Liberate your staff and grow your business with a good business management solution

Liberate your staff and grow your business with a good business management solution
It’s time to shake hands with and introduce yourself to business management software solution when your business is being held back by limited disparate systems.
As businesses grow, so the processes develop. Numbers of forms needed to be completed and filed grow, spreadsheets used to track customer details come under increasing strain, stock needs grow, and manpower becomes stretched which could potentially hinder your growth or even tarnish customer relationships as service standards begin to dwindle.
The business grows, the more the systems start to creak. Bits of paper go missing, the person who understands how the formula in the spreadsheet works is off sick, and an order gets lost.

The people who have made the business the success whether it is through their fantastic sales acumen, or their vigour in chasing up overdue invoices, are sidelined into spending hours each day just making sure the systems are ticking over in order for the business to keep running. And what happens if god forbid something happens to that person? The system in place is likely to fall apart.
A small business may at this stage start thinking about making an investment in dedicated admin staff, which to all extensive purposes doesn’t solve the problem which is really a communication issue. Information and processes need to flow between and across people and repetition needs to be avoided.

Alternatively a small business could invest into a business management solution that has been designed specifically to meet their needs, overcome current difficulties that have been recognised and that they may not even be aware of, improve overall efficiency and productivity and in long term support growth and reduce costs.

Business management solutions that have been designed specifically for your business by software experts who have studied the way you work from the bottom up and know exactly what you want it to do – liberate your staff from mundane, labour intensive tasks.

Those people who were beginning to flag, who were complaining that they didn't have time to do their job properly, who had stopped thriving in the workplace, suddenly find that those dull aspects of their job - tasks that, in fact, weren’t really part of their job - have gone. They have hours in the day to do the role they were hired to do.

And, with the right system, as your business grows your systems grow with it, enabling you to add or amend functionality according to your business needs.

The potential savings from business management solutions are huge. But they won’t replace your staff, they’ll just help you to get the best from them.

Original Article: Fenner Pearson, managing director, Meantime IT, SME Web

Cheap Internet has hidden secondary costs for SMEs

Cheap Internet services may initially save you money, but they can be detrimental to your business in the long term.

Peter Gradwell, Managing Director of award-winning Internet services provider Gradwell, explores the pros and cons of taking up a cheap internet service provider.

Businesses may be doing everything they can to cut their costs and maximise their profits but unfortunately, if you’re considering cutting the cost of your business Internet provision by switching to a cheap Internet service, you may find yourself counting the cost and not the saving.

Ofcom recently published a report that investigated the most popular broadband products and revealed that despite customers being sold faster connections, due to an increase of more than 25% in the average fixed-line residential broadband speed, many providers were unable to deliver their advertised speed to customers.

These providers may say they can provide fast speeds in your area, but they will really slow you down, as many cheap Internet services can only manage as little as 1-2MB, which is simply not good enough for today’s business broadband user. If you’ve signed up for a long contract with these cheap, slow Internet providers, you’ll be regretting it when you can’t get the speed you need. Therefore if your business relies on speedy Internet, choose a business Internet service with speeds that really match your requirements.

If, like many businesses, your company relies on the sending and receiving of considerably large amounts of data each month, you may come unstuck with a cheap Internet service as they often impose unrealistically low download limits and charge you heavily if you go over your agreed usage. A business broadband user often needs to have capacity for downloads that can grow with their business, so you should consider how much information you currently need and how much more you will require in the future.

You should also ask whether your cheap broadband provider offers the kind of service that can support high quality voice telephony. If you experience patchy quality with frequent drops in service, then you should consider changing your business broadband provider to one that offers a stable, reliable service for all your VoIP telephony requirements, as a poor reception is not suitable for customer contact or client calls.

When you choose to sign up to a cheap Internet service you may discover to your cost that their service is down more than it’s up and running. To most businesses these days, downtime means a serious dent in the profits, so always choose a business broadband provider with the very best connection stability.

When you choose a cheap Internet service, you often have to pay a premium price to call their customer service; when you do finally reach one of their operatives, they may be based outside the UK and English may not be their first language.
Before signing up for any business broadband package, check that all of the above areas have been satisfactorily discussed. If your business depends upon excellent communication and connectivity, choosing a cheap Internet service for your company could end up costing you much more than you save.

