When operating a small business, there are a lot of different things that owners need to consider and manage to ensure that it runs smoothly. In fact, there are so many different facets of leading a small business that it can become overwhelming and frankly quite difficult without the proper tools in place.
The best way businesses can deal with these challenges is to equip themselves with the right solutions and software, which can aid in streamlining the business’ processes and can make performing certain tasks a breeze. Here’s a look at the best solutions and software that most small businesses should consider in order to give their operations a boost.
Trello
Trello is a brilliant and easy-to-use management software that can be used to manage not only personal but also team projects. It’s a visually focused software, which helps in its usability and it organizes things such as schedules and tasks effectively, so that an entire team is on the same page.
The main gist of how this software works is that a team can create a ‘board’ for each task or project that needs to be completed and then stick to that ‘board’ little cards, which detail the individual tasks that each member needs to do to contribute to that task. It’s super simple but it’s that simplicity that makes it really useful and easy to keep a business more organized.
TurboRes
For small businesses that require staff to travel to different locations to attend meetings or hold events, managing the business travel can be a tricky and time-consuming endeavor. Things such as booking transport, accommodation as well as expenses like food can be a hassle, not to mention that a lot of money can be lost through these expenses.
Getting TurboRes Business Travel Solutions is a great way to improve how your business handles travel, as the service will help you better manage your accommodation and also help you keep costs down when sending staff away. It’s really important to manage your travel effectively as a business, as not doing so can be a huge strain on a business’ resources, so that’s why getting a solution like TurboRes is a great idea.
Canva
Canva is a cloud-based graphics design suite that can allow users to create stunning visuals, whether that be images for social media, brochures, and flyers or whatever else you may need good graphics for.
Canva is a great tool for digital marketers as it’s super easy to use and allows creators to build stunning visuals really quickly and doesn’t require the steep learning curve that’s associated with Photoshop. What’s even better about Canva is that there is a robust version of it that is entirely free to use, meaning that businesses can save a lot of money using this service to enhance their digital and print visuals. It has a variety of different styles, illustrations, fonts, and more, meaning that you can create a unique and interesting piece of artwork that will differ from your competitors’ collaterals, making Canva a great business solution.
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In business, reaching new solutions are crucial to saving time and money.
So, taking the lid off IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, may also confuse people with regard to IP (Intellectual property), but both are different and yet, play a strategic part in expanding your business’s trajectory in an upward direction.
But, how can you move forward with this in the current economic climate?
To learn more about how to Buy IP address, click the link.
An IP address stands for ‘Internet Protocol’.
What does this mean?
It refers to the unique number connected with the IP address that links to all of your business’s activities, similar to that of a parcel’s return label.
You cannot take your IP address with you when you move from place to place or venture to another country as it is all part of the ‘Internet Protocols’
Economics of Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property (IP) is a critical component governing a high percentage of economic policies. Many Government bodies face headaches, when deciding the design and structure of IP to serve specified objectives that fit new technologies, and the current changing business models.
Strategic Intellectual Property Management
The scope of business plans is not reliant on its commercial aspects, and incorporates all of its assets and resources to make the business viable.
A strong IP protection and management policy will ensure that business planning and IP are strongly connected.
An IP policy for your business is an essential element in your business plan, adding value to your venture, especially if your description within your plan capture this information. However, it may also deflect any interest from potential stakeholders.
Therefore, any IP information must be included in your business plans as clearly as possible.
IP ownership and protection policies inside your business need to be completely durable. There should be no doubt about the products or services either co-owned or owned by the company, in particular any assets that are under license with third parties.
You should also make revisions if this is not the case, as investors heavily focus on IP when considering business investments.
Business Strategies Post Brexit
Many businesses are now frantically wondering what will happen to their companies post-Brexit. The ongoing damaging effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic are a cause for concern, leaving many companies at breaking point.
Here are a few steps to a post-Brexit strategy to keep your businesses buoyant and moving forward:
Develop a course of actions that can float and are unsinkable.
Rethink your global footprint.
Embrace diversity and different perspectives within your company.
Choose your words wisely and lead at a level of transparency so that nothing is missed.
Develop a foreign company policy.
Turn any signs of antipathy in your business into a source of building forward momentum to propel your business forward.
Business strategies need to progress in line with new technologies, and the current constraints of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Essentially leading to businesses rebuilding and recovering from any losses.
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Regardless of what kind of business you operate, there are very few industries that haven’t been affected by COVID-19. Since the start of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the UK and beyond, resulting in over one million deaths across the world (and counting). For entrepreneurs, running and operating a healthy business can be challenging during these unprecedented times. So, to keep your operation afloat, here are some useful tips on how to survive the pandemic and keep revenue up.
Encourage Remote Working
If you’re able to do so, you should encourage your team to work remotely. If you operate in an office, many employees will have concerns and fears about being in close proximity to others. The last thing you want is for your team to fall ill with the virus and have to isolate. So, you should encourage working remotely, meaning your staff can operate from their homes which will reduce the risk of them contracting COVID-19.
