Category: Operations

Article Contributed By Alex Schnee

Knowing how to protect customers’ security is one of the biggest challenges that many companies face. When you want to build trust and you want to make clients feel as though you have their best interests at heart, taking care of their security concerns should be one of the main things you consider as a business. Building customer trust isn’t easy, but it’s essential to the success of your company and crucial decisions you choose to make moving forward.

Here are some things you might want to keep in mind as you look to improve security.

Customer information is hard-won

It takes time to build a relationship with customers and to discuss how best to keep the information that they have entrusted you with safe. It can sometimes take months or years for customers to feel like they want to give you some of their personal details. In order to earn that trust, you might have to market yourself correctly, be able to cite positive experiences with former customers, and show that you have some sort of security measure in place in order to win hesitant, potential customers over.

Keeping it safe

Once you have taken the time to build a relationship with clients, you want to make sure that you are planning on upholding that promise of keeping their valuable info stowed away. Fortunately, companies are now more aware than ever of hackers and have put together systems that can protect clients’ (and your) information. Virtual data rooms, complicated passwords, and multi-tiered security entry makes it much easier to feel comfortable about promising customers safety for their data.

Once it’s lost, it’s hard to get back

Several companies over the years have had issues with information hacking and trying to win back customer loyalty. While it is completely possible, it does take time and massive amounts of effort on the part of the company in order to restore previous feelings of trust. The best way to keep this from happening is to have advanced security measures in place in the beginning, but it’s never too late to make sure these extra measures are available later on, as well.

It’s cheaper to keep it safe

Compensation to customers for the loss of their information is often necessary when systems are hacked. This can often be incredibly expensive and can cost a company much more than it might have figured to begin with. Along with this, it is common to have lawsuits, little business coming in, and a more difficult time marketing to repeat clients. All this can end up costing a business a lot of money—and it might sometimes be impossible to recover if the information lost was invaluable to customers. Overall, the preventative measures tend to cost much less than if something goes wrong and data is hacked or lost.

Running a business is never easy, but it can be easier knowing you have some security measures in place and that your customers can rely on you to take care of them and their information. You’re more likely to build a business that clients can count on—and that you can feel comfortable promising their security.

Globalization tends to attract negative emotions especially from people who have a tendency to promote conspiracy theories. The mere mention of globalization evokes images of an evil corporation making inroads into an emerging economy to kill off the local businesses in order to gain a control of their market. Many people believe that globalization is a tool used by the world’s rich to perpetrate the cycle of income inequality.

However, when examined in an objective context, globalization could be a positive force. And globalization when merged with entrepreneurship could birth innovations for a more inclusive economic growth. Entrepreneurs are now starting to think globally in order to improve the odds of surviving locally.

Entrepreneurs have to source raw materials, services, and skills from other countries in order to get the best value for money. Some other entrepreneurs also find ways to sell their products and services to other countries where they could getter better prices because of the dynamics of demand and supply. The interconnectedness of today’s business in turn triggers a domino effect of wealth creation across national borders.

However, a number of hurdles must be crossed for globalization to reach its true potential as a powerful tool for wealth creation in the hands of entrepreneurs.

Some countries/companies are yet to embrace digital communications

Entrepreneurs in some countries have to contend with the fact that globalization is moving at snail speed because digital communications is yet to take a firm root in some places. Some companies still have corporate cultures built around paper communications with postal mails. Trying to build a business relationship with such companies could be somewhat stressful because postal mail between countries could take months to arrive. In some places, faxing documents is still in vogue and entrepreneurs in the west might have to relearn how fax works in order to send and receive documents.

Foreign exchange management is still somewhat expensive

If you are trying to do business with any form of international exposure, you’ll need to find a way to get your money in/out of your home/destination country. Many entrepreneurs doing business internationally still have to live with the exploitative fees that some traditional financial institutions charge to send or receive money from foreign countries. In fact, you can expect to pay between 10% to 20% in fees when sending or receiving money from some countries.

Apart from the exorbitant costs of foreign exchange transactions, some forex transactions often take a number of days to process; thereby adding to the opportunity cost of having cash at hand. Thankfully, services such as moneytransfercomparison.com can provide you with valuable information for choosing reliable international money transfer companies. In addition, entrepreneurs with foreign exposure can find ways to handle forex headwinds by employing best practices in foreign exchange management.

