Tag: Business

What is a Dispatch Software and How Does it Work

When you are running a business you want to ensure that you are doing everything you can to keep customers and employees happy and satisfied at all times. It can be very hard creating and striking a balance and ensuring that everyone is kept well informed and up to date but it is possible. To strike a balance you have to think carefully about what you want to achieve and why. For example, do you want to keep customers happy, are you going to keep them informed about when their order has been dispatched or perhaps when they have an engineer or maintenance person on the way. What are your customer service aims, and also what are your employee aims? With employees, a dispatch system will keep all employees aware and in the loop about what is happening and when.

What Is Dispatch Software

Dispatch software is a clever digital tool that allows you to handle and manage technicians and employees who are working for you. With dispatch software, you can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of technicians and employees and as a result, you can ensure that customers are happy and satisfied. When dispatch software is used for managing and handling technicians it is used to assign them to work, plan out routes, monitor and track their movements and even reassign them if you can see that there are other jobs nearby them.

 

What You Should Look For When Buying New Software 

When it comes to buying new software you do not want to just jump in and purchase the first one that you see. Dispatch software can impact your business’s efficiency and productivity and as such, it is only just that you invest a considerable amount of time into establishing what software is on offer and just how it can benefit you and your business. Price may be the main consideration of yours but it should not be your only concern. You should also look at the brand and the manufacturers and the seller as well as the specifications you want. For example, do you want a cloud-based piece of software from 10-8Systems.com or are you after an older fashioned piece of software that takes longer to update and change? Your business needs will of course determine what you buy, but the price mustn’t be the only deciding factor. Looking at what you get in return will help you establish what you need. Before making any commitment, think about what you want and think about your return on investment. Never be afraid to ask questions to accurately establish just what you are looking for and why.         

How Can Software Integration Help Your Business

When you integrate new software into your business you look at making processes more effortless, more efficient and more seamless for everyone involved. Software integration will save you time and it will save you money, it will ensure you can make all processes used within your businesses quicker and easier. Software integration can keep your business out there and ahead of your competitors which is important. Software integration can allow you to keep a close eye on the inner workings and goings-on of your business. When you pay close attention to what is happening within your business you get the opportunity to see clearly and quickly what needs improvement and work. Making improvements swiftly will save your business time and money.

How Does Dispatch Software Work

Dispatch software whether cloud-based or not works by sending a message via text or email from the operations base or a technician out on the road. It is an automation process that allows seamless and quick interactions between your workforce on the road and customers that they are visiting. 

What Advantages Are There To Having New Software Within Your Business

When you implement new software into your business you improve its efficiency and its productivity which will ultimately improve your bottom line. You need to keep ahead of trends and you need to keep ahead of competitors to ensure you maintain your position within the marketplace. The major advantage of integrating and incorporating new software is that you can improve your business efficiency and keep both customers and employees happy.

 

Your business cannot and must not stand still and this is why it is important to always be looking at new ways of working that are better and more beneficial. The software can change and alter all of the time but if you get the best that you can afford and you get the software that is advantageous to your business then you will get a good return on investment and you will strengthen your business position.

Why Software Development Is Important For Expanding Your Business

It only makes sense that you’re always on the prowl for ways to keep your business relevant in a competitive market. New companies and even the old are busy getting their businesses online in this day and age. The benefits of transitioning to the digital space with software developed for your company far outweigh the costs that you’ll incur. The software that you develop for your business will help you immensely with productivity, customer experience, and process optimization.

With the increasing penetration of the internet deep into new and uncharted territories, the avenues for growth are endless. You can reach out to more potential customers since the majority of people are using mobile phones and web browsers to access the internet. In this opportune time, it’s up to you to utilize the opportunities presented. We’ll be taking a look at why software development can help your business grow.

1. Increased Scalability

Perhaps the greatest benefit of having software developed for your business is the scalability offered. You can expand and shrink your business according to your needs without having to overspend or compromise on the features. You can decide to add new features to your business anytime you feel like it’s growing fast and needs more bells and whistles to better serve your customers, or you can simply cut back on the features that are not needed and don’t serve any real purpose.

