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Can You Look Professional Without Paying Professional Prices For Your Office?

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Many things have changed in the world of business, but a few things have stayed the same. Indeed, automation has taken over the scene like wildfire; each employee must be worth their weight in gold, the technology we use is incredibly fast, adaptive and able to do many things online which you once could only do in person. However, the look, feel and image a business headquarters projects, can make or break you. Offices around the world have been updating to keep up with the demand of modern employees who want the work environment to be fluid and encouraging. It’s also key that investors and potential partners get to view your office as a sign of trust and high standards. But how should one go about remodeling a business office? With a little common sense and understanding human behavior, your office can be redesigned to increase productivity and boost morale levels for a healthier work environment.

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Personalizing is the key

Think about it, when you’re at home and working in your office, you feel more inclined to go the extra mile. It’s because you feel right at home, and the room you’re in reflects your personality. The best office spaces aren’t merely functional and efficient; they also capture the spirit of the person and company work in them. If you have a mascot or perhaps your logo, hang it up in the main office area. It’s kind of like planting your flag, whereby your employees will subconsciously treat the work area with more respect. It shows they’re part of a team, and that this spot is theirs and everyone’s little corner of the world, each sharing a common goal. You might also find that having your company colors flourish throughout the office, such as the color of the chairs, computer screens, or even just the pens and pads, can have a positive effect of inclusion.

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Refurnish where you can

Nobody wants to live in a stale and pale environment, let alone work in one day after day. Renovate the office by buying chairs, tables, and desks. You may find that equipment leasing is the best option to quickly and affordably change the look of your office. You can lease some of the trendiest office furniture going around, with correct posture chairs, wide executive chairs for the boardroom, and nice wide tables, so employees don’t feel crowded at their workstations. Refurnish where you can, so if you see the sofa in the reception room getting worn out, replace it with something that’s more in tune with where your business is heading now. By updating the work environment to the current attitude of your company, you also show anyone who visits, that you’re mindful of how you present yourself to both customers and clients.

Artwork and plants

Don’t be afraid to buy plants to put in the corners of your office. Natural greens from vegetation have been proven to make for a better work habitat. Hang up painting you like, to inject a bit of art and creativity to the professional setting. Employees should feel as if they’re not being pressured by the dullness and brutalist approach of most modern commercial buildings.

When you’re looking for that professional image, you should also look for a good deal. Updating your office isn’t just about buying the latest equipment, it’s about cultivating a healthy and productive work environment.

Starting A Business? Utilising Experts Can Help!

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When you start your own business, you are putting yourself in a position of ‘jack of all trades’. As a one-man-band, you are effectively doing it all yourself until you get enough traction in your company to bring in more people to help you with your business growth. Not every business owner wants to handle every area of their business, and contrary to popular belief, this is okay! It’s not a failure to want to concentrate on your own strengths and to do this, you need to know where the experts are. Part of your business plan will include a portion on expansion and to be able to facilitate this, you need to be able to focus on the areas of your business that are strengths for you. It’s not a bad thing to know your weaknesses as a business owner, but if you don’t own those weaknesses from the beginning you could find yourself drowning before you’ve even begun.

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The best way to ensure that your company doesn’t fall at the first hurdle is to explore outsourcing. Most entrepreneurs are aware that they have a plethora of talents, if they didn’t they wouldn’t have what is required to get a business off the ground. However, this doesn’t mean that you have every single tool at your disposal to make your company a success. You may not be at the point yet where your company is ready to expand, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have the budget to pay the experts to help you! The hard work of starting a business doesn’t end with a successful launch, it only starts at that point. Not being able to do it all in your company means you need to know where to look to find help. There are many pieces of a business that get outsourced, and the most common are IT, marketing and human resources. If you aren’t aware of how you can outsource, you can read this more in-depth article for more information.

When you start a business, you have to take in as much advice as possible so that you can be a success. Business growth starts with asking for help and it’s that help that can keep your business afloat. When you get advised to outsource some of your business processes, you can feel like some of your company is being taken off of you. Taking steps toward outsourcing can be a long process while you decide how to manage your business. As a progressive entrepreneur, playing to your strengths is the smartest business strategy you can implement. The thing is, to be able to concentrate on your strengths you have to allow outsourcing to happen.