Shipping across international borders is still problematic

Entrepreneurs who are involved in the production/sales of physical goods might find it somewhat cumbersome to do business internationally because the shipping business is simply complicated. The cost of shipping goods to the some countries especially in parts of Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa is simply expensive. The worst part is that you can’t always pass on the shipping costs to the buyer because you’ll end up losing your competitive advantage on the price point.

 

Article Contributed by Sanjay Darji

As your business grows, your team expands. With the expansion of the team, the overall assets of your company also increase. In the process of growth, companies must have the resources to access all their asset details. It is also extremely important for the business to maintain their every asset because it also affects their employee efficiency.

Inventory management is an extremely time-consuming and tedious task. There is a higher chance of missing out on many things if the task is performed manually. For the benefit of employee efficiency and better work productivity, businesses have started using Asset Management Software which automates the process of asset tracking. Inventory management software has also been widely accepted by the businesses for smooth inventory process.

Here are the top benefits of automating asset tracking and inventory processes.

1. Save time:

An asset management software saves all your asset information, which means you can find any information regarding your assets in seconds. It gives all the maintenance details of your fixed assets, so you can plan your production/manufacturing on that particular day. You will not face any sudden breakdowns as you already know the upcoming dates of the maintenance.

Putting the inventory in a smooth workflow with inventory management system will help you a lot. First of all, it is obviously faster than managing it manually. Second, the system offers various shortcuts where you can save a lot of time with repetitive tasks.

2. Be more accurate:

The system will let you know various operational and maintenance dates of a particular asset. With the right date of maintenance, you can plan the whole production with higher accuracy.

As we all know, human errors are very common. On the hand, systems are very effective with predefined tasks. For a process like inventory management, automation is highly suggested because it will reduce the number of errors in minor operations. In inventory management, information like purchase date, release date, no. of items, weight, and other such small details can be noted down incorrectly at times. But by automating this task, you can finish it in few minutes with greater efficiency.

For most of the times, we use spreadsheets for such processes. Even though spreadsheets are easy to use and consume less time, there are still chances of a mess which creates unnecessary complications. A software, on the other hand, will directly generate accurate and precise reports with the help of automation.

3. Increase Accountability:

You will sense the difference when you automate your asset management process. This step will actually help you with your fixed assets accountability in following ways:

1. Asset management software automates the process of asset shifting from one place to another.
2. It helps you in changing requests or details from the asset manager, and smoothen the process.
3. It can track the movement of your assets and gives you the real status of the asset.

Same can be seen in the inventory process where you can leave the entire process to the software. All you need to do is check the important details. The same process would have been very tedious and less trustworthy if it was handled manually.

4. Set up a workflow:

When you automate the process of asset tracking and inventory, it will automatically set up a workflow. There will become a definite process where incoming documents will be generated quickly, no. of items will be calculated with precision, invoices and material incoming-outgoing papers will be generated quickly.

When it comes to inventory, there is a lot of paperwork to be handled. By simply using software for this purpose, can set up the whole workflow in an efficient way.

5. Save money:

Of course! By saving a lot of time in these processes, you’re obviously saving a lot of money. You may require a lot of staff to perform these activities manually. But, with the automation through software, you are effectively cutting down your cost.

You may not realise it immediately, but when you make a human error in asset tracking and inventory management, it can cost you in the long run. By using the software, you are saving a lot of money by eliminating these errors.

Effectively managing your data saves your time and cost, and that’s what the system does for you.

Bottom Line:

By using an asset management software and inventory management system, you can achieve success in two of the most important processes of your business. These systems will set up a workflow and all the tasks will be carried out more efficiently.

Author Bio:

Sanjay Darji works as a software analyst at SoftwareSuggest. His interests include asset management software, online CRM software, inventory management software, and. In his spare time, he likes to spend time with his son and catch up on the latest technologies. You can follow him on twitter at @sanjaydarji01.

Ah yes: your point-of-sale (POS) system. That piece of advanced technology that you spent a significant amount of money on, so that you could boost customer experience and increase sales. What’s not to love?

Well, unless you’ve checked to make sure (actually, double-check), then there’s a chance that your employees aren’t in love with your POS. In fact, they might fear, loathe and dread it. Here are the four reasons why:

1. It’s s-l-o-w.

A slow POS system turns what should be a rapid touch point into a tedious, awkward and frustrating process for customers; one that that makes employees — and the businesses and brands they represent — look bad, and stuck in the last century. Yes, retro is in, but old school is out. Slow POS systems are the latter. Heck, you might as well be using Internet Explorer (sorry, I’ll take that back — there’s no need to hit below the belt).

