One of the biggest concerns for many businesses is turning over a large profit. A high level of profit is deemed as a marker of success for most businesses. Shareholders and investors expect profits, and without them, they will pull their investments.
While there are longer-term growth aims that should be central to the objectives of the business, finding a way to deliver profits should be a major goal.
Maximizing profit means minimizing spending, and increasing sales. But many companies use techniques that are too harsh in both of these areas and end up damaging the reputation of their business which can have lasting, long term effects.
If you cut spending in the wrong places, you end up with a business that is not equipped to deal with challenges. And, if you try and increase sales by putting your attention on the wrong area, you will end up with aggressive sales techniques.
Find Tools To Manage Expenses
In order to manage your expenses in the most productive fashion, you need to set out a clear budget that is married up with realistic forecasting. You need to make sure you do not underspend on business-critical areas. And, above all else, you need the flexibility in your expense planning to be able to make changes to your spending habits based on your overall business performance.
The Management Platform For Fleet Operations is an example of a tool that can be implemented to monitor spending and use of certain business assets. In this example, company vehicles. By having all of the information about the fleet, who has access, what they are driving, to where, and how much this is costing, as well as all of the information with regards to insurance and maintenance it is possible to make informed decisions about spending. This type of system should be applied to all areas of spending within your organization.
Be Aware Of The Threats To Your Business
Understanding threats is a way of ensuring profitability. Threats may come in the shape of competitor activity, economical concerns, or cybercrime. With data breaches being very costly to affected businesses, the last thing that you would want is all of your customer’s data to be stolen and you to be left facing lawsuits, fines, and a severely damaged reputation. You need to protect your business from cybercrime in order to minimize all risks of financial loss.
Invest In Service And Products
Many companies will cut back on customer service. After all, front line spending can be quite expensive in customer-facing businesses. But this false economy will lead to a reduction in sales and cause lasting damage to your reputation.
Similarly, you should not cut corners on the quality of the products that you are offering. It is essential that your customers get what they pay for, and you should not jeopardize your reputation by providing something that is inferior as it will lead to you getting a poor reputation in the long run.
We’ve seen a flurry of new laws come out over the past few years that attempt to maintain individual privacy in a world where the internet remembers all. In Europe, for instance, there’s the so-called “right to be forgotten.”
But these measures don’t capture the full picture of what is happening in the digital world. If you’re a company and you post something or get a bad review, it remains for all time. There’s usually nothing you can do about it.
Everyone, therefore, is becoming obsessed with their digital footprint. The internet is chock full of blogs reminding students who want jobs after they graduate not to post pictures of themselves drunk on Facebook. There are articles telling companies that they have to hire public relations experts who can manage potential social media PR disasters. And there are computer forensics expert witness services reminding people that they need to be careful about what they reveal online. Hackers lurk around every corner.
Most people know that when they do something online, websites collect data and store it. That’s part and parcel of using the internet. But comparatively few people really have a gut feel for just how much of their data is out there.
If you’re struggling to get your head around this, just hop onto your Amazon account and take a look at your purchase history. You can view everything you’ve ever bought for the last twenty years.
That’s right; Amazon knows what you were buying two decades ago if you use the same account.
The number of ways that digital footprints can affect business is extraordinary.
Unlike individuals looking for internet privacy, companies want an online presence. They want as much positive exposure as they can get to sell more goods and raise awareness. But the type of publicity matters. Having a good digital footprint is awesome. It builds your brand and enables you to expand your operations. Having a lousy footprint does the opposite and can be very damaging.
Then there’s the issue of security. Here, companies need to be careful. They want to divulge some information so that customers find it easy to get in touch with them. But they don’t want to provide so much that hackers could exploit them. It is a delicate balance.
Content Matters
It would help if you assumed that everything you publish online lasts forever. Even if you delete it from your accounts, there’s a chance that someone, somewhere has a copy.
For that reason, whatever content you create matters a lot. You need whatever you publish to remain consistent with your brand, regardless of who writes or produces it. Disjointed, inaccurate or, heaven forbid, “offensive” content may come back to bite you.
Of course, not all companies will manage their digital footprints. Some may actively embrace risk – especially those who want to create a scene. But that doesn’t mean that it is unimportant. Digital footprints last forever, and that’s kinda scary.
You’d hope that if you could just pick the best items for sale, then people would come to your store. Alas, that’s not necessarily the case. While customers do, of course, want to buy the best items, they also want their visit to a store to be an overall enjoyable experience. As such, one of the best ways that store owners can help to boost their business is to work on making their shop more appealing. This will help to catch the eye of passersby, and also make things pleasant for your existing customers. We take a look at a few useful ways to achieve this goal below.
A customer isn’t going to like being in your store if they can see that you don’t treat it with respect. If you don’t respect your store, then why would anyone else? While many store owners are adept at keeping the inside of their store clean, they’re sometimes not quite as good at keeping the outside of their store clean. Keep in mind that this is the first thing that people passing by will see of your store. Sweep and mop the floor outside of your store, and ensure that there’s no trash on the ground too.
Guiding the Way
People can often just walk around with their head down, and as such, one of the best ways to get people to pay attention to your store is to add signs that will get their attention. Have you ever noticed a sign that’s been placed in the street? Of course you have, they’re hard to ignore. Look at adding one in front of your store, ideally with a funny slogan or listing your latest deals, and see just how many people come into your store. You’ll find that you can get a lot more visitors just by giving people a gentle nudge into your shop.
