POST CATEGORY : Management

When Outsourcing Goes Wrong: What Not To Do

Outsourcing is undeniably a useful option for small and growing businesses. As the main operator at your business, you can’t possibly handle every task and role. You might be a one-man or one-woman show, but quickly you’ll realize that certain tasks are taking too much of your time without delivering the needed ROI. Enter outsourcing to solve all your business challenges.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing can be the best business decision you’ve ever made, or it can be the worst. The provider you choose and the way you implement their services will be the deciding factor in how effective outsourcing is for your business.…

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How to Support Data-Driven Decision Making in Your Organization

Today’s IoT-driven landscape requires you to make data-driven decisions quicker than ever before. While companies have been collecting customer data for some decades, they’ve only recently realized that insights from big data can help them make predictions and identify trends that lead to long-term success.

Data-driven decision making

However, cultivating such a data-driven mindset is an obstacle for several organizations, particularly the ones that are just beginning to unlock and analyze the data accessible to them. In such enterprises, top managers shrug their shoulders when they’re asked to connect the dots from multiple data sources to make decisions that will optimize their company’s growth.…

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3 Top Tips to Help Contractors and Freelancers Succeed

By 2020 it’s expected that one in two UK and US citizens will be working on a freelance basis. The competition for work among freelancers and startups is increasing by the day.

Freelancer working with laptop

And if trends during the last economic downturn are anything to go by and the UK’s exit from the EU does bring about an economic lull, it is likely that we’ll see an even more rapid increase in freelancers.

Now more than ever the solopreneur and independent contractor has to have an edge. Part of this will come from doing grinding administrative work as efficiently as possible.

Here are three top tips to ensure you succeed:

1.

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6 Ways to Grow Your Business and Not Break Your Bank Account

There are a number of ways to market your business. But they can cost a great deal of money that you don’t have yet. If you’re looking for a way to grow your business and get your name out there inexpensively, you need some skill and effort. The following are tips on how to grow your business without breaking the bank.

Growing your business

Free Publishing

You don’t need to spend a penny to give customers what they want. Publishing content that pertains to your business and entices customers can be done without shelling out any money through newsletters, blogs and emails. But in order to do this wisely, you need to come out with current material that is useful to the consumer.…

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How to Optimize Safety Stock to Improve Supply Chain Performance

Business developments can be hard to predict; for instance, a customer could place an unexpectedly large order for one of your products. That should be great news for you–but only if you’re prepared to fill the order on time. That’s where safety stock comes in.

Warehouse worker managing safety stock

Forecasting precisely how much inventory you’ll need is always a difficult proposition; safety stock, by acting as “buffer inventory,” allows businesses to build up some margin for error. The downside, of course, is that holding inventory–let alone extra inventory–is expensive.

Some studies have pegged it at 20–40 percent of the cost of stocked merchandise. Making matters worse: That’s an ongoing, recurring cost, not a one-off purchase.…

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What to Do When an Employee Has a Health Issue at Work

Emergencies are not predictable. That’s their nature. They happen when least expected, and they wreck havoc on everything they come into contact with. If you’re the owner of a small business or you’re a manager, emergencies are your least favorite kind of surprise. They set you back, they lose you employees, they lose you time, and they lose you money.

Employee sickness funny cartoon

If you’re managing a small business and you have employees who are having health issues that either happen at work or interfere with work being able to get done, here are things you can do:

Encourage Time Off

Health issues arise when somebody is stressed.…

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Looking To Sell Your Small Business? Here Are Things You Need to Do

If you’re a typical entrepreneur, you have a habit of jumping from one idea and project to the next. When you find something that works and you build a successful business out of it, you’re already looking for the next thing to sink your teeth into. You get easily bored and can’t do the same thing for too long. That’s the reason you’re in the line of work you’re in. Entrepreneurs innovate. They don’t sit on successes of the past. They create the success of the future.

Sell a business

If you’re an entrepreneur anxious to move onto the next project, but you have to offload the current one, it’s not always easy.…

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How to Choose the Perfect Company Car

When you have the responsibility for buying a car for your company, the choice can be even more difficult than when you buy one for personal use. Whether you run your own small business or are in charge of an extensive fleet of vehicles for a larger company, the basic elements are still the same – you need to get good value for money and you have to make sure the vehicle will be up to the task.

Businesswoman and her business car

Business professionals can find it difficult to access reliable advice on how to choose the perfect company car, simply because manufacturers and sellers can make confusing claims, which might not always be able to be taken at face value.…

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4 Ways to Make a Small Business Feel Like a Big Business

Many people dream of owning small businesses. Unfortunately, not all of them realize that small companies often have a hard time competing with larger businesses. Perhaps that isn’t such a serious concern, since you can use these four tips to make a small business feel like a big one.

Hipster workspace

Build a Professional Website

It doesn’t matter whether you own a farm or a travel agency, your company needs a professional website that gives visitors valuable information about your business, products, and services. If you don’t have a website, a lot of consumers will assume that you’ve gone out of business. Despite this, about 60 percent of very small businesses don’t have websites.…

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Freelancing Tips: Building Long-Term Relationships with Your Clients

So, you’ve decided to be a freelancer, and you’ve successfully acquired your first set of clients. You were able to negotiate the payment rate that you want, and you’ve worked on a contract and terms of conditions that detail the responsibilities of both parties. Give yourself a pat on the back, you’re well on the way to independence.

Freelancer working on a cafe

Of course, things don’t stop at this point. Successfully closing a deal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be plain sailing for you from here on in. You’re just about to get on with some real work, so it would be good to learn a few pointers on how you can forge long-term relationships with the people you’ll be working with.…

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