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

Manufacturing, Which Of These Three Processes Are Right For You

April 17, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Converting raw materials into marketable and sellable products is the heart of many businesses across the world. While the concept behind an idea is all down to the business owner and their team, making that idea a reality often relies on the ability to manufacture it effectively.

Of course, most businesses don’t have a dedicated manufacturing facility joined to their offices – or anywhere in the country for that matter. Most companies choose to outsource their manufacturing to highly specialized manufacturing companies, to ensure that their products are created to an exceptionally high standard.

3D Printing

While it’s all well and good choosing a manufacturing plant, what a lot of businesses struggle with is deciding which manufacturing process is right for them. While the manufacturing company that you are working with can advise you, it’s worthwhile taking the time to get to grips with the different processes available and which could be the best fit for your business and product that needs making.

Want to know what these processes are? Then read on for a guide to the three more commonly used manufacturing processes.

Laser cutting

Laser manufacturing is becoming increasingly popular, due to the specialist processes available. Laser specialists like LaserLight.com, for instance, are able to offer a wide range of lasering services that have been designed to perfectly meet the needs of various businesses in a range of industries. How it works is simple: the laser beam is focused to the right size and directed onto the material, which it can then be set to melt, burn, vaporize, or engrave, creating the desired shape and finish. Laser cutters can be used to cut flat-sheet materials, as well as on 3D structures, such as piping.

3D Printing

Within the manufacturing industry, 3D printing is becoming increasingly common. 3D printing is popular because it’s a form of fully automated manufacturing where an image is put into a computer, along with the specifications for it, and then the computer prints a 3D version of this image. How these printers work is by turning a whole object into thousands of tiny slices, building the object from the bottom up, slice by tiny slice. These slices stick together and form the finished object. 3D printers are able to create extremely complex structures, including moving parts like hinges.

Molding

Molding, also known as injection molding, is a basic manufacturing process where plastic (or another material) is melted into the injection molding machine and then injected into a mold under a high pressure. Then, the material is cooled, allowed to solidify, and is then released from the mold. This is how all manner of items are created, from toys for children to car parts.

When it comes to choosing a manufacturing process for your company’s product, there is a lot to consider. You need to not only think about which manufacturing process is best for the product and will offer the highest quality results, but also about the cost of the manufacturing process, because in business good financial management is key.

Find What Works For Your Company

April 16, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

What works for your company

If you have a ton of competitors, and they’re always ahead of you in the market, then you might not have found what is working for your company. Some people stick to the same processes, the same products, and the same sales technique. What you’re left with is a failing company. The market is ever changing, and what customers expect from a company is going to always be evolving. So, you should always be trying out new techniques and tactics to find out what works for your company. Just a few changes could mean the difference between success and failure. Here’s just a few changes that we think your business might need to make.

Increase Your Office Space

It’s so easy for a business to outgrow an office space, and it can actually really disrupt the daily working life for your employees. If they feel cramped and as though they have no space, they’re going to start getting on each others nerves. The last thing you want is a team of people who are bickering because they’ve been crammed into an office space so small. Even if your company isn’t big enough for a full blown office that takes up an entire floor of a building, you should still be checking out what small office space for rent there is and see if it will work for your business. The more space you have, the more room there is for creativity to flow. Just make sure you aren’t overspending, and make sure that everyone seems happy and motivated when coming into your office. If you do move, make the new office and bright and as interesting as you possibly can. It should help to keep your employees motivated during the day.

Driving Sales

Sales are the most important part of any business, but often companies don’t meet the level of sales they think they’re going to make. If this is happening to you, the first place you need to look is marketing. If you’re not marketing right, you’re never going to make the sales you need. Marketing is all about getting your name out there to the wider audience, and connecting with people who might not have known what your business was if it were not for your marketing campaign. If you’re not sure what’s going to work for your company, then you should definitely always be looking to outsource. There are companies out there with an extensive knowledge of different marketing techniques, they could help boost your business up another level.

Website Improvements

Even if you think your website is perfect, there will always be something that can be improved. For example, it could be that the servers you’re using crash once every month or so. To you, it might just seem natural, but whilst the servers are down, potential customers are turning away and finding another business. Find a trusted server you can rely on to keep your business online 24/7. You should also find ways to keep the design fresh and interesting. A business should be unique, and it should be exciting, this can be displayed easily through your website design.

Taking on the Technical Side to Business as a Creative

April 15, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Technical Details as a Creative

In the world of business, we’re all very different. No two leaders will be the same. Because we all have our strengths and talents, and it’s often going to be those differences that make us great at business. However, you will also find that you won’t be great at everything. When you’re more of a creative person, trying to take on some of the more technical aspects of running a business can be quite tough. And when you find that you are struggling a little, it does seem quite silly to say that you’re going to just muddle on through and struggle. Instead, here’s what you need to do.

Do Your Research

As a creative, you’re more than familiar with finding inspiration. Sometimes it comes to you, and sometimes you have to go looking for it. Well, when it comes to handling the technical side of your business, you often have to take the more investigative approach towards making it happen. While your creativity may be the reason that you know your business will work, you still have to execute it in the right way. Doing your researching into the more technical areas that you don’t understand is a great way to make this happen.

