Four Tips for Choosing the Right Fleet Vehicles for Your Business

Selecting the right equipment and machinery for your business doesn’t have to be a difficult and costly task. 

Here are some simple steps to pick the right fleet vehicles for your venture to ensure all employees are happy and they can perform their jobs well without spending a ton of money.

 Choosing the best vehicles for your business fleet and allocating them at the right price can be a mammoth task for any fleet manager. You need to keep employees happy and safe, and there are a lot of other factors to consider, including preserving capital and trying to provide ‘more with less’. When you’re selecting vehicles, you want to make the best procurement decisions overall. Assess all the factors that will have an impact on the budget, capital expenditure decisions, leasing/financing options, purchasing all in cash, and cost of ownership.

First Factor to Consider: Use and Operation

Whether you’re going to buy outright, finance, or lease your fleet vehicles, make sure that what you choose is for their intended use. Avoid being brand or manufacturer specific, as this will limit your choice. Instead, focus on the capability of the vehicle, and find the right performance that will match your needs to ensure your team can do their jobs safely and efficiently. 

Determining what is suitable could include:

●      Size, style, safety, and carry capacity. What are the requirements of what the vehicle needs to carry? How much space do you need? What safety features are needed to keep your drivers safe? What other functions and features does each vehicle need to have? Remember, you’re using these vehicles for your business, not your personal use.

●      Routing, road types, and terrains. Will the fleet be driven on long motorway commutes such as freeways and highways, stop-start driving in suburban or urban areas, or for off-road jobs? This is where the vehicle type and fuel will become important. Consider too whether you will benefit from a fuel transfer pump to keep your fleet running. These tools help move fuel from one place to another and can be useful for when your drivers are out on the road to ensure they are fully prepared if they run into issues.

Second Factor to Consider: Standardizations and Specifications

Standardizing specifications across all vehicles could be useful for working out which cars, trucks, or busses are suitable for your fleet. These could include: 

●      Support for your corporate objectives, images, and branding

●      Employee satisfaction--is the vehicle right the job to allow for safety and efficiency?

●      Support maintenance, training, and parts inventories 

High up on your list should be fuel type and emissions, as the debate continues about the effect of diesel engines on the environment and how much damage it causes. Diesel used to be the fuel of choice, but it is a higher cost purchase option as it provides more economical fuel consumption for driving long distances. Diesel usually offers more cost savings over the long-term, but its popularity is beginning to fade, due to respiratory health concerns, cancer, environmental pollution, harmful emissions, and overall global climate change. Could you consider an electric, or electric-hybrid fleet instead? These vehicles will help protect the environment while improving your brand image. 

Third Factor to Consider: Additional Extras for Your Fleet

Fleet managers (or business owners/founders if they head up this part of the business) often allow a certain amount of flexibility with fleet vehicle selection, so they can offer additional extras or perks to boost employee satisfaction and reduce emissions.

Embrace the opportunity to get the first-hand experience from the people who actually operate and manage the vehicles. Ask for their honest opinions and how different vehicles will help them with the tasks they need to perform more effectively.

If employees are satisfied, they’re more likely to treat the vehicles responsibly and with respect. They will be more conscious about driving carefully and parking to prevent accidents. Make sure that the demand for extras from employees is aligned with company operational objectives and within your operational budget.

Fourth Factor to Consider: Safety, Insurance, and Accidents

Ensuring your employees are safe if they have a fender bender or crash and reducing accident costs are often high priorities for a fleet manager. If this is the case for your business, then you should consider adding vehicle technologies that are designed to make vehicles much safer and reduce the risk of accidents to ensure your insurance costs don’t increase.

Conduct the proper research and execute a thorough cost-benefit analysis while selecting the best felt vehicles for your business to make a more informed choice and the best possible decision for your business and employees. It is also worth thinking about the fact that better accident management might go hand-in-hand with a prompter return on investment and lowering your overall costs.

10 Simple Ways To Improve Your Small Business

If you want to have a successful and sustainable small business, then it is critical for you to have consistent improvements that enhance the business. Using tools like social media for marketing, monitoring the cash flow consistently, recognizing and honing in on your strength, and looking for help in certain areas of weakness will enable you to focus on improving areas of your business. 

