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Why Outsource To Grow Your Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Outsourcing|Why Outsource To Grow Your BusinessAll businesses have one main goal: to grow. There are lots of ways for a business to grow, but the big question is, should you outsource your operations or perform them in house in order to grow most effectively?

Outsourcing is the strategic use of outside resources to perform tasks usually handled by internal staff.

Why Outsource?

There are many reasons to outsource, including cutting your costs, improving focus within your company, and making sure you internal resources aren’t over-stretched and are allocated to tasks that are fundamental to your business. There are also some requirements to meet if you’re going to outsource successfully.

The basic principle is to make sure that activities that carried out inhouse actually add value to the business, and tasks that are outsourced are ones that can’t be managed by your existing, such as to manage IT providers. To outsource successfully, do your research and make sure you have these things:

  • Clear goals for the company
  • A clear plan for the business
  • A clear selection process for the people you outsource to
  • A plan for how to keep in touch with your contractors
  • Clear and properly written contracts

Is Outsourcing Practical?

Outsourcing means more efficiency. We’ve all heard the saying ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. Managing multiple tasks at once time means the productivity drops. Counteract this by outsourcing.

By moving tasks off your plate, outsourcing makes you more efficient and more productive. What it doesn’t do is cause you to lose control over your business. Outsourcing activities like content marketing, bookkeeping, and admin is popular with business experts, and can all help your business to grow. Outsourcing based on the areas that your company is developing in can help you be more successful, and save you money in the long-run.

Outsourcing can be a solution to operational issues too. If you outsource non-core business functions, you have more time to focus on the things that are core to your business. It also allows you to seek out the best people for the job without time constraints and geographical boundaries.

Another big reason to outsource is to cut your costs. Outsourcing also improves your company’s ability to be flexible and innovative, as you will have access to ideas and knowledge at the cutting edge of different business areas. Outsources lets you form partnerships with those at the forefront of innovation, keeping your company in the lead.

Reasons Not To Outsource

Despite the many advantages, outsourcing is not the right answer for everyone. Some people feel that outsourcing is not the answer. One concern is one of quality control. If you don’t employ in-house to take care of business functions, then it is much harder to have much control over the quality of the work that is done. There are ways around this, as people develop more in remote teams and get better at communicating with each other in non-traditional working environments.

Some think that outsourcing also makes your business less flexible. Any changes to your business have to be passed down to your outsourced vendors, which means time spend on retraining.

Some companies are now choosing to bring back function in-house that they previously outsourced. But why are businesses minimizing outsourcing now? One reason is that the vendors they worked with didn’t meet their expectations. For example, an outside contractor might not be as commited to the values and ethos of your company, so don’t put in the same level of work. Wage inflation in outsourcing markets also puts pressure on how much outsourcing you can do, which makes the idea a little less attractive.

Deciding whether or not to outsource will be different to every business. The decision should be made carefully, and it’s essential to do your research. What skill gaps do you have in your company that would benefit from an expert contractor? What can you outsource to save time and money? You must thoroughly vet any contractor you plan to work with. Make sure they can deliver the service you need and do it inline with your company’s brand values, ethos, and guidelines. If you need to closely monitor an outside company, then you aren’t saving any time, so you may be better to move these activities in-house or look for another partner. Remember too, that outsourced services can also work alongside your own teams, such as outsourcing SEO to allow your PR team to focus more on other areas. IT is a common area to outsource to work alongside internal staff.

Language Barrier: Solving Communication Problems As An International Business

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StrategyDriven Business Communications Article |Communication Problems|Language Barrier: Solving Communication Problems As An International BusinessEffective communication has always been an essential element of a business. If you’re unable to communicate properly, it can be impossible to get your work done, making it incredibly hard to run a successful company when you can’t talk to those around you. Of course, though, when you work internationally, issues like language barriers can make this issue even harder to overcome. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the work that can go into ensuring that you can always convey the right information to the people you work with and serve.

Website Translations

Your website is going to be one of the first places people visit when they want to learn more about your business. While web browsers like Chrome have built-in translation tools, these are rarely good enough to make your website work perfectly in every language. This can make it worth paying for a dedicated translation service that can make your website readable in every country you work in. Automated tools will never be as accurate as a human translator, even if you have to pay for them.