Keep in Touch with Employees and Customers
No matter what kind of business you run, regularly communicating with your employees and customers is key to success. If you have had to shut your physical premises for the time being and your team are working remotely, you need to head online and use video conferencing software like Skype or Zoom to hold meetings and training. Your customers may feel out of the loop during these strange times, so make sure you have social media business pages that can be used to keep your audience in the know.
Coronavirus-Proof Your Premises
If your business has been allowed to reopen, you need to take precautionary action to keep staff and customers safe. You can use screens to reduce the spread of covid which can be useful in all kinds of environments, including offices, restaurants, and retail stores. As well as covid screens you can use queue barriers and face masks which are key measures that you can use to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Encourage Hand Washing
If you employ others in your business and they’re back at work, you must encourage hand washing. While we should all wash our hands regularly with soap and water, you will be surprised at how many people forget to do so. In the unprecedented times we are currently living in, it’s more important than ever to wash your hands. There are hand sanitiser stations that can be installed in your business which will serve as a constant reminder for employees to clean their hands.
Whether you hire office space, run your own restaurant, or operate a retail store, your employees and customers are at the heart of your company. To keep your business thriving and on track, all the tips above will ensure you have all bases covered, helping to boost morale, productivity and ensure staff and customers are kept safe and protected during and post COVID-19.
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Almost anyone can start investing nowadays, and they can do so without the guidance of a financial advisor, a stock broker, or any guidance at all. While novices are urged to start small and do their due diligence and research prior to getting involved with investments, there is a reason why some people choose to jump right in. The stock market is a big draw for novice investors looking for a big payday, and sometimes they do hit big. However, without a plan and investment goals, that one-time payout usually ends up being a case of beginner’s luck. The importance of setting investment goals should not be lost on anyone who will be building a portfolio of investments.
Setting a Healthy Financial Standard
There are various ways to make money and earn an income, with the majority of working age individuals choosing to seek out gainful employment. When you have a relatively steady income, you can estimate your expenses, and then live in a manner that allows you to stay within your means. Investing is one way of “beefing up” your finances, so to speak. If done properly, your investment portfolio will represent one of your assets that can be leveraged, liquidated, or transferred in the event that you need financial relief. In order to set a healthy financial standard, you have to look toward developing multiple channels of income.
Knowing What’s Going Out Versus Coming In
During the initial phase of investing, there will definitely be more money coming out of your bank account than going in. It doesn’t matter if you are investing $50 or $1,000 a month, as all investing plans should be developed with the investor’s budget in mind. Using the best Robo advisors will allow you to easily track the total amount you have invested and compare it against current total profits. Wealth Simple offers tools designed to help investors meet their personalised investment goals. Make your investments while operating in autopilot mode with Wealth Simple and you can always keep track of your investments made versus profits earned.
Having the Ability to See Consistent Returns
One thing that new investors need to learn quickly, is the term volatile. This single word perfectly sums up the stock, forex, and cryptocurrency markets perfectly, as anything and everything can happen. What all traders want, in spite of the volatility of the markets, are consistent returns. You can lose money on one trade, but quickly make up for it and then some on your next investment. Some investments will promise small, yet regular returns that can slowly bolster your portfolio. When you have investment goals, it is easier to see the act of investing as a long-term and large-scale plan as opposed to overanalysing individual trades.
Allocating Your Free Time
When you have an investment plan, you start to think about structure, resources, and time. While you are learning about investing and getting your first few trades underway, it’s okay to be as slow, careful, and methodical as necessary. Soon though, the amount of time you spend trading has to match up with the profits you are earning. Consider your work schedule and how it coincides with your salary. If you get hired at a set salary, then you would expect to make more money in the form of raises, bonuses, and other increases over time. So, someone hired in a position for $50,000 annually today would not usually expect or be okay with earning $35,000 annually, in a decade. The time that you spend investing works in the same manner.
Changing Priorities and Investment Goals
It is not uncommon to have set investment goals change. A change in income would definitely be reflected in your investment goals, while buying a home, getting married, or enrolling in college would also cause a change in your priorities as well as your investment goals. Don’t think that whatever you plan has to remain set in stone. It is actually a great thing to evaluate what your investment goals are from time to time, as the market and economy are going to change frequently, too.
Starting from Where You Currently Are
Some people are raised in families where everyone starts investing from the time that they are quite young. Parents may purchase stocks and bonds for their minor children, turning them over when they mature. As such, there are also many novice investors who have to learn everything themselves. Don’t worry much about where you are currently. Motivated investors can and do learn very fast. In addition, you don’t have to learn about investing on your own if you are also making use of all available resources.
Learning More as You Hit Your Investment Benchmarks
Investors who develop their portfolios with a goal in mind are simply more likely to hit their benchmarks. So, your ultimate goal might be to amass an investment portfolio worth $1 million by the time you retire. Logically, you will have several benchmarks to meet before you can even think about hitting that goal. The first benchmark may be $1,000, or $10,000 or some other relatively low amount. If it takes a very long time to reach those first critical benchmarks, then you will have to shift your approach in order to meet that end goal.
