Category: Operations

Efficiency is everything when it comes to building and growing a business. It not only saves time, money, and effort, it improves results across the border. Although this blog has already touched upon how to build better business efficiency by enhancing ergonomics, communications and data entry, employee productivity, weekly goals, and qualifying clients better, there is still much more you can do to improve your company’s productivity and cost-efficiency.

Here are 4 more ways to improve efficiency in a business by leveraging the power of technology.

1. Use smart mobile devices more.

If you still use old fashioned ways of communicating in an office from post-it notes to clipboards, walkie-talkies, and bulletin boards, you haven’t fully embraced the marvelous flexibility of mobile devices. Smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices help staff communicate inside the office and when they are out in the field.

Suppose, for example, a salesperson needs to make a presentation to a client at their office. Their job is to introduce your company’s latest machine and explain why it’s the perfect solution to the customer’s problem.

How are they going to describe the machine, assuming it’s not a common item?

They could do the following things:

• Try and paint a verbal picture of what the machine looks like and how it works. (Vague)
• Carry an armful of visual aids and prompts into the meeting and set up a display. (Awkward)
• Carry in a laptop, hook it up, and offer a power point presentation. (Better)
• Carry in a tablet and share graphics, videos, flow diagrams, etc. (Perfect)

In short, using today’s slimmer, more portable, more versatile technology, which is loaded to the teeth with productivity apps will increase your company’s bottom line. It will make everything easier, from interoffice communication to remote collaboration while on the road.

2. Use customized software.

Perhaps, you run a specialized business that requires a lot of manual effort, manpower, and coordination. While you’ve looked for software that can help you automate some of your processes, you haven’t quite found anything that works for you. The solution to finding the perfect software is to build it from scratch. Just go on to a job board where you can find international freelancer workers and hire a developer. You can outsource to get exactly what you need for a much lower price than simply calling up a local software developer in your city. With the right software, you will then be able to automate many tedious processes that might be taking many hours of your employee’s time and slowing your business down.

3. Use printed labels to make things easier to find.

Labeling things helps employees and customers find them faster. In an office, for example, when you label a shelf or cabinet, everyone knows where to look for certain files, and when you clearly label your office files, it’s easier to find the one you’re looking for. Or on the shop floor, if you label the merchandise on the racks, shelves, or other displays, it’s easier for customers to find what they need.

While, you can, of course, simply handwrite your labels, it’s much more professional to you use a QuickLabel printer. This way people don’t have to squint over unintelligible scribbles, and you can add color, nice fonts and graphics to a label to make it look much more eye-catching.

4. Update your computer infrastructure.

Smart mobile devices are only a small technological upgrade you can make. You can do even more impressive things like ditch your expensive, antiquated on-premise computer infrastructure and migrate to cloud computing.

Here are 7 good reasons why migrating your business to cloud computing might just massively boost your business productivity and profits.

• 1. You will slash your capital expenses by spending far less on your operational costs. This will free up your money to spend on revenue-generating tasks like marketing and sales.
• 2. You will free up your office space by getting rid of your in-house computer infrastructure. Besides your server, you can also get rid of any supportive equipment like emergency power generators, special air-conditioning devices, backup devices, etc.
• 3. You will stop spending money on hiring IT consultants or dedicated IT employees because the cloud provider will take care of installations, upgrades, patches, and so on.
• 4. You will start using the latest applications in your business through software as a service (SaaS) which allows you to rent software that you might not be able to afford otherwise.
• 5. You will get much more data storage capacity, bandwidth, and other system resources when you need them.
• 6. You will only pay for what you use. During the slow seasons, you can drop power and functionality you don’t need; then during the busy season, you can ramp things up again.
• 7. You can scale up your business rapidly without having to buy a whole new computer infrastructure to handle your exponential growth.

If you think short-term, a technological upgrade may sound like you are shelling out more money than makes you feel comfortable. However, if you look at things from the long-term perspective, you will be cutting costs and increasing profits. Still, if you think a complete technological makeover is overwhelming, then just add one technological upgrade at a time.

Article Contributed by Dan Radak

When you are a new business owner, the easiest thing to make is a mistake. While mistakes are expected in every new startup, some of them should be avoided at all costs. Not only that they can ruin your morale, but serious mistakes at the beginning of your career can influence the later steps a fresh startup owner takes. This is why we have prepared an insight in most common mistakes fresh entrepreneurs do in an attempt to save you from a bad business start.

