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3 Innovative Ways You Can Move Your Business Online

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When you first start your business, a lot of it boils down to trial and error – especially if you have never done it before. You could follow another person’s business hints down to a tee, under the impression that whatever worked for them will surely work for you too. But as every company is so different, you will stand a much better chance of success if you take the plunge and carve out your path. That said, there are always certain things that successful businesses have in common, and one such example is having efficient operational systems in place. There are so many different components required to keep a business ticking over on a daily, monthly, and annual basis. Using multiple systems, or a poor one, won’t hold you in very good stead against your competition. Manual systems, in particular, are very outdated, and as the business world is all about efficiency, you may want to consider moving every aspect of your business online. This can be pretty intimidating if you are something of a technophobe, but it honestly isn’t as complicated as you may think. Here are a few examples of ways you can bring your business into the digital age, to create a more straightforward and streamlined company.

Employee training/monitoring

Depending on the size of your business, training and monitoring your staff can be a bit of a laborious ordeal. Sure, you want to invest time into your team so you can rest assured they know exactly what they are doing. But taking time off from your work to do so can potentially have a knock-on effect to the daily runnings of your business. With that in mind, moving your training online can save both you and your colleagues a lot of time. Plus, you can also invest in performance monitoring software so you can keep tabs on your team from anywhere in the world.

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Accounting

Bookkeeping and accounting are often the banes of a business owner’s life. Keeping track of all your expenditure, as well as any profit you turn, can easily be confusing – especially if you are doing everything by hand. Inevitably, pieces of paper will get lost, and those finance notes you made at 3 am suddenly don’t look quite as coherent in the cold light of day. Using something like hnwi and online accounting software can help you keep all your financial information in one place. Just make sure you have plenty of security on your computer systems too, as obviously, this is some pretty sensitive data.

Cloud computing

The term ‘cloud computing’ is a bit of a strange one – it arrived a few years ago, but still, very few people know what it means! It is something, however, that can revolutionize the way you operate your business. The Cloud is fundamentally a network where you can store files and documents, which means they are not linked to a particular hard drive or desktop. Therefore, you and your colleagues can access your work from any location, at any time – perfect for a modern business which has to work around the clock.

Take A Leap Of Faith & Launch Your Startup Abroad

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You think starting a business in your own country is hard, well it’s even harder launching one abroad. There’s the language barrier to overcome. The different currency to adjust to. The different culture and values to understand. It’s always going to be easier launching a business in your own country, that goes without say. However, just because it’s easier to start a business in your native country that doesn’t mean you have better chances of success there, which ultimately running a business is all about.

The reason that so many budding entrepreneurs choose to start businesses on foreign soil is because the rewards are often much higher abroad, depending which country you opt to open your business in, that is. Another reason so many business owners choose to launch their ventures abroad is because there’s call for what they are offering, which in the long-run boosts their chances of business success.

To make the process of launching a startup abroad easier, below are some useful pieces of advice.

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Learn about business practices

First things first, if you are going to launch a business abroad, it’s vital that you understand the business practices that are in place in that country. Business laws and practices differ from place to place, which is why it’s crucial that you learn about the business practices of the country that you intend on moving to, to launch your venture. For example, in New Zealand, you can set up a business in one day, while in other countries it can take weeks or even months. Take the time to learn about the laws that are in place in the country that you want to move to as well as what the requirements are to be allowed to move to that country. To learn more about this, get in touch with an immigration law firm for that country. The more knowledge you have about what is required to be granted residency, the better.

Get to know the area

If you are going to launch a business in an area, it’s important that first, you get to know it. What you want to do is learn more about the culture and values of the country (and specific region that you want to move to), to see whether your business idea would be a good fit. For instance, in the US fitness may be a big thing but in middle eastern countries, it may not be. To ensure that your business will fit into the community, visit the area at least four or five times and spend some time getting to know the place and people properly.

Put together a solid business plan

Once you’re certain that your business idea has the potential to be successful in the area that you’ve chosen, start putting together a business plan. This should describe your business idea, what your goals are, and how you plan on making it work. To make the process of creating a business plan easier, you may find working with a mentor beneficial.

Deciding to launch a business abroad is a daunting prospect, but if you have taken the time to do the research and plan out the concept carefully, then you should take a leap of faith and launch your business. It might be somewhat scary moving abroad to launch a business, but if it’s well thought out and planned, it could just be the best thing that you ever do.

Is Your Business Heading For The Cliff Edge?

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What exactly is a disaster scenario in business? A disaster scenario occurs when you are no longer able to sell your products or make a profit with your company. At that money, the engines for your business have faltered, and you’re falling fast. In cases like this, the best option would be to start completing damage control procedures. But, if we’re looking at the optimum outcome, you should not be controlling the damage at all. Instead, you should do everything you can to make sure it never happens in the first place.

You need to avert a disaster scenario in your business, and there are a number of ways that you can do this.

Keep Spending Under Control


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One of the most common disaster scenarios is caused by a simple case of overspending. By spending more than you make from your business, you will reach the point where you’re no longer making a profit. Once you get to that stage, you only really have two options. You must be ready to cut back. Of course, if you keep your budget under control from day one, you’ll never reach that point. So, you’ll have to think about how to manage your budget.

Outsourcing is a great way to cut the costs while still delivering a quality service to your customers. You can outsource almost any part of a business these days from logistics to HR. When you do outsource, you have to remember that you are essentially giving the control of that part of your business to another company. They’ll still work for you, but they will be responsible for maintaining quality levels. As such, you should choose a company very carefully.