2. More Reach

You are extremely limited in your outreach if you don’t utilise the proper software to grow your business. When you have an online presence that’s optimised, you can grow your client base much more easily. Software that’s specifically developed for your business can help you out immensely, the specialists at https://apro-software.com/ say that web applications and mobile applications are some of the most widely used services. Integrating and utilising specialised additional tools like AI can help you increase your reach even more.

3. Customer Experience

In the world of business, the customer is the king and custom-developed software can help you serve them better. The user experience is something that most modern businesses focus on since it’s highly efficient at increasing your brand’s sales and recognition. If you can provide your customer with increased convenience and a pleasant user experience then you’ll be able to capture their loyalty which will keep them coming back for the same delightful experience. Not only will the newly developed software help your customer interact with your business better, but it’ll also help you to engage in a much more effective manner with your customer.

4. Better Integration

With the modular nature of modern software development it’s rather easy for you to integrate your services with additional features. You can integrate multiple offerings together which include payment gateways, analytics tools, artificial intelligence, and tracking tools. All of these tools might not be very useful individually but when you integrate these with the basic offerings, you can easily create a mighty impressive software that will offer an unmatched experience to your customers.

5. Cost-Effective

The biggest benefit of the rapid technological advancements seen in the IT industry is the reduced costs of every possible hardware or software service. The software that you get developed for your own business will be far more effective than any other generic ‘one size fits all’ software. The effectiveness will be clearly evident when you’ll see an increased turnover due to the implementation of the custom software. 

The investment will be rather small compared to other means that you can utilize for the advancement of your business like offline marketing or hiring full-time employees to do the jobs that software can easily automate. Seeing the steady decline in the prices of the software development services provided by many reputed developers, it’s safe to say that you’ll be making more money from the software than you’ll be investing in it.

The above-mentioned benefits of getting custom-developed software should be enough to make you stop and consider getting one for your own business. You should definitely seek out a software developer to help you create a customizable solution that will have immense benefits for your business. In this era of rapid advancements, if you don’t utilize the technological edge then your competitor will, and that means loss of your customers to the competition. 

It’s critical for you to get custom software developed for your business if you want to stay relevant and compete with the other contenders. If you don’t invest in software soon then it might be too late to do so later since your competitors will have already left you behind.

Are Sales Enablement Tools Worth it? Here’s how they can Benefit your Business

It should be a no-brainer that sales act as the most integral part of the pathway of improving the growth of your business. It is the aspect that requires most of your attention. It does not matter if your business is small, medium, or large-sized, its sales will directly correlate to the revenue generated. Sales can become the defining factor in which businesses will prosper and which of them will get devoured by the fast-paced, ever-changing market. The only business that can manage to come out at the top amidst all this rising competition is one that boosts its sales.

So, how can you boost your sales, you might ask? The answer is simple – with the help of a sales enablement tool. These programs help to provide your sales teams with all the right resources and modern technology that they would require to conduct their sales successfully. 

How does a Sales Enablement Tool Boosts Sales?

In order to conduct effective sales, all the successful companies of the world wish to provide their sellers with information regarding their customers. Sales enablement softwares makes this process significantly easier by creating a customer-centric environment to help the sales reps understand customers’ ambitions and motivations. Moreover, they keep track of all the data and changes in market trends to keep them aware of what approach they should take. This also helps you to make sure that your company’s sales always stay above a certain threshold by continuing the successful aspects of currently implemented strategies.

Another key aspect of a sales enablement software is its training program. When your sales reps are well-trained, they can predict the market better and perform in an optimised fashion. The tool helps to keep a schedule for such a training program where you can also keep a track of how much training is being done. New suggestions are put forward by these software’s as well, depending upon the effectiveness of the current programs.

Communication is the key to a department performing at its max potential. Hence, sales enablement tools provide a platform where your sellers, buyers, and even marketers can share information with one another. This information exchange can be performed in the form of questionnaires, feedback forms, and also content reports. It is kept well organised and easily accessible to all the relevant people.

Thus, a sales enablement software equips your sales team to handle any real-life scenarios that may occur during their trade deals.

Why is Sales Enablement Important?

In order to keep the consistency levels up, your sales team needs to close as many successful trade deals as possible. Providing them with the right resources, training, and counselling will increase their efficiency. After all, the ultimate goal is to perform in the ever-changing market trends.

So how can a sales enablement program help you increase your business revenue?

