Add to Flipboard Magazine. In modern business, companies face an ongoing battle to keep their customers impressed. Customers have so much choice, nowadays; it makes it hard for businesses to get customers based solely on the goods that they sell. Of course, this has been the case for a long time. But, it’s an area that many businesses fail to consider. Cleanliness is one of the biggest parts of this; especially for physical businesses. So, it’s very important that your company follow the right rules when it comes to keeping things clean. To help you out, this post will be going through the importance of a hygienic business. And, how you can achieve results to wow even the pickiest customers.
A lot of business owners may be asking why they have to bother with cleaning. Well, unfortunately, in most places, there are laws that force businesses to ensure that their business stays clean. These rules cover areas like bathrooms and kitchens. But, they will also cover the areas that staff use. For some industries, cleanliness is more critical than others. For example, places that serve food to customers have to make sure that their entire business meets health and safety standards. If they don’t, their business could be shut down, fined, or even both. And, you will never know when an inspection is coming. These laws are in place to ensure that customers and employees are kept safe. So, it’s not just important to obey them to keep out of trouble; but, also simply to keep people secure.
Customers won’t like to use a business that is messy or dirty. If you’ve ever used a dirty restroom in a restaurant; you’ll know the feeling of never wanting to go back. And, you don’t want to put this across to your customers. This issue doesn’t just affect physical businesses, though. If you sell products online; you have to make sure that they reach the custom clean and tidy. People expect their products to be perfect when they get them from the factory. And, if they don’t; word will travel quickly that your company can’t supply clean goods.
Of course, getting something like this solved isn’t exactly easy. You have to put a lot of work into keeping a business clean. In some companies, like cafes and bars, it might be appropriate to have current employees do some of the cleaning. But, in businesses like offices and clothing stores; you’ll have to get the help of a contract cleaning service. Companies like this can cover all of the cleaning within your business. So, you don’t have to do any of it. Along with this, it could also be worth hiring a training company to help your employees to pack products in a clean manner. And, you could consider having someone perform a health and safety audit on your business. All of this together will make a huge difference to the experience customers have within your walls.
Hopefully, this will inspire you to start working harder on the cleaning within your business. It can be hard to make sure that you’re doing everything you can in an area like this. But, once things have started; it will be easy to keep them going.
While it’s easy to think that most enterprises serve individuals, there are a plethora of B2B (business-to-business) firms that provide support services. They cover a multitude of niche markets from IT technical support through to architectural design. As you can imagine, dealing with other businesses can be easier and more lucrative than selling directly to retail customers.
With that in mind, you are probably here today because that’s precisely the sort of enterprise that you’d like to set up in the future. But, which niches are profitable enough to warrant the effort? Here are 5 lucrative business support sectors that you should consider for your next company:
Let’s say that you want to start a new company but have no need to rent a dedicated office for it. You’re happy to work from your home, but you don’t want to give out that address to your future customers. What do you do?
Virtual office services cater to such entrepreneurs. In a nutshell, they offer people the use of a professional business address for a flat monthly fee. Many offer add-on services such as mailbox hire and even bookable meeting rooms.
Safety Auditing and Construction Services
You might not think it, but many business leaders are unaware that their premises can post a high risk of danger to their employees. Because of that fact, they need to have independent inspections done by seasoned building safety professionals.
Such companies can also offer construction services, such as the installation of a rooftop guardrail system or external emergency fire escape stairs.
IT Support Services
Outsourcing is something that the vast majority of businesses do each year. They outsource many aspects of their company to keep costs low and improve their bottom line. IT support is one such example, and can often represent an impressive cost saving for even the smallest of enterprises.
And because IT support service providers offer such a comprehensive service, their customers can come to do for all their technical needs, regardless of how trivial or large they are.
Cleaning Services
Let’s face it; keeping an office building clean can be challenging at the best of times. Sure, employers could ask their staff to keep their workstations tidy. But, they aren’t paid to spend an hour or more each day vacuuming and dusting!
One of the oldest yet most lucrative support niches in the business world is cleaning services. Setting up a commercial cleaning firm isn’t a costly endeavor, and it’s easy to find hard-working team members to clean each client’s offices on a daily basis.
Transportation Services
You might think taxicab companies already offer transportation services to commercial and industrial clients. But, the market is far from saturated, and customers have a broad range of diverse requirements.
For instance, some clients may want to rent a limousine for executives and CEOs. Others may need large vehicles to transport groups of workers to other sites.
So, now that you know how lucrative the business support services sector is, when will you be setting up a business in that niche market?
If you pay any attention to the developments of digital systems in the workplace, then you’ve heard about how important data is becoming. It offers a solution to all sorts of problems, from customer engagement and conversion rates to productivity and common employee problems. Big data is, however, a big responsibility. You have to be ready to deal with some of the factors that we’re going to be exploring now.
Big data can answer a lot of different questions about the business. But it’s a good idea to know why you want it and what the questions you want to ask are. It can help you better organize your resources and identify potential problems as well as making you a competitive force in the marketplace. There are a lot of reasons to use big data, but they all need a certain focus to accomplish.
Gather it
Data doesn’t just appear, of course. It’s built from the integration of already existing data sets. When separated, the data from your customer relationship management systems, your web analytics, and your reputation management efforts only give a piece of the picture. Gathering all that data, real and digital, and putting it in one place is what gives you the layered answers that can give you as close to the whole picture as you can get. It’s not always easy to make that happen.