Working from the top of your head might seem like a good idea, however, making sure you are working to the checklist to remind you of the simple, and basic steps that you need to take is going to lead to the biggest gain.  

Below are 10 of the simple ways you can improve your small business that you should be including on your checklist: 

Keeping Track Of Your Finances 

There are not many businesses that can estimate an accurate idea of the monthly, weekly, and daily numbers, as well as the financial trends that are happening within the organization. But, it is essential for you to take some time to keep track of the current cash flow. When running a small business, you may lack the much need financial skills to do this, and in this scenario, it’s always best to seek professional help and outsource to an accountant or accounting service. At least until you are unfamiliar with what you need to do to keep it in line yourself. 

Set Realistic Goals 

Similar to keeping track of your finances, setting objectives and goals is a critical part of your business success. Utilize the goals you set as a plan for the future to ensure you can continue to move forward with your business. For example, try to increase the traffic that you receive on your blog or business website. Having an increased traffic flow to these areas can translate into more sales or more customer loyalty. 

Use High-Impact Marketing 

It’s far too easy to waste money on marketing that is ineffective and pointless. Try to look for low-budget, high-impact marketing methods in order to improve your small business. Test a few tactics at a time, such as utilizing social media alongside using a printing service (click here for a great option), you can then see which work the best and offer a more effective performance. Once you have gone through the trial and error process you can utilize them as a permanent fixture in your marketing strategy. Social media can be an excellent low-cost and low-risk marketing method if done correctly. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter are some of the good options to build up a social media presence and attract the needed attention to your business. 

Create Fantastic Business Presentations

Having a fantastic, powerful business presentation can really help to improve small businesses’ performance. Start by taking the time to learn the essentials of a business presentation that is memorable. These can include providing unexpected pieces of information in order to captivate and engage with your audience. However, you want to make sure you don’t overload your presentation with too much information. Everything needs to be relevant but not long-winded. 

Keep A Watchful Eye On Trends 

No business should operate with tunnel vision. Changes and events in the global landscape have a massive impact on your business, meaning you need to make sure you are up to date with the latest occurrences as well as the latest trends. Make sure you remain current on issues and trends that are happening in your industry and the local community.

Things that may appear irrelevant on the surface could impact what you decide to do, so, always ensure you are considering all the possibilities. Covid-19 is a huge example of this, no one could have predicted what could happen, but it has impacted every single business, across all industries in different ways. 

Brush Up On Your Selling Skills 

If you want to ensure you have a high-return in sales, then you need to focus on the business sales function. Whether you’re managing a sales team, or you’re a one-person operation, you need to make sure you are always focusing on sales improvement. To start, you need to begin by clarifying your business mission. When you determine the areas that you know that customers need and that you excel in, you will have a much better sense of vision and purpose. If your selling skills are less than perfect, it could be a good idea to brush up on your skills or hire a dedicated sales team to tackles any incoming sales. 

Establish Best Practices 

An important underpinning for every business is keeping everything transparent. That means communicating effectively, testing, breaking down silos, and improving your processes constantly in order to keep everything running as smoothly as possible. Another great example of this is the ensure you document all of your processes and avoid miscommunication at all costs. Make sure you write your best practices down as policies, train any staff with them, and review them on a regular basis. 

Motivate Your Staff

Motivated and talented staff members can lead to big improvements in your business. You should take the time to learn what motivates your employees and leads them to higher levels of performance. You also need to be aware that all employees are different and they will be motivated in varying ways. What works for one member of your team won’t necessarily work for another. In order to succeed in this department, you need to be willing to listen to their input and insight regardless of seniority or position. Some of the best ideas for motivation methods comes from those who are closest to the problems. 

Be Aware Of Your Limits

A successful business owner will have a very clear awareness of their limitations. Being aware of your entrepreneurial personality type, you can successfully manage your resources and identify any areas of weakness. For example, if you’re brilliant at sales and marketing but are less experienced with bookkeeping, focus your efforts on the sales and marketing bur hire someone else to handle the books. One of the best things you can do for a small business is play to its strengths. A great way to help your business be as strong as possible, leading to success is to utilize outsourcing to strengthen your weaknesses.

