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3 Tips for Taking Your Small Business to the Next Level

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Small Business |3 Tips for Taking Your Small Business to the Next LevelSmall businesses today have a lot of obstacles that they need to be able to overcome. The world of business has always been ruthless and punishing to those that aren’t prepared for it. However, even the smallest of businesses have the potential to grow into titans, as long as they play the game correctly. Making the right moves isn’t easy, and even if you do everything right, it doesn’t mean you will necessarily achieve your goals.

However, there are a number of things you can do to give your business the best chance possible of surviving in the long term. Here are just some of the ways that you can take your business to the next level and ensure that you are able to keep growing it long into the future.

Have a Plan

When you first launch your business, you will hopefully have a business plan. This plan will lay out exactly what you plan to do with your business, as well as how it will operate in general. Business plans also contain lots of projections for the future.

As time goes on, you will learn whether those projections turn out to be accurate or not. You should update your business plan regularly and ensure that your plans for the future take into account everything that has come before.

Keep Your Expenses Down

Every business has expenses; they are often unavoidable and there’s not a lot you can do about them. However, while you will find it impossible to eliminate many of your expenses, there are plenty of things you can do to keep those expenses as low as you possibly can. Saving even small amounts of money can ultimately amount to some very considerable savings in the long run.

Any products or services that your business uses on a regular basis can potentially be targeted for savings. In some cases, making savings in key areas is associated with a dramatic boost to your overall efficiency. For example, switching to a different payment processor can reduce the cost of each transaction, a small increase on each transaction can be a significant boost over the year.

Make sure to check for online reviews of any processor you consider, stick to reviews that go into some detail about the processor you are considering. This review of BlueSnap by Merchant Maverick is a good example.

Put the Customer First

It doesn’t matter what your job is, what industry you work in or what your long-term goals are. You will have your best chance of success when you are putting special focus on the customer experience. In today’s world, customers always have other options; you need to make them choose your business because you are offering something that your competitors aren’t.

You don’t need a huge business with fully-staffed departments to improve your customer experience. You just need to make sure that you are getting the right feedback from your customers.

If you are at the helm of a small business, you will no doubt have your eyes set on higher goals. Learning to prioritize the right aspects of your business is the key to reaching those higher goals.

Why SEO Needs to be at the Heart of Your Corporate Strategy

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SEO|Why SEO Needs to be at the Heart of Your Corporate StrategyBy now, you’ve heard of SEO. Any business that has made a serious effort at launching their own website will either know what SEO is or, hopefully, have hired someone who understands (ask your web designer).

But is SEO just another corporate buzzword, or is it really as important as everyone makes out? The answer is an emphatic yes – SEO is very important to any business.

Web Searches are the Most Common Driver of Internet Traffic

Most internet traffic today is generated by search engines. Without them, we would be completely lost online. Imagine a world where you can only access websites if you know their exact URL. The world of marketing would be very different for one thing; you would have to publicise your web address to consumers.

You can’t afford to be missing out on the traffic that search engines can bring to your site. SEO will bring your website towards the top of those results pages. The vast majority of traffic goes to the first few websites on that list and the top three results will take around 90% of the traffic. SEO is how you climb the ladder.

Build Trust and Credibility

Google’s algorithms have become vastly more sophisticated than they once were and they are now adept at sorting out legitimate content, like this article, from a page that is created purely to artificially boost SEO. There was a time where you could literally just spam a link on otherwise blank web pages and send your SEO through the roof.

Fortunately, search engine providers are all now able to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate content. This means that a website’s SEO score gives us a proxy for measuring trust. Also, when other trustworthy websites link to your website, you will gain a nice SEO boost.

Local SEO Drives Footfall

Working with an seo agency that also handles local SEO can give your brick and mortar business a significant boost in footfall. SEO isn’t just about reaching out into the cold vast expanse of the internet; it can also benefit your business offline as well.

When consumers want to find a particular product or type of business, the vast majority of them will begin by searching for what they need on their smartphone. If your business is one of the names that they see and you are near to them, they are more likely to pay you a visit.

