The Covid19 still stands as one of the greatest challenges in history to businesses & the global economy & the impact is certainly still being felt.
During 2020 & far into 2021, hundreds of thousands of businesses found that they were either forcibly closed, had to adapt rapidly to a changing environment or sadly did not make it through the crushing weight of the pandemic & although on the surface the initial wave of the pandemic seems to be easing, the impact it has had on businesses continues.
Pre Covid the UK saw some of the giants of industry fall by the wayside, crumble under the never-ending pressures & expectations of remaining relevant in an ever changing cultural & business environment.
Some UK companies all too familiar to the traditional High Street, fell afoul of the ease & availability of internet shopping, with warehouse-based companies offering vastly reduced prices on products & quick & easy deliveries.
Access to a global ordering market at consumers fingertips has also damaged the traditional High Street business ability to remain competitive. Despite some councils reducing business rates, the High Street has ceased to be the bustling community based hub it used to be.
Likewise, other corporate giants have folded citing competition from abroad, not remaining relevant & being superseded by new, vibrant & up to date versions of themselves.
Industry giants & oftentimes companies who have been responsible for generations of families’ employment have dissolved before our very eyes. One of the most tragic pre-Covid examples was the collapse of Thomas Cook.
Thomas Cook having employed 21,000 staff & been established since 1841, saw 174 years of trading end in September 2019, with the breakdown of Britain’s longest running travel company. But how or why did this happen? How did the company management not see that there was something amiss with their trading, their company, their brand?
After the dust had settled, Thomas Cook bosses came under fire after the collapse of the travel firm as their extensive salaries & bonuses came to light, even when the stricken travel firm was close to collapse.
Although this is an example of a corporate giant being victim to an ever changing consumer environment & expectation, smaller & medium based companies face the same juggling act daily to ensure they remain competitive, current, up to date with business trends & remain focused on their core values.
Which beggars the question. ‘if it isn’t broken, why try & fix it?’
Try before you buy!
If you are a business owner & are considering any kind of changes to your business, you need to be asking yourself some pretty far reaching questions. Where is the business now? Is it as far along as you had envisaged? What was the business mission goal at the beginning? Are you still on track? etc
Once you have had a chance to ask yourself a plethora of posing questions & you feel it is time to make some changes; consider what these are going to look like, before implementing them.
An example is if you’ve decided you need to upgrade your software. The first task is market research to discover what is available & read as many reviews as you possibly can about the particular software solution, in relation to your own business model.
Secondly, do you need to buy something? There are thousands of free based apps available, often times available as bolt-on’s to existing office based options.
Thirdly, if you do decide to go down the route of buying into a new software solution, try before you buy! Make sure you have enough practise with the system you are considering & make sure it really does do what you want it to do. Try not to get bamboozled by the vast selection of applications, which all seem to do the same thing, but better. Be mindful of your choice & ensure it really is right for you & your business.
Is employing more staff the right way to go?
Whether you are an entrepreneur, a partnership, small or medium business; staffing is always a huge commitment. Every business wants to grow & be more productive, however, staffing choices can take on many different guises.
The first thing you must do, is to take a very big step back from your business & ask yourself if you really do need to expand your staffing. If you really feel that this is the right time? Ask yourself would this be full time member of staff, part time, contractor, freelancer? There are many different ways to grow staffing these days & each option comes with it’s own challenges & opportunities.
To be more productive, you may feel that more staff could be the answer. However, have you calculated that you can already cover the additional salaries & pensions & if not, how long is it going to take to be able to cover it?
If you already take a salary & or money from your business for yourself, are you prepared for the additional responsibility of another proportion of your profitable income, being paid to other parties? & finally, how can you be assured that after all the investment, that with all the invested time, emotion & money; that the people you take on is the right people & will be able to be productive in your business?
One huge question to ask yourself is “can I go it alone?” Consider if it is the right time for you to expand, if financially you have the ability to pay another salary & still be productive & if you can find alternatives to full time staff to enable you to still make the changes you want to make to your business.
What’s new? What are your competitors doing?
Staying up to date with what your competitors are doing is absolutely vital to any business. One of the very sad facts of some of the businesses we have all seen very publicly collapse; is because they didn’t see that the competition was gradually beating them in the business stakes.
Therefore, keeping an eye on what the competition is doing is vital & understanding why they are being successful, enables you to strive for better. Staying ahead of advertising trends & in particular, how you are presented in social media streams & online; is a huge key to success. Not being afraid to make changes & improvements to keep you up to date, keep your business fresh & in the public eye; enables any business to keep their eye on the prize, without breeding complacency.
Ethical business is big business. Showing that you are ethically minded, enables your clients, customers, end users & suppliers to see that you are a conscientious business person. The modern consumer is being forever more mindful of their purchasing & business interaction choices & will base these monetary investments more & more based on a companies ethical policies.
Sitting back on your laurels is never going to allow you to succeed in business, but equally so, running before you can walk is as damaging. If you feel the time for change is right, consider how you could make changes to your business which won’t impact on your productivity, your income & profit, your emotional state & your business as a whole.
If you take the time to look at your business objectively, you might find that instead of seeking ways to fix a problem which was never there in the first place, you may discover that with limited resources, a few inner changes & a lot of determination; you can succeed & continue to grow & prosper, without vast investment which proves not to be what you needed.
Written by Katy-Jane Mason for & on behalf of Virtually Smart Ltd.