Most business will utilize some sort of outsourcing, for tasks as simple as data entry right thought to IT design and maintenance. One of the most common areas to outsource is social media management, this is because it is often a skill that is lacking within a small business, but also takes up a lot of valuable business working hours. 

Remember To Take A Break

Running a small business takes a lot of time and hard work. And, especially when starting up, small business owners are known for wearing several hats that can lead to them working too much and too hard. One of the best things you can do for a small business is to also look after yourself. Reignite your passion for a few vacations. A tired business owner can often lead to a tiring business. You should never underestimate the potential value of spending some time away from the workload, refueling, and preparing yourself for more work as your business grows. 

These 10 simple ways to improve your business should lead you to success. Is there anything that you do to make sure your small business is successful? Or is there anything from the list above that you already use to help? Please share some tips in the comments below.

How to Make Your Business Run More Efficiently

As a business owner, how much time do you spend on menial or administrative tasks every week that don’t yield any revenue? Are you looking for ways to make your business easier to manage? Do you need to streamline operations and improve your finances? 

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you’re probably wasting upwards of 22 hours a week at work on tasks that take time away from the more important issues according to a study reported on Inc.com.

Learn how to put a stop to it now to maximize your output and start generating a profit!

A lot of aspiring and established entrepreneurs do dream of running a company that is simple to manage so that they can focus on everything from other investments to their personal life. Yet to do this, you need to make the right decisions for your company so it can run smoothly without having you work around the clock. Here are the steps that we recommend. 

Hire the Right Team Members from the Outset to Ensure High Retention and Low Employee Churn

First, you need to make sure that you are getting the right team on board with the right skills for your business. You should be doing this from day one and being careful with your hiring decisions. There are a number of key challenges here, however, the main point is to make sure that you know what skills are needed to fill each position, and then be sure you are asking the right questions during every phase of the interview process.

Ideally, you should be looking for people who are going to be valuable assets—both for the job and the company culture--in your business for the long term. That way you can avoid the problem of employee churn and not spend money on recruiting, hiring, and training new team members, only for them to leave a few months or a year later. If you find that the person you hired is not performing effectively in their position, it could be worth exploring additional onsite, in-house training rather simply cutting them loose. Some reports (such as SHRM) show that every time a company replaces a full-time, salaried employee, it can cost between six and nine months of that salary. This is due to the advertising, screening, interviewing, hiring, and training protocols.

Use Outsourcing Solutions and Providers for Projects Where Your Team Falls Short

Do be aware that if you are keen to keep your team small, then there are outsourcing solutions available. With the right outsourcing solution and help, you will be able to make sure that you can cut the costs of your business and still get the quality services and skills that you need for specific projects. You should be exploring outsourcing for any area of your business that is either expensive or complicated to manage effectively. For instance, if you need to hire a graphic designer or copyeditor for one project only, you can find qualified help on websites such as Upwork.com or Freelance.com. This is a much more cost-effective option than hiring a full-time or part-time specialist. 

Another example of outsourcing work would be an IT management service such as www.egistech.com. An organization like this can work to make sure that your IT systems run effectively behind the scenes and that your business doesn’t encounter unexpected downtime, fewer disruptions, or other information technology problems. You don’t want to end up in disaster recovery.

Explore the Right Technology and Tools for Your Brand from the Beginning

Next, do think about the tech tools available on the market. There are numerous options available that might provide you with the relief you need when managing your company from scheduling meetings to social media automation to project/task management software. Some of the technology tools that we use at FemFounder.co are HootSuite.com to streamline and automate our social media posts, Canva.com to develop our website and social graphics, ConstantContact.com to distribute email newsletters and announcements to our customers, and Squarespace.com as our main web hosting portal. All of these tools save hundreds of man-hours every month by automating various tasks.

Essentially, this will mean that you won’t need to spend as much time or effort on tedious administrative tasks or putting out fires. Indeed, everything can run far more smoothly, with or without your personal input.

