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In 2010, the world experienced an unemployment rate that was beyond anything anyone had seen before. For a rate that tends to stay between 5-8%, it hit 12% and beyond. For the past five years, individuals and corporations have been playing catch up without much luck. It’s no wonder that people are turning to entrepreneurship in their time of need. As the boss, they can make the decisions that will benefit them the most. And, there is no reason to listen to stuffy politicians in suits. Anyone that wants to become a self-made person can as long as they enter the right sector. Below are the industries which are ripe for budding businesspersons.

Street Vendors

People like to look at numbers, so here are a few. The industry has grown by almost 4% since 2010. In total, the street food vendor sector is now a billion dollar industry, $1.7 billion to be exact. Clearly, there is more room for growth and for a businessman or woman to take advantage. What is even more lucrative are the social factors that surround the business. Not only is it an easy company to start, but it is also becoming more popular in 2017. People don’t have the time to cook, or to do anything, to be honest. As a result, they have no qualms eating off the street.

Ethnic Supermarket

Think about this for a second. How many people gravitate towards their nationality when they go abroad? The answer is almost everyone that has ever stepped foot on a plane. There is nothing wrong with experiencing a sense of nationality because it’s normal. What’s not normal is the fact that businesspersons aren’t taking exploiting it to their benefit. The world is a big place thanks to globalisation. As a result, thousands of different ethnicities all live under one roof, metaphorically. These people will always want to shop at places which cater to their culture. There is a reason that Asian corner shops have been so popular in the UK for decades.

By 玄史生 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Salon/Hairdresser

Yes, there are hundreds of salons in a single town. Still, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a lucrative startup. The great thing about a hairdresser company is that the owner will always get traffic. Unless the entire area goes bald overnight, people will need a trim. The important thing is that entrepreneurs understand how they will stand out from the crowd. A promotion is often a good option, as is a job well done because it inspires customer loyalty. A well-run, professional outfit is essential, which is why a feature like Phorest makes sense. Even though it’s a salon, people don’t want a mani-pedi from a cowboy. That is unless dressing up as a cowboy is a gimmick.

Photo credit: Jane Coffey

App Development

Apps take off because people want a quick and easy way to shop or communicate. WhatsApp is the prime example. The public was getting tired of messaging by text, so the market was open to change. The instant messaging service came along and took the world by storm. Nowadays, it’s one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet. As long as the concept is solid, the app will get traction. And, developing one is pretty easy.

The process? Get in touch with a developer and pitch them the idea. They should have it up and running within weeks.

If you are like every other business owner across the world – you’ll be constantly on the lookout for ways in which you can improve. There will be no end to your quest in searching for the ways to take your business to the next level. That is a great thing! Your business needs that mentality to get anywhere.

But where should you look for ways to take your business up a notch? Well, start at dragging up the foundation to put yourself on a higher level. With any good business the foundation is computing. Get your computers refreshed, optimized and updated to give yourself the best chance for success. Your company needs ways to work, after all. But what next? Well you gear up your computers and equip your staff with the tools that they need to succeed. That comes in the form of software. Thanks to what seems like a never ending list of developing talent, there is a software package out there to meet your business needs. What a world we live in!

What package should you get started with? Well – any business that is a business is making some kind of money, even if it isn’t breaking even just yet. This means that accounting software is important. Freshbooks and Quickbooks are two packages that come as close to automating finances as you’re going to get right now. They rely on basic data entry (what you’ve earned today and what you have spent today) to calculate financial records, but can also help you claim expenses such as fuel spent on travel. They also help the legal side of your business thanks to the assistance provided with tax returns. No matter the size of your business, this type of accounting software can help you out! Financial software packages aren’t just limited to accounting software, no, contract management packages exist such as Exari’s professional suite of contract management software. No matter your financial needs, there will be a piece of software out there that can help you and your business.

There’s no point in succeeding in business if you lose your work because of a powercut or outage. Sensible business owners back their work up – so nothing stops them from succeeding. Backing up work doesn’t need to involve software as you can back up to the network and external hard-drives. Mozy is a subscription software that automatically backs up your workplaces computers to ensure that no disaster impacts your business. Google Drive also offers remote storage with remote working and collaboration possibilities. For dedicated collaboration, you won’t have to look further than Vyew. Vyew allows you host sessions over the internet so that discussion can take place and work can be done on a remote basis. This is essential if you want to go global with your business as your workers can collaborate on work from anywhere in the world.