Nor is it always easy to see the picture through all that data. It’s a lot to look through, like trying to see the wood for the trees. Which is why you need to think about hiring or outsourcing a great data analyst. An important part of that is knowing that it’s not just about technical skill. You need to focus on the problem solvers and scientific method thinkers. Data doesn’t always lead to expected results. They have to know how to sift through all the data on hand to create truly relevant results for your decision-making purposes.
Take care of it
Beyond the technical side, there are some serious practical considerations for your data gathering means. If you’re hosting a physical server, can you afford the power supply and support like data centre cooling? If you’re going for a Cloud interface, are you prepared for some of the potential downtime and lack of access?
Big data doesn’t just give you a bigger picture of the truth of your business. It puts it all in one spot for anyone with access to see. Beyond coming up with clear definitions between levels of access and authorising only the right people, you need to look into security methods for your centre like secure zones in your network and physical reinforcement and locks on entry to data centre rooms.
Using data well means having some aims, knowing what you want from it, getting the right people to find it, and taking care of it. It can even be a vulnerability to the business more than an asset if you don’t protect it. The tips above should hopefully prepare you for all those responsibilities.
Add to Flipboard Magazine. If you are in charge of a startup that sells goods, you'll ideally be using the internet to not only market your goods, but to sell them. Good on you. That's a step more than those who don't follow their business dreams and a further step ahead of those who are doing business the wrong way. But once a good is ordered and you've sent it out - your work isn't finished. In fact, if you haven't got a handle on shipping or delivery, you might have made more work for yourself. If you want to succeed in business, you need to realize that dispatching a good isn't the end of the journey, it's actually the beginning.
There are so many things that can happen after goods are dispatched. In fact, there’s a lot of interactions that can come from the shipping process. Most of these are negative, though. From ‘where is my product?’ to ‘why is my package broken?’ right through to ‘what is going on?’ There are plenty of things that go on once you’ve dispatched. If you’ve done a good job, you won’t hear about it at all, but if you’ve done a bad job – you and everyone else won’t ever stop hearing about it. Such is the nature of business.
But these interactions don’t have to be negative. Bring the positive out of them when you can. When people are asking where their goods are, this can be a call to action for your business. If your goods are late, it might hint at an issue with your process – especially if you are delaying the dispatch of your goods. Every second you delay in dispatching – it is an additional second against your customers receiving their goods.If your customers are constantly receiving their stuff late, it hints at a problem with your process – so identify that as an issue and work to resolve it. If it becomes a serious issue, then why will people shop with you?
When people are asking why their goods are turning up in bad condition, some businesses choose to point a finger and pass the buck onto a courier or delivery firm. Now delivery companies do treat packages a bit dangerously on occasion, but your company has more power in this situation than the average consumer. Take responsibility and deal with the situation. If a certain courier firm is constantly breaking packages, switch. Solve issues behind closed doors and make your business look like a business that actually sorts problems out. There are things you can take into your own hands though. You can package goods safely and wrap them securely. You can learn about New World Case, Inc to find shipping crates that will last. You don’t have to wait for things to get broken.
Only when you have mastered shipping will dispatching be the full job – but one broken chain can bring the process down. Check your processes, check your firms and make sure your goods arrive safe and on time, every time.
When we talk about a work environment, we should be talking about an asset that provides an advantage to your workforce. Unfortunately, more often than not, we talk to barriers that they have to work around. Barriers that might seem abstract when boiled down to a few individual problems, but can be indicative of problematic areas in the business you could address if you organised your approach to them.
Crime is always going to be a problem. The likelihood is that in most places it isn’t going to directly affect the safety of an employee. However, even missing items of inventory and disruptions to work have a lingering effect. People miss the resources they need and feel like they’re in an unstable, unprofessional environment. Focusing on security measures like an inventory system, CCTV security systems, and even adding more lighting to your surrounding workspaces can make them feel a lot safer. When an area is more secure, it makes the people in it feel more secure, too.
Safety
Of course, that security lasts only as long as it takes someone to fall prey to a workplace accident. Health and safety is an issue that reaches across all industries and all kinds of workplaces. You should be taking the time to address every potential risk factor and have a policy of hunting and addressing safety concerns. Employees need to believe you care about their needs to some degree and their physical health is the simplest need to ask for. Fail to do so and your lack of regard for those needs will shine loud and clear. You won’t see any loyalty that way.
Hostility
Environments aren’t just potentially harmful to employees but to the equipment they use to work, as well. In hostile work environments like manufacturing and construction, failing to prepare for things like debris and dust can have you dealing with malfunctioning equipment more often than not. Failing to replace things like vulnerable control pads with help from partners like a manufacturer of membrane keyboards and other resilient equipment won’t just cost you money thanks to repairs and more thorough maintenance. It creates a frustrating workplace where the failures of the equipment lead to feelings of failure amongst staff. Impotent workers will look for environments that can empower them.
Productivity
Issues of productivity play the same role but tend to work under the surface, chipping at the confidence of the team and undermining any attempts you make to get them motivated. It can be thanks to physical factors like uncomfortable temperatures and low lighting that make them sluggish and make it harder to get as much work done. It can be due to poor use of time and little implementation of management strategies that hone people toward a purpose. There are a lot of potential barriers to productivity and it’s your duty to find what they are and break them.
A keen eye over the barriers in the way of your workplace could help you create an environment that’s not only conducive to better work practices but essential to a more motivated workforce too. Stop ignoring the problems that seem minor. They all build up.
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