How to Delegate Effectively to the Right Team Members as Your Business Grows

Finally, you should make sure that you are able to effectively delegate in your business model to the right people in your organization. This isn’t as easy as most business owners assume, though. It can be difficult to relinquish control over key areas of your company. When I launched my first business, I always felt the need to be in control of every aspect of the business. But that led to more problems over the long run.

You need to make sure that the right people are in place to handle menial administrative tasks for you. That’s why it’s so important to hire the right team from the beginning as we have already discussed. Once you have the right team members in the right positions, the trick is to train and then trust them to make the right call with key decisions. Where possible, you need to make sure that you avoid micromanaging any of your team members—this can lead to your most valuable players to leave your company. You can learn more about team delegation on www.mindtools.com.

We hope this helps you understand some of the best ways to make your business a lot easier to manage.

Three Critical Business Areas to Analyze this Year

Now that we’re getting used to the COVID-19 crisis, and unpredictability has become something that our businesses can cope with and adapt to more easily, it’s time to decide how to spend the rest of this most alarming and unprecedented year. Your aims, when considering which areas of your business to analyze and change, are twofold.

First, you need to prioritize the business-crucial elements of your operations and logistics. Second, you need to consider how you could feasibly improve those crucial elements in a short amount of time. Given these two provisos, here are three areas of your business to review and analyze this year to ensure it can weather the storm and come out on the other side fully intact.

Optimizing and Streamlining Your Biz Online Performance

Across the board, COVID-19 has meant that more people are spending time online, shopping for products and services, online news, digital magazines, and blog readership figures all have gone up, as well as social media use has increased. Website visitors and page views are up, and e-commerce sales have also taken a boost from the lost shopping yields on the high street. Overall, the online cyber-highway is busier than ever before – and you want to be enjoying a comparable boost in your own fortunes during this difficult time.

·       So: have you found that you’re making more money online in 2020 overall?

·       Are you noticing more traffic from organic searches on Google, Yahoo, and Bing?

·       Have your social media channel followings and engagement improved? If so, how you noticed an increase in click-throughs?

·       Are you seeing a reduction of abandoned carts and increase an in customers completing the sale?

·       Did you notice whether the total customer value of each sale increased?

·       Have you built an email list of engaged subscribers and customers? If so, are you seeing an increase in email open and click through rates?

·       Have you generated more views and sales due to the predilection of people to be searching and shopping online?

These are a few questions that you need to answer through analysis to guide smart changes to your online infrastructure in the latter half of this year. If your customer base and revenue have not increased during the first part of the year, it’s time to evaluate the reasons why.

Top-Notch Customer Service to all Customers/Clients

Never has excellent customer service been so crucial for businesses attempting to navigate the post-pandemic world. You need your staff to be on the ball when it comes to their communications with clients and customers - and you need to be making those customers and clients feel comfortable with their relationships with your brand. If your customers feel neglected or unsatisfied, they will go elsewhere. Now, is the critical time to overhaul your customer service programs and incentives and train your employees to ensure all customers and clients receive the best possible service. There are too many other choices for consumers to explore if your customer service is lacking. It’s that simple.

As such, one innovation that can be incredibly helpful for your business is unified communications software. This software enables you to take an overview of all of the different communications platforms that you’re operating within your business – both internally and with external individuals – to monitor, assess, and analyze your communications. With this ability to view all of your communications through a single portal, you’ll be able to suggest changes to help your customers trust your business more. Essentially, you’ll be able to track all stated KPIs and benchmarks, determining strong and weak areas on micro and macro levels.

Importance of Scheduled Package Delivery Times

Many people remain in their homes after being told to stay at home by the government. These include vulnerable people who are scared of getting ill and people who have been able to change their working routine to incorporate working from home more regularly. As such, fewer people are visiting brick and mortar shops and stores – and more people are shopping online and having items delivered to their door.

If your business isn’t accurate and competitive in delivery – and you’re disappointing customers with long lead times, canceled orders, and missed delivery slots – then you’re unlikely to be chosen as a trusted business for them to buy from again. The importance of swift and accurate delivery cannot be overstated in the post-pandemic world – and to improve your business, you need to make sure that you’re analyzing all of your delivery slots to confirm your customers’ packages are delivered on time and they are happy.