Having a detailed plan

It goes without saying that every new startup launcher has a certain business plan. However, plans can differ significantly and the sheer fact that you have a plan does not have to mean anything if that agenda is lousy. So, while you are dreaming about your future business, take some time to think hard beforehand and write down everything that you expect from your business during its first year. After a few brainstorming sessions, you are supposed to produce several sheets of paper with your ideas, strategies and business goals. Now it is time to start narrowing down your focus and divide the details into several consecutive stages. When this phase is finished, you can say that you have a detailed plan with all the relevant aspects for your business.

Strict approach to finances

When a young entrepreneur makes a lot of money overnight, it might end up as a complete disaster. Although everybody who decides to start a business wants to come up with profits as soon as possible, it is better for a young person not to succeed too fast. If you are struggling to make money, you will be much more careful when it comes to spending and investing. Therefore, before you discover how you behave when you have a lot of money, hire a financial advisor and keep them informed on everything you are doing. In addition, it would be smart to start using a budget-tracking app, to have all your personal expenses in one place. Only a reasonable approach to your personal and business finances will make you a successful entrepreneur. See how the billionaire founder of Ikea saves money, in a piece published by The Guardian.

Marketing hitting the target

Most young entrepreneurs think that they can cope with all the business challenges all by themselves. While being self-assured is generally considered a desired trait for a businessperson, it can also have numerous negative effects. Even if you are highly skillful and educated in your primary profession, you cannot cover other business aspects with equal efficiency. For instance, you can never master all the marketing skills necessary for the modern business world. The demands are simply too complex for a single startup owner to deal with them. To make sure that your marketing hits the target and yields profits, try to outsource the marketing services, especially if you also have to deal with ecommerce features. However, be careful when you are choosing the associates, since working with ecommerce professionals, such as Magento web design experts, is much different than hiring amateurs from developing countries. Take care of the quality of the service and not only the cost.

All three major mistakes described in this piece can direct your business to a dead end street. Although a failure is only one stop on your way to success, it is much less stressful to make the business work properly from the very beginning. So, avoid these mistakes and keep your business growing slowly but steadily, until you have passed through all the stages from your business plan.

About the Author

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with ten 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.

No matter how big or small your business there can always be ways to improve your performance. It’s also quite important to be constantly looking for new ways to innovate and help set your business aside from the rest – after all, the business world is always highly competitive.

If you’re a business manager or feel your company could do with some improvements, in this post you can find a few examples you may wish to consider implementing in your operations. When you do, you’re potentially opening your company up to a world of benefits.

Boost Employee Productivity

Your staff are essentially the lifeblood of your company and without them doing a good job, your business will suffer. With this in mind then there’s a few things you can do to boost their productivity:

• Offer them more flexible working hours, so they can complete their tasks in a fashion that suits them
• Give them a variety of different tasks to work on rather than the same jobs over and over
• Boost morale by showing them you appreciate their efforts and provide training to help them develop their skillsets

Invest in Newer Technologies

Along with your staff, the equipment they’re using whether it’s their computers or machinery plays a big part in your success. Old, slow and outdated tech can be frustrating both for your employees and potentially for your customers; the simple step here is to invest in newer options and reap the benefits of faster performance.

Carry Out a SWOT Analysis

On a larger company scale, a great tip is to carry out a SWOT analysisof each section of your business. The testimonies of your staff will help to inform you on what’s working well and what areas you can focus on, in order to then improve.

Use Professional Help

Lastly, it’s also worth looking into external support – be it for helping out with the administrative side of things, or even the more complex roles such as stock management or even finance. For example, if you were a business involved in Logistics, talking to an invoice specialist like Touch Financial could be beneficial for your administrative process. There are a number of expert firms who can assist you with the more difficult aspects of running a business; whatever preferences you have though, seeking extra help can be highly beneficial.

So, as aforementioned, make sure you give some of these a try and look to improve your business’ performance in as many was as you can.

Through the industrial era, computer era, jet era and web era; retail stores have stood the test of time. Some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs made it on the Forbes rich list through retailing their top-quality products. Read their success stories and you’ll learn a lot about crafting your own niche, employee productivity, pricing strategies, promotional methods, and other tactics needed to operate a successful retail business.

But rarely, the entrepreneurial stories of these highly successful individuals will include a mention of the tools they’ve used to reach greater heights. Retail businesses of all sizes and ages can access the same tools to increase sales and productivity. So to help you out, I’ve compiled a list of the must-have tools you need to run a successful retail business.