  • Boosting the interactions with customers:

When your sales reps have access to all the data regarding their product at their fingertips, and that too organized in an efficient manner, the customers are bound to get impressed! They can be persuaded much more easily if they can receive access to the content specific to their needs. These impressed and satisfied customers can then turn into returning customers in the future.

  • Saving time:

Sales enablement softwares takes control of all the repetitive mundane tasks of the sellers. They no longer have to focus on the monotonous activities, and instead can concentrate on more important tasks such as analysing the market and developing client relationships. Even the research work can be automated by the sales enablement tools.

  • Departments cooperating with each other:

Connecting the different departments together, especially the sales and marketing, means that the information exchange about the product performance and specifications can be performed quickly. This ensures that your business has a continuous flow of ideas and strategies between different branches.

Final Notes

Hence, it has been established that sales enablement programs are almost a necessity for your business in modern times. A rare gem among the heap of different software’s available is Content Camel which is a cloud-based tool that checks on all the requirements for a sales enablement software. This tool will not only help you maximise your current sales strategy but also pave a pathway for future advancements so that you too can enjoy the profits from a successful business.

Credible Solutions That Will Effectively Boost Your Business’ Sales Performance

The success of any business venture is reliant on a robust sales and marketing strategy. As a business owner, you want to keep your sales flowing as this contributes to your overall business success. To achieve this reality, you need to keep improving your business processes. This dictates the momentum for consistent growth. Besides focusing on sales efficiency, you need to pay keen attention to your customers. Next, you want to switch to boosting sales performance instead of profit. That said, if you’re struggling to increase sales performance, it’s either you aren’t putting in extra effort or are prospecting the wrong way. In this guide, we will cover the steps you need to follow to refine your sales performance.

 

  • Use Sophisticated Email Tools

Thanks to innovations in technology, CRM systems now feature advanced email features. These features allow you to create email campaigns and track email management. Whether it’s cold emailing or drip campaigns, email is a critical tool your business sales team needs today. Based on a review of the best CRM applications, you can use various tools to adjust and elevate your email. To get started, you can leverage email tools available through CRMs, Gmail plugins, or marketing automation to increase your sales performance. This is time-saving and also increases engagement between you and your prospects.

  • Educate Your Sales Reps

Your sales team can make or break your business. If you don’t train them using the right tools, this can lead to inefficiency. Sometimes, your sales team will waste time and resources working on ineffective strategies or trying to pitch to prospects before they are well-prepared. The results are disastrous. If you have new employees in the sales team, train them on effective selling and prospecting. If you cannot do it yourself, hire external training professionals.

 

Nonetheless, whatever method you choose to train your team should focus on creative customer-handling strategies. To achieve better results, ensure the training is consistent. This way, your team stays up-to-date on the latest selling strategies. It will surely boost your sales pipeline quickly because your team is well-equipped to handle any customer situation. For example, you can use role-playing exercises or case studies to test their knowledge and skills.

  • Build Better Relationships on Existing Customers

Your customers didn’t choose your business without reason. They saw something unique and decided to be part of your family. This isn’t something you want to ignore or brush off as a “normal” nature of any business. Remember, your number one rule is to keep customers happy. When you build and maintain these relationships, your sales performance will increase. Why is this so? It’s simple: satisfied customers become loyal fans and will help spread the word out there. While new customers are still critical for your business, your existing customers can be an invaluable resource for your business.

  • Have a Competitive Edge

In today’s ever-changing world, having a product or service that solves a problem is easy. Even better when your business fills a particular need in the market; for instance, you can use social media to understand how your business fairs in the eyes of consumers. Once you learn the ‘how,’ you need to craft a compelling marketing strategy that will help you win prospects. Your strategy should encompass a message that stands out from competitors. So what’s the catch? It’s simple: creating an excellent first impression. Your message needs to speak to your customers directly: Are consumers facing a pain my business can solve? Once you satisfy their needs, your sales performance is likely to improve.

  • Promotion

Consumers love discounts and promotional offers. They’ll go to great lengths to achieve these offers. When your business offers promotions, you showcase to the world the products or services your business holds. In most cases, discounts provide customers a chance to try and sample your products. Ultimately, these offers and discounts can attract customers as well as optimize the number of existing users. If possible, you can also offer free trials.

