Business Strategy | Mike McRitchie | Resume and LinkedIn Profile Writer | Telecom Marketing Content Writer

Where Should You Invest Next?

June 5, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

What should you invest in

In business, you always need to be thinking one step ahead. There’s nothing quite worse than getting to a point and realizing that you have no idea where to go next. When you’ve been working incredibly hard and things are starting to pay off, you’ll always want to know where you should be investing next. Because that’s the thing about business. There’s never really any clear ‘I’ve made it moment’. While you will find a range of successes along the way, you’ll always set more goals. And when you get to one point, you’ll already be thinking ahead to the next. So when you get to the point where you’re ready to grow, you’ll want to consider what your next move will be. Here are five to inspire you.

Product Development

First of all, you could put more time, money, and effort into your product or service. New product development can often be the obvious next step that you need to work on when you’re looking to move forward. If you have the capital to do it, think about how you can improve what you have, or add something new to your line up. Whether you want to target the same market, or aim at a new audience, this can often be a great way to move forward.

Staffing

Next, you may want to think about hiring your first employee. Or if you have already done that, you may want to hire a full range of employees for different roles across the company. If this is the case, then take a look at xero.com today to figure out how you can find the right employees. Because that’s often the key. You need to ensure that you hire the best people for the job, and not just fill a role.

Equipment

Or maybe you really need to invest in the right equipment? When that’s the case, you’ll want to do your research. Take a look at hr2fl.com today or similar suppliers in your specific industry. Workout what machinery or equipment you need to be able to grow or do your job more efficiently. Then make your purchases so that you’re able to move forward with your business.

Marketing

Then, you’ve always got your marketing to think about. Whether your business is in trouble or you just could do with a little push, putting more budget into your marketing to even hiring professionals if often a strong way to ensure that you grow in line with your objectives and get more traction.

Expansion

Finally, you may also want to invest in expanding your business. Think of this as doing exactly what you’re doing now, but on a larger scale. In some cases, you’re going to want to combine your investment in marketing with this in order to get the best effects. Whether you need a bigger premises, to put in a larger order with your supplier, or even hire more staff so that you can cope with the workload – this could be your ticket to growth.

Simple Ways to Make Your Business More Profitable This Year

June 5, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Increase Profits

Whatever your business does and no matter how much money you make, it is always possible to increase your profits, and doing so should be a no-brainer. With that in mind, here are a few things that you can do to increase your gross profits this year and beyond…

Make Your Design Cycle Faster

If you run a business where you manufacture your own goods, a really effective way of increasing your profits is to speed up your design cycle. If you can so this, you can develop many more products in a shorter amount of time, which should help to bring those profit margins up. How do you do this? You could use greater automation and better software to speed things up or you could outsource to a company who specializes in designing the kinds of products you sell – only you will know which option is likely to work best for you.

Ditch Tasks That Don’t Add Value

If you want to make bigger profits, you need to be more efficient and one thing that will really help you in this endeavor is cutting out those tasks that don’t add value to your company or to your customers. Every cent that you save by ditching processes and procedures that aren’t valuable are cents that you can add straight to your bottom line without having to do any extra work – what’s not to love?

Create More Value

Speaking of value, finding ways to add more value to the products and services you offer, so you can charge a slightly higher price for them is a great way to add more value to your business too. For example, you could bundle your content writing service in with some basic seo, which won’t take you too much more time to work on, but which will allow you to bump up the price and make more money.

Outsource

Outsourcing tasks like bookkeeping and administration to freelancers is a great way to cut your staffing budget and add more money to your bottom line, and since there are so many great freelancers out there right now, you’ll still get the same great service you’ve always benefited from.

Invest in Stocks

If you run a small business, it’s seriously worth thinking about investing some of your profits in stocks to maximize your bottom line. There are few restrictions on doing this when your business is small, and if you invest in something like the best lithium stocks, which are in high demand now due to the increasing use of lithium-ion batteries in tech, it can really pay off. Of course, investing does not come without risk, so you should not place all of your eggs in this particular basket.

Retain Your Customers

It can cost as much as 3 times more to bring in new customers than to retain existing customers and existing customers have already shown that they are interested in what you do, so if you do anything you can to keep them sweet, perhaps by offering them special discounts of valuable bundles, you will save money, make more sales and increase your bottom line.

Do you run a business? How have you made your company more profitable this year?

Construction Site Essentials That You Should Never Forget

June 5, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Construction sites are often seen as dangerous and chaotic places, especially if you’re doing something like building a skyscraper. However, people don’t realize that construction sites are surprisingly safe and organized places–at least if it’s being run by a manager that knows their stuff. If you’re planning on managing a construction site in the future or just want to learn a bit about how construction sites are organized, then here are a couple of site essentials that you should never be without.

Construction Site Essentials

Generators

Where are you going to get the power to use all of your equipment? Generators of course! Don’t expect to just get a really long extension plug to the nearest wall outlet–that would be incredibly silly. Make sure you invest in a generator to keep your lights and equipment powered so you can continue working efficiently.

Security

Site security is incredibly important and should not be neglected. The last thing you want is for delinquents to sneak onto your site and start stealing things, breaking equipment or potentially slowing down your progress.

Cabins

Offices and restrooms are important. If you have a lot of workers on site, then you may want to invest in a canteen as well. These cabins are usually inexpensive to hire and they can simply be dropped down onto your site from a crane.