Source: SME Web

Think twice before you make the switch! Cheaper isn’t always the solution!

SMEs save with Group Purchasing- Why pay more when you can pay less!

“United we stand, divided we fall”

This may be the inspiration behind group purchasing which gives small businesses the collective buying power to compete against their larger counterparts as they can take advantage of the economies of scale which they can so readily exploit. Keeping costs low is essential for small businesses, so any strategy that reduces operations costs should be explored and group purchasing is one such option.

Small businesses use a wide variety of products and services in the course of their operations, everything from office supplies and equipment to information technology, payroll processing, and employee benefits administration. Unfortunately small firms often pay more for such goods and services than large companies because of a lack of volume or scale. But there is a way small business owners can enjoy the same kinds of cost savings their big brethren do on essential goods and services: by participating in group purchasing.

Group purchasing is the collective participation of many different individuals or small businesses in the purchase of products or services, thus enabling participants to benefit from discounted or group rates. While it isn’t new, group purchasing has generally been under utilised by small businesses in the United States.

This may be starting to change, however, with the emergence of a number of different online consumer-group buying services, such as GroupOn and LivingSocial. These services primarily offer localised deals and discounts on items such as restaurant meals, retail store purchases, and event tickets.

If you don’t want to commit to group purchasing co-ops or membership-based associations, you can still apply the principles of collective buying by bartering with other businesses. Through a bartering agreement, your business can offer its products and services at a discount, or in exchange for, the goods or services offered by another local business.

There are many group purchasing groups within the UK developed to meet the needs of particular industries including Spiral, Beacon, Aliaxis and PPG Premier Purchasing Group.

SMEs acquiring more customers with Twitter and Facebook

Small and midsize companies are figuring out how they can use social media to gain customers. Small businesses are acquiring more customers using Twitter and Facebook than large companies, even though large companies spend more money on so-called “social marketing.” This is recording to research carried out by Nielsen Co.

To ensure your small business doesn’t miss out get started by setting up a Twitter account, find your customers and ask them what they want. It’s that simple.

Small businesses know there customers which helps when it comes to your tweets and knowing what to say. You can also undergo market research by soliciting feedback about a new offering or design that you are considering.

For some small business owners, traditional advertising channels such as television, radio and newspapers are prohibitively expensive.
For others, the web is a medium more in tune with their potential customers. It provides an opportunity for small businesses to advertise on a level playing field with their larger counterparts.

While large companies usually try to accumulate a lot of Twitter followers, small businesses tend to be smarter and use the service to build relationships with people. A Twitter relationship means that you reply to all tweets to you, and you encourage your followers to send you private direct mail or “DM” messages whenever they want.

Another advantage small companies have over larger ones is that they can usually respond to Tweets more quickly. Larger companies normally have to go through layers of management to make a public comment, but smaller companies can respond on Twitter within a day or so, which means if something needs fixing, you can get to it faster than your larger competition.

You can also let some of your firm’s personality shine through. You don’t have to sound generic and overly professional like the big guys. Be friendly and personal. Research shows that the Twitter world is conversation-obsessed. Consumers spend almost half of their tweets on conversational messages.

Build up your relationships with your customers on twitter and when they are happy with your business, products and service they are sure to tweet their followers about it and potentially retweet your business tweets which will bolster word of mouth communications for your business.

SMEs Resolutely Behind VOIP… but why?

A recent survey from IBISWORLD revealed that VOIP services are among the top IT technologies with an expansion of 20.1% in spite of an overall decreased growth rate in the IT sector.

“VOIP is an acronym for Voice Over Internet Protocol, or in more common terms phone service over the Internet. If you have a reasonable quality Internet connection you can get phone service delivered through your Internet connection instead of from your local phone company.”

VOIP Info

Colin Duffy chief executive of UK VOIP provider, Voipfone, cited the advent of the technology in 2008 as bringing advanced telephony features to SMEs, which were previously only available to big companies for tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Mass market penetration is now being achieved not just with large enterprises but with companies with as little as 20 employees. This rise in demand with SMEs was borne out by a recent survey carried out by Star which revealed that, amongst those businesses with 100 employees or less, 41% have already deployed VoIP technology since it was first introduced in the late 1990’s.