  • Hold Meetings with Your Sales Team

How often do you hold meetings with your sales team? If you do, are the meetings productive and effective? How well you communicate with your team during meetings will dictate your sales performance. Your meetings should focus on uniting your team and fostering cooperation. Next, ensure you provide your team with enough information, motivation, and the accountability they need to meet their sales goals. With meetings, your team can focus on their objectives and goals within your sales plan. This way, they can also share their challenges and strategies.

As a business owner, your role is to lead your business to success and profitability. After all, you didn’t put all this effort into making losses. Whether you have a small or large business, the best way to achieve success and increase profits is through a robust sales strategy. With an improved sales performance, your business can operate with efficiency to generate more profits.

Dell Technologies encourages businesses to use the learnings of the past year to foster innovation at speed. #Dell

Reflecting on a year which has seen many businesses transition to a remote working model, Dell Technologies today outlined how organisations in Ireland can use the learnings from the past year to continue transforming at pace to ensure a digital future.

Jason Ward, Vice-President and Managing Director, Dell Technologies Ireland said: “Over the past year technology enabled organisations to transform their business models so that they can continue to operate in a virtual environment. Embracing digital transformation has ensured that 40% of Ireland’s workforce could move to working from home practically overnight while close to one million young people were able to continue learning from home.

“But after a year of living with COVID, it is essential that Irish business leaders reflect on their experiences and bring the positive learnings into future plans to inform their future growth strategy. From the shift towards ecommerce and the changing nature of work, new business opportunities have emerged. Harnessing these opportunities will require organisations to accelerate the pace both of digital and cultural transformation.

“By embracing digital and cultural transformation at speed in the coming months, we believe businesses will be able to innovative at speed. That’s why today having reflected on the year just gone we’ve outlined some of the most important lessons from the pandemic. In taking these learnings into account, business leaders can ensure that advancements made last year through necessity can be built upon to foster a technology-enabled recovery in the future.”

Jason Ward, Vice-President and Managing Director, Dell Technologies Ireland

1. The stay-at-home economy is here to stay 

Businesses of all sizes have embraced the flexibility to work and operate from anywhere. SMEs, in particular, have leveraged Cloud technology to develop their online presence with ecommerce sales growing by over 24% in 2020 (CSO, 2020). With consumers increasingly moving online, Irish firms will need to develop intelligent software to personalise and fully-optimise the customer experience and modernise their IT infrastructure to support the growing demand for transactions and buying goods online.

2. The future of work is flexible, but it must be secure

Over recent months, it has become clear that the future of work is flexible. Employees have come to value the flexibility provided by remote working as they use technology to balance work and home commitments. This has been recognised by Government through the National Remote Work Strategy. With 94% of employees seeking to work remotely some or all of the time post-crisis, businesses will need to ensure they have secure devices and networks to maintain a hybrid workforce. Cybersecurity must be embedded at the heart of an organisation and a constant priority of its people.

3.Culture is key to building a productive hybrid workforce   

The remote working experiment of the past year has changed the concept of work forever – it is what you do and not a place you go. Now organisations are faced with the challenge of enhancing productivity amongst a workforce located both in the office and at home. To ensure a hybrid workforce thrives into the future, leaders will need to accompany digital transformation with cultural transformation. Built on trust, clear communication and company values, culture will prove key to building collaboration within the team.

4. A new era of always-on connectivity has emerged

Businesses and remote workers have relied on broadband and 4G technology to stay connected in the past year. The coming 12 months will see 5G technology unlock a new era of always-on connectivity. With 175 zettabytes of data to be created worldwide by 2025, 5G will enable businesses to gain real time insights from data wherever it resides – in the data centre, in the cloud or at the edge – and digitise their operations at a speed not seen before.

5. Technology will be consumed as-a-Service

As digital transformation accelerated at pace in 2020, and IT strategies become more complicated, businesses sought to make technology easier to deploy, consume and manage. Increasingly, they began to consume technology as-a-Service with the move to the Cloud enabled through this approach. In the coming year, organisations will move to everything as-a-Service which will help free up IT budget to invest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities that will transform the customer experience and to harness the power of data at the edge of a network – not just data in a cloud or data centre. With 75% of business data to be processed at the edge by 2025, this is where business innovation will be unlocked.

