Category: Operations

Covid has slowed down business for all kinds of companies. It can be incredibly frustrating to look at all of the unused space on which you are paying a mortgage or rent. The last thing you may think to do is spend any more money right now. 

When business inevitably opens up again, you need to be competitive. Here are some ways to improve your business now, while business may be slower than other times. 

Examine your Business Expenses

This is a pretty logical step to take during a slow time. If you aren’t busy making money, now is a good time to make sure you aren’t bleeding out money anywhere. Look into employee activity reports, office expenses, vehicles, and other areas of your business to find anywhere that money is being wasted.

Redesign Your Office

If you aren’t planning on doing away with the brick-and-mortar building altogether, it’s important that the office that reopens for business is designed well. This is a great chance to make changes to workspaces, ensure that your office design is in line with company values, and get rid of excess furniture that may be cluttering things up. A superb design company like Key Interiors can help you to revitalize your office more affordably than you may expect.

Look for New Business Opportunities

Covid has changed the world in some ways that are temporary and some that may be permanent. Flexible and adaptable businesses are much more likely to survive slow periods. 

Take the opportunity while Covid is slowing you down to examine how your business functions and see if there are any places for you to create a new product or develop a new service to meet changing needs. 

Can current factory equipment be repurposed to make masks, sanitizer, or other high-demand products? Can deep cleaning services or home workforce management be added to the services your company performs? 

Look for ways to expand your business to meet changing demands. 

Take Advantage of Slow Times

It’s very tempting to put your head in the sand as you wait for Covid-19 to pass and business to pick up, but by being creative and making use of your downtime, you can make improvements that will make your company more successful when business picks up.

Contracts, lawyers and collections agencies are a few places to turn when you have clients who won’t pay their invoices. Even better is to prevent the problem in the first place.

Companies are learning to create enhanced systems to keep everyone safe from Covid. Some of these systems including using products that can be introduced into the work environment and others are more procedural adjustments. Used in combination, they can create a work environment that’s secure to enter and work inside. 

Here are some Covid-Safe Systems worth employing in the workplace. 

• Entrance Procedures

When anyone enters the building, they need to go through appropriate Covid-Safe procedures to avoid endangering anyone on the premises.

Floor Decals and Signs

Use floor decals, signs, and people there to assist them to advise what to do. The addition of signs and floor indicators for where to stand or stop for inspection help to reinforce the procedures for people unfamiliar with them. 

Check for Temperature Abnormalities

It’s expected that anyone visiting an office shouldn’t have a temperature. Checking for this using a zero-contact temperature reader is the best idea. This can screen for people who should be asked to quarantine or avoid entering the building due to an elevated temperature reading.

Face Masks and More

Wearing a face mask and washing the hands before entering the main work area is necessary too. 

While a face mask might be removed when sitting in front of a plexiglass screen, otherwise wearing one helps to avoid the potential for spreading Covid to people nearby. 

Also, handwashing prevents accidentally spreading germs through surface contact. 

• Protective Screens Between Work Areas

One item of personal protective equipment that’s worth investing in is a protective screen. These are usually freestanding and create a visible separation between one space and another. 

These types of plexiglass screens are designed to prevent the free movement of air particles from one zone to the next. They can be used to separate one desk from another. Also, in a retail environment or a reception desk at an office, they can create useful separation between staff and visitors or shoppers. 

Additionally, they can also encourage better social distancing through a forced system, rather than relying on everyone remembering to do it. Just the presence of the screen is a visual reminder to keep distancing. 

• Separating Workspaces and Seating Areas

Part of social distancing means separating workspaces to place them further apart than they’d normally be.

Space Out the Desks

For some office environments, this will create a space restriction where the office isn’t large enough, but large office space is unaffordable.

Using remote working or working from home for certain employees – ideally as many as possible – can resolve this issue. This way, only the high priority staff who benefit from working from the office should do so. 

Reconfigure the Reception Area and Reconsider Meetings

For seating areas like in a reception or a staff meeting room, it’s preferable to intentionally space out the chairs to allow for greater social distancing. In this situation, face masks should be worn because the distance will be less than normal.

Also, companies running in-person meetings should avoid cramming people into a private office due to the risks of doing so. Use larger office spaces, speak outside, or switch to other means of communication.

By using the above-layered approach to creating a Covid-Safe work environment, anyone on the premises will be immeasurably safer than they would be otherwise. At a time when millions of Americans are being infected, companies cannot be too careful.

Getting paid is one of the most important elements of running a small business. Unfortunately, creating invoices and managing payments from customers can be complicated. That’s where Zoho Invoice comes in.

Zoho Invoice is an online invoicing and payments tool built for small businesses. But it’s designed to scale with users as they grow as well.

The tool has been serving small businesses since 2008, constantly updating with new features through the years. Recently, Zoho announced a series of updates aimed at helping small businesses through a challenging time.

Zoho Invoice Product Expert Harikrishna told Small Business Trends, “We’ve been focused on helping businesses making the transition from traditional to online. We really wanted to get ahead and support our customers, especially small businesses that have been most affected this year.”

Zoho Invoice

The invoicing and payments tool within the Zoho One suite, Zoho Invoice has been downloaded more than 100,000 times. And businesses across more than 160 countries have used it.

The tool is meant to be scalable. Freelancers can use it to send out simple invoices. And businesses can use it to automate various parts of the payments process. It’s popular with everyone from musicians to consultants to retail shops.