Guaranteeing You Won’t Take a Financial Loss
Setting investment goals helps you to avoid taking lasting financial losses. The fact of the matter is that all investors take losses. It’s just part of the nature of all the various trading and investing markets. Your losses might get offset by the close of the day, or you could be looking at making up that loss for months. Either way, if you have an investment goal, you will be focused on creating strategies to recoup your losses and not be caught up on one potentially dangerous plan of action.
Being Methodical About Making Investments
A good investor will always move methodically, which is what you can look forward to as you develop your investment goals. If an investment looks strong, you might purchase shares over the course of a few days, until you have a healthy amount. When selling, you will probably offload your shares in no particular rush. Biding your time might even help you to gain more profits than expected.
Determining What It Means to Take Calculated Risks
While slow and steady is said to always win the race, there are times when investors can benefit from the chaos that sometimes develops here. When you get an alert that a stock is way up or way down, you will probably pause for only a second before making up your mind and going for it. There are times when a risky move is your best course of action. With more experience in the stock market, you will come to know what those moves are and when you should be making them.
Remaining Calm During Market Shifts
Throughout a single day, prices are going to go up and down, sometimes quite sharply. The key to making good investments and creating intelligent investment goals is holding tight when the market shifts. Realise that major shifts in the markets ultimately lead to corrections in the polar opposite direction. So, if an investment you have just made goes way down unexpectedly, you have to remain calm until prices correct themselves. You have to know it will happen, even if the signs don’t seem to be there presently.
Gaining Confidence in Your Ability to Pick Profitable Investments
As you learn, trade, and build up your portfolio, you will feel much better about each subsequent decision. There won’t be that nagging feeling that you have done something wrong, and you won’t second guess yourself even if an investment does not turn out how you had hoped. The confidence that is gained during the course of you setting investment goals is going to change your perspective on a lot of things.
Being Sure That It’s Worth It
Whether you keep track of your investments by checking stock prices continuously while the market is open or utilise a suite of automated tools to collate data, what you gain on your investments has to be worth your time. People invest because they want to make money, build up their nest eggs, and have something substantial to rely on in case their primary sources of income dry up. Of course, you may need decades of investing to get there, but you will know along the way if your efforts have been with the reward.
Understanding The Asset You’re Investing In
If you’re making any particular investment a part of your portfolio, then you need to understand how it fits into your goals. This means understanding the characteristics of the investment itself. If you’re investing in a company’s stock, then you need to follow the news around that company and understand how it can affect the worth of said stock. If you’re investing in Forex relationships like the euro to dollar exchange, then you need to know how its volatility impacts your goals and what other investments you might make to mitigate it. Individual trades need to fit within the broader picture of your goals.
You don’t need to be a stock market expert in order to make smart and profitable investments. In fact, you will learn just as much by actively investing than you will by reading predictions or finding out that a stock has skyrocketed after the fact. On the other hand, there are ways for you to learn about investing that don’t require you to blindly wager your hard-earned money. Check out various automated investment tools, including robo advisors and automated trading signals. Eliminate as much risk from your investment plan by taking advantage of all these resources and technologies.
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You could easily feel jittery if you approach your boss to ask them for a pay rise. After all, you don’t want to risk striking an arrogant or self-important tone – but, all the same, you don’t want to come across as so humble and reluctant that your manager could wonder why you asked in the first place.
Fortunately, it’s more comfortable to bring up the idea of a larger pay packet if, before then, you have excelled more than usual in the workplace, making it easier for you to justify the salary hike.
Invest in self-development
In a sense, you are probably already doing that by honing your existing job skills. However, you could go a step further by enrolling on a course. The Muse points out that plenty of free courses are available online, but taking classes at a local college or university is also an option.
Before you do any of this, though, you should directly ask your boss exactly what new skills you – or perhaps “the team”, if you would prefer to be more subtle – ought to learn.
Ask for your boss for boring-but-essential tasks
In probably every workplace, there are a few responsibilities that people only do because they have to, not because they want to – and your boss probably has some of those tasks on their own plate.
Just imagine, then, how much further you could get into their good books simply by asking your manager whether there are any important-but-dull tasks you can handle for them. Even if there aren’t, your offer to help won’t go unappreciated.
Surpass your manager’s expectations
If there aren’t any extra assignments for you to take on, doing even better with your existing ones can be a great way for you to ease your argument for a pay increase.
For example, you could endeavor to hand in completed projects ahead of the officially-set deadlines. Still, make sure that, in your attempt to do that, you don’t compromise on the quality of the work – as submitting a sloppily-done project early would be rather defeating the point.
Mentor a junior member of the team
That doesn’t necessarily have to mean enrolling in a formal mentorship program, though it would certainly be convenient if your company had one. There are more informal means of mentoring someone, such as by providing them with impromptu feedback and support from time to time.
As you do so, your relationship with your mentee should develop naturally – and, as their career takes off, yours will inevitably improve, too.
Through LifeWorks’ perks and savings scheme, many employers can provide their employees with price cuts on such routine purchases as cars and family outings – so, you could point this out as an option.
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