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Knowing when you should outsource your daily, time-consuming activities is difficult. If you have a team in-house who are ready to take on the work, timing your outsourcing will centre around you and your staff being unable to continue with the workload. You want your business to grow, but if you have no time left in the day to pursue the growth, then consider outsourcing. You don’t need to have absolute control over everything in your business, so read this article here and learn how to delegate tasks effectively. There is a lot of advice online that can tell you when the optimal times to outsource is, but popular advice says that outsourcing from the very beginning is the best idea. You could start by outsourcing your payroll processes to an external accountant or finance company, and grow into other ventures from there.

We mentioned earlier that IT, human resources and marketing are the most common business elements that are outsourced and the chances are you are already outsourcing your finances. Any task in your business that you haven’t got the time to dedicate your attention to can be outsourced. Using a digital marketing agency to handle your campaigns instead of managing them yourself can be hugely beneficial and money very well spent. Marketing is such a big deal for businesses, as you have the choice of print marketing, digital marketing, email marketing and mobile marketing at your fingertips. You need to spend time on business growth and all of these marketing elements are going to be a big part of that growth. If you hand over your marketing campaigns to an outside company, you end up with a whole team of people working for you that you have allocated your budget to. The beauty of this is that you are not going to be the one to manage personalities, salaries or ego as you have taken that outside of your office. All you have to do is approve the campaigns that your outsourced marketing team comes up with.

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When you are choosing which areas of your business you should outsource, you should ensure that you are doing it for the right reasons. Your area of expertise may not lie in data management and analysis, nor would it lie with data protection, so outsourcing your IT services to a company that specialise in those areas is a smart decision to make. Business management is all about knowing where your strengths lie and capitalising on those. You can pay outside companies to be strong in the areas that you are not and this is something very important to remember. Finding the right IT companies, HR companies and marketing companies to work on your behalf is rather like interviewing individual staff. You have to know your long-term aims and goals before you can go ahead and sift through the many businesses that offer those services.

The key to finding the right businesses to work with will come from recommendations, reviews and personal experiences of those in the same niche of business that you are in. If a trusted mentor tells you to use a particular company because of their efficiency and value for money, it’s worth looking into. It doesn’t necessarily mean they will be the right company for you, but it’s always good to trust the word of someone you know. Once you’ve found the right providers for the work you need, it’s time to check and recheck references and draw up contracts. You must be sure to effectively communicate your expectations to the companies that you want to outsource to. What you have in mind may be completely different to what a new, trendy company has in mind. You have to be clear about the service you want to pay for and as time goes on, a relationship can be built. It isn’t easy to let go of control of parts of your company that you have grown and nurtured, but the only way to keep that vision successful is to trust that there are people out there who have more expertise than you do.

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The last thing you need to do as a business owner is let go. The control that you have to hand over is not simple, but the collaboration of working with other companies can open so many more doors for you. You need experts on your side in all fields to be able to be a success, and it’s less about the logic and more about the mindset behind it. You may be the only person who knows exactly what your business needs, but it takes a village to achieve that vision with you. There’s no need to run everything yourself when as a team, you can get your business to the heights you’d like it to be.

5 Signs Your Office Space No Longer Works For You (And How To Fix Them)

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Your ideas and the skills of your employees will push your company forward, but your office space will be the backbone that allows them both to thrive. If your office is no longer working for you, it’s working against you – and no good can come from that. Below, we take a look at five telltale signs that something the office needs to change, as well as offering some useful tips to fix the problems.

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Your Surroundings Don’t Match

In the early days of your business, you were not so concerned about where you worked. Any office would do: getting your business off the ground was the important part. There comes the point, however, when reputation starts to become a factor. If you look around at the companies in the neighboring offices and realize they don’t have the same ambition as you do, it might be time to begin looking for premises that the go-getting companies call home. It’ll help you step up your game.

Your Staff Are On Top Of Each Other

As a business owner, few things are more challenging than trying to gel your employees into a cohesive, well-oiled team. This is all the more difficult if your office is overcrowded and your workers are always getting in each other’s way; it’s a surefire recipe for workplace tension. If you have room, build extra office space on your premises and give people space to breathe. The relatively small steel building cost will be a small price to pay it if it leads to a happier workforce, and it’ll also enable you to add more employees should you need to. People always work better when they’re happy in their surroundings.

Relaxation Is a Memory

If you’ve got a cookie-cutter office space, then it’s unlikely to be relaxing or inspiring to your employees. But adopting the Silicon Valley approach of ensuring your workers feel comfortable at work can have real benefits, and it’s worth putting in the extra effort to create a space for them to unwind. Add a bigger kitchen, or chilled out reflection zone. It’ll be money well spent, as your employees will be at their creative best when they feel calm and relaxed.