Tips On How To Effortlessly Operate Finances When Owning An Online Business

Whether running a physical or an online business, any business owner must understand how to manage their finances. The business owner must educate themselves on how to run some of the financial tasks, including simple accounting tasks, drafting financial statements, and applying for loans. With this, they can create a stable financial future for their businesses, thus keeping away failures. There is nothing terrible than running a business but suffering more costs than income. You need to create procedures that will ensure you manage your finances well. How does one operate finances in an online business?One example to consider is using a reliable check stub template, which allows business owners to easily generate accurate and professional paycheck stubs for their employees. This not only ensures compliance with financial documentation requirements but also promotes transparency and efficiency in managing payroll and overall financial record-keeping.

Here are some tips for managers to stay on top of their business finances, paycheck stubs is one example to look at but see what else is in store below

 

 1. Monitor your Books

While this might appear an evident practice, it’s the most overlooked but important one for every business person. It would be best to plan your finances well and set time to go through your books to see how your business is fairing. With good accounting software, you will know your business finances and how your company is fairing on. You need to know your income, expenditures, and everything else that’s consuming your finances. Here you can find more info on planning and managing your income and expenses, including handling the employee payroll. Also you can try cloud-based payroll system to manage payroll and wages of employees without any error, it is crucial to spend some time making bank reconciliations and reviewing outstanding invoices, even when working with a bookkeeper. Not doing so will make your business overspend or have funds embezzled.

  2. Have A Better Billing Strategy

 

Most online businesses sell on cash. However, some sell goods on credit or offer hire purchase terms. Some of the clients will honour their invoices a bit late. To run any business effectively, you also need to manage your cash flow. Cash-flows enable you to get new stocks, pay your employees and manage your bills. It also ensures your business stays healthy at all times. If you are struggling to sell on cash or collect cash from existing clients, it’s time now to make a move and create a better billing system for your online business. Not doing this will lead to cash flow problems, which might cause your business to fail amid the rising competition. You can change your billing system to cash-only or put a percentage of the amount clients are supposed to pay before checking out.

  3.Invest In Growth

To ensure your funds are utilized well, you need to invest in the business’s growth. Always pump the profits back into the company to see your business grow to greater heights. This will enable the business to stand against the competition and have a healthy cash flow. It will also mean focusing on the future of your business. Any online business that’s willing to grow, attract the best clients and employees, and innovate must continuously invest in growth. With this growth, clients will start appreciating the increased levels, while employees will begin to laud the business for securing their careers. With these appreciations, you will continue seeing your business thriving and staying competitive in the market.

 4.Monitor your spending

 

How much do you spend in a day, week, or month in your business? How do you account for this money? When you don’t monitor your online business spending, you might be losing money on things you don’t know. It leads to overspending on unnecessary items and also misusing business funds. Most businesses will have different accounts, including savings accounts, credit card accounts, and check accounts. It is essential to understand how the money got withdrawn from these accounts and their uses. Also, you need to set up a designated spending account that will cater to small business needs. This will make reconciliation and follow-up manageable at any given time. You can have accounting books that will enable you to know your income and expenditures at a click of a button. 

 5. Stay Top Of Your Deadlines

Every business has its monetary deadliness. It can be the deadlines for paying the business bills, including loans and card payments or employee salaries. It’s crucial to meet this deadliness on time. You have to know when the bills are due to avoid getting penalties and late fees, which might disrupt your business finances. Late payments also lower your business credit and establish a sour relationship with your lenders. To ensure you stay top of the deadlines, you can record when the bills are due or set reminders.  

At any time in your business, you should have a cash reserve. This will ensure emergencies are taken care of in case of a cash crisis in your online business. This, together with the tips provided above, will ensure your business excels well without financial troubles. 

Amazon hosts small Irish business bootcamp. #Amazon #AmazonBootcamp #IrishBiz

Amazon, Enterprise Ireland and Enterprise Nation announce the first ever Amazon Bootcamp Ireland, an online event on Tuesday 13 – Wednesday 14 April providing free training and guidance to help businesses increase their online sales and reach new customers, as part of the Amazon Small Business Accelerator, a programme to support more than 200,000 entrepreneurs across the UK and Ireland.

 The event will include practical sessions on how to sell products on the Amazon stores, scale operations, master social media, secure funding and more. Tickets are free but attendees must register in advance via this link.

