If you’re kicking yourself because your small business tanked last year, now is the time for you to get back on your feet and boost your office productivity and financial knowhow. Of course, nothing beats having productivity resolutions to welcome 2014.
Among those resolutions is financial awareness in all aspects of business: equipment, spaces, employees, productivity tools and even toilet paper. Let’s address four major cost management snafus that many small businesses – and even some large ones – don’t adequately prepare for.
Future expansions
It’s not an easy feat, this building an “expansion friendly business.” When you think about it, your business, whatever it may be, is your baby. The foundation growing with your business is the entire development of your baby’s life, everything from learning how to walk to potty training. It can be time consuming, and your hands could get dirty (at least, though, not from soiled diapers). Expansion is equivocal to the Terrible Two’s, perhaps even similar to teaching your teen how to drive: it’s not easy, and is sometimes painstaking at best; however, the process must transpire at some point.
However, relocation is also chaotic and disruptive and it needs to be managed very carefully in order to make sure that it has minimal impact on your long term success. Have an exit strategy should your business decide to move quarters or even have an extensive expansion planned.
Frequent financial analyses
If you’ve dealt with the incredible risk that goes hand-in-hand with being a business, chances are that you already know what can go wrong first-hand. But for the sake of setting the scene, either of the following could happen:
- You fail to underscore key financial areas of your business, including equipment and rentals;
- Your finances currently are wrapped up in areas with little remuneration expected.
For you, this means lost capital, cash-flow problems, collection agencies -and above all - plenty of brain-numbing stress. Therefore, forgetting to analyze is another growing business concern rarely addressed – and if you’re failing to address or monitor your finances, you may as well be ‘cooking the books’.
Forego opportunities to go green
Green procurement can be described as purchasing ‘green’ products and services, the hiring of contractors and the surrounds of environmental requirements within a contract. Green procurement is also linked with the wider sustainable development aspects.
The whole idea of green procurement policies and programs that are stated in documents for the developed countries is to reduce expenditure. This is becoming popular in the tech portions of offices, and is nearly forcing some small businesses to rest their data on the cloud.
Of all the benefits that cloud computing can offer as a technological option, one of the most appealing is how quickly it can reduce costs. It can lower the cost of running IT in various ways but a key element about the cloud is its ability to increase efficiency of energy use so that energy costs are lower and businesses can reduce their carbon emissions at the same time.
Cutting necessities without cutting costs
It is a fact that every business that is not growing is dying, which means getting new customers consistently while retaining current ones is the key to growth and success of any business. This means trimming fat from the right end of the steak.
This means finding short cuts – including finding companies that help to locate business services and office equipment – is imminent. Of course, it may also mean doing simple to your site. Read a special report where I discussed 10 blog etiquettes for readers and blog owners to get a better idea what I mean.
From Titus Sharpe, CEO of Expert Market, a free service providing an easy-to-use sourcing tool for finding office equipment and business services: “We have always felt that small businesses are the lifeblood of the UK. That’s why we help them find office and business products for free.”
Summary
If you really take a moment and think about it, managing money in your business is almost nostalgic. There was a period in time where as hard as it is to believe, every penny counted… for the majority. Suffice it to say, businesses today may inadvertently become financially lackadaisical.
If you are a small business owner or perhaps you have a small home office, it is important to pay good financial attention to the work environment. A good working environment can really boost the productivity and morale within the workplace, and help your employees have more fun laboring away their days.