It’s Constantly Changing

You need someone to monitor and regularly update your SEO if you are to be effective. The landscape is constantly changing as Google’s algorithms evolve. See the adpocalypse for an example of how an update by Google can have far-reaching consequences. If you let your SEO practices slip behind then your website and your business will both suffer.

SEO is far too important to be an afterthought when you are devising a corporate strategy. Without SEO, your website will be all but invisible to most internet users. That should be reason enough to convince you it is worth investing in.

5 Ways You Can Spend Your Work Breaks

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Productivity|5 Ways You Can Spend Your Work BreaksIn this day and age, there is a major focus on productivity in the workplace. Employers want to be sure that they’re getting their monies worth from each employee and maximizing their potential as a business. However, for the sake of balance, employers are also realizing that employees aren’t robots and need healthy breaks during and after work hours. It is also left to employees to know how to utilize such breaks so that they don’t feel overwhelmed and overworked. Here are five ways that you can spend your work breaks.

Go for a Walk

It’s always good to stop and get some fresh air after hours of focused work. A good way to go about doing this would be to take a walk. Whether it’s a five-minute or twenty-minute walk, it could do your mind a lot of good. Some benefits of going for a walk are that it can help lift your mood and get your creative juices flowing. These are two things that you need to get your best work done. Also, pulling away from the computer can help your eyes and concentration.

Play Games

During your work break, another thing you could get up to is playing a few games. This is actually great for your brain as game playing can likewise improve concentration and enhance your social skills.

In addition to this, it’s an ideal way to distract yourself from work which you need if you want to come back with a fresh mind. You could play the lottery online if you want a short and fun game. Online games also have their benefits as they can be entertaining and social seeing as you can play with other people.

Meditate

If you can find a quiet space during your break, use it for meditation. This is the perfect opportunity to clear your head and relieve any work-related stress you’re feeling. If you’ve never meditated before, it’s easy to learn. Also, you can start with as little as 2-5 minutes and then gradually work your way up. In terms of how to meditate, start by committing to a daily practice.

This should outline what time you’re going to do it every day and for how long. Once you’re ready to start, sit comfortably, keep your back straight and rest your hands in your lap or on your knees. You should then defocus your eyes, breathe deeply, and ensure your body remains relaxed. By the time you’re ready to go back to work, you should be refreshed enough.

Read

If you’ve got a book or novel you haven’t had a chance to read, why not go through a couple of pages during your break time? It’s a way of redirecting your attention and also unwinding.

You will need a quiet place to read in order to avoid distractions unless you have noise canceling headphones. It has been stressed that you should try and read every day. Doing so enables you to tick that off of your personal development list.

Exercise

Some places of work happen to have a gym on their premises. Others offer discounted gym membership for places nearby. Consider going for a quick session during your break to get rid of any negativity and tension that may be triggered by work. It’s also a way of boosting your wellbeing and ensuring your mind and body are in a healthy space.

Boost Your Business With License Plating

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |License Plating|Boost Your Business With License PlatingDoes your business entail supply management on a large scale? Do you think your company can still grow if only you have better infrastructure and more manpower to handle the workload? Do you have concrete plans for your business, but is hindered by budget constraints? Perhaps you would like to consider improving your current processes, employing better supply management practices, and adopting modern technology.

With that it mind, you should check out and learn more about license plating. Yes, the same practice you’ll find in vehicle registration also works great with supply management. Simply put, license plating lets you intelligently manage a batch of items, taking them as a single unit. The assigned plates determine the batch/unit, and it improves the efficiency of your warehouse operations, streamlining inventory transfer within the supply chain.

Can this really improve my business?

Imagine this: you’ve been managing your supply the same way throughout the years. The process, assuming you have one in place, follows several steps from one point in your supply chain to another. If you can introduce a better, more efficient way to do things, you can take out several steps in that process and move your products faster from your end to your consumers. It’s not really a question of “will it work,” because it will make your existing supply management process work better. Say for example you have a diverse supply to take care of. You can assign a “container” for these, either by pallet, carton, truck, or a large freight box. These are then assigned license plate numbers and use this information to group the items for easier management.

Get a snapshot of the information that matters

The license plates assigned are unique for your business. You can customize it however you want. By “customized,” we mean adding the associated information on the plates, including the item type, quantity, part numbers, serial number, manufacture date, expiration date, and more. You can add all of these and more, as necessary, to make tracking and grouping your items easier. By using the license plates, you’re simplifying the handling process by eliminating the need to distinguish on the item or product level.

