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Posted

November 15, 2017

Is It Possible to Increase Profits Without Increasing Turnover?

At some point, most successful business owners will saturate their markets and find it almost impossible to increase turnover. When you reach that stage, it’s vital that you create a plan for the future that will enable your firm to continue its growth. In many situations, that will mean launching new products or services for your clients and customers.

You might also think about expanding your operation and trading in new markets. However, sometimes you just have to rethink your approach. It’s usually possible to increase profits without improving your turnover, and there are some excellent tips below that should help you to achieve that goal.

Know when to outsource

There is no getting away from the fact that outsourcing is often the best solution if you want to cut back on spending and boost your profits. Business owners just need to identify the areas in which that strategy will provide the most benefits. Lots of companies choose to outsource tasks like:

Marketing
Accounting
Social media management
Market research
Customer service

You just need to search online for specialist firms that offer those services to other businesses. You can then obtain some quotes and perform the calculations to ensure you will save a fortune. Then it’s just a case of getting rid of a few staff members.

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Think about automation

It’s possible to automate many of the processes within your operation without breaking the bank these days using modern technology. There are lots of software applications that could remove all the hard work out of invoicing and ordering.

Using automation in construction, warehousing, and other manual operations will often involve the use of robotics. If your business exists within those industries, you could replace many of your human staff members with computers. It’s just a case of getting in touch with suitable experts, letting them know your goals, and then taking their advice.

Increase your prices

There is a benefit you won’t want to overlook if you’ve managed to saturate the market in your home country. If your company is the most prominent supplier or the only supplier of a product or service, you can set the going rate. That means sometimes it makes sense to increase your prices once your position in the market is secure.

If you don’t have many competitors, customers and clients will have to cover the increase whether they like it or not. Just remember that greed is not an attractive attribute. So, you need to work hard to ensure you don’t price your brand out of the marketplace. Still, increasing your asking prices will assist when it comes to boosting profits.

As you can see from the tips and information in this article, you can always make more money, even if you can’t find any new customers. You just have to use some common sense. Also, do yourself a favor and seek the advice of an experienced business advisor if you don’t have any experience. People in that profession will often take a look at your plans and highlight any potential issues before you set the wheels in motion. Good luck!

Posted

November 11, 2017

3 Instances in Which Your Small Businesses Should Outsource

If you’re a small business owner then the chances are you’ve been told to outsource. This usually leads to some small business looking to outsource every single job they have. It’ll save money, they think. In reality, outsourcing only saves money and benefits your business when used correctly.

So, today’s your lucky day — here are some pointers that outline when it’s right for your business to outsource.

Jobs That Aren’t Always Constant

In your small business, there will be some jobs that are constant and some that aren’t. Now, here’s a question worth considering — why would you hire a full-time employee for a job they won’t have to do every single day? It’s a waste of money. Hire on an as-needed basis is the best approach — and this is where you’re far better off outsourcing.

Things that come to mind include content writing for your website or even web design. It’s unlikely you’ll need new web content everyday, or for new web design. So, it makes way more sense to outsource these jobs whenever you need them, cutting your overheads quite dramatically.

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Complex Jobs That Require Specialist Skills

There’s no denying your business will have some complex tasks that need to be fulfilled. Attempting these yourself can take a long time, and you might not have the skills to do them. The problem is, if you bring someone in on a permanent contract, they could cost a lot of money as it would be a skilled job. Here, we have the perfect opportunity to outsource.

If your business outsources a bookkeeper, they handle all the complex financial tasks because that’s what they’re good at. You could outsource a marketing team to handle the complicated marketing strategy, and so on. There are loads of tasks that require skilled individuals, and you’ll find it cheaper to outsource rather than hire permanently.

Plus, you could get a team of people doing one task, rather than having to physically hire individuals to make up a team.