Features include invoicing, expense tracking, project billing, and even client communication. Basically everything revolves around the main goal of helping users get paid faster.

Invoicing

Zoho Invoice gives users the ability to customize their invoicing process. There are more than 15 invoice templates available. And you can customize each one further once you get started. Invoices are available for both goods and services. And you can set them up to send one time or to send on a recurring basis.

There are also custom project billing options for those who charge on an hourly or per-project basis. You can set up time sheets or even use timers within the Zoho app and customize the amount charged for time on each specific task.

Zoho also allows you to send estimates and collect payments at various parts of the process. For example, users can get an estimate approved, then send out an invoice for their initial retainer fee. Then they can later go back and collect payment for the rest once the project is complete. There are even options for setting up payment approvals to multiple stakeholders within a company. And of course, you can send these out via various channels like texts, email, or a customer portal so your clients can respond quickly.

Beyond Invoicing

Zoho Invoice users can also take advantage of features for managing expenses and other payments. There are options for tracking both billable and non-billable expenses. For example, you can include materials purchased for a project, mileage used to meet with clients, and even parking meter fees. The app even lets users scan receipts and mark up expenses by a given rate to bill clients accordingly.

Another unique feature is the customer portal. This gives end users all of their billing info, estimates, and statements in one place. They can also access contact info or chat with users right in the app. The whole experience is designed to make things as easy as possible for end users, so those sending invoices and estimates can get responses quickly.

Zoho Invoice Product Expert Sachin Nishil told Small Business Trends, “This lets customers chat directly with you within the portal. So if they have questions or want to discuss something, it simplifies that process for both sides.”

Payments

When it comes to payments, Zoho Invoice also offers plenty of customization. There are both global and local payment modes available. Options include direct deposit, credit and debit cards, cash, check, and various local platforms.

They’ve also added late and partial payment options. So if a client isn’t able to pay everything up front, they can still send what they have. And users can set up reminders or fees for late payments. This is also designed to save companies time on running down clients to collect on those invoices.

Nishil adds, “We often have customers say that the software saved me this many hours that I would have spent reminding customers about payments and doing other very simple tasks.”

Compliance

There are several compliance issues to contend with when it comes to payments and communication with customers. But Zoho Invoice has thought of that too. The tool offers country specific compliance options for businesses that operate in a specific area. And there’s a global edition for those who operate internationally. These are made with compliance standards like ISO 9001 and GDPR in mind.

The self service portal and invoicing options also offer a wide array of languages and currency options to fit the needs of global customers.

New Features

Zoho Invoice is constantly taking input from customers into account. So trends like mobile payments and quickly pivoting to online sales have already made an impact on the platform.

To facilitate easier invoice payments on mobile devices, Zoho recently unveiled QR codes.

Harikrishna says, “The percentage of payments being made on mobile devices is on the rise. So when you send invoices with this option, the end customers can just scan the QR code and pay right through mobile. We’re not even a month in with this feature and many of our customers are already noticing results.”

Zoho also recently added payment links. This feature is designed to help those who want to simplify the invoicing process even more. It may be especially relevant for companies that sell products directly to consumers after pivoting online this year.

Zoho Invoice Built to Grow With Your Small Business [Smallbiztrends]

Suppose you have been thinking of a mechanical lift that is accurately matched and can achieve task within the production, maintenance and other industrial settings. Then scissor lift is your go-to equipment. Operators, site managers and maintenance personnel utilize this machine to increase industrial productivity. And this is only achievable if the concerned machines are high quality scissor lifts with the recommended standard of size and weight. To understand the concept of this post, let’s quickly define critical terms.

Scissor Lift

This is the primary focus of this post, and then we would shed light on this term in the simplest way possible. A scissor lift is a machine designed to transport people and heavy-duty materials including equipment in a vertical direction, and get them to the spot where they are needed for further processes. Any industrial activity that requires a ladder can be done using a scissor lift. The main objective of this machine is to access areas that are difficult to reach when performing whatever task is required. The scissor lift varies in size and model; however, they perform the same industrial activities.

Material Handling

There is no one single description for the term material handling. However, there have been several attempts to define this term. Whenever a material is moved from one place to another may be in the distribution, production or workplace, then it’s material handling. On the other hand, it is much more than the movement of materials – it involves all the activities that facilitate the moving of materials until they get to the point of direct consumption. So, it ranges warehousing, storage, protection and the control of material throughout their lifespan.

How Scissor Lift Becomes a Safer Material Handling Solution

For every activity that goes on in a factory or warehouse, there is a high level of risk. This is because different technological tools and machine are used to perform individual task. And these machines are to be controlled by an experienced operator. Therefore, the need for balance and knowledge is highly required.

Individuals have a specific limit they can attain pertaining to height, but with a scissor lift, the limitation can be overcome. A number of jobs require scissor lifts, and it equally contributes to the hygienic and sanitary circumstances in the food and pharma industries. It handles production materials neatly and safely.

Scissor lift handles material safely, and with its flat top surface, the machine can carry heavy-weighted loads with prior balancing without any drop-off. It provides a safety harness or cable with a sturdy platform surrounded by a protective rail. The machine is developed to operate efficiently indoor, that’s more reason it is used within warehousing and building maintenance business niche. A scissor lift may not be able to stand the outdoor condition and challenging paths. As part of the basic safety rules, it is prohibited for scissor lift users or operators to move the machine at the same time, the platform is in the up position, especially with heavy loads.