You get more freedom to customize as you see fit, and you can choose to have a barcode or RFID tag for scanning purposes. From these alone, you can see how free you are to customize your supply chain based on your specific requirements.

Other Benefits

With license plating in place, you’ll be able to receive your shipments faster, track them for better response times, and adjust accordingly when problems arise. You can group items in “kits” for better packing and unpacking, depending on the supply needs or your customer requirements. If you’re working with raw materials, you can create license plates for every part you need and group them based on the order. You can also manage the consumption of materials, to ensure that you don’t over or undersupply. You can easily view inventory balances through the plates, so that you can adjust in real-time and avoid any downtimes and other similar issues.

How to Optimally Align IT with Your Business Processes?

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article |IT architecture|How to Optimally Align IT with Your Business Processes?IT is an important subject for any organization and it becomes increasingly interwoven with business operations. The information should be accessible for any relevant person and it should be structured logically, so that everyone in an organization relies on the same, up-to-date information and is able to use it efficiently. Structuring business information is also referred to as enterprise architecture.

How Does Enterprise Architecture Add Value?

IT should be connected to a functional process in the organization. This is necessary for organizations to be efficient and for IT to generate value. The market a company operates in should also be taken into account for enterprise architecture.

In order for enterprise architecture to be effective, a company must be agile. The word “agile” is popular in the business world and it is bandied about frequently. However, agility is crucial in this article; it does not appear in this context, because it sounds interesting. To illustrate, enterprise architecture tools provide an opportunity to respond to inefficient and ineffective situations, but organizations must be able to benefit from these opportunities, before the relevance of an action has already passed.

For the IT architecture to be effective, it should be between centralized and decentralized. The enterprise architecture should manage changes in the architecture, but input by other employees should be appreciated. As a result, opportunities in the environment can be consumed.

Architectural centralization requires sharing knowledge, uniformity and standardization. Because randomly sharing knowledge could result in organizational chaos, it should be accompanied by the other two requirements (uniformity and standardization). Standardization of enterprise architecture can involve the process level, IT level and data level. In this, IT can be considered the bridge between data and process.

Balance between Centralization and Decentralization

To apply and appropriate balance between centralization and decentralization, the information pyramid can be implemented. This approach is developed by Aloys Kregting, who was entitled as CIO of the year twice. The pyramid presents questions that arise when changes in the architecture are proposed. The bottom layer represents requirements that must be met for the idea to be implemented.

The bottom layer of the pyramid is related to governance and involves leadership and organizational structures that are fundamental for the attainment of primary organizational goals. The second layer concerns the roles of employees and the behavioral adaptations that are necessary for the proposed architectural change. The subsequent layer represents data matters, such as key performance indicators. In the top layer Kregting referred to IT systems by which employees are supported. A proposal for change should correspond with the primary organizational objectives. If a requirement relates to one of the higher levels, without meeting a lower level, the implementation of the architectural change is suboptimal.

Two Views on IT

Gartner, a consultancy company, initiated the distinction between two modes of IT. The first mode concerns security and accuracy, whereas the second mode concerns innovation, which is less structured. Additionally, mode 2 requires agility. Mode 1 is related to non-distinctive IT: products and services are not directly influenced by it. And example of a mode 2 process is employee skills management. In mode 2, IT is part of products and services and serves as a competitive weapon. For instance, the customer journey could be a mode-2 aspect.

The Importance of Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture provides guidance for organizations. It could be part of strategy, tactics and operations. Especially for IT companies, it can be effective to apply the bimodal view. Every action should add value to the business.

In conclusion, IT architecture should allow members of an organization to process information and contribute to the architecture, applications and processes. Information should be available to individuals in the organization to whom it is relevant. Also, organizations should distinguish between the two modes of IT. If these recommendations are executed, organizations will reap the benefits of enterprise architecture.

About the Author

Rianne Koopmans is a graduate in International Business Administration. In 2019 she will start her Master’s program in Digital Business. Currently, she is working as an online marketeer and is predominantly occupied with link building and web development.