If you are serious about business, you need to be serious about communications. There is no better communication tool than Slack, which positions itself as a virtual office allowing you to communicate instantly across the world with your team.

 

Businesses are constantly embracing digital technology in new and intuitive ways. Some companies are now taking the step to develop their own software either to help their staff or help their customers. Examples of uses include training programmes for staff, loyalty card apps for clients and electronic catalogues for recording stock. If you’re looking to develop your own business software, here are the steps you should take.

Research the market

Is there a real need for your software? Better still, is there already a programme out there than you can be adopting rather than building your own? These are the questions that you should be first asking yourself before developing software. Research online and read reviews of already existing software. Offer clients and customers a survey to find out if they think it would be an effective move to make.

Establish a budget

Developing software isn’t cheap – unless you’ve got the coding know-how to do it yourself, and even then you may have to hire team members and testers. Create a budget that you’re willing to spend. When you approach developers with your idea, you can then find out how feasible your idea is. Developers may be able to negotiate tweaks with you so that it meets your financial plan.

Design your software

It’s important to design your software before approaching developers or doing it yourself. Write down all the features you want and draw out how you’d like it to look. Look at other similar programmes to get ideas.

Start developing

If you’re developing the programme yourself, you’ll need to assemble a team to help you (otherwise it could take a long time to build). Use management software and tools to make the process more organised and give your team more power – this guide What is DevOps? discusses the importance of giving your team ownership. You’ll also need to hire a testing team and get to grips with testing software.

If you’re paying a development team to do it for you, make sure that you keep in contact throughout the development process in case they need to discuss any issues or much needed tweaks along the way.

Putting your software to use

Once your programme is built and fully tested, it’s then time to put it into action. If the programme is for staff use, you’ll need to get to grips with it first and then ideally write up a guide on how to operate it so that your staff can then get trained up on it.

If the software is for clients, you’ll need to market it. Let all your existing clients know about it via email, over social media and in person. Keep promoting it so that all your clients use it and highlight how it will make their lives easier (a digital menu app for a takeaway restaurant might also give clients loyalty points that could make future meals cheaper).

Over the last couple of decades, tech has moved forwards in remarkable ways. Nowadays, we have the power to find near limitless information from our pockets. And, it’s all designed to be incredibly user-friendly. So, anyone can use it. Along with these sorts of advancements, the tech world has made a big splash for businesses, too. It’s never been easier to kit your business out with gear. But, it’s important that you make the right moves. To help you out, this post will be going through some of the easiest areas to change in your business, simply by using technology to clear the way. Now, all you have to do is start investing.

Within your business, you will be able to find loads of areas to improve. Often times, this will mainly involve clever self-auditing techniques. You have to be able to see where you could be saving time or money. Of course, there are some areas that are easy to see. And, below you’ll find examples of our of these areas; to give you the inspiration you need to find the slightly harder ones.

Any business that is using paper for a lot of their work in the modern age needs to make some changes. Paper is expensive. And, getting rid of it can be a pain. So, it’s best to minimise your use of it as much as possible. Doing this can be achieved nice and easily with computers, though. There are loads of services out there that allow you to store your documents online. And, there are software applications that can be used to make this easier. This is all well and good; but, it leaves all of your older paper-data with no home. Thankfully, there are companies that can help you with this issue. Document scanning and storage companies have popped up everywhere since cloud storage options become viable. This gives you the opportunity to match your old file systems with your new ones. And, have access to all of your documents from anywhere in the world. Doing this sort of job in-house will take hundreds of man hours and will likely be more expensive that using someone else to do it for you.

• Security

Next, you need to start thinking about the security in your business. There are loads of physical and digital threats that can be helped with technology. If you have an office or other physical premises; it’s important to make sure that you have the right tools to secure it. Having digital locks, which use key cards or fobs limits the risk that a member of the public will get their hands on a key. And, a good amount of area covered by CCTV can make a big difference. Next, you have to think about your internet connection. As a business, you will no doubt have a substantial router to power your network. Along with this, you should also have a physical firewall to avert threats before they ever make it onto your network.