Toilets

Construction sites are busy places and workers will be staying around for a long time, meaning they’re eventually going to have to take a break, eat and even go toilet. Instead of forcing them off the site and into the nearest cafe, get yourself a portable toilet. You can find more info here about portable toilets

Safety Equipment

No construction site is complete without ample safety equipment. Keep this gear in a safe place such as a cabin so that it’s not stolen or lost and make sure you have everything you need. This will often include hard hats, high-visibility clothing and first aid kits.

Cranes

You’re likely going to be doing some heavy lifting, so make sure you have a crane on site. Whether it’s to lift heavy bags of waste out of the site or drop large numbers of reinforced bars to be used as materials, it can save you a lot of time and effort.

Waste Management

If you’re demolishing a building or going to be spending a lot of time digging up land, then make sure you’ve got sufficient waste management processes to clear it out effectively instead of expecting your workers to drag out the waste one bag at a time. If you are going to be excavating land, make sure you hire an excavation company.

Trained Staff

Lastly, make sure you have trained staff in your workforce. The last thing you want is for poorly-trained staff to hurt themselves or other people. While a construction site is typically a safe place, a clueless worker can easily endanger the lives of others. Make sure you have an efficient workforce if you want your project to be successful.

3 Possible Reasons Your Business Is In Trouble

June 4, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Running a business is eternally fraught with potential troubles, and you need to make sure that you are doing everything you can to keep it in the best possible way at all times if you want it to stay afloat. The truth is that to do that, you need to be able to know how to actually keep your business out of trouble – and that means being able to identify the possible reasons that it is in trouble in the first place. In this article, we are going to look at a few possible common options for why your business might be struggling, and this is something which you might want to look into at your earliest convenience if you care about keeping your business going strong.

It Is Uninsured

One of the biggest problems you can have in business is to find out that you suddenly suffer great financial turmoil, or that you need to protect yourself in future as best as you can. Not having insurance for a range of possible situations could mean that you are in a lot of trouble indeed, and this is one of the first things that you should therefore look into if you want to keep your business out of trouble. Thre are an umber of different kinds of insurance you might want to look into getting for different possible situations, ranging from basic contents insurance to the professional indemnity insurance you can see at https://www.qdoscontractor.com/professional-indemnity-insurance. Make sure you have whatever you think is necessary for your business type – it could be all you need to do to keep yourself out of trouble in future.

You Don’t Listen To The Customer

Another early warning sign is that you have a hard time actually knowing what the customer wants, possibly because you simply don’t listen to them well enough in the first place. Not paying attention to the customer can mean that you end up doing things which lose them in the long run, and you might even find that your business reputation worsens over time as a result of this too. Make sure you are always paying attention to what the customer ha to say. By doing so, you will be able to make the right moves in future and keep your business out of trouble in the long term.

It’s Not Original

Ultimately, you need to have an original business idea if it is to work as well as possible – and that means that you should work on this first and foremost if you want to get it done right. If your business is basically unoriginal, then it will likely mean that you are not going to be able to keep it out of trouble, so make sure you have considered that if you are going to try and keep your business afloat for longer. Having originality will ultimately save you hugely form future turmoil, so this is more important than you might think.

‘Off the Shelf’ or ‘Tailor Made:’ Which Tech Is Best For Your Business?

June 4, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

No matter what sort of business you are in or industry you serve, the chances are that in some way your company will be heavily reliant on technology. There is a huge range of choice out there, however, which can make the simple task of choosing a piece of software or a tool confusing and bewildering.

In fact, one of the biggest decisions you will make as a business owner is your choice between an off the shelf technology or something tailor made and custom built precisely for your needs. The big question is – which is best?

In this guide, we’re going to run through everything you need to know about the differences between off shelf and custom built technology to ensure you make the best possible choice. Let’s get started straight away with some of the basics.

Business Technology

Off the Shelf vs. Custom Built – the Key Differences

First of all, let’s take a look at what we are talking about. Off the shelf technology refers to products like software that has pre-built integration, are available to anyone, and tend to be sold by vendors to millions of different customers. Think Microsoft Office and you will be somewhere close to the relevant ballpark. Custom built tech, however, is a bespoke solution that is built purely for your business. For example, custom software development companies will look at your exact business needs to come up with a solution that fits you perfectly. As a rule, tailor-made technology solutions are thought to be the more expensive of the two – but is this really the case?

The cost

The idea that off the shelf tech solutions are more expensive than a custom built alternative is simply untrue. The myth stems from the fact that because of their vast reach, off the shelf solutions will often appear to be moderately priced. With a custom build, you will be paying for something developed for you alone, so there will obviously be a cost attached to that. But it isn’t that simple. When you buy generic software, you pay for a lot of features that you just won’t use, whereas, with something made for you, everything is relevant to your business. Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that performance is often an issue with a generic product – you have to take time and use resources to seek out the best possible solution for your business, and even then you might not get a perfect match. In terms of value for money and bang for your buck, it is almost always best to take the custom built route.

The service

Finally, you also need to consider the level of service you will get from each possible solution. As a rule, buying off the shelf means that your business makes up only a tiny fraction of the tech company’s business – it simply won’t be their priority to cater to your individual needs. With a tailor-made solution, however, the company will have a smaller set of clients, and a lot more focus on keeping you happy as a result.

Conclusion

If you are serious about your business, at some point you need to find a system and the technology that works specifically for your business. Off the shelf, solutions may well do a job for you, but ultimately you will be at the mercy of the selling company. Tailor-made alternatives give you more control and power – and more value for money. What are your thoughts?