Four steps to improving your business’s productivity

Four steps to improving your business’s productivity

You don’t have to be Alan Sugar to realise that business productivity has a huge impact on whether your company will be successful.

Although hard work is important, there are other ways to increase your productivity and some are easier than you’d think. Check out our four step guide and boost your profits today:

         Assess the situation: In order to increase productivity, you need to understand where your business is at the moment. Any measurement of efficiency should focus on goods and service produced from raw materials – check out this guide to measuring productivity if you need help.

2      Identify problematic areas: Don’t waste valuable time trying to fix something which is working well in a company-wide overhaul. Instead, identify the areas which will improve your bottom line.

Is it your outdated communications system or your clueless online strategy which is holding you back? Ask employees what they think is being done well and what could be improved. They will appreciate being asked for feedback and you will gain valuable insight.

3      Get training: New or even old employees who have not been properly trained can often impact negatively on company productivity. Whether they’re uncertain on how to prioritise work, use equipment or implement procedure, they could be holding their team back.

Make sure all new employees are adequately trained and schedule refresher courses for existing staff.

4      Outsource where it makes sense: Most small businesses could easily save money through outsourcing at least some tasks, at no risk to results.

Top of this list is payroll, which can be extremely time consuming – check out this guide to in-house vs. outsourced payroll, by UK company Moorepay, for help understanding whether or not their payroll services would work for you.

Similarly, it might pay to outsource IT and technical assistance – if your employees are wasting valuable time trying to handle something beyond their capabilities.

For more info on what services you can realistically outsource, without compromising your services, check out this blog post.

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How an ordinary person can use creativity in business.

Not everyone is gifted with Da Vinci’s ingenuity and Shakespeare’s imagination. You can, however, develop creative thinking techniques  with the right mind set. Ways to think outside the box innovate and challenge ideals which can make your business great again.  Encouraging creativity is a vital function of strong leadership in any organization. Creativity is increasing becoming a factor in job descriptions as people seek new business opportunities. 

One you assess the leadership characteristics of your staff you may have traditionally thought, integrity and intelligence were the most influential factors, however a recent survey from IBM’s 1500 employees revealed ‘creativity’ was ranked as the most prominent attribute. Creativity is not just important for developing new business opportunities but maximizing the potential of your staff. So how do you build skills in creativity and innovation?

1.       Ask Questions. Being inquisitive by asking the right questions can lead you to ideas that you never considered before.

2.       Read Up. Reading allows you to absorb various facts that might be beneficial in the future. It opens your mind to new dimensions and perspectives.

3.       Research. Look up previous approaches and solutions to the problems or issues at hand. This allows you to get an idea of how to build an approach of your own. Learn from the strengths and weaknesses of those before you.

4.       Develop Alternate Plans. If plan A does not seem right, you can always move to plan B. If it still seems mediocre, you do not have to worry since the letter Z is a long way ahead.

5.       Brainstorm. Sit with a group of people to generate different ideas about a problem at hand. Share thoughts, debate, and challenge each other in a constructive way.

6.       Listen. Consider other people’s thoughts and opinions. Their light bulbs might be brighter than yours. Never assume that people are superior and inferior.

7.       Criticize. Do not be afraid to speak your mind about something and share your criticisms. This helps point out the negative points in a discussion. Just see to it that you do it in a polite and professional manner.

8.       Appreciate. Be thankful for the criticisms you receive and also be appreciative of other people’s input.

9.       Rest. Do not force yourself to overthink when your mind is already tired. It helps to get some rest to give your brain a brake. Take a nap, exercise, or grab a bite to replenish your brain cells. Freeing your mind allows it to recharge and replenish its creative ability.

10.   Avoid Loyalty. Loyalty to a single idea can lead you into a dead end. Explore all options and avoid bias in supporting your original thoughts.

11.   Take Down Notes. Oral discussions are great but there might come a point wherein the information might bombard you. To avoid missing significant facts, jot down the things that you find essential. This allows you to look back and review your progress later on.

12.   Take Your Time. Ideation does not come in a snap. The best idea might not be realized right away. Forcing it to come out would only make it more difficult on your part. Take some time to give it a break and relax. There are plenty of instances wherein the best thoughts come at the moments wherein we expect them the least. For instance, the “Aha!” moment that you have been waiting for in the discussion room might hit you while you are already driving on the way home.

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Experiential inspiration: 5 essential strands in an experiential campaign

Marketing methodology is shaped around the way consumers process communications and respond to messages. TV adverts, direct mail, email marketing, SEO and print strategies are formulated based on the way the consumer thinks, behaves and makes decisions. We analyse human behaviour and psychology to generate campaign success in these areas. On the surface experiential marketing works a little differently; in reality it marries these different methodologies and can act as a catalyst for multi-channel success.
Experiential marketing can be used to support above and below the line techniques or be the icing on an integrated cake. When it comes to the customer, experiential marketing seeks to dictate and enhance the customer journey, accelerate the decision making process and bring the campaign directly to the target audience.

Creativity and customer awareness are key when planning an experiential campaign or event, but there also other essential strands you should consider during the planning stages. The following five campaign components can be seen as benefits of experiential marketing and also be used as key performance indicators.

