Tag Home Business

Benefits of Storage for Small Business

Not long ago it was significantly more costly to set up a small business. Advances in resources for working from home, such as high speed broadband among others have played a huge part in the changes. Factors such as lower priced technology and the increasingly cheap and more flexible options offered by storage companies also plays its part in the rise of small entrepreneurs.

Business no longer needs a physical shop space and so can advertise to the world from its home and so in the last decade we have seen a huge change in the way many businesses begin and are handled.

Home Business

Running a business from home used to come with the negative, of either having to section off an area of the home for stock, or having to purchase or rent a retail space. The advent of self-storage allows a flexible answer to this. Users can use their own stock control methods to ensure they have the goods needed on hand, while they can store others for periods in stores.

Flexibility

Storage options are significantly less costly than retail space, and many have the additional benefit of allowing entrepreneurs to use more or less space as their stock levels require it, mirroring this in costs, which are usually charged per square foot. Second to this, a storage solution for delicate goods is also provided for, with humidity controls in place for goods susceptible to damp environments.

Obviously, security plays an important factor when storing goods. Many entrepreneurs don’t feel comfortable with thousands of pounds of stock sitting around the house. Storage companies providing 24 hour CCTV, with individually alarmed rooms and sturdy perimeter fencing, provide safety homes never could.

Receiving Stock

For entrepreneurs who receive large stock, or deliveries via articulated truck, storage solution companies provide space and parking answers, which conventional streets, or roads just can’t. They also present options for unloading, such as pallets, trolleys and in some cases designated forklift drivers that require investment. Such lifting equipment obviously takes the cost, time and pain out of unloading stock.

Clearly, access is imperative and many of these storage points provide this seven days a week, with some even making provision for packaging needs via an onsite shop. This allows entrepreneurs to prepare items when onsite and save time, while being as productive as possible when on task.

Financial Aspect

Financial, storage solutions are also a positive, with costs low and storage flexible. People with storage needs often find the room required fluctuates, fortunately with such storage solutions it is possible to increase or decrease storage room depending on levels of stock. This means taking up less footage of an area when it’s required and so means paying less. Contract lengths are also quite short, with contract termination periods as low as seven days and storage allowed on the day signed up.

Storage solutions flexibility, economic costs, access and safety make them undoubtedly an ideal solution for the ways of much commerce in the 21st century.

GUEST BLOG: This helpful business advice was provided by Drew Davies on behalf of Big Yellow Self Storage

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

It’s more than only about the cloud

I went to a Kleinwort Benson Entrepreneur Forum last night and invariably cloud computing came up as a discussion point. On the way home it got me thinking about what makes my customers special, is it all about cloud computing, do they get it or is it even important to them?

We recently had looked at our client base and we looked at how old businesses are and how long clients had been with us, how many had gone out of business and so on. The mortality rate of our clients is way below the national average, in fact over 23% lower.

Surely that must be the result of our great cloud computing small business framework – software, e-commerce and services – right?

Wrong, the fact is our clients don’t care about anything like that. The don’t care about cloud computing, having the greatest and flashiest website or our services.

They care about their business, they care about their clients, they care about their staff, they are passionate about their business, they love doing what they do and most of all, they are focused.

Software, website and many other things are mere distractions to them. They expect us to do our end of the deal, to provide them with their small business framework and apart from that get out of their way.

To our clients, we are just a small cog in the finely tuned machine they call their business.

That is what makes them different and successful.

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

The Small Business Blog Is Changing.

After five and a half years writing articles about small business issues on this blog, I am going to follow many of my fellow bloggers and open my blog permanently up to a select group of interesting and relevant authors for my readership.

In the next few weeks I will start introducing new authors with the aim to make my blog even more relevant and offer more insight into other aspects of running a micro business or small business.

I hope you will enjoy the new content. As always please come and join me (us) on our Facebook page for comment and discussion of the topics covered or anything else related to small business.

First up is Adrian Swinscoe, his first contribution will be on Wednesday.

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Top 5 Tips for Small Business Insurance

The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.

1. Make sure that you entirely understand your business insurance needs before shopping around for a new policy. Conduct research or speak to a professional if you have any doubts.