Amazon Bootcamp Ireland has been created in partnership with Enterprise Ireland, Enterprise Nation, and the Local Enterprise Office. The virtual event will feature interviews, panel discussions and interactive presentation sessions with Amazon experts who will provide hands-on, practical advice of how to sell on Amazon, together with Irish industry leaders such as Pamela Laird, former contestant on The Apprentice, who is now a successful Amazon entrepreneur with her brand Moxi Loves.

The two-day event follows the successful Amazon Academy Ireland, which took place in November 2020, where hundreds of attendees learned how to grow revenues, enhance productivity and develop digital skills. More than 4,500 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have now joined Amazon Academy events across the UK and Ireland to scale their businesses.

 Amazon Bootcamp Ireland comes as recent research from Enterprise Ireland revealed that 9 in 10 Irish exporters to the UK see future opportunities in the UK market, with 4 in 5 businesses (83%) saying their strategy is to grow exports to the UK, topics which the bootcamp will cover. The event is part of the Amazon Small Business Accelerator, a major support package for 200,000 small businesses and start-ups which provides free online training and access to business advice, developed in partnership with Enterprise Nation, a leading small business support network.

“Amazon is proud to work with Enterprise Ireland to offer free training and advice to small and medium-sized businesses across Ireland which we hope will help them grow and prosper in 2021,” said Simon Donegan, Head of Seller Services, Amazon. “More than half of all products sold on Amazon stores come from independent selling partners, most of which are SMEs. We also have a long track record of supporting Irish entrepreneurs and small businesses, most recently with the Amazon Academy Ireland event. Many businesses have found their way through the crisis by providing goods and services online. Through this bootcamp we will be providing hundreds of offline and online businesses with the skills, tools and support they need to succeed in the digital world, to reach customers through Amazon or any other service.”

 “I believe Amazon offers a huge opportunity for small and medium sized businesses in Ireland to grow and I’m looking forward to taking part in the Bootcamp to help get more businesses online,” said Pamela Laird, founder of Moxi Loves. “By listing products on Amazon, SMEs have access and reach to an entirely new customer base. It can be costly to acquire a new customer online, especially if you are new to e-commerce, but Amazon provides a simple and cost-effective opportunity for your products to go global!”

Julie Sinnamon, CEO of Enterprise Ireland: “It’s great to partner with Amazon following our successful event for small businesses last year. Amazon Bootcamp Ireland will build on the strong foundations laid at the Amazon Academy, helping hundreds more companies to take their businesses online. I’m excited to welcome lots of new faces to our virtual event in April.” 

Padraic McElwee, Chair of the network of Local Enterprise Offices: “Selling online has become a key component for Irish small businesses and we saw the difference that made in 2020 when we approved over 13,000 Trading Online Vouchers as traditional businesses pivoted to online. As the Local Enterprise Offices are the first stop shop for start-ups and small businesses in Ireland, it is great to partner with Amazon on this event that will give small companies even greater resources and knowledge on how to build their online skills.”

Emma Jones CBE, Head of Enterprise Nation: “We’re looking forward to returning to Ireland with another fantastic Amazon event, with the aim of helping more small businesses to prepare for growth by embracing e-commerce. Attendees will get an understanding of how to get their businesses online from industry leading experts over the two-day event and we can’t wait to be a part of it.” 

Amazon’s fulfilment network supports millions of businesses of all sizes worldwide through its Fulfilment by Amazon offering, and many of those businesses are based in Ireland. There are hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), authors and developers in Ireland growing their companies and reaching new customers with Amazon products and services. Amazon offers a suite of services to help businesses export their products and services, including providing global delivery and distribution, managing customer services in the local language and translating hundreds of millions of product listings each year on behalf of smaller businesses.

 In 2020, Amazon announced it was creating another 1,000 permanent jobs in Ireland over the next two years. The new, highly skilled roles will be based in locations across the company’s Cork and Dublin sites in Blanchardstown, Tallaght, the city centre, and north County Dublin, and will bring Amazon’s total permanent workforce in the country to 5,000 people over the next two years. This will help to support Ireland’s economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

For over 16 years, Amazon has been investing and growing in Ireland. The company launched its first cloud infrastructure region outside of the US in Ireland in 2007, and since this time, has grown the number of staff, expanded its collaboration with colleges and universities, invested in skills programmes, and strengthened its relationships with local communities across the country. Amazon, through Amazon Web Services (AWS), maintains the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. Millions of customers – including the fastest-growing start-ups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies – are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster.

A Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Successful Small Business

In 2020, things have been somewhat rocky for small business owners. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has meant that many small business owners haven’t been able to weather the storm of repeated closures and drastically lower footfall. Some, of course, have still survived, through a combination of good luck, resilience, and a solid business strategy. The latter has never been more important than it is in 2020; if you’re going to start a business this year or next, then you absolutely need to be able to prepare for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Here’s our beginner’s guide on how you can start a successful small business in 2021.

Get enough cash together for several rainy days

One of the most important things about being a small business owner is being able to face potentially difficult times with confidence. You can only do that if you’ve got enough cash saved up to weather as many storms as possible. If you’re just starting your small business and you need some cash, it might be worth considering taking out an unsecured personal loan. This way, you can clear any debts you might have to your name, get some capital for starting your business, or inject the operation with a little money if it’s flagging somewhat. However you do it, make sure you’ve amassed enough money to be comfortable before starting your business.

Make sure your idea is bulletproof

Obviously, no small business idea is completely and utterly fool proof. However, you should try to ensure that your idea is as solid as it can possibly be. We can’t give you a concrete idea of what that should be, but it should complement your skill set and be an area in which you feel you would fit comfortably. Once you know what your idea is, do some research into other businesses in that field and try to understand their formula for success. Simultaneously, try to identify niches in that market that are underserved, because that’s where small businesses thrive best. If you have a solid idea at your business’ core, then it will always attract a market.

Create and adhere to a business plan

Your business plan will serve as the cornerstone of your entire operation. A successful business plan consists of a clearly delineated mission statement for your business (i.e. what you intend to provide and how you intend to provide it), along with the key operational parameters of your business and how you’re going to differentiate yourself from the competition. Of course, a business plan will change and shift over time, so it’s important to keep revisiting this document, but the core ideas behind your business should be absolute. Not deviating from these ideals is how you’ll attract and maintain a core customer base over time

Don’t neglect the legal aspect

The last thing you want as a small business owner is to get tied up in inconsequential (or, worse, significant) lawsuits that threaten to massively disrupt your business operations. It’s important to pay close attention to the legal situation in which your business will operate. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to hire an entire legal team to take care of this side of the business; just being au fait with the potholes you might run into should be enough as you begin operations. However, as your business increases in size, you may want to consider a dedicated legal team, because the number of potential legal grievances will increase exponentially as your business’ size does.

Create a strong brand

Unfortunately, a modern business isn’t particularly likely to succeed if it doesn’t have a strong, memorable brand behind it. Weaker brands will mean customers or clients won’t remember your business and will instead opt for competitors who have worked on this aspect more diligently. Remember to carry out the appropriate market research and try to understand your demographic in order to create your brand. After all, it won’t do you any favours using colloquial language if you’re a business-focused brand, and you won’t want to be overly professional as a retail outlet. Be sure that your brand matches the tone and mission of your business plan.

Sweat the small stuff

Registering your business, considering what kind of company structure you would like, and understanding the general ins and outs of business are all extremely important skills for a business owner. While you may have a dream and the will to execute that dream, that won’t be enough to get you through as a business owner. You’ll need a thorough understanding of how business operates and the minutiae of running a business. Even as you begin to delegate and hire more and more staff, you should never lose sight of the smaller details, because those could be what trip you up later down the line.

Hire a dedicated accountant

Although you should be sweating the small stuff in your business, believe us when we say that you will want to hire an accountant. Crunching numbers is an incredibly difficult and involved task, so it’s best left to the professionals. While it may initially seem like a difficult expenditure to justify, an accountant will pay for themselves eventually by identifying areas in which your cash flow could be optimised. This way, you can take care of the aspects that are important to you – branding, growing the business, networking, et cetera – and you can leave the mathematical side of the business to someone who understands it. Even if you’re skilled in accountancy, you may still want to consider an external hire, because it’s an awful lot of work to undertake alone

Irish Businesses Facing Penalties as Data Protection Commission’s October 5th Deadline Lands

Businesses all over the country were scrambling last week to make the necessary adjustments to their websites as the Oct 5th deadline for online cookie compliance[1] fast approached. But by today businesses will be expected to have complied, and it’s unlikely that the many businesses that didn’t devote the necessary resources to this project will have gotten there on time. However, this should not dissuade them from taking action now, as there are significant penalties for non-compliance under GDPR legislation. This is the advice of the ACOI (Association of Compliance Officers Ireland) who say that implementation of the Data Protection Commission’s (DPC) guidance has significant implications for Irish businesses, particularly those SMEs whose resources may be already fully focused on surviving Covid and preparing for Brexit.