The Phone 

Talking on the phone will be just about impossible if you don’t speak the same language as the person on the other end. Of course, though, you need to make sure that you’re able to do this if you’re working in different countries. Hiring bilingual team members will cost a small fortune, and it will be hard to find people with skills like this who are willing to settle for jobs in call centres. A bilingual answering service could easily solve this for you, providing you with the means to talk to people across the world.

Social Media & Marketing

There wouldn’t be much point in working across different countries and regions if you’re not going to tailor your marketing efforts to them. A big part of this will mean changing the languages of your posts to make sure that as many of your customers as possible can read them. It’s becoming increasingly common to see businesses with more than one social media channel to sell themselves, opting to use multiple accounts so that they can post in different languages.

Products

Buying a complex product and struggling to understand the instructions that come with it can be very frustrating. Packaging should always be tailored to the country it will be sold in, with the language on the box reflecting the person who has bought it. This can be hard to achieve when you work across the world, and some companies opt to have more than one language on their boxes to make the whole thing easier.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of communicating with people across the world. Running an international business will always come with challenges, but you can often overcome them by simply using the tools you have available to you. Of course, though, you still need to figure out exactly where your business will be operating.

A Review of ForexSignals Service

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ForexSignals.com is an information site that specialises in selling trading signals for earnings from forex trading. Clients can apply for a paid subscription. After that, they receive an alert and make profits by following the provided instructions. The complete exchange analysis, as well as entry and exit points for the transaction, are prepared by experienced professional traders. So, traders do not need to make any effort. They only have to renew the subscription and use the signals on time. The link to the official website is forexsignals . com. The website is simple and effective. Is it worth investing in? Let us have a look. Here is a ForexSignals.com review for you.

StrategyDriven Recommended Resources Article | A Review of ForexSignals Service

First impression

You can search for reviews about ForexSignals.com on search engines like Google. An interesting thing is, if the query “ForexSignal” is entered mistakenly, then a lot of negative comments come up. However, if you enter the correct query “ForexSignals”, then a majority of the reviews which appear are positive. With the first query, you will find complaints about broken signals, terrible technical support, and the lack of refund mechanism. With the second query, you will see praises about the best service and best signals. This is a little surprising because generally, two almost the same queries cannot have this huge difference.

General information

As gathered from the “About Us” section of the site, ForexSignals.com was founded on May 1, 2012, by Nick MacDonald. It is a place for traders to work together and share their experiences with others. From the different pages, traders can find different trading signals developed by experienced traders to choose from by following these steps:

  1. The trader can create an account by filling out a simple application form.
  2. After visiting the account, traders can view the list of traders providing trading signals. Users can select any participant they like.
  3. After that, the user has to go to the profile of the trader he/selected. By clicking on the follow button, the trading ideas can be studied. After the subscription is activated, the trader will get email notifications whenever the selected trader does something. So, users will easily know which entry points, protective orders, and levels they need to use. A marked schedule and the description of the investment idea are also visible.

The rest of the site is filled with educational content regarding forex trading. The content is free, and it is published in English. Another section offers an affiliate program that enables users to receive passive income so they can attract customers to the project. Also if you’re considering valuable and trustworthy Forex Signal service – reach out https://forexrobotexpert.com/rofx-review/.

Registration and use

You can activate the trial version by providing a name, mail, and generating a password. Then, click on the start button. By doing this, registration continues, and users are asked to indicate additional details as followed:

  1. The availably of the brokerage account.
  2. Next, the users are provided with the choice of four services given by ForexSignals.com. The services are a copy of trading signals, invest in other trades, development and improvement of trading strategy, and individual trading with professional traders.
  3. Finally, you have to write a message about why you are interested in the foreign exchange market. Without completing these steps, you cannot proceed to the next stage.