1) Offers product experience

At the most basic level, many experiential campaigns take the product directly to the customer and ask them to experience it first-hand. This might be through innovative product launches and demonstrations or through more interactive events such as public competitions and social events. Whatever the tactic, this ensures the target market come into contact with the product and removes many of the common barriers to trying it for the first time.

2) Brand extension and differentiation

The type of experiential campaign helps to differentiate the product in the market place and can help shape the perceived brand persona in a number of ways. For example, a drinks company could work alongside a band to set up a one-off club night to promote a product launch and offer tickets to the event as competition prizes.  The type of band, the venue and the likely competition entrant all help to set the tone for the product and act as an extension of the brand, which is differentiated in the market by this approach.

3) Direct relationship building

Whether it’s signing up for an app that allows guests to guess the ingredients in a restaurant’s new menu as they work their way from course to course or leaving an email address in exchange for a carry away sample, experiential marketing offers plenty of opportunities for data capture.  Relationship building also becomes a more organic process as questions are more easily answered on site with products on hand to offer proof in the pudding.

4) A moment to remember

 The ability to build a positive product experience in advance of purchase gives brands the ability to shape the consumer’s view of them and their product from the off. Building a campaign around an experiential event and offering it up as a prize or an extra in relation to a product or service gives the consumer a reason to come into contact with it and ultimately, a moment to remember too.

5) Shareable subjects that generates social signals

In experiential marketing, the campaign often carries itself. Create an experience that consumers want to take part in, talk about and engage with and they will share it and positive information about your product for you. Good experiential marketing is a great support to other offline and online strategies because it encourages sharing, sharing that generates social signals, content, site visits and hopefully, purchases. With careful planning shareability can be built into your campaign and channel your target audience across platforms to purchase.

One example of a brand that continually implements effective experiential marketing campaigns is upmarket sandwich chain Pret A Manger. One particular experiential marketing campaign, which was the brainchild of experiential marketing firm Kommando Ltd, aimed to reinforce Pret A Manger’s core values of providing stylish, fresh and natural produce and service, by transporting customers to their new stores on Pret branded pedicabs, and dispensing free helium balloons, brownie samples, and money off coupons.

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What A Small Business Can Outsource Without Affecting Results

What A Small Business Can Outsource Without Affecting Results

At some point in your business ownership, you’ll need to start making decisions about what tasks to keep and what tasks to outsource. This becomes worrisome for business owners, because so many tasks that are outsourced can (and do) affect the quality of work, which also affects the quantity and quality of sales.

If you would like to know of some things you can outsource without risking your results, keep reading. Following are a few great ideas of some tasks you can relieve yourself of with no risk or worry.

Payroll

Payroll is number one on the list because it’s typically the most practical solution. How much time do you spend dealing with your company’s payroll that you could spend doing something more beneficial to raising your bottom line? Payroll has no ties to your company’s income, which means that you won’t risk affecting results.

Invest in a payroll company that will be able to take over your payroll needs at an affordable price. There are several companies that will work with your budget and any number of employees you have. They will also work on your standards. Perhaps you don’t want to lose total control, or maybe you feel secure enough to let the Payroll company handle every aspect, and all you want is a report to keep on file every cycle. The companies you can choose from will have all of these options available for you. All you have to do is decide. Contact a couple of companies and see if they seem right for you, searching for payroll companies brings back a wide selection of companies the likes of Moorepay.

Technical

IT work can be bothersome and time consuming, especially for those who don’t know how to handle it. Hire a professional IT company to handle your in-house IT needs, so that you can free up some time and resources and dedicate them to growing your business.

Accountant

If you spend too much time dealing with your books, hire a tax specialist or an accountant. The only job they will have is to keep track of your numbers, and file the papers for you during tax time. This is a fantastic resource to free up your numbers day. All you have to do is go over the report at the end to be sure that everything looks right.

Menial Tasks

Menial tasks include, but are not limited to:

·         Scheduling either your employees or your self. You can outsource this part of your life by hiring a virtual assistant that can be in charge of taking phone calls and inquiries that are related to scheduling. They can also be put in charge of creating an in-house schedule for your employees every week.

·         Research can also be outsourced. If you need any kind of information, hire a virtual assistant that specializes in research. They will be at your beck and call to provide any information you need, and they will be good at it.

·         Data entry of any kind should always be outsourced. It’s very straightforward and doesn't affect your company’s results at all. It’s also quite time consuming. Outsourcing data entry tasks could be the best option for you.

·         General administrative tasks could be outsourced as well. Hire an assistant that can do any administrative task for you, from checking, organizing, and responding to your e-mails to sending your thank you notes, get the menial tasks outsourced and see how much time you free up in your day to dedicate to more meaningful work.

Outsourcing can be extremely beneficial to any business owner, and it should be done. However, you should do it right. Be sure to outsource the right way by hiring a company or person to do a job that won’t be affecting your company’s results. 

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Driving Sales through Social Media.

