no goods get damaged when in transit. Whatever the problem, how you deal with it and overcome it will determine how successful you are within other areas of your business.

Seeing issues or problems through to completion is what needs to be done. Don’t be afraid to compromise to get the best solution for your business, but at the same time, don’t become a pushover – you will struggle to regain authority and respect.

Delegate and seek assistance

This may be easier said than done, especially if you have run the business from day zero, but remember that as an entrepreneur or small business owner, nobody is expecting you to do everything. To succeed in business, you need to know when to delegate jobs and responsibilities to others. Trying to do too much all the time will lead to burnout, which is no good for you or your business. Never shy away from seeking assistance or help from friends, family, and possibly even freelancers.

Evaluate and learn from your actions

To move forward within your business and to push it to the dizzying heights of success that you deserve, you need to regularly evaluate your business and yourself. Take some time out to focus on what you have achieved since you started out, and ultimately, where you want to finish up. It is important not to be too harsh on yourself but to simply see where and how you could have done things differently in certain situations or scenarios. It is beneficial to utilise business consultants when evaluating where you are wanting to take your business next and deciding which direction to go in.

Consultants have a wealth of experience and can provide you with an in-depth growth and development plan which you can implement within your business and start working on as soon as possible.

There will always be challenges to overcome within a business, this is part of the fun which you thrive on and live for. Make use of networking both online and offline to meet like-minded business owners and entrepreneurs. When you are facing difficulties or facing other small business challenges, the people you met through networking will be your business support network, which you can rely on to help you continue picking things up and moving forwards.

It’s Time for Your Company to Switch to VoIP

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |VoIP|Why Your Business Should Invest in VoIPVoice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is one of today’s most popular communication methods. Similar to a traditional phone line, it allows voice communication but uses the internet instead of phone lines. Due to its simple and convenient features, many businesses in different industries have successfully adopted this technology.

If you’re still using landline phones for your business, it’s time to seek a Fanvil reseller and make the switch to VoIP.

Consider the following reasons.

More Affordable Software and Hardware

If you’re having doubts about using VoIP because you’re concerned that the software and hardware will cost you a fortune, don’t worry. A majority of VoIP systems require little to no installation. Most of them can also function or integrate well with your existing equipment.

In terms of hardware, businesses that use VoIP through a computer require sound cards, which most computers already have. You’ll also need a speaker and microphone or headset. Other service providers may also require the use of VoIP phones. These phones are not too costly and in some cases, the VoIP providers charge phone use for a nominal monthly fee only.

More Affordable Communication Costs

Using VoIP services enable users to communicate for free or at lower call rates compared to traditional phone lines, as long as you are connected to the internet. Other service providers let you use your existing Internet-connected phones to enjoy unlimited calls for lower prices compared to the per-minute charges of telephone companies.

VoIP service providers offer different packages to choose from, many of which may suit your business’s size, budget and future goals.

Mobility

With a VoIP phone system, you can place and receive calls wherever you are – as long as you have a strong Internet connection. This means you and your team can work remotely, which is a great benefit in the world’s current situation (aka COVID-19 pandemic). Also, remote working is beneficial should your business be disrupted because of natural disasters or power loss. Your staff can still work from anywhere, as long as they have an Internet connection.

More Features Than Traditional Systems

Apart from supporting multiple calls simultaneously, many features come with using VoIP. These features may differ from one service to another, but most of the common features include the following:

  • Call forwarding
  • Caller ID
  • Voicemail
  • Fax
  • Call blocking
  • Call forwarding
  • Last number redial
  • 441 directory

Many VoIP systems also come with advanced features, which include return call, call transfer, SMS, area code selection and speed dialing. These features are often included in VoIP subscriptions, which keep the add-on costs low.

Increased Data Security

Telecommunications scams have been increasing in numbers over the years, costing businesses over $32.7 billion annually. This is where VoIP proves to be helpful. These systems can protect your data against hackers. Also, online VoIP service providers protect data using information security technologies, such as encryption and identity management.

One of the best things about VoIP is you need not perform DIY security audits. VoIP service providers monitor your network security and notify you in case of a breach.

Advanced Call Analytics Options

Call recording is one of the most significant call analytics features VoIP offers. First, it allows HR teams and managers to replay the conversation and assess their call center agents’ performance. It also helps customer support teams analyze their interactions with customers, as well as help them improve their calls in the future.

Marketing teams can also benefit from phone call analysis. With VoIP, they can calculate customer experience scores and customer sentiment, which help marketers determine the most loyal customers and reward them.

Personalized Customer Support

Today, customer experiences matter just as much as the quality and price of the products and services. When interacting with businesses, customers expect them to provide highly personalized customer services – a job VoIP simplifies.

First, VoIP makes customer interactions more enjoyable. Smart case routing connects your customers to the right team members, ensuring customers receive feedback without having to be on hold for long.

Second, VoIP easily integrates with CRM software. The software captures consumer data across different channels they use (e.g. website, social media, email and phone calls) and stores it in one platform. This helps you map out your entire buyer journey, which helps create detailed customer profiles.

The Bottom Line

VoIP services reward organizations in many ways, from creating mobile-enabled environments and boosting employee collaboration to reducing organizational costs and personalizing customer experiences. There may be no one-size-fits-all solution for your business so you’ll need to set clear goals and choose a VoIP provider that aligns with your needs.
Dispose of your old technologies and make the switch to VoIP.