Hire A Service

If you’re absolutely useless with anything too technical (or technological), then don’t force yourself to learn how to do it. You have to be able to play to your strengths. And it’s safe to say that technology might not be one of them. So hire a service such as Level 5 to take it on for you. When you bring in people to handle the key areas that cause you stress, you’re free to focus on your strengths.

Hire Technical Expertise — Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash

Choose The Easy Option

So this one is a bit obvious, but when you know that you aren’t too good at a certain thing, then find a simple solution for it. Whether that’s the most user-friendly piece of technology or software that you can find, or a product that comes with a service or some kind of assistance, sometimes choosing the easier option is going to be the best solution for you.

Hire An Employee

And when you know that you’re really useless at certain things, like web design, marketing, or finance, then there’s always an employee for that. If you want your business to grow, then hiring your first employee will always be on the horizon. So it could be the perfect time for you to think about bringing on your first member of staff.

Create A Partnership

Finally, when you really do know that you’re not that skilled at anything technical or business related, maybe you don’t want to deal with any of the business or strategic side of things yourself? As with many creatives, you may want to take the creative lead and leave everything else to somewhere who is more capable. By joining forces with an entrepreneur or strategic business person and letting them take the technical lead, you can still keep control in the company but only ever focus on the creative side of things.

How to Inject Some Creativity Into Your Business

April 13, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Being creative might seem like a vague thing to apply to your business, but when you apply creative thinking to business processes, you tend to find some of the most interesting and innovative ideas. That’s why you should work hard to make your business more creative on a day to day basis than it is right now. If you don’t get this right, you’ll soon find that your business becomes tired and boring without any fresh ideas.

Encourage Trial and Error

Trial and error has a bad reputation because to some people it can seem like you’re just trying things for the sake of trying them, without putting in much thought. But that’s not the way it has to be. Sometimes, trying new things can mean having to take risks and see how the turn out. You can then learn from the experience and aim to try something better next time around.

Change the Scenery

A change of scenery could be exactly what you and your team need. It’s easy to get too comfortable and too complacent in your office. So you could shake things up by changing the seating plan or maybe even moving to a new office entirely. It could be the spark you need to start doing things differently inside your business.

Make Your Marketing a Department a More Creative Place

Marketing is one of the areas that can get very stiff and boring pretty quickly if you’re not careful. You shouldn’t let that happen though and you can get this right by looking for ways to engage people in a more informal and at ease kind of way. Be creative and present your company as a laid back and relatable entity. Places like HIVE Digital Strategy can help you with being more creative with your marketing too.

Business Creativity

Create a Diverse Team of People Inside Your Company

Having lots of people from a range of different backgrounds could be exactly what your business requires. After all, when you have people from different backgrounds, you find that they bring different ideas and perspectives to your business as well. It’s something that’s very positive and should work well for you over the years ahead, as long as you combine this with real talent.

Don’t Make People Work to the Clock Quite So Much

When people feel under pressure to get things done at a certain time, they will feel rushed too. It’s very hard to be properly creative when you’re always looking at the clock and worrying about whether you’ll have all your work done by the deadline. You should relax things and give everyone in your team the chance to work on creative and out of the box ideas.

A little creative in your business will certainly take it a long way. You can’t underestimate the impact this will have in the long-term. By empowering your people and encouraging them to approach each new challenge with creativity and bravery, you will put your company in a much better position to find success.

Looking After Your Soul: Personal Development As A Solopreneur

March 29, 2018 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

Solopreneur - Looking After Your Soul Many Americans are self-employed, and as the Small Business Administration has found, there are over two million people working as solopreneurs here in California alone. With flexible working patterns, the chance to build something long lasting and rewarding for yourself, and that amazing feeling of being free from the grind of a dead end 9 to 5 job all on offer, it’s no wonder that self-employment is so popular. But there are some downsides to not working in a team, too, and that means you need to take the time for your own personal development.

Get learning

When you work in a traditional team or office environment, opportunities for learning and continuing professional development are often handed to you on a plate. But when you’re working for yourself, you need to arrange learning for yourself. For that reason, it’s wise to hunt out courses which suit your needs, and this could cover anything from basic bookkeeping to improved networking skills. Your local small business networking group may be able to help you find providers, while a nearby college may run courses perfect for your needs.

Become spiritual

Whether you’re religious or not, it’s a good idea to spend some time becoming more spiritual. Being spiritual encompasses everything from feeling more purposeful to having to the mental tools to process business events more quickly and efficiently, and as a result of this increased self-reflection, you’re likely to get through more tasks and save company time. Spirituality can be a way to do everything from reflecting on how well you are running your business to managing stress in the workplace, and as Inc.com reports, it’s endorsed by leading lights like Stanford business professor Scotty McLennan – so you’re in good company!

Speak to others

The clue is in the name: personal development is something that you largely do by yourself. But that doesn’t mean you can’t speak to others to help develop your own self, and sometimes it’s vital to do this to make sure you get it right. By reaching out to other entrepreneurs in your network, you can swap tips on how you can build yourselves up mentally. That way, you can use your peers to filter out ineffective or useless personal development ideas.

As an entrepreneur, spending time working on yourself and improving your sense of self-worth is vital. By investing time in making yourself into a better person, you will find yourself increasingly knowledgeable about yourself and more able to manage life’s issues. No matter how much personal development you’ve done before, it’s definitely worth starting today.

Laser cutting