If your business delivery time has lagged in the past or you had problems fulfilling orders, then you could offer free shipping on all orders and returns to help make up for the shortfall. Or you can go one step further by offering free shipping on all items and returns for 30 days or for an entire quarter to build up that trust once again. Brainstorm creative ways to provide interesting offers to your customers so they remain loyal.

These three areas of your business should be a priority of assessment and change this year, helping you redirect your energies to fulfill customer expectations in 2020. If your business falls short in any of these areas, then it’s time to optimize those weak spots to enhance your customer satisfaction and, in turn, which can increase your overall revenue. There are just too many options for consumers to choose from today.

3 Ways To Cost-Effectively Modernize Your Shop Floor

Having your own business or retail store feels like a dream come true. When you’ve worked your whole life to achieve something of this magnitude, it feels indescribable when you finally reap the rewards. Running a business or retail store requires an entrepreneur and owner to wear many hats; you must be financially knowledgeable and savvy; you must understand the ins and outs of cultivating a positive team environment and welcoming culture; and you must have a great relationship with your customers for long-term growth.

If you run a face to face business such as a retail store, restaurant, or cafe, however, you’ll know that your business’ physical appearance matters an awful lot to customers, pretty much more than anything else. If you sell premium products, your store’s physical appearance is even more important. Just think about what you see and feel when you walk into a Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany’s, or Louis Vuitton store. The environment is just as visually pleasing and high-end as the products are. Merchandising is critical to brand uniformity and consistency. Even if you are a trustworthy business with second-to-none customer service, your shop floor looking shabby easily deters potential new customers. 

If you struggle to find cost-effective ways to improve the physical appearance of your shop floor, here are three helpful tips!

Switch Up Your Color Scheme and Update Your Brand Fonts

While it’s useful to have a well-known design color scheme that all your customers know and how they identify your brand, sometimes the same-old look and color palette can fade into the background. Particularly on a busy street with lots of businesses all trying to pull customers in, standing out is of paramount importance. If you run a great service or sell premium products while providing top-notch customer service, but can’t get customers through the door, you’ll never be able to grow as a business. It’s just that simple.

How is this cost-effective? Well, switching up your color scheme, fonts, and overall layout doesn’t mean you have to fork out tons of cash. A simple overhaul or redesign such as re-printing menus on high-quality paper, ordering your staff uniforms in a new color, or updating the displays and changing how items are merchandise doesn’t have to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the storefront, there are so many innovative ways to introduce a new color scheme or displays without starting from scratch. Additionally, you can enhance the look of your physical store by updating your logo or even by using a new font in your marketing and branding materials.

Improve Your Signage and Other Visuals

Even if it’s obvious to you and your employees what your business does and how it operates, it may not be clear to your prospective customers. One of the main turn-offs for potential buyers is lack of clarity. It makes your business seem shady, disorganized, and unprofessional. Having to explain what your business does or the types of products it sells to a customer because they’re confused about your messaging or market positioning, while they’re standing directly inside your store, means that your store’s design and appearance are both missing something vital. Be clear about what your brand stands for, the types of products or services it sells, and the pricing.

Investing in innovative, attractive signage for your business doesn’t have to be expensive. The Clik-Clik Magnetic Sign Hanging System allows you to create eye-catching signage and hang them simply and quickly in your store. Signage can bring an entirely new look for your store without spending a lot of money.

Keeping Your Eye On The Latest Design and Retail Store Trends

If you’re an older business that has been operating in the same way for years or decades, you may be reluctant to change the way you function. After all, your tried-and-true system works, right? However, ignoring the progression of today’s world could lose customers for your booming business. Keeping your eye on trends you can emulate will keep your flow of customers through the door. You don’t have to restructure your store or restaurant completely, but it should reflect what your customers want and make them feel comfortable.