Michael Kavanagh, CEO of the ACOI explained,

“The ending of the grace period for implementing the DPC’s guidance on cookies and tracking technologies (See Appendix) is today October 5th, and anecdotal evidence has suggested that for many organisations, this has been overlooked, with energy, time and resources being placed instead on responding to COVID and Brexit. But it hasn’t gone away – and even though the business environment has never been more challenging, compliance is expected and will be enforced. With GDPR, the DPC has the power to impose significant sanctions on businesses that don’t comply, for example, if it was proven that a business did not gain affirmative consent from consumers using the site, then then they could potentially be fined a percentage of their turnover”.

In late 2019, the DPC carried out a cookie sweep of thirty-eight organizations, with a view to understanding current levels of compliance in Ireland[2]. The ACOI say this exercise raised significant issues across a range of areas. Some of the issues highlighted included websites setting cookies immediately on the landing page, in many cases for non-necessary cookies. Others misclassified cookies as necessary or strictly necessary, while consent was found to be bundled in many cases. In April 2020, the DPC then issued a guidance note which is intended to ensure greater levels of adherence across Irish organisations, and businesses were given 6 months to bring their sites in line with these new practices.

Mr. Kavanagh went on to comment,

“The implications for Irish businesses are considerable and extend beyond meeting the DPC’s list of requirements. For marketing and sales teams, the need to receive consent before deploying analytics cookies will effectively set a new baseline for their website metrics. A significant number of users are unlikely to opt-in, making it difficult to accurately compare year-on-year performance across the site. Customer service departments relying on website chatbots to deal with consumer queries must assess how to cater to customers who choose not to opt-in to this function. Many companies will need to implement a consent management platform (CMP) if one is not already in place. It will not be feasible to manually oversee aspects such as the requirement to reaffirm consent every six-months. Lastly, any firms still relying on pre-ticked forms of consent must amend their practices soonest. Compliance professionals will need to consult widely across the business to ensure key departments and stakeholders are aware of the upcoming changes, and to minimise the potential impact on day-to-day operations”.

The ACOI advise that all businesses should give high priority to this issue for the remainder of the year.

Appendix – Key Considerations from the DPCs Guidance Notes

  1. Organisations must obtain consent to store or set cookies.
  2. The rules apply even where cookies do not store personal data. ePrivacy focuses on the confidentiality of all electronic communications. If personal data is stored, the additional requirements of GDPR apply.
  3. Consent must meet GDPR standards, being freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. It must be as easy for a user to withdraw consent as it was to provide it in the first place.
  4. Pre-ticked boxes and bundled consent, where approval is sought for a range of processing activities, are not allowed.
  5. Continuing to use a website or scrolling through a landing page do not imply consent. It must be an affirmative action by the consumer such as ticking a box.
  6. Default settings on a browser do not constitute affirmative consent.
  7. Analytics cookies require consent. However, the guidance states it is unlikely first-party analytics will be considered a priority for enforcement action.
  8. Consent must be reaffirmed every six months. It is worth noting a similar view has been taken by the French supervisory authority.
  9. Businesses must have clear retention periods for each cookie. Retaining cookie data indefinitely does not meet the GDPR’s requirement for proportionality.
  10. The guidelines do not recommend a particular method for obtaining consent. They recognise that website cookie banners are a typical way of achieving this objective.
  11. Companies should avoid using language or interfaces that nudge the user to accept cookies.
  12. The Commission recommends having both a cookie policy and a privacy policy, as these meet the requirements of ePrivacy and GDPR respectively.
  13. The guidelines apply to other tracking technologies as well as cookies. For example, pixel trackers, like buttons and social sharing tools.
  14. Companies must be aware of any data shared with third parties, for example through social tools, and put in place data processing agreements where necessary.
  15. Finally, every effort should be made to present cookie banner information in a clear and accessible manner.