Meetings Aren’t Productive

There’s a school of thought that says meetings aren’t productive even at the best of times, but there’s no denying that sometimes they’re just necessary. However, you’ll find them all the more difficult if you have to add extra chairs to a room just to accommodate people. If you have an important meeting, rent a conference room at other premises until you’re able to expand your office.

Targets Are Harder To Hit

If you’re failing to reach your goals or deadlines are getting stressful, your office might be playing against your worker’s productivity. If you have a big project that needs to be completed, consider allowing your workers to work from home. Studies have shown it boosts productivity, and you’ll also be freeing up office space for the people who need to be there.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Business Software

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When it comes to building up a business, there are many different factors that will determine your overall success. However, one of the least considered points that many business owners overlook is the way they utilise technology. In particular, one problem area that they fail to notice is the use of software. Now, it’s not to say that companies don’t use software. In fact, it’s clear that in order to survive in the current business landscape, the use of software is paramount. However, there’s a clear divide between companies that understand how to make the most of their software and companies that barely use 10% of the features.

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Common Examples of Underutilisation

Let’s take the common word processing software packages that companies use. The three most common applications (as of writing) are Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and Google Docs. We could write an entire article comparing the three and what type of businesses they cater towards, but that wouldn’t be the point of this article. Instead, we’re going to show how businesses fail to utilise their full list of features and how it’s both costing them money and time.

Collaborative Features

Despite Google Docs being a free-to-use cloud application, many people fail to realise the full potential of a cloud-based office productivity suite: collaboration. Google Docs offers one of the simplest ways for multiple people to collaborate on a single document. Whether it’s a technical document that is being written by several authors or a project document that has to be edited by several people, Google Docs offers the necessary tools to take advantage of it. Sadly, far too many people use Google Docs as a simple word processing tool and nothing more. This can, of course, be done with other office programs, but it’s a good example of how even a free piece of software contains unique features that are often underutilised.

Remote Working

A great feature that has been enabled by cloud services is the ability to work from almost anywhere. There are still people that save their work to flimsy USB flash drives and pass them around between the office. Those days are over (for the tech-savvy, at least) and it’s now possible to not only use the cloud to transfer files across greater distances and keep team members updated, but you can also access and edit files from virtually any piece of hardware. You can edit it on your Mac laptop, Windows desktop, Android smartphone or even iOS tablet. No matter what operating system or type of device you use, there’s a good chance that the software you use can actually be used across multiple different platforms. The industry calls this cross-platform compatibility and it’s something that far too many companies forget about.

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Finding Problem Areas to Fix

Now that you understand the effect of software and how it can optimise your business, let’s take a look at ways that you can actually find problematic areas to fix.

For starters, always start from your workflow. From start to finish, your workflow should be seamless and without any hitches. You can’t just take a look at your workers and just guess if something is going right or wrong, however. The key here is to use analytics in order to get a better idea of what your business is up to or capable of. For example, keep track of where the bottlenecks in your business are. If a certain department or employee is constantly causing the rest of your company to halt, then it might not be their fault. It could be the fault of a piece of software or it could be that their job is just so tedious they can’t finish it on time. It might not be a case of getting an extra employee either—they could just need some new software

Realising What Software Can Do

At the end of the day, computers are dumb, Without input from somewhere, they don’t know what to do because they don’t serve a purpose. A computer that calculates numbers has a purpose, but even then, it needs input in order to function. You should think of software in the same way—it needs to serve a purpose and it’s often to make something easier.

Let’s say your financial department is having issues with calculating your incoming and outgoing money. As a result, it’s causing delays in paying and receiving invoices and you’ve even had a couple of complaints from the rest of your staff because they aren’t getting paid on time. You might think about hiring a new employee because it seems like your finance department isn’t being productive enough. However, there’s a better way to solve that issue.

Fixing the Issue With Software

Take note of how much it costs to hire an employee and keep it aside. Next, take a look at what the financial department’s workflow is like. If you find that they’re having troubles calculating numbers and filling out spreadsheets because they’re doing it manually, then it’s possible that a piece of cloud accounting software could fix the issue. If it’s a specific problem, such as payroll management or asset management, then things like fixed asset management software or a dedicated program to manage staff wages could be a great alternative. In other words, software is fantastic for fixing things or improving productivity as long as you’re willing to research the possible solutions and consult a tech-savvy employee for assistance.