Increasingly, organisations require telephony systems which are not only cost effective but can help to deliver better customer services and enhance productivity. This is where VoIP can really deliver over traditional PBX systems. Beyond what is perhaps the most compelling reason, cheaper calls, there are a number of factors driving the demand.

As VoIP is based on software rather than hardware, it can be easier to maintain, upgrade and scale up or down. With IP telephony, SMEs can also add functionality and flexibility to their communications to deliver an enhanced level of customer service, such as directly connecting web users with customer support staff and using automated functions such as call forwarding and three-way calling, all of which are rapidly becoming essential tools in our 24/7/365 world.

VoIP is also the route to more advanced applications that converge together, much like the usually touted Unified Communications philosophy. What this actually means is that we are seeing facilities like ‘presence’, mobility solutions and rich-media conferencing converging voice, data, application and video technologies and services.

Sources: SME Web; Techwatch; VOIP Info

Facebook Questions Supplies Huge Opportunities for SMEs

Facebook has begun the rollout of its new feature, Facebook Questions. While online Question and Answer services are not exactly new, Facebook’s community of 500 million users adds a new dynamic to the space and could potentially create an exciting opportunity for small businesses.

“Ask Question” is now a feature of the Publisher, meaning Facebook places it on the same level as status updates, posting photos and sharing links. It’s also integrated on Facebook Pages, where a new “Questions” tab lets users ask questions directly on the Page that can be answered by Page admins or fans.

A Facebook blog post explained the service: “Millions of people ask their friends questions on Facebook every day. What new music should I listen to? Where’s the best sushi place in town? How do I learn to play the piano? With this new application, you can get a broader set of answers and learn valuable information from people knowledgeable on a range of topics.”

Some of the features that Questions will include will offer an opportunity to SMEs. For example, you will be able to create public polls within Questions. This means that SMEs will be able to get feedback on their products and services very quickly, and more importantly for free.

Another feature that will have a definite impact on SMEs is that you will be able to respond to questions about your business with your business name. In other words, if you have created a page for your business, ‘John’s Café’ you will be able to answer questions with your page profile. This allows anyone who comes across the question to visit your businesses page rather than your personal profile.

Also when you pose a question it can be easily spread to whom you like. If you tag it with a certain topic category, the question will be posed to all those users who have expressed an interest in the topic.

Facebook questions is only available to a limited number of users at this time but
Facebook developers are committed to making it available to all users as quickly and proficiently as possible as they gain feedback from their beta testers.

Government to award 25% of IT contracts to SMEs

The coalition government has set a policy objective of placing 25% of government IT external expenditure with SME suppliers.

Achieving the scale of savings demanded by government requires moving from the status quo and deploying innovative ideas, products and services. While government appreciates that small and medium-sized enterprises, (SMEs), are best placed to provide that innovation, the barriers to using them are huge.

Blockers include: perceived risk of SMEs, complexity of UK interpretations of EU procurement rules, self interest from gatekeepers to preserve lucrative status quos, and an underlying belief that big is safe.

Aside from the government's self-imposed objective, there are a number of other key drivers that should prompt more support for SMEs:

•Looming job losses in the public sector may not be soaked up by large companies.
•SMEs are a vital part of the UK economy and employ 51% of those working in the private sector. They are also the key to innovative step-change savings and efficiencies.
•SMEs are disadvantaged in bidding for and securing government work by the structure of public sector procurement and the UK interpretations of EU procurement regulations. In the current IT supply chain to government, 70% of the revenue goes to just over a dozen large organisations - those gatekeepers often have the most to lose from innovation.
•There is an urgent need to create more jobs in the private sector.
•An effective mechanism for government to give contracts to SMEs (and become "anchor clients") would make step-change savings, create the new jobs, and provide customer references to help those SMEs to export, and help reduce the deficits for the Exchequer.

The coalition's policy objective of placing at least 25% of external government spending to SMEs is feasible in the IT marketplace and does not necessarily require changes to EU procurement legislation. It can be done if the public sector takes a creative approach, using the legislative requirements as a constraint rather than a driver for procurement.

