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Building and Growing Your E-Commerce Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Grow your Ecommerce Business|Building and Growing Your E-Commerce BusinessWhether your business has been established for a few years, or you are a new startup business under 12 months old, building and growing your e-commerce business is the way to go if you want to future-proof your business. If you want to achieve quick results, then you will need a large growth budget, and you will need to set SMART goals and targets, but if you want to build and grow slowly and more naturally, perhaps through social media marketing and good old-fashioned word of mouth, then your costs will be lower. Of course, both types of growth strategies require some amount of research and planning as it would be foolish to just see how a business grows, even if you are aiming to grow slowly and naturally.

Find New Target Markets and Audiences

Who are you currently selling to, and where are they based? What demographic is your existing audience in? Will your new target audience be the same age group of people, perhaps just in a different location, or are you looking to sell to both a completely new age group in a new country? Once you have established who your new target audience is, you will be able to start reaching them through your marketing efforts.

Focus on Upselling and Cross-Selling

To grow your business, you do not just have to focus on new customers; you can also focus on your existing customers. Perhaps they have been with you from the start. Focusing on cross-selling and upselling is beneficial to you as you already know who your audience is, and you know how to reach them. To be successful at selling more to existing customers, you must ensure that you provide good value for money. You must give your customers something that they need and want and something that will enhance their lives.

Get to Grips with Outsourcing and Freelancing

To grow an e-commerce business, you must learn to delegate to others, and you must use external providers. Utilizing others will ensure that you do not spread yourself too thin. You need to ensure that you focus on overseeing your whole business rather than being weighed down by individual areas which can easily be outsourced. For example, you could utilize a fulfillment company; click here to learn more about order fulfillment services and how they can benefit your business. In addition to using fulfillment services, you may also want to hire freelancers for one-off jobs or ad-hoc work, from weekly website management to social media management for your business accounts. Hiring freelancers can allow you to source just the skills you need to grow your e-commerce business successfully.

Look to the Future

You must keep pushing your business growth even if, at times, it is feeling like it is not going in the direction you want it to go in. If you can create a plan for growth (even if you want to go down the slower and more natural route), then you will ensure that you can get the most out of everything you do, and you can also make sure that you implement ideas and tactics which can be tracked and monitored.

Growing Your Business – Finding New Business Premises

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Premises|Growing Your Business – Finding New Business PremisesTo grow your business, you need to focus on expansion, and part of expansion involves finding new business premises. Business premises often need to be larger and better than what you have now to make it worth your while, and they often need to offer you and your business the potential to grow. Space is important as you want to be able to offer new products and you want to increase the ranges and lines of everything you currently offer. Whether this is new services within a large space or new products. Bigger is often better when it comes to business premises, but what else should you be looking for in addition to size?

What Do You Need Out of a New Business Premises?

So, what exactly must your new business premises have? When you are looking at new premises, you need to think about the usable area, the location, and the storage on offer. Some premises offer you the frontage or location that you need, but they do not offer the storage space that you require, and for this, you need StorageArea.com. As storage area is just as important as location, it is important that this key area is not overlooked. You need to get a big enough location for your growing business for the next few years; anything too small will just be a waste of time and energy.

How Healthy is Your Budget?

How much can you afford monthly and annually? Your budget will ultimately determine what type of premises you can get and in what location. So, what is your budget, and what allowances or expenses does it include? Larger premises will cost more to heat, light, and use daily, so it is important that you factor these costs into your budget. Underestimating costs at any stage can leave you tight at the end of the month or chasing your tail which will ultimately end up distracting you aware from running your business.

How Important is the Location?

Do you need new premises simply for storage, or do you need somewhere that paying clients and customers can visit? Out-of-town locations are often larger in size and cheaper, but if most of your physical customers are in town, then it will be a waste of time. Similarly, if you simply need storage or warehousing for your business, then having a location that is fit for customers to visit is a waste of time and other resources. With any premises, you will want to consider the parking on offer. Some units and locations come with marked-out parking spaces, and some places come with parking lots. If you are having deliveries regularly, will off-road parking benefit your business? If you are located down a narrow street, and you are constantly having large and irregular deliveries or loads; then you will soon find the local community or area you are in will begin to make complaints which is not conducive to business growth and expansion. Therefore, before you commit or sign any leases think carefully about the location you want to go for and why.