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Some Final Words

This article has been brief, but it should have given you some insight into how you can unlock the full potential of your business software. It’s an expensive investment, which is why you need to make the most of your software. Read guides, learn if you find that you’re not utilising more than half of the tools available to you, then you might want to consider downgrading to another piece of software that will help reduce your business expenses.

Understanding Industry: Where We’ve Been And Where We’re Going

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When starting your business, the chances are that you did some research. Nobody entering into an enterprise does so blind. In fact, the months and years leading up to product release are heavy-going. As well as developing your product, you have to find the best materials, study what the competition is doing, and try to find a price bracket which works. It’s no easy task, and by the end of it, your research skills were probably pretty good.

But, most startups fail to consider one thing – the history of business. And, why should they? What does it matter what’s come before? Though few people realize, it matters a lot. Everything, including business, evolves. Nothing in this world is permanent, and the business world is no different. If you fail to consider what’s come before, you have no way of foreseeing what will come in the future.

To get an idea of how much things have changed, you only need to take a trip to the past. Four leading industrial moments are worth your consideration. We’re going to take a brief look at them here.

Late Eighteenth – Early 19th Century saw the first industrial revolution. When people speak industrial revolution, this is most often what they’re referring to. Before this date, production mostly took place in people’s homes. Businesses were small and local, and everything was produced by hand. But, why did things change so drastically?

Late in the eighteenth century, mechanization was, and arguably still is, the greatest game changer. Here, industry was born. Instead of small-scale operations, factories took charge of the market. People could produce more, and they could do it faster than ever.

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1870 brought with it the next remarkable changes in the industry. A variety of different inventions meant good news for business. For one, telephones were an option. People could speak long distance, and the new communication made business much easier. Automobiles were also coming into use. Business owners could travel vast distances for the first time. And, most notably for the industrial field, gas and oil were now an option when it came to electricity. As such, even larger factories were a possibility.

1970 onwards, things started to change in significant ways which should be recognizable to you. During these years, electricity became part of everyday culture. Televisions became staples in every home. A little later down the line, computers and mobile phones changed the way we communicate forever. And, in 1983, researchers started to consider how they could produce a worldwide network,  later known as the internet.

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The present day sees us in midst of Industry 4.0, the fourth, and ever developing revolution. Digitalization is changing business. Though we have yet to see the results, social media, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things are sure to take things further than ever. In the same way that telephones once changed the game, the technology of today promises to do the same. With the use of these technologies, your business reach is broader than has ever been possible. You’re operating during a time which promises to go down in the history books, so make the most of everything that’s available to you.

So, where do we go now, and what does it mean for your business?

As you can see, things change fast. Inventions have the ability to alter the face of business as we know it. And, each time things change, companies which fail to keep up go under. During that first revolution, many small business had to close. They couldn’t keep up with the production of factories. And, the same could happen to your enterprise if you aren’t careful. Things are changing at a faster rate now than ever before. The development of the Internet of Things means we will soon have smart homes. As such, successful business is no longer just about keeping up. You also need to be one step ahead of the game. Here’s how.

Forward thinking

Now that you’ve taken the time to look back set your eyes firmly forward. You need to always think forward with everything you do in business. Never settle for a method, because it could go out of date in no time at all. Always look for better ways to operate. Never be afraid of trying new things. Software developments and new technologies should be top of your agenda. Sure, they may be untested now, but they could be the next big thing. And, if you’re using them when that happens, you’ll get big too. Just remember; the internet was untested once upon a time.

Keep up with news

Back during the above-mentioned revolutions, signs of what was to come were in the news all the time. And, some smart business owners will have noticed that. But, the ones who failed to pay attention won’t have made it past the big inventions.

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Don’t make that mistake. Keep an eye on world news, and in particular, tech news. That way, you’ll be well aware of the latest big things. If any major game changers are on their way, you’ll know about them. Get into the habit of checking the news each morning. To save time, download a news app onto your phone. Most of these include a few different sections, including technology, and business. You should be reading both. It’s also worth making a note of anything that catches your eye. Then, you can do your own research into the issue.

Watch your competition

Watching your competition is, of course, always important in business. But, it’s even more so if you want to stay at the front of your game. While none of us like to admit it, the competition sometimes does things right. And, when they do, you want to be hot on their heels.

They too will be doing everything possible to stay on trend. And, they may spot things you don’t. Take note of any sudden popularity heading their way, and get to work determining what they’ve done right.