After you enter the data, you have to choose a tariff plan that is appropriate for you. The plans are available in a monthly and annual subscription. You can choose the monthly subscription that costs $97 per month, or the yearly subscription for $249 per year. By visiting the payment page, you will get to know the additional rule, which is that you will have to pay first to activate the trial period. The next seven days will be free and if you like the service, then money will be debited from you from the 8th day only. You cannot verify ForexSignals.com without making a payment and you should not do it on a paid basis. Why? You need to see the user agreement to know the reason. Let us highlight a few points from there:

  1. The courts of Hong Kong is the only jurisdiction to which ForexSignals.com is subject. So, you need to contact them to resolve any dispute.
  2. The administration of ForexSignals.com is not responsible for any losses.
  3. The company holds the right to block any user anytime and the administration is not obligated to show any reason for their actions.
  4. A refund after the trial period is only possible if the user provides information about the reason behind the return.

So, to put it simply, after you have paid, you can start working with trading signals. However, when you send a letter asking for a refund, they can refuse it easily. The only way to challenge them is visiting Hong Kong. So, sign up with ForexSignals.com only if you want to continue using the signals.

The way of checking ForexSignals.com trading signals without money

To do this, you need to visit the “Blog” section od the site. You can view the reviews of the strategies there that are shared by the ForexSignals.com service traders. These people are positioned as professions. So, it is unlikely that they will display unprofitable algorithms deliberately. So, you can choose any strategy, open a demo account with a broker, and trade for a couple of months for the result. By doing this, you can know for sure if the trading signals are useful or useless.

Final thoughts

ForexSignals.com advertises itself well while monitoring its reputation and cleaning up negative comments. Although there is plenty of free educational material on the site, you cannot check the signals. The paid subscription does not guarantee a return on investment and it can also lead to a loss. No information about the trading signals is provided either. You will not find any data on the used trading strategies. Moreover, the official blog is full of unprofitable algorithms. Considering all these points, ForexSignals.com does not seem like a reliable platform. So, we will recommend everyone that is willing to try it to proceed with caution.

How to Accept Credit Cards at Your Small Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article | How to Accept Credit Cards at Your Small BusinessIn 2017, credit cards were used more than 40 billion times in the US alone.

If you’re a business that doesn’t accept credit cards you’re missing out. There are plenty of benefits for both you and your customers.

If you want to know how to accept credit cards at your business, then we’ve got you covered.

Read on to learn more.

Why Should You Accept Credit Cards?

Before we get into the detail of how you can accept credit cards, it’s worth understanding the reasons why. Here are some of the benefits.

More Sales

The more different types of payments you accept, the more sales you can make. If someone wants to pay by credit card, and you don’t offer that option, then you’ll miss out on a sale.

Many customers will prefer to pay by credit card for different reasons. It may be that they can earn rewards or cash back if they use their credit card, or they may just need to kick the payment further down the line.

More Choice for Customers

The more options you give customers, the better. If a site or store only offers limited payment options, and their competitor offers more choice, then the competitor is likely to get more business.

You should give customers as much choice as possible if you want to maximize the potential of your business.

More Secure

If you only accept cash payments, you’ve got to get that cash to the bank somehow and keep it in your store throughout the day.

That means you’re opening yourself up to a lot more risk. If someone breaks in or tries to take your cash when you’re on your way to the bank, you could end up losing a small fortune. With credit card payments, there’s nothing for anyone to steal.

You also don’t have to worry about any of your staff lifting money from the cash register, either.

Time-Saving

Taking money to the bank, paying it in, filling out your receipts, and recording your cash sales are all time-consuming processes.

With credit card payments, the whole transaction is done in seconds. The payment will end up in your account, a receipt will be generated, and some systems can even upload the transactions to your accounting software of choice. All of this will save you a lot of time in the long run, and as we know: time is money.

Online Credit Card Payments

If your business is online-only, then accepting credit card payments is fairly simple.

You’ll need a few things set up on your website. You’ll need a shopping cart first of all so that users can make multiple purchases. You’ll then need a payment gateway, which is the service through which your customers will make their credit card payment.

There are plenty of payment gateways to choose from. Popular choices include Paypal, Square, Venmo, Shopify, and more. Each of these gateways come with their own specific fees. Most of these are in the range of 2.7 to 2.9 percent of the transaction, plus a fixed fee of anything up to about $0.30.

Integrating these payment gateways into your website is simple to do, and if you choose one of the big names you know that your customers will trust the gateway for making a purchase.

One issue with online payments is that you may have issues with cards that are declined. This a particular issue if you offer a subscription service. In this case, you’ll need good dunning management in order to chase up any failed payments.