Why Identity Verification Is Important In Remote Hiring

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Identity Verification|Why Identity Verification Is Important In Remote HiringModern technology has a plethora of advantages for companies. For instance, clients and workers alike benefit from reliable, high-speed connections and unlimited internet access. Smart devices also hold human networks linked with vital knowledge accessible in a matter of clicks.

Technological advancements also facilitated the exponential growth of the freelance economy and the growing number of remote jobs. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic also accelerated the development of the virtual workforce. The circumstance compelled companies with formerly staffed employees in workplace settings to embrace work-from-home methods rapidly.

Importance Of Identity Verification

These developments have brought in a range of new factors businesses and recruiting firms must face while conducting interviews and hiring, including identity verification. Here’s a deeper insight into this verification process by outlining its significance in remote hiring:

1. Make AML And KYC Compliance Easy and Safe

Identity verification was implemented to guarantee companies adhere to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations. It’s been a critical method in the modern age for assisting businesses and organizations in preventing identity fraud.

Due to the virtual nature of things, it’s more challenging to get a clear check on an individual. It’s easier to conceal behind a false identity, especially when recruiters and applicants don’t meet face to face.

Though recruiters may believe they’re hiring a potential individual, they may be engaging with somebody who’s performing fraud, so it’s important to seek services like ID Verify and other identity confirmation platforms to know the person.

Keep in mind, identity checking is a collaborative endeavor. Although human resources may be responsible for the recruitment process, they can collaborate with cybersecurity and information technology to ensure the appropriate techniques are utilized to identify and deter fraud.

2. Increased Efficiency Of Hiring And Onboarding

Companies are adapting their recruiting processes in response to the COVID-19 scenario. With a greater emphasis on virtual jobs, conducting in-person interviews and checking a candidate’s identification could be challenging.

Automated processes for checking an applicant’s identification at the beginning of the selection stage may help minimize risk. Likewise, automated identification checking may hasten the process by minimizing data entry errors, which may hold back the recruitment and onboarding phase.

However, almost half of companies responding to a survey acknowledged they’re unprepared for remote recruiting and onboarding. This also implies they’re not equipped to perform checking for identity theft.

The way to solve this is to employ a third-party firm focusing on identity authentication. Also, companies should start strengthening automated recognition systems. As straightforward as it is to hack identification or build a fictitious digital profile, processing records and certificates without verifying them exposes the organization to an increased level of system attacks and regulatory violations.

3. Enhanced Workplace Security

According to a poll, four-fifths of businesses say they’ve become applicant identity fraud victims. The poll also found 31% of companies don’t perform due diligence prior to recruiting as they usually delay the comprehensive background check until the applicant turns in their documents and records.

Though several human resource practitioners believe their reference service verifies applicant identification as a component of the selection procedure, it’s not always thorough. Additionally, human resource professionals are concerned with the consistency and integrity of employee and applicant identification results.

While companies work to build an environment of confidence and protection, ensuring identity validation at the beginning of the recruiting phase is more important than before. This process enables the early detection of deception, and it also discourages fraudulent people from applying, resulting in a better job environment for everyone.

4. Positive Applicant Experience

Validating applicants’ identities at the beginning of the recruiting phase in a secure, virtual process creates a positive applicant experience. It sends a clear signal to applicants they’re engaging with a progressive company that’s considering workplace safety seriously.

By collecting and checking data in advance, applicants are also less prone to be hassled by demands for changes to the information recorded improperly. In remote situations, providing applicants with a better experience would mean good reputation points for the company.

Bottom Line

By incorporating identity verification into the initial hiring phase, companies would be secured and onboarding would be accelerated. It’s time to reconsider obsolete recruiting strategies and adapt modern ideas to cater to the increasingly changing hiring settings.

Along with streamlining the recruiting process, identity verification protects the company’s integrity, personnel, and clients from possible threats. It can also discourage frauds from applying, sparing you more time and money. By applying stringent identification protocols, organizations would be ensured they’re hiring the right people for the job.

Bookkeeping Tips For Entrepreneurs

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Bookkeeping Tips|Bookkeeping Tips For EntrepreneursBadly managed and improperly handled finances can cause a lot of serious issues for any business, from poor cash flow to legal action from tax mistakes. These problems can put a new business at serious risk. Good bookkeeping and accounting habits can help an entrepreneur to do well. Learn these important habits to help your business to succeed.

Get Professional Help To Prepare Tax Returns

Business owners have a lot of different tasks to juggle and a lot to do. This is why it’s a good idea to outsource any work that you don’t have the skills or time to do by yourself. If you’re like a lot of entrepreneurs, you’re probably not a trained accountant and don’t have the time to become a certified bookkeeper.