Backup Everything


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Another piece of advice would be to make sure that you are backing up important data and files in your business. To do this, you can use a colocation service for your company. Colocation services provide data protection, handling and backup for companies and colocation pricing can be very reasonable indeed. For just a few hundred out of your budget, you can make sure that if your systems do break down you have a backup ready to go. This can allow you to avoid your business entering a period of disaster recovery that can take weeks or even months.

Hire A Legal Advisor


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Of course, one of the main issues that might cause a disaster scenario for your business would be a legal issue. That’s why you might want to think about hiring a legal advisor for your company. You can check in with your legal advisor every so often and ensure that you’re not crossing any lines that you shouldn’t be.

Legal issues can arise in any area of your company, but you should pay particularly close attention to employee management. It’s quite possible for an injury or complaint from an employee to send your business towards a legal case that could cost hundreds of thousands. An SME won’t survive this type of expense and neither will your business.

If you take this advice, you can steer your business away from the cliff edge before you get anywhere near it.

It’s Not A Race: Don’t Rush Launching Your New Product!

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You’ve done the hard part, you’ve come up with that perfect product idea, or at least, you think that you have. The fact is that although coming up with the initial product idea and developing it can seem like the hardest part of launching a new product, that isn’t necessarily the case. There are also various other factors that come into play when launching a product, which is why it’s so important not to rush the process and to ensure that you take your time launching your new product.

That being said, what you don’t want to do is take so long that your competitors beat you to the punch – it’s all about finding the right balance between rushing the launch and taking too long. To help you ensure that you don’t rush the launch of your new product but don’t end up being beaten to it by your competitors, below are some useful tips and pieces of advice to take note of.


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Be clear on aesthetics

Let’s talk aesthetics. The product itself aside, because you will most probably have already dealt with the aesthetics of this, but what about the aesthetics of the branding. From the packaging and logo to the stock images you plan on using, it’s vital that you ensure the aesthetics of your product are on point. What this means is making sure that when it comes to the designs of your product packaging, for instance, or the layout of your product photos, that they will be appealing to your target audience. To do this, it’s worth investing in packaging research, as well as doing research into the types of styles and designs that appeal to your target audience. What you want to be clear on is that your products, their packaging, and any stock images that you have created, appeal to your target customer base.

Make time for focus groups

A simple way to ensure that your new product, its packaging, and various marketing materials will appeal to your target audience is to hold focus groups. This is where you bring a group of people together – usually five or six people – and ask them to discuss something, in this case, it would be your new product, and it’s branding. You can then use what is said in the focus group, such as what the attendees like and dislike about the product design, as feedback to improve the product and its aesthetics. Focus groups are an incredible tool for ensuring that before you launch a product, it’s a perfect fit for your target customer base, so it’s worth making the time to run them.

Use social media to build excitement

The key to success when it comes to launching a new product is social media, as well as a fabulous product launch, that is. But going back to social media, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are the key to your success with a new product. You see, these sites can be used to help build excitement surrounding your new product with tweets about it, sneak peek photos, and competitions, you could even create your own hashtag for the product and attempt to get it trending. Learn to use social media effectively to build excitement around your brand and the launch of your new product, and you can significantly increase the product’s chances of success.

It’s important to take your time when launching your product, to ensure that you don’t rush things and make an error. That being said, what you don’t want to do is take too long launching it, as else a competitor may beat you to it and launch something similar.

It Takes No Time At All To Take Care Of These Niggling Office Tasks

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There are some jobs that no one wants to do in the office. You know the kind of things, like taking out the recycling or nipping out to the shop to buy a new jar of coffee. But once someone does take care of them, the office will certainly be a better place. After all, how are you all going to get any work done without any caffeine?! So, why not take the bull by the horns and get these niggling office jobs done today. They won’t take any time at all!

Clean The Kitchen

Most offices have a kitchen area these days. They are a place where employees can prepare some lunch or grab a quick drink. If yours is large enough for a table and chairs, some workers might gather for a chat during their break. Kitchens are important spaces in offices, but if yours is a tip no one is going to want to use it! So, it is really worth taking ten minutes out of your day to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher and to just have a general clean up. If you find that it’s always you taking care of the kitchen, you could set up a rota so that everyone takes it in turn. Apart from this, it might be useful to hire a professional cleaning company. One well-received company is Ideal Cleaning who can provide a routine office cleaning service, as well as kitchen, canteen and washroom cleans – this will save even more time when taking care of the kitchen, as the amount of upkeep employees have to do will massively decrease.

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Tidy Up

No one wants to work in a cluttered office! It will make it incredibly difficult to find tools and equipment, and it will look like a right mess to any visiting clients. Everyone in your office will benefit if you have a quick tidy up. You could cut down on clutter by using business document storage solutions so that you aren’t stuck with piles of documents all over. If everyone in your offices shares certain items, such as staplers and hole punchers, then you should have a cupboard where all these are stored. Make sure everyone returns them when they aren’t in use. Otherwise, they will clutter up your office and could easily go missing!

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Book Some Team Building Activities

Do you remember when the last time everyone in your office did some team building activities? If it has been a while – or if you have never actually done any – then you might want to take the time to get some booked. There are two ways to go about this. You could either look for a motivational speaker or team-builder organizer to come and visit your team in the office. They will then carry out activities in your office. Alternatively, you might like to book a session for you and the team at a local laser tag center for a fun way to strengthen your relationships. There are also some community centers that run company team building days.

So, rather than procrastinate for an hour, why not get one of these jobs done? At least once you have carried one out, it won’t need to be done for a while! And I’m sure that your whole team will benefit now that the job is done. Plus, it could encourage others to be more proactive around the office!