Take a cross-section of SMEs, go to the top of the office, and ask a general question about the use of social media in their business.  Chances are a fair percentage will look slightly blank and then put on a brave face and stumble through the buzz words of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and the like but probe a little deeper and not many would be able to tell you how their companies use these tools and exactly what information is displayed and, even more worryingly, what their ROI is.  The Marketing lead may have convinced the Board that they must invest in these channels or be “left behind” their competitors in the race to develop and hold new customers.  Panic for the MD and magic words for the Marketing Director to squeeze cash out of the Board and invest in their favourite hobby and using the company’s time and money.

The compulsion to have a Facebook or Twitter presence is overwhelming and once done Sales Managers can bask in a satisfied glow that they are truly in the modern world.  But how much good does it bring to the bottom line – sales?  Little work has been done in this area precisely because it is so difficult to measure, like a lot of Marketing the Financial Director might say, looking for overheads to squeeze; (no, let’s not get into the debate as to whether Marketing is an overhead!)  Ultimately any, yes any, marketing activity must have indicators to demonstrate success, if not in direct sales then at least in building awareness of the product or service and, to use the old cliché, “creating a climate in which a sale can be made”.  Expecting people to trawl Facebook and instantly click to buy is naïve in the extreme but the power of social media cannot be denied and persistent brand awareness, even if subliminal, should be pursued even if it’s the potentially irritating advertising banner running down the side of your favourite web page.

Social layering and brand reinforcement is comforting to the customer supporting the decision to buy and confirming they have made the right choice.  All Marketers will be aware of the convincing research showing that given the choice on the supermarket shelves of either choosing a brand they recognise form the television or some unknown packaging they, will overwhelmingly reach for the former.

Don’t forget LinkedIn in your strategy, lovingly known as Facebook for people who work.  This is an increasingly important network for the business community and adds a whole different set of users to that of other social media sites and therefore maybe needs a separate strategy or marketing style.

So what is to be done?  Ensure your company has a strategy or time-bound plan for engaging with social media channels and this means measurable objectives, (not necessarily direct sales), with budgets and time-lines.  Monitor progress through customer and market research, look for the correlation between investment through social media and the sales figures, use the relatively cheap technology of tracking click-throughs from social media sites to your web site, and ask the difficult questions of your Marketing Director. If they are competent they will be one step ahead of you and doing this without prompting, providing the data, and more importantly, the analysis.

Attributed to James Barnett Managing Editor of Oceanic Business

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Greening Your Business.

“A Nation of Shopkeepers” is how Britain was once described by Napoleon in a remark intended to be disparaging and showing Britain was unfit for war against France.  The other side of the coin is a nation of entrepreneurs maybe with people willing to gamble on small scale ventures in the hope of making millions.  It is the entrepreneurs who create jobs and help drive the economy.  However in recent times creating a low carbon economy has become ever more important and business are looking for government to take a lead with tax breaks and incentives.

The UK has signed up to stretching carbon reduction targets by 2020 and this will only be achieved by businesses adopting ‘green’ practices and creating confidence in the market.  The recent ‘about turn’ from the UK government in relation to subsidies for solar power indicates confusion at the top as to how we achieve this and what level of investment can be expected from the taxpayer.

Coupled with this is the apparent unwillingness for the banks to lend to small businesses and adopting a perceived inflexible stance to SMEs in trouble.  The banks having been bailed out by the UK taxpayer are still taking a purely balance sheet led approach to lending decisions when they could be looking at the broader social and environmental impact that the SMEs could make.  Other investors who are willing to take the risks and view business with a more altruistic approach can make a huge difference.

Green’ entrepreneurs being faced with limited investment have a job to do in convincing the banks and investors of the value of their business approach and the sustainability of those businesses and investors should be reaching out to those businesses to provide them not only with capital but support advice and expertise.

Attributed to James Barnett Managing Editor of Oceanic Business

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The Evolution of Finance...Prosperity, Investment, Assest Management.

Attributed to James Barnett of Oceanic Business. 

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The Central Economics of the Magical Middle.

Younger companies which transition the effect from entrepreneurial ambitions to major enterprise play a significant role in developing our economies. The image data documents significant movement for these enterprises as employers which burden a large share of the responsibility for the GDP and workforce for America.

The US often celebrates the dynamism of its small business economy but rarely has the opportunity to publicize its fragility as an employer for over 54% of paid in employment in the US. 

Image Source – Good + IBM + IDC.   

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SMEs use of Social Media Expanding.

Social Media management for small business's emphasizes the multiple profiles which are now being used on major social networks. Facebook and Twitter account for almost 80% of the business activities with LinkedIn acquiring a reasonable 30% share. 

Interestingly the increase of blogging platforms from WordPress to Tumblr has reinforced the need for business to pursue a content marketing strategy in addition to social media generation. Online marketing can not fabricate a social presence without a genuine formation of an engaging and trustworthy message in support. 

Image Source – postling.com  

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Profile of the UK Private Sector.

The UK's private sector profile highlights London as an unsurprising leader in its contribution to employment, capital and enterprise. SMEs are featured as the backbone of the UK economy providing 59.1% of jobs The South East is the only other region to match the force of London's enterprise power my matching the 16% ratio. 

Image Source - Simply business ONS. 

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