For example, if you run a cafe or restaurant, there are so many food trends that have become staples, particularly for young customers. Farm-to-table ingredients and using sustainable materials are easy ways to update your restaurant for a small amount of money. Likewise, if you run a clothing or accessory company and have a retail store, having an awareness of the mainstream fashion trends and store decoration can help you stay relevant. While you go through the store or restaurant optimization process, consider who your customers are and what they want. This will help them connect with your brand naturally and in turn, increase your revenue.

More Than Bricks And Mortar: Setting Up An Effective Business Location

Taking the big journey from a modest self-employed worker to a fully-fledged entrepreneur is an intimidating leap for anyone. There are so many things that need consideration. But one of the biggest issues we can all have when your business starts to take off and we've spent a lot of time working on it from the comfort of your home is a location.

Whether it's an office environment, a retail space, a restaurant, or a shared working space, there are so many things that need considering when you are choosing a location for your business baby. What are the main things to consider?

The Prospect for Expansion

For many people, a physical location is purely a starting point. But much like when you buy your own home, you need to see what potential it has. You could very well pick a small office, or you could go further out and buy some land, so this becomes your base now and 10 years down the line.

Your physical business location is crucial (when you have to meet clients or sell to customers but ensuring that it's a place ripe for expansion is another thing entirely. You need to think about the opportunity to expand your business but also hire employees for different positions for the business to scale. And when you purchase land over leasing an office, there are no limits to what you can do with it.

And even if you think that constructing buildings are expensive, there are resources such as ArmstrongSteel.com that can help educate you on the best way to move forward. When you start to look at the potential, rather than what it already is, this can make all the difference.

How Does It Fit in With Your Business Demographic?

Demographics are a tricky topic when you don’t know exactly who they are. When you are defining demographics, it could be your customers or it could be your client base, depending on the nature of your business. But there is a correlation between demographic and how the business evolves and grows. There is an insightful article on SmallBusiness.chron.com. If you have given much consideration to your demographics, this could be a sticking point that can trip you up further down the line so it’s critical that you have a firm and thorough understanding of your target audiences.

Is It Accessible?

Accessibility to your target customers and clients is vital. Accessibility is even more important when you set up a location further afield. When you are relying on customers or employees, and even suppliers or vendors, you have to think about the little issues that can prove frustrating. If someone is not able to access your location properly due to a seemingly insignificant issue, they may very well give up after a while, and yes, even employees that do-good work could be tempted to give up based on where you are. So, a convenient physical location is critical to your brick and mortar store or office.

Is It Close to Competitors? How will this Impact Your Business?

In one respect, competition is healthy if you are both in the same industry, such as retail or a restaurant. But if a competitor nearby will add a lot of stress and strain to your marketing, it might be important to look somewhere else to set up shop. Competition is something you cannot get away from no matter your industry, so you have to weigh up the pros and cons.

Setting up a business location isn't just about getting an empty office. Put as much thought into this aspect as you would any other part of your business. 

From Office To Remote Working: Ensuring Your Business Can Thrive Forevermore

For many entrepreneurs during this unprecedented situation, many have realized that they can actually run a business from home. And when you are looking to build up a business or find a new way of working, this lockdown has certainly forced us all to change our mindset. We have had to find different ways of working and in fact, some have been able to make it work in their favor, far better than they thought!

For those people who have realized that they don't need a physical office to run a business anymore and are looking to set up a remote company, what are the best approaches every business owner should take on board?

Don't Neglect The Tech

Everybody is either working with a device issued to them or they are using their own laptops. As we can struggle to oversee our employees in a personal sense, we've got to protect them in other ways. When it comes to phishing scams and viruses, we've got to make sure that our employees are clued up in spotting these issues but we've got to make sure that the tech is in place. While it may be cheaper to incorporate a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy where people use their own devices, this can prove troublesome when it comes to accessing sensitive business data. This means that we've got to invest in appropriate VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). And for many people, they don't know how to setup a VPN on a router or have any technical knowledge at all. As such, we've got to hold their hands through the entire process. But ultimately, it is our responsibility to make sure that they have the tools to do their job.