Large-scale Jobs That Need Multiple Hands on Deck

This final point kind of plays off the last sentence of the above point about outsourcing a team of people. You’ll find this is one of the main benefits of outsourcing — you can pay a company to do a job, and they’ll provide their team for you. This comes in handy when you have quite large-scale jobs that mean you need a lot of people working at once.

The main thing that pops into my mind is customer support. Even a small business needs a decent support team for their customers. This could mean hiring a lot of people, even a small support team of five or 10 employees is costly. By outsourcing jobs like this, you get a team working for your business, and all you do is pay the company that supplies them. It’s easier to manage, and you get rid of the overheads like employee benefits, etc.

The whole point of this article is that you don’t have to outsource every job. In fact, some jobs are better done in-house. Hopefully, these points help you figure out when you should outsource to gain the most from it.

Posted

September 19, 2017

4 Tasks Your Small Business Can Afford to Outsource

Are you spending too much time on mundane tasks rather than actually operating your business? It’s certainly not uncommon for business owners today. In fact, as little as 15 % of them feel that they spend their time on the kind of tasks that will make their companies prosper — instead, they’ll be walking on the same tracks, completing the same processes, without really being able to grow.

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There is a way out of this for everyone, though, and the quicker you realize that you can’t do it all on your own, the easier it will be to focus on the tasks that really matter. Here is a neat list of the top processes a small business should have outsourced yesterday, making your week at work a lot more manageable — and clearing the space for growth and success.

IT Services

Unless you’re running an IT company, it makes little sense to dedicate an entire department to this. Most companies outsource these processes, by the way, as many as 53 % of companies — and 26 % of them plan to outsource it as soon as possible.

By relying on third-party vendors as well as cloud computing, you’re also making your company more flexible and will even benefit from the amount of knowledge an entire IT crew can provide you with. It’s a whole other story than a few employees in the office, stationed at their desks, and ready to help when they’re needed.

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Customer support

While some people may oppose to outsourcing customer support seeing that direct contact with customers is vital to building a lasting relationship, consider this first; small companies are often unable to hire dedicated customer support staff, forcing them to delegate it to some of their existing employees. This is bad for business in more ways than one.

First of all, the employee is unable to spend time on what they do best, making your company miss out on valuable productivity. Secondly, they won’t be as well-trained as an actual customer support agency which puts you at risk of losing customers.

Outsource this task while your company is still relatively small, let your team focus on their job, and hire professional customer support staff to be in-house when you’ve grown bigger. It’s as simple as that. Make sure you scrutinise your options, however, as the costs and quality may vary.

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People

When you’re still young and unable to pay for the kind of quality you’d like, hiring freelancers may be the best option. As many as three out of four small businesses in the US admit that the use of freelancers gives them a competitive edge; when the talent is there, but you can’t afford to hire it, you can simply put a contract on it instead.

The same goes for finding the next talents for your flourishing company, and a procurement recruitment agency is perfect for any new business as they can make sure you’ve got the best kind of staff on every level, right from the start.

Accounting

Every process that is repetitive and mundane both can and should be outsourced. Accounting and payroll are certainly one of them, but 60 % of business are still completing it in-house rather than just handing it over to a third-party.

When you can afford to treat yourself to a professional accounting team, it’s all well and good — but most small businesses lack this kind of resources, and choose to delegate it to an existing employee instead.

It’s perhaps a bit more cost-effective than outsourcing, yet the risk they run is way too big; when something goes wrong with the payroll or accounting system, everything tends to tumble downhill. It will cost your company quite some money in fines, you lose the valuable addition of team members who can focus on their job rather than accounting — and your employees will be very unhappy with you.

With the correct kind of software and a few tech-savvy workers, you can easily continue to do it in-house, though. Just remember that the software should be comprehensive enough to take care of all the processes without being too complicated for them to understand — otherwise, you end up spending a lot of time on training.

Keep in mind that, by outsourcing to a reputable company, your business is also gaining the expert knowledge and support of an entire team you didn’t have before. They’ll be able to give you that competitive edge, helping you to growth and success a bit faster.