1. POS (point of sale) software

POS software will help you process payments, manage employees, configure products, and run reports. However, every POS solution is different, and only the best ones are backed by top of the line modern technology. Options like mStream and similar solutions are tailor made for retail businesses as they simplify the processes involved in setting up products, integrating payments, and running reports in real time. Additionally, such top POS solutions come with all hardware and software components as well as the flexibility of integration.

2. Traffic Counter

This valuable device will help in improving store traffic, advertising, and sales conversion ratios. They’re helpful in determining a store’s closing ratio, which can then be used to determine your sales conversions. The data provided by traffic counters will help you generate the steps needed to improve sales conversions. Also, retail traffic counters help in scheduling of sales staff as you’re able to identify peak traffic periods. Lastly, you can determine the impact of different marketing promotions on store traffic.

3. Shipping Software

Shipping is perhaps one of the most complex areas of retailing. A reliable shipping software like Shipstation can give you tremendous flexibility over order routing. Instead of doing everything in-house using manual methods, which would consume a significant amount of your resources and time, you can configure a software to handle the shipping and logistics aspect of your business. Even with a 3PL, you can pass orders through a third-party software. Smartphone apps are available for most shipping software, so you’ll no longer be tied to a computer.

4. Beacons

It’s time you give serious consideration to this technology. Solutions like Gimbal are now enabling retailers to engage in-store customers through targeted, real time sales offers delivered directly to their smartphones. Beacon technology combines beacons and geo-fences with the hardware, analytics and software to give you actionable insights on how you can serve customers better and get the most out of their location presence. Beacons are also transforming the way retailers send push notifications.

5. EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)

An Electronic Data Interchange tool is necessary to transfer purchase orders (normally created by a point of sale software) to a supplier through electronic means. With this technology, you can reduce errors, so you can avoid a situation where you’re apologizing to customers for delivering a wrong product. The POS software will create purchase orders based on transaction history and then these could be sent electronically to suppliers, without you needing to enter a single item number.

Make sure to learn what’s involved in each tool and how they’re useful. Then leverage them to streamline your retail store operations.

You wouldn’t normally buy a pre-owned or handed down equipment for your business, but sometimes the savings you can amass is too hard to refuse.

In truth, purchasing something that’s pre-owned can be a good investment along with the savings. There’s splendour in buying one that still performs like it’s brand new. How’s that for a smart decision?

More than the condition of the equipment, you might still be suspicious and uncomfortable with the idea of buying a pre-own, but through a PPSR search, like with Infotrack, you’ll be able to search the security interests over the personal property, so the risk of purchasing illegitimate tools/facilities is avoided. It also allows individual grantor search, which identify whether an individual has any registrations over their personal property.

PPSR makes it easier not only to track the history of an equipment, facility or any personal property, it also lets you see the owner’s reputation.  Does your business or staff really need the latest multi-function printer, or can an older version office printer does the same printing, scanning and fax functionality? Is it really going to hurt your corporate reputation if your business equipment is pre-owned?

That’s asking the real question.

Pre-owned equipment is generally less expensive. Obviously, even a 1-week old equipment is considered pre-owned and will have a lesser cost, although it is virtually still new, there are a lot of reasonable reasons to buy pre-owned equipment for your business.

The major one is that it’s a lot less expensive than purchasing new. Keep in mind that the secondary market is well-established, and that equipment is normally has a warranty, and that you can save as much as 75% over new equipment. It’s worth remembering that just like a car, new equipment declines in market value as soon as you purchase it. And there’s typically more room to negotiate a better price with pre-owned equipment than new.

Used equipment is environmentally friendly. Looking at a marketing perspective, possibly the only thing better than saving capital is saving our dear environment. As equipment resellers pointed out, purchasing pre-owned or recycled electronics expressively reduces tech waste that comprises potentially hazardous metals and chemicals. A hefty portion of this waste will end up unlawfully dumped in many developing countries, according to The Guardian report. Buying pre-owned equipment automatically gives you green cred by keeping possibly dangerous chemicals or materials out of the waste stream and inspiring the secondary market of pre-owned and recycled equipment. And with the ability to utilise PPSR search, you’ll know that you’re buying good equipment while helping the environment.

So, when is buying a new equipment a better choice? When you can allocate the funds for it, that’s when buying a new equipment is a better choice. New equipment normally includes features that can make you more efficient, or provides a better fit with client systems, or just has the new technology you require for your production. As said, if your budget can handle it, and if your business really needs it, it is a good idea to buy new. Moreover, at some point you can always recover the investment by selling it to another business.