In-Person Credit Card Payments

If you’re going to accept payments in-person, things are a little more complicated as you’re going to need some additional hardware.

You’ll need a point-of-sale (POS) system in order to process credit card transactions. This will include a card reader that the customer will use to make their payment, as well as the software to process the transaction.

Alternatively, you can use a mobile phone combined with a card reader to replace the traditional POS system. This is particularly useful if your business doesn’t use a permanent location; if you sell from market stalls or a food truck, for example. Since the system only requires a phone signal, you can use it almost anywhere.

With this equipment in place, you have all the physical hardware that you need to accept credit card payments, but you’ll still need someone to process the payment.

Merchant Accounts vs. PSPs

The traditional way of accepting credit cards is to set up a merchant account.

This is basically a business bank account that is set up to handle your credit card payments. The money goes into the merchant account and then is transferred to your account, minus any fees. You can find merchant accounts with banks, payment providers, and independent businesses.

There will usually be significant set-up and equipment fees, and you’ll almost certainly pay monthly fees too.

Payment service providers are all-in-one businesses that handle all of the payment processes. Paypal and Square are examples of PSPs; these companies don’t require you to set up a separate merchant account to handle your payments. The payment structure is usually simpler to understand too.

Which you choose is really personal preference; for small businesses, the lower set-up costs of PSPs could make them a better choice.

Are You Ready to Accept Credit Cards?

We hope that this article has given you some insight into why you should accept credit cards and how to go about it. Credit card payments offer a range of benefits for both your business and your customers, so if you don’t accept them, it’s definitely something to consider.

If you’re looking for more great content, please be sure to check out the rest of the site.

7 Security Tips From Experts That Anyone Can Use

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article | 7 Security Tips From Experts That Anyone Can UseIt is not uncommon for celebrities and high-profile business people to travel with their own personal security details. The rest of us picture buff men clad in crisp black suits and headsets whenever we think of such security detail.

However, the day-to-day for the professionals in this line of work is far from that of the “Men In Black.” According to body guard school PWA it is the opposite of what many people believe these professionals do. Much of the work is in the preparation.

Many of the tactics that bodyguards use are adoptable by different travelers and we’ve taken a look at how they can be utilised below.

1. Always Be Aware Of Your Surroundings

Staying safe is often tied to being aware of your surroundings. Situational awareness is essential, more so when in unfamiliar places. Avoid walking while glued to a map or your phone.

The pros say that the more you clank and clunk, stumbling as you walk, you appear like prey, thus inviting predators to have enough time to come up with a quick plan.

2. Avoid Making Yourself An Easy Target

Dawning a T-shirt and baseball cap shouts that you are a tourist. Moreover, you will make yourself a target when walking around carrying a purse or your wallet in the back pocket. Instead, do your best to blend in; secure your valuables by opting to carry a cross-body bag and putting your wallet in a buttoned-up or zipped breast pocket. Also, consider neutral clothing that does not advertise your nationality.

According to PWA most criminals look at the path with the least resistance.

3. Plan Ahead

It would be best if you planned in advance; that is how you will be more aware of potential threats specific to your destination. Set your transportation early, for it also can help you avoid potentially predatory situations from the moment you arrive.

4. Ask Locals About Their Preferences

Hopping on the local bus might be the preferable and safe way of getting around in one city but not recommended in another. Every place has its risks; The experts say they works closely with different local partners to get suitable recommendations on the safe places to go and the best ways to get there

5. Share Less On Social Media

An Instagram post every other time during your vacation might be hard to say no to, but it is an effective way of advertising that you are away from home. For instance, Hillary Duff posted photos on vacation in Canada, and what followed was a break-in at her home. It only goes to show that snapshots shared on social media pose a significant risk to all travelers.

6. Secure Your Technology

Protect any technology devices in a locked safe. Avoid using public hotspots that can be easily hacked. Porter says that you should always have physical control of your computer, smartphone, and other equipment.

7. Carry A Burner Wallet

Muggings can happen even to the most cautious of travelers. According to PWA consider walking around with a “burner wallet” with an old ID and a few dollars if you are unfortunate enough to be assault during your travels.