David Chan, Computer Weekly

Hospitality or Bribery??? Bribery Act 2010

“Though the bribe be small, yet the fault is great.”
Edward Coke

The Bribery Act 2010 will soon come in to force but what does it mean for businesses?

The Bribery Act 2010 introduces controversial new corporate offences, which will add more weight to the increasing burden on prudent managers who are responsible for business planning. The Act has enormous importance from a practical, commercial point of view, in all sectors, whether public or private.

What does this mean? It means that it will now be an offence to bribe another person, or receive a bribe, including the mere offer to give a bribe, or a request for one.

A sensible starting point would be to:
•Identify areas of the business where bribery could be an issue, for example, in procurement or sales, where official permissions or consents are required. Look for warning signs. The risk is potentially higher where there is a foreign element, although a very recent police case in the Liverpool Crown Court highlights a potential problem with lavish corporate entertainment even in the domestic market.

•Consider corporate entertainment in particular, and consider some central monitoring of entertainment given and received.
An anti bribery policy should be written and circulated to all members of staff and make it part of the terms and conditions that they agree to adhere to.

Get prepared now and then once the Secretary of State’s guidance is published hopefully only a few changes will have to be made.

Adapted from Source: SME Web

Technology Adoption in SMEs

It has been claimed that the majority of IT spending by SMEs is on communication solutions.

The high spend and investment in communications technology is a result firms seeking to deliver faster and more reliable service to their customers.

Speaking to the SME Times, Dell director Satyen Vyas claimed that in addition to email technology, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management solutions are highly sought-after.

The question which overshadows SMEs investment in more formulised CRM is perhaps the potential for the process to become inhumanised which is perhaps what differentiates SMEs from their larger competitors.

There is the debate as to whether technology is being adopted by SMEs as a result of external or internal pressures, or whether they are taking preemptive actions ahead of their adverseries allowing them to achieve a competitively advantageous position.

Grandon and Pearson (2004) found external pressure to be a statistically significant determinant of technology (e-commerce) adoption by SMEs. Broadly stated, external pressure could include demands on technology adoption imposed by suppliers, trading partners, customers, competitors, and collaborators.

Likewise, competitive pressure has been found to be a strong determinant of the adoption of communication technology by SMEs (Premkumar & Roberts, 1999). Further, technology obsolescence, adoption of newer technological standards by the industry or business sector, and demand from customers or markets also serve as external influences on technology adoption.

New technology presents many opportunities to SMEs but there is evidence that many hurdles are still faced when it comes to technology adoption and that there is still a considerable number of SMEs that are adverse to the risk of embracing new innovative solutions.

Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship, Mar 2010 by Badrinarayanan, Vishag, West, Vicki L

To read more visit: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5424/is_201003/ai_n53505283/?tag=content;col1

SMEs missing out on funding opportunities in the UK

It is estimated the total value of support schemes available to UK business is £5 billion per year.

According to experts, it’s not just government grants that are not being taken advantage of but financial support from advisory, guidance and information services too.

The issue has been highlighted by North West accountancy firm, Hurst which has seen an increase in demand from businesses seeking alternative sources of funding and advice on grant applications.

Helen Besant-Roberts, partner at Hurst said:

“Lots of grants are set aside for specific business types for example IT, construction and creative media. There are also lots of grants available for innovation and research as well as to help new businesses to grow. Some funding is aimed at business owners to help develop skills, but they often find that looking at the different schemes awarded by many different awarding bodies can be daunting at first.

“Even if you know what funding to apply for, you need to make sure you apply for it in the right way. I work with a lot of charities and businesses who feel they are often wasting valuable time filling in grant application forms incorrectly and need guidance in getting the most out of the application process.”

Helen, who specialises in providing compliance and advisory services added:

“Typically you can get business grants and other awards for anything from £500 to £1 million and you might be able to apply for multiple schemes or grants. There are also a lot of interest free loans available for capital investment, particularly in energy efficient assets. The application process for different types of funding can vary greatly and some are more onerous than others. Before applying for a grant, loan or award, you should prepare a business plan with forecasts outlining how much money is needed, what it is needed for, and the benefits that will be obtained. We would always recommend that you get advice before making an application.”

