POST CATEGORY : Economy & Environment

Building Up Your Construction Company

After laying the foundations, things are finally starting to place. Here’s what to do now your construction company has left the start-up stage behind.

Construction business

Staffing

Now that you are ready to expand your construction business, you may be considering hiring full or part-time assistants where previously you have used other contractors. This is a good choice early on since it is a risk to have staff members on your pay-roll when you aren’t assured of any large income. However, if you have taken on enough clients and are assured that you can handle the risks, taking on an employee can be a much cheaper source of labour than involving other contactors.…

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How to Make Your Small Business Marketing More Interesting

Marketing a small business is absolutely essential. Whereas larger companies tend to have already made a name for themselves, it’s usually the case that smaller companies have yet to achieve widespread recognition. Marketing your business is the best way of growing your company’s reputation and winning more customers.

Shop mascot

Keeping the Customers You Have

Before you go off hunting for new customers, it’s important to make sure you’re retaining the ones you already have. It’s actually much more cost-effective to keep existing customers than it is to try to gain new ones, so you should concentrate some of your efforts on improving and maintaining satisfaction and loyalty.…

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The Art of Business Investment: How to Establish a Warehouse and Viable Logistics Operation

There is a genuine sense of optimism around small businesses in the UK at present, and this positive sentiment is encouraging entrepreneurs to spend higher volumes of capital. This trend is prevalent across multiple areas of business, with small and medium-sized businesses forecast to spend an estimated £8 million more on technology alone this year than they did in 2013.

Warehouse solution

The technology spend is expected to increase across software, outsourcing and office equipment, especially in the fields of warehouse management and logistic operations. For small business owners that sell and distribute products directly to the consumer market, it is imperative that they invest in a viable infrastructure that can help them to minimise costs and maximise profitability over time.…

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Four Ways to Improve your Business’ Eco-friendliness

Offices contribute to over 3% of global emissions and cause 1.54 gigatons of greenhouse gases to escape into the atmosphere each year. In order to make positive changes to the environment, it’s imperative that businesses start taking eco-friendliness more seriously.

Reducing your carbon emissions won’t just help the environment, it will also reflect positively on your finances. Less emissions means less bills, which in turn leads to greater profits. In addition, as more consumers begin to acknowledge the importance of protecting the environment, it could lead to more customers.

If you’re looking for ways to improve eco-friendliness around your office, consider taking these four simple steps.…

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Leave A Lasting Impression After Speaking At Conferences

After pulling off a great conference, the impression should not end there, even after the Q&A session toward the end. The magic really happens when you engage each and every single person at the conference, I mean it will take up more of your time but it gives you the perfect opportunity to swoop in and pitch your business and brand! You have already managed to hopefully hook them whilst performing the presentation so why not take it that one step further? Not doing so simply means you are dropping the ball and missing out on great potential business.

Conference

Let’s go through some different ways to leave a real lasting impression with your audience!…

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So Where Will Pension Pots Go if Not Into Annuities?

Baker Tilly, a leading national provider of accounting and business services, explores options such as bricks and mortar for your pension pot after the Budget 2014 bombshell.

Now that the dust has begun to settle after George Osborne’s totally unexpected pension’s bombshell, people are beginning to take stock of the longer term ramifications. Not least amongst these is how the 420,000 Britons who usually buy some £14 billion worth of annuities every year are going to respond.

Old lady golfer

This is a vast amount of money and it is already quite clear that the annuity providers’ loss is going to be a major gain for certain other industries.…

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Economy, the Government and Your SMB: What to Expect This Year

The economic situation in this country and various government reforms are two factors that you have absolutely no control over as a business owner. One could make the argument that you can’t control your customers either, but that isn’t really true.

Marketing and customer service can always be controlled. Most of us would like to have as many customers as possible, but you can limit how many you do business with too, if you like.

Both the uncertain economy and government changes are the two big issues facing us in the coming months.

Business and economic outlook in 2014

Leading into 2014, there’s a glimmer of hope for the first time in years.…

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POS System Trend to Watch: Online Ordering

Point of sale is no longer the same as what it was several years ago. Point of sale – or POS – was referring to retail transaction only – customers bring goods, retail staff calculate the amount, issue a receipt and get paid for the amount. It was a terminal, rather than a system.

online ordering

Today, POS has transformed; as a small business owner, you need to be aware of the transformation and when you see fit, adopt the changes to give your business an edge over your competition.

POS today is all about integration, and it’s no longer taking care of transactions only.…

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How to Create Balance in Your Home Office

Working at home doesn’t mean that you need to work in a “homely” office. As home-based businesses become more and more popular, the home office environment becomes more important. Because you’re working from home, you need to make sure that the workspace is conducive to you getting work done. If your home office is set up like your living room or is actually located in the living room, forget about it.

work from home

Add An L-Shaped Desk

Using L-shaped desks is one way to organize your work space so that you have plenty of room to work, yet you aren’t taking up a lot of space.…

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Crowdsourcing: The Latest BIG Advantage for Small Businesses

You’ve heard of it.

You like the idea.

Maybe you’ve tried it.

Crowdsourcing, though simple to define, can have a very broad range of uses for your small business and for all of humanity in general.

Let’s kick this post off by taking a quick look at what it is and how it got started.

crowd sourcing

How crowdsourcing started and its impact on modern society

The term crowdsourcing is often used to describe the practise of outsourcing tasks on the Internet that you either can’t do, or simply don’t wanna do. In the hum-drum of of our current technological global society, it isn’t hard to see how this very classic term has evolved into what it is today.…

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