2. It’s unreliable.

Few things — actually, make that almost nothing — embarrasses customers more than having their transaction declined. But you know what? Nothing irritates or even infuriates them more than learning that this rejection was because a POS system didn’t want to work and play well with their perfectly valid payment card. Sadly, employees are on the front lines of this unhappiness, and make very easy targets.

3. It’s needlessly complex.

Customers shouldn’t feel as though they need to watch a how-to video in order to figure out which button is for checking and which is for savings, or how to leave a tip (presuming that they don’t talk themselves out of leaving one after such an uphill climb). Again, employees are on the front lines here, and even if they politely and professionally guide customers on what buttons to press, it’s not a pleasant experience — and hardly fits into the “omnichannel, seamless, gap-free end-to-end buying experience” that retailers promise, and that customers expect.

4. It’s not mobile.

Handing customers a POS system attached to a coiled wire is about as high-tech and impressive as going to the gas station, and getting a key with a hub cap attached (so that you can’t steal it — the key that is, not the hub cap). It’s easy to understand why employees and customers dislike twisting and turning to accommodate wires. It’s harder to understand why businesses use a wired POS system in the first place! Companies like Retail Management Solutions offer a secure, wireless solution that enables employees to turn any area into a payment hub — even outside at the curb (which is ideal for retailers like pharmacies).

The Bottom Line

Your POS system needs to be an ally in the fight for customer loyalty and increased sales — not an enemy. Don’t get misled by marketing hype or vendor promises. Speak with your employees to see if the “S” in POS experience doesn’t really stand for “sale”, but for another 4-letter s-word (yeah, that one). If so, then you know that upgrading to something better is a top priority.

Article Contributed by Dan Razak

Although getting a high-end equipment and hiring the right people helps make your business more productive, there is much more to it than these two aspects alone. The key to the success of your business lies in your startup’s work organization, which is not a small matter. In order to be able to unleash its full potential, your business needs to run like a well-oiled machine but to achieve this, every single cog needs to be in its place. With this in mind, here are three simple tips that can help improve your startup’s work organization significantly.

1.      Encourage employee autonomy

The first thing you need to realize if you want to expand your business is the fact that you won’t be able to micro-manage everything forever. Even with an assistant, you can’t be everywhere at the same time, which means that you should start trusting your employees. In the very first sentence of this article, we’ve mentioned the importance of hiring the right people for the job. Well, if you handpick and train your employees the right way, all that is left for you is to trust them.

They are more than capable handling tasks they are appointed with, which is why you need to encourage employee autonomy whenever you can. Of course, when it comes to major managerial issues, you still need to be the one calling all the shots.

2.      Outsource non-vital tasks

The next thing you should be focusing on is improving the productivity of your team in its core tasks. Here, we are usually talking about your production or sales team. At the end of the day, the aspect of your business that interests your clients the most is how good your product/service is. Because of this, you need to focus on it as much as possible and make it your priority.

Unfortunately, new entrepreneurs usually get exhausted by issues they are not as skilled in, such as IT, HR and customer support that they get barely any time or energy left for these core-departments. In order to remedy this situation, you might want to consider outsourcing. Moreover, you might even want to consider offshoring in order to get the highest quality of service at the most competitive prices. While India is one of the greatest outsourcing hubs in the world, outsourcing Jordan companies are currently on a steep rise, as well.

3.      Improve your communication channels

Finally, in order to make your business run as smoothly as possible, you need to work hard on improving your communication channels. This goes two ways. First, your management needs to become much more honest towards the staff and let them know exactly what is going on. Regardless of what some may believe, even people at entry-level jobs can benefit from seeing the bigger picture. Furthermore, you need to create an atmosphere in which people won’t be afraid to speak their minds. Sure, it may not be the best idea to fraternize with your employees but they shouldn’t be afraid of you either. This kind of situation can backfire in more than a few ways.

Conclusion

By working on these three issues alone, you stand to make your business much more automated. What a lot of people aren’t aware of is the fact that one of the most common reasons SMBs fail is the fact that the entrepreneur that started it simply burned out. Running a one-man show may currently seem as your only option but keep in mind that this usually isn’t a healthy business practice. By hiring others to relieve you of at least some of your duties, you will be able to allocate your talents, time and resources where they can be useful the most.

Author Bio

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.