Jan O’Connor, manager at Wood Street Mission, a charity that provides help to families in the Manchester and Salford area said:

“As a charity there are several funding options available but it’s easy to get bogged down in the rigorous application processes. We need to secure funding to cover all our costs so it can be immensely frustrating having to invest so much time and effort completing complex forms rather than doing hands on work for the charity.”

The government provides a number of financial products for helping small and medium businesses, including Grants for Business Investment and Research & Development, the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme, and small loans. In addition, there are many other organisations that offer funding for certain types of business investment and growth.

Examples of funding available for charities include awards from charitable foundations, such as the Lloyds TSB Foundation, Awards for All, the Hedley Foundation, plus grants from organisations such as the Big Lottery and Futurebuilders.

Latest from the SME WEB!!!

How are SMEs Getting Finance? Aldermore present the solution as they gain a competitive foothold

SMEs continue to have issues acquiring loan finance from banks. Now tired of receiving the cold shoulder from the UK’s largest banking institutions they are beginning to seek finance via other sources and means.

Invoice financing is now in vogue. It’s used to free up cash and working capital by borrowing against the business’s unpaid invoices.

Aldermore, the new British bank, says that the number of SMEs using invoice financing is soaring as small companies look for new ways to deal with the SME funding crisis.

British lenders are this week expected to continue to announce profits in spite of concerns over levels of lending to SMEs.

HSBC Holdings announced £7bn in profit for the first half of 2010 yesterday, with about a billion of this coming from its UK operations. They boldly announced that they intend to increase the pay and bonuses given to their staff, though one can only suppose who may receive them in actuality.
HSBC also admitted that despite their mammoth windfall as the UK climbs out of the recession they are have not increased overall lending to firms in the past 12 months.

Business loan applications are down 20% in the first half of 2010 and the stock of outstanding loans to SMEs was fractionally down because many core customers to HSBC are paying down debt.

Aldermore says that small businesses are increasingly frustrated with the inability of some of the big UK banks to meet their demands for funding.

The banks could be missing a trick as invoice generation is a sure indication that the firms in question remain viable.

Ian Wilkins, Managing Director at Aldermore’s invoice finance arm, comments:

“Some SMEs want to create some headroom in case of a fall in orders or a possible double-dip. Other businesses want to release cash to fund expansion.”

“They all realise that they will not be able to rely on their bank to give them the kind of overdraft facility that they have used in the past. Banks have to reserve capital against overdraft facilities even if they are not being used.”

“Small companies remember the lessons of the last recession and they are keen not to be let down at a crucial time by their bank.”

“I would love to say that the surge in invoice finance business that we are seeing is entirely down to our own efforts but we are definitely helped by the fact that other banks are giving SMEs the cold shoulder.”

Adapted from Source : http://www.smeweb.com/finance/news/how-are-smes-getting-finance-081003.html

Digital Marketing isn’t just for the Big Players

Digital marketing offers huge potential for SMEs looking to increase their range and communicate with the audience who matters most to them. With the consumers now beginning to look beyond the recession, it is an ideal time for SME business owner to consider the options available to them.

There is such a great variety of online tools available that SMEs can choose the one suited to their needs to increase their impact on and within their chosen market.

It doesn’t have to be costly, which is a common misconception, but more about selecting the right campaign and tool, identifying clear objectives and deciphering how you can measure and acquire a true ROI.

Digital marketing is more accountable and measurable than its traditional counterpart and as a result, the return is more easily recognised. It is ideally used to complement existing marketing activities, supporting the strength of campaigns and fortifying a stance, position or message.

The key is to ensure that all activity is tailored to the company’s exact requirements: whether it’s a campaign based around key search terms on Google, an affiliate campaign promoting the business on relevant websites, or a campaign around a social network like Facebook.

Audiences can be more readily targeted with the use of digital marketing which is ideal for SMEs. They can reach out directly to interested consumers, in the long term reducing cost and improving efficiency of their marketing activities.

Digital marketing is also an ideal way for SMEs to create two way communications and interactions with their target market and existing customers. The humanisation of businesses has never been easier or of borne as much significance to the sales cycle and CRM.

The challenge for most SMEs looking to enter the world of digital marketing and utilise the available tools is where to start.