Communication Is Paramount

A lot of people feel that working remotely benefits them more than the typical office setup. For others, it can be an incredible shock to the system. This is why you have to make sure that your abilities to communicate with your team are better than ever before. Giving your employees the numerous options to communicate, whether this is through email, instant messenger, or the old fashioned phone call, your employees need to feel that they are in the loop. As people that work remotely can feel isolated, you've got to work doubly hard to include everyone.

You Need In-Person Meetings On Occasion

And while you can improve your abilities to communicate you can't underestimate that people need human contact. Look to those companies who have been working remotely for years. They work hard keeping everybody in the loop but they also make sure that everybody meets up once or twice a year, either for team-building exercises or as a way to enjoy some quality time together. This can help employees to see the bigger picture but it also works wonders for morale. When employees work from home full-time, there's a lot of positives but when you remove the option of an office, a lot of employees can miss that human contact.

While many businesses are, no doubt, considering remote working forevermore, and have yielded positive outcomes as a result of the current situation, you may have to put a lot more work into it further down the line.

Applying Agile to Aerospace and Defense

The aerospace and defense industry has longstanding best practices and certain ways of approaching innovation. While it is one of the most innovative industries on the market, designing something new takes years. The tried and tested processes within the industry are what make the aerospace industry so reliable in the first place.

However, just because there are processes in place, doesn’t mean the industry cannot implement agile as an approach to problem-solving and task management. Agile is not meant to replace the meticulous processes already in place, but rather add new flexibilities to them. There are several ways to benefit from agile as a method in the aerospace and defense industry.

Visualized Task Management

One of the first and easiest things to do when it comes to implementing agile in the aerospace industry is adding a visual task management system into existing workflows. This is done by integrating the Kanban system with workflows already in place. As a result, this supercharges existing workflows using the Kanban system.

Teamwork, team communications, and general task management are among the aspects that get improved with the implementation of Kanban. Using tools like Kanbanize, it is also possible to divide complex projects into a series of smaller tasks waiting to be completed. Project completion tracking becomes easier at this stage.

Visualized tasks and the integration of the Kanban system also helps with managing project costs and eliminating reworks. This is the true advantage of implementing agile in aerospace and defense, particularly with complex projects now having to adapt to tighter budgets. You can learn more in this article by Kanbanize.

Flexible Processes

The application of agile as a methodology brings some degree of flexibility to existing processes. Ideally, you want to be firm with principles but offer some flexibility when it comes to designing processes. This is what agile can do to various workflows within the aerospace industry. It also helps companies in the industry achieve their goals faster.

What agile does is prioritize objectives and principles over processes. You can outline a set of objectives for a project or a task, and then let team members figure out the best and most efficient way to achieve those objectives. As a result, processes become more fluid, efficiency gets increased, and the whole company can operate in a more agile way.

Emphasis on Teamwork

Teamwork is an essential component of agile. Staying lean doesn’t mean limiting the resources available to projects and tasks. It simply means making sure that all team members can perform at their highest capacity without sacrificing reliability and accuracy. As stated before, a collaboration between team members is facilitated by systems like Kanban.

In this industry, in particular, teamwork allows for different functions to collaborate in a more seamless way. During product development and testing, for example, engineers with different backgrounds can combine their resources to solve problems, find new improvement possibilities, and develop a capable product as an outcome.

Customer Involvement

At the same time, agile allows customers of the industry-government agencies and enterprises – to be more involved in processes such as product development. Customer feedback and continuous improvement are essential to developing better products, both hardware, and software, and facilitating customer feedback is now a necessity rather than an option.

Customer involvement goes beyond feedback forms and meetings; we have to look at customers in a more holistic way. For starters, there are internal and external customers, with internal customers being departments that rely on other departments’ work to succeed. When viewed from this perspective, customer involvement becomes crucial indeed.

As more processes accommodate customer feedback, you slowly transition into continuous improvement rather than big leaps. New additions can be made on the fly and without ruining the integrity of the project or the roadmap around it. It is also at this point that the implementation of agile becomes more impactful.

A Continuous Cycle

The final result of applying agile in the aerospace and defense industry is a development process that relies on continuous improvement. In the long run, this is the approach that yields better results. Rather than starting from the beginning every time a new project is opened, teams can focus on improving existing products in a continuous way.