2. There are useful online tools that can be used to estimate the level of liability for your business, based on factors such as the industry you are in and the number of people you employ.

3. You most likely already have insurance on your home and automobile. It is a good idea to contact this company to see if they will give you a business insurance discount for being an existing customer.

4. Don’t go with a company just because they give you the cheapest quote. Check to make sure that the policy will actually cover your needs and that there isn’t anything in the smallprint that could make it impossible to claim.

5. Try to get full quotations from at least three of the major insurers as you will likely be surprised about how wildly the policy valuation can differ.

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Big Business working with SMEs/SMBs

Over on my NASDAQ.com column I have just posted an article about how big business can work with SMEs and SMBs. All to often big businesses fail at the first hurdle to engage with small business – read on….

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Small Business Cost Cutting:- Fire Non-Essential Staff

I think it is no great secret anymore that the world economy is going to take a “little” longer to recover, due in part to the incompetence of some of our beloved and distrusted politicians.

What are you doing to tighten your “business” belt? As I have discussed before, changing as much of your fixed cost (cost you have every month, no matter how well your business is doing) to variable cost (cost you only have when you are making money too) is essential – one way of doing that is to reduce you labour and staff costs.

Ask yourself is every member of your team fully utilized, what is your ROI on each of your staff and don’t forget to look at holiday costs, sick costs, infrastructure costs for the employee, health insurance and employer contributions.

Finding business partners, including freelancers and home businesses, to perform those jobs and task for you if and when you need them, should be part of your business model.

Having to fire staff is never a pleasant experience for all concerned, but having your business go under because you have not tightly controlled your overheads will be much more unpleasant, trust me!

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Top 5 Tips for Running a Part-Time Business

The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.

1. It is possible to run a part-time business alone in addition to working full-time, but if you can receive aid and assistance from family and friends then it will be a far easier task..

2. Try to find someone outside the business who is prepared to oversee your company at regular intervals and hold you accountable for any problems or lack of progress.

3. Make sure that you are clear about the definition of “part-time business” and what this means to you. There is a big difference between spending an hour or so in the evening to working solidly through your weekend.

4. Discipline is the key to running a successful part-time business. You will need to tightly schedule your time every day, especially if you also work full-time. Clients won’t want to be kept waiting just because you are busy doing your day job.

5. Don’t be discouraged if a part-time business doesn’t work out. Look upon it as a learning experience and try again a few years down the line, using all of your accumulated knowledge to help you succeed.

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

The Social Customer

We humans are social animals – there can be no doubt about that, given the rise of social networking & social media. Social networking is centered around the exchange of ideas, knowledge and more – in other words it helps people to interact.

A business wanting to use social media effectively you’ll need to ask yourself, “how can we as a company add value to this network?”

It is certainly not about selling to the network, but it is about helping members of the network. Now the question is which conversation will bring your business in contact with those members of the network that need your help to achieve their business goals?

Find the topic for this conversation and you will find network members (new customers) you can help!

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

The Branson Model

The way Richard Branson starts businesses is very simple – that is why it works so often.

He looks at an industry where the market participants have accepted that the current way is the way this industry works (complacency). He goes and finds the most profitable part or sector of it, makes it better and focuses on the on that niche to establish a strong base before moving deeper into the industry.

That is how anyone can start a business! It is much easier and less risky – since you do not have to worry about the market and you are often surrounded by over confident competitors.

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Sugar – Who needs him?

The man who apparently failed to recognize that we were in a recession, has now decreed that engineers can’t run successful businesses.

What gets me, is not “Lord” Sugar, who in my opinion is well past his sell by date (lets face it anyone can make money out of a large real-estate portfolio), no it’s the public outcry and interest in these “celeb-entrepreneurs”.

We live in a different world today. Sugar was very successful in his day, but he would most likely not succeed today, where very different qualities are needed to succeed in business, none of which he evidently has ever heard of.

If a would be entrepreneur (including engineers) looks and listens to Sugar, Dragons & Co, he or she would get the completely wrong end of the stick of what it is like to run a business today.

While I have to admit he is a great advertisement for starting your own business, because who in their right mind would want to work for someone like him?

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.