I would suggest with your website and from there it is up to the individual.
Google Adwords could be explored in order drive the optimum amount of traffic to your website.
The world of Social Media is continuously growing and SMEs would be hasty not to at least explore the many well established sites that now exist.

Digital media is rapidly becoming a vital element of the marketing communications mix.

With so much advice and support available SMEs should take advantage of what has been tried and tested by the bigger players in the market, delve into, test and find their place within the digital marketing revolution.

The Value Of Super Fast Fibre Broadband for SMEs

Fibre broadband is not just about speed though it is the selling point which has been fundamentally highlighted.
It offers considerable benefits in terms of reliability, scalability and longevity. Fibre is inherently less susceptible to damp or interference, making it more reliable with less risk of business downtime.

Any company that wants to make the most of the new technological services that are available such as cloud computing, HD videoconferencing, voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology, realtime backup or just sending and receiving large files, will want the fastest connection possible to make sure their business runs smoothly.
If not, its existing infrastructure could be in danger of slowing down and struggling to cope.

Enthusiasm for these services is widespread. Research carried out by Easynet Connect showed that over half of UK SMEs plan to switch their core applications to cloud computing systems in the next year, compared with the 22 per cent that had planned to in 2008. As the dedication to these bandwidth-hungry applications grows, so too will the need to think seriously about investing in fibre.

The beauty of fibre is that it can also be upgraded at a later stage. Even though today people may think of 100Mbps as fast, future requirements may well demand even faster connections which could be provided over the same fibre connection. One day we could even be talking about connections in gigabits as standard, rather than megabits.

Fibre not only meets business needs today, but can provide a truly future-proof service which can easily match the increasing need for business bandwidth.

According to research carried out by US consultants Booz & Co., European countries are lagging behind on fibre based broadband networks. They pronounce that next generation broadband networks promise much faster transfer of information, services, and benefits throughout a national economy, promoting overall growth, productivity, and prosperity. Without investment in fibre broadband networks businesses will only be able to reap meagre benefits from the advances being made in today’s information society.

According to OECD estimates, by 2011 broadband communication will generate one-third of the productivity gains made by highly developed nations.
Not only do we need to consider our own investment in fibre broadband but we need to encourage and support investment by the providers within the UK and Ireland and any government support that may be employed as it evidently bears influence on the prosperity of our economy in the long term.

SME’s the centre of attention

Small businesses have been cited as the backbone of the Irish economy, and the government are seemingly making every concerted effort to at least be seen to take an interest in their vitality and future prosperity.

Though we are seemingly out of the recession small businesses continue to struggle to survival the credit squeeze.

Four businesses went bust every day in April of this year according to a InsolvencyJournal.ie; a website run by Dublin insolvency firm, Kavanagh Fennell. Though there are more positive outlooks and turnarounds on the horizon figures are still similar to those recorded for the past two years.

The government is now urging banks to start lending to firms having come under criticism from Labour Party's Eamon Gilmore; though the sentiment is widely felt.

A survey from Isme, which represents small and medium sized enterprises, showed over half of their members were refused credit in the last three months.

The government has now signed off on a €12 billion plan with AIB and Bank of Ireland within which they have pledged to make €6 billion available by the end of 2011.

Minister for Enterprise, Batt O’Keeffe is now set to seek cabinat approval for a State backed loan guarantee scheme for small businesses before the summer recess of the Dail next month.
It’s aimed at getting credit flowing for small businesses who have been rejected by the main banks.

“I am particularly anxious that viable businesses in new high-growth sectors and markets have access to proper credit facilities so that they can generate jobs and compete on a level playing field with firms in other countries that have access to similar loan guarantee schemes,” the Minister said.

It’s about time the government made an effort to support what is seen as the backbone of the Irish economy. The Irish banking system got us in to a lot of difficulty, the government took on the worst of their loans and it’s now indisputably time they played their part in turning the economy around!

Small firms “reluctance to recruit” may also be tackled once they are given the finances to keep their businesses afloat.

As it was justly put by Eamon Gilmore, "Having got the commitment from the taxpayer, the Government should now in no uncertain terms be telling the banks that they have to lend to small and medium-sized businesses - that's why they got the money."