• Efficiency/collaboration

Speed is one of the biggest benefits that technology can bring. So, as a business, you should be utilizing everything you can to make sure that everything is running nice and smoothly. One of the best ways to do this is by limiting the amount of time your employees have to be sharing data and passing around paper. Services like Office 365 and GSuite allow you to achieve this goal, without having to put in any effort at all. These systems allow your users to collaborate on the same files, at the same time. And, they’re incredibly affordable. The way that these systems store your data limits the needs to have on-site servers. It gives you staff access to their files from anywhere in the World. But, best of all; you don’t need an IT technician to set it all up for you.

• Computers

There’s no point in improving the software that your staff members use, though; if their computers aren’t good enough to run it. Unfortunately, the world of computers moves very fast. This leaves companies in a bad position. Computers are usually very expensive. And, buying the as they go out of date is a very costly procedure. So, most companies can’t afford the expense. Thankfully, this is easily resolved with the help of a computer rental agreement. Loads of computer manufacturers, like Dell and HP, allow their business customers to borrow computers from them. This will give you the chance to have your machines upgraded regularly. And, it won’t cost a fortune on maintenance.

The Benefits

The benefits to something like this can be huge. For one, you will be saving a lot of money. Thankfully, once you have all of these things in place; they cost very little or nothing at all to keep running. Of course, you do have to deal with the initial investment, though. This will usually be worth it for most companies. And, if you don’t do it now; you’ll probably have to do it in the future. But, this can help you with more than just money. Space is a big factor for a lot of small businesses. As you grow, it can be hard to make sure that you have enough room for new employees. Having paper or other unnecessary things taking up space will only hinder your progress when it comes to getting bigger.

Everyone should be aware of the environment. It affects everyone. And, humans have already had a major impact. Of course, this doesn’t mean that most people will go out and grab pickets to start protesting. But, for some reason, care for the environment is becoming more and more fashionable. And, businesses have to be aware of this. People won’t be willing to buy things from a business that does nothing to help it’s environmental impact. Getting rid of paper in your business will do a great deal to help your impact. And, if it comes to it; people will be happy to see that you’re at least doing something.

Hopefully, this will give you the inspiration you need to start building your company into a techy haven. In the future, you will rely on tech to help you get a lot of your work done. As a bigger business, it will be impossible to avoid using things like this. So, it’s best to get yourself kitted out early. So, you won’t have to make change when it’s harder for your employees to adapt.

Marketing is a hugely important part of any business, and often this means that it takes up a lot of the internal resources. Chances are, a good proportion of your budget goes towards the marketing, and this means that it is probably somewhere where you want to get the most bang for your buck. Fortunately, there are many ways that you can reduce the costs of your marketing, and this is likely to have some great ongoing benefits for the rest of your business. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can cut the costs of marketing today.

Get It Right The First Time

If you look at where marketing money is usually wasted, it is often the same old story. More often than not, people overspend on their marketing simply because they fail to get it right the first (or even second or third) time around. Clearly, if you want to spend less, you need to make fewer mistakes to begin with, so make this your first mission towards cutting your marketing costs. To ensure you get it right the first time, you might want to think about the customer target, what it is they are likely to respond to well, and what your efforts should be directed towards most of all. This will help you to get the marketing in the best position possible for the future.

Save On Content

A lot of different content goes into any marketing campaign, and if you are looking to make the whole process cheaper you will want to make sure that you are saving on this content as well as possible. This might mean that you need to use a stock photo instead of an image which has royalties behind it that need paying. It might mean creating content yourself, such as the written side of it, or it could be that you need to think about other inventive ways of finding cheap or free content to use. Do this, and it will make a noticeable difference to the overall costs of your marketing.

Consider Outsourcing

Sometimes it is necessary to give the whole project to a third party to take care of for you. Outsourcing is usually considerably cheaper than producing the same content in-house, and you might even find that it saves you time and energy as well. If you do think you want to outsource your marketing, then you will want to ensure that you communicate your desires as strongly as possible to the firm you are using. Otherwise, they might not end up producing exactly what you are looking for, and that can be a disastrous thing when you are looking to improve your business on the whole. Also ensure that you shop around for the best marketing firm you can find. It makes a considerable difference, and you want to use people that you feel you can genuinely trust if at all possible. With any luck, you will cut the costs of your marketing and also improve its quality.