A Sophisticated Look
You can tell a lot by the look of a building. If it’s in bad shape, then you won’t hold out too much hope for the insides of the building. Even if the interior is just fine, people do make judgments, and may never make it in there. If the outside of the building looks sophisticated and attractive, however, then the situation will be much different: people’s attention will be caught for all the right reasons. One smart way to do this is to add ledgestone to the exterior of your building. It’ll help to give it a rugged and sophisticated look.
Window Dressing
If you want to get people into your store, then look at showing them what you have to offer! A well put-together window display really can make a difference. Plus, they can be fun to design. You’ll want to focus on showcasing your best products, and also mix up the look every month or so. Get it right, and you’ll find that you have many more people stopping as they walk past to take a look at what you have.
Imagine you have just signed a contract that puts your business in a lucrative position. You’re in a strong healthy B2B relationship and it seems like you have started a road to a long partnership. However, a couple of weeks later you begin seeing signs that the other party isn’t living up to their obligations. You’re about to say something to them but you can’t find your contract. In the commotion of a fantastic deal, the virtual copy of the contract was lost. It was mistakenly deleted or lost due to a hardware malfunction. Now you wish you had doubled up and saved the contract somewhere else, where employees and outside forces could not get to it. Doubling up sounds simple, but there is a concerted way to do it right and procedures which you should follow whenever saving and or accessing your second copy.
Whatever kind of important document you have, you should make three copies of it, not two. First, the copy which you will use day to day can be saved on your local network. This will allow employees to reference it if they need to and it will get them familiar with what they can and cannot do with regards to the contract terms and conditions. The second copy should be on your personal hardware, i.e. a hard drive which you keep at home or in your office. It’s hardly ever used but when plugged in, it gives you access to your most important documents. The third copy should be a physical hard copy, which again, you either keep at home or in your office. The final copy should be in a data backup service. You should visit quicktech.ca which provides exactly this kind of service, using off-site hosting servers.
What needs to be protected?
‘Important document’ could be anything as it’s a pretty subjective term. However, the general consensus for what constitutes an important document is quite simple. A contract of any kind automatically qualifies. Emails with threats of physical or legal action must be saved in case you need to refer back to them in the future. Annual financial reports are definitely high up on the list of important documents, as they pretty much explain the health of your business. Employee profiles need protection as they will often come with medical record history. Coercive behavior from an individual, company, regulating body or an authority figure, trying to get you involved in a scam is something you will want firm proof of before you head to the police. If you have made a large purchase, you’ll want to save your invoice just in case you want a refund or proof of purchase.
You will want to make multiple copies of your taxes as a business, as you cannot rely on the government to keep a hold of your taxes when filed. It’s not uncommon for tax papers to get lost and then the IRS believes you’re trying to hide something. You can always resend them as soon as possible even if one saving method is not active.
Doubling up is in your best interest as a business. For certain key documents, you need extra protection.
As an Entrepreneur, it can sometimes be difficult to keep every element of it running in an organized fashion and also keep your sanity. As much as running your own business can be hugely rewarding, it also requires a lot of work, and a lot of arms to keep the ship headed in the right direction! So, here are a few tips and tricks and help you keep the ship leveled as you steer your company towards stability and then growth!
An Organised Office is an Organised Mind!
Your workspace is hugely important when it comes to working efficiently. A messy office will promote a messy mind, and a messy mind cannot run a business efficiently! Organize the office. Make it work for you. Create a workflow that really helps you work efficiently, as everyone has a different method of how they work. So, with this in mind, go into your office next time, and really explore how even just a small change, will impact how you work within it.
This is another tip that will really help you in the long term. If you have a lot of social media campaigns or a bug campaign, plan it in advance, schedule posts and take advantage of platforms such as Hootsuite and others to plan your campaigns. Posting at the time of release all the time is one, a headache and a lot of work for you to do. Also, second, it can look very unprofessional with many different posts posted randomly at random times when you are free. Scheduling them means you can be in a business meeting, but your social media post can go up at peak times for your audience without you needed to lift a finger. Use technology to your advantage, it is there for the taking, so if it can make your life easier, then why not use it!
Manage Your Expenses on the Go!
One huge part of the business is managing your expenses. Why is it a huge part of the business? Firstly calculating profit, being able to remove expenses from revenue and seeing what’s leftover. Also for taxes, knowing how much taxes you will need to pay, or how much tax the taxman will need to adjust based on the expenses you have provided. You can’t expect to know all the most common IRS notices but when you are constantly on the move trying to get a business up and running or keeping it going, it’s far better to have a system in place. This is one of the biggest lessons we can all learn as far as keeping organized is concerned, but this is where we should make the most of technology. There are many different apps and platforms that can help you manage and save paper receipts. So check them out!
Keep your IT in check
In the digital world that we live in today, having a good IT Management or IT part of the business is crucial. So keep your IT updated and running enough to sustain your business.
Go Paperless!
Something that helps you and the planet it going paperless! Most business functions if not all functions have digital alternatives that you can use that will enable you to become a paperless company.
So, hopefully, some if not all of these tips will help you run your business a little more efficiently and relieves some weight off your shoulders as a business owner!
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