Outsourcing the job or using virtual bookkeeping services gives the task to somebody who can do it faster and more accurately, which is a better plan than struggling with it alone.

A professional accountant can do a lot more for you than just sort out your tax return. Someone with a skilled financial eye can see ways to improve your accounting processes too.

Don’t Go Entirely Hands Off

Outsourcing your bookkeeping doesn’t mean you should hand it over completely to someone else. You still need to look at your reports, understand what’s happening with your finances, and ask questions when you don’t understand anything.

No matter your own level of bookkeeping knowledge, it’s a good idea to have some understanding of basic numbers yourself, such as your profit, trend in expenses, accounts receivable, profit per customer, and how your client funnel works.

Get The Right Software

You shouldn’t choose an accounting program just because it’s the cheapest option. There’s a lot of choice for software available, so businesses don’t have to use accounting software that is only designed for accountants.

There are plenty of choices available, so look for software that will meet the needs of your business. If you’re not a trained accountant, then don’t choose a system that will need a huge manual to get you started.

Document Your Processes

It can help to write documents that explain how your bookkeeping processes should be managed. By documenting all these processes you can prevent any confusion and answer any questions that people might have.

Consistency is essential for good bookkeeping and can help you to spot issues as you will have a better notion of what might have gone wrong.

Keep Expense Receipts

You can’t keep track of how much your business is spending if you don’t keep your receipts organized. This is easy to do for credit card purchases, as you will have your receipts and your monthly statements to check the receipts against.

Cash expenses can be more difficult to track. The receipts from cash purchases are important as there are no backup statements to double-check. Try keeping a small notebook to log cash expenses. You could do this in an accounting app in your phone, and take pictures of the receipts as you go.

How to Successfully Open Your First Restaurant

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Open a Restaurant|How to Successfully Open Your First RestaurantMany aspiring entrepreneurs are excited by the idea of opening a restaurant. People love to dine out, especially now after not having been able to for so long, and the demand for a good restaurant will always be there, so it’s a business idea that should work well. However, just looking around and researching other restaurants shows that it’s not always successful, which you will clearly want to avoid.

To do well and to keep running well into the future, there are some important factors to bear in mind. If you plan ahead and consider all the different aspects of running a business and specifically running a restaurant, there is every chance you can do well. Read on to find out what you need to think about right from the start.

Choose A Restaurant Concept And Brand

If you know you want to open a restaurant, you probably already know what concept you want that restaurant to be, and you might even have an idea of your brand too. Before you can start doing anything, from finding a location to advertising to hiring staff, you need to have these things set in stone. If you’re still unsure about the kind of restaurant you want to open, or you’re wavering when it comes to your brand and the idea behind it all, you won’t be able to convince your patrons that they should come to you. In other words, if you’re confused, they will be too, and rather than trying something they don’t have much information about, they will go back to the familiar restaurants they already understand.

Plus, without a brand and concept, it’s going to be impossible to fit out your restaurant, and you might find you are delayed or that you buy furniture that won’t work with your final idea, and you might have to spend additional money to get it right. This is why it’s crucial to have your brand and concept completed agreed upon before you can do anything else.

Licenses And Permits

There are a number of different licenses and permits you’ll need to safely and legally run a restaurant. Depending on where you are opening your restaurant, there will be local laws to follow, so ensure you research what you will need.

No matter where you are, something you will certainly need is insurance. The best way to obtain this is to speak to a commercial insurance broker Montreal. You can discuss exactly what you need to be covered by the insurance, and they will help you find the ideal cover.

Choose A Location

Once you know what you’re going to do and how you intend to do it, you’ll need to find a business premises in the right location. Unlike many businesses, you cannot ‘work from home’ and a premises is crucial when you run a restaurant. You’ll need to think about:

  • Footfall – will people pass by your restaurant?
  • Parking – having a great restaurant is excellent, but if no one can park, they won’t find it easy to come to you, and they’ll go elsewhere
  • Size – how much room do you need in the restaurant and in the kitchen?
  • Competition – what else is around the area you’re thinking of opening your restaurant in? Can you compete?
  • Budget – how much can you afford to spend on rent?

Looking for a premises can be fun, and it’s easy to get carried away and fall in love with somewhere without thinking things through. Always ensure you get a second opinion and you’re thinking of the business at all times.