Updates can be pushed to products that are already on the market as well as new products in the pipeline. New technologies and improvements will continue to support industry output for years to come. All that is needed is a clear definition of a support period which allows teams to transition to an all-new development in a less disruptive way.

Continuous improvement lets teams fail quickly and learn from failures even faster. Fewer errors will be found and the errors that do exist are less catastrophic than ever. Combined with the other benefits discussed previously, there is no doubt that applying agile in the aerospace and defense industry is something that needs to be done today.

3 Areas Your Startup Should Think About Outsourcing

The world of startups can be extremely competitive, so this means that any startup should be focusing on the core business operations without any distractions. However, in the initial stages of a business, fund s and staff, are limited. This can lead to a limitation of growth potential. Many startup owners tend to wear far too many hats and find it hard to juggle all the areas of their business. 

So, Why Choose To Outsource? 

It might be surprising to know, but 90 percent of new businesses fail, 46 percent of these is because of the money running out. Keep your eye on the budget is essential as a new business. You don’t want to invest in services that aren’t going to return a hefty sum with outsourcing you can expect to receive a generous return on any investment. In fact, outsourcing can save you up to 60 percent of your costs. You can also benefit from higher productivity and more experienced skills. 

What Should Outsource As A Startup?

If you’re thinking about outsourcing, you might be questioning where your business might use it. This is very dependent on each individual business and it will depend on your business goals. You need to strategic in your approach and look at any skills you are lacking. Acknowledge your weaknesses and work from there. 

If you want to look at a few suggestions, three commonly outsourced areas include: 

• Administrative duties

• IT services

• Payroll

Administrative duties

Outsourcing administrative duties enable you to pass the responsibilities of taking notes and answering emails to an outsourced worker/s. Things like scheduling meetings and employee working hours can also be outsourced. This will enable you and your staff to work on more pressing matters. 

IT services

Getting yourself online and seen as quickly as possible is essential for any startup. Because technologies are constantly changing, IT services such as those found at www.navious.com are a popular and well-utilized way to make sure you don’t fall behind before you are even ahead. Using an IT Service can help to increase the productivity of your employees, ensure the safety of your data, reduce technology expenses and give you peace of mind that all your digital needs are in good hands without the need to recruit or train an in-house IT specialist. 

Payroll

Outsourcing your payroll to a professional service is going to protect both you and your staff. It provides you with expert knowledge to ensure the accuracy needed to prevent any legal problems and your employees are paid accordingly. Payroll can get a bit messy if you don’t know what you are doing, so using outsourcing can help to limit costly mistakes. 

Startup owners need to be driven in order to succeed. Part of this is recognizing when you have weaknesses that could damage your success in the competitive market. Outsourcing is an excellent way of ensuring you are covering any holes in skillset within your business. It’s been said before it’s determined by your individual business needs. Almost any areas of your start-up can be outsourced. 

Could You Have A Paperless Business In 2020?

Paper is one of those resources that we all need to use as little as possible. Deforestation is a hot topic in today’s modern world, and one of the reasons why that happens is because of our demand for paper products.

There’s no denying that one of the biggest consumers of paper products is the business world. We’re always printing out contracts, documents, even emails because of a long-established need to retain hard paper copies of things. But, what if there was a way that you could run a 100% paperless business in 2020? It might seem like a far-fetched idea, but the reality is that it’s doable. Here’s how:

Image Source

Use managed document services providers for contracts

Do you run a business that requires each client to sign a contract before you commence any work? If so, you’ll be pleased to know that you can stop paying for reams of paper contracts to get printed out.

You may not realize it. But, it’s possible to use managed document services providers for such purposes. They can handle the design, storage, and management of your contracts. What’s more, they make it easy for you and your clients to sign those contracts digitally. Check out websites like www.cdsla.com to find out how you can revolutionize those all-important legal agreements with your customers.

Digitize your business cards

Some business owners, whether they are sole traders or multinational corporations, are hesitant to give up using paper-based business cards. The thing about traditional business cards is folks tend to lose or even dispose of them in the trash.

Image Source

We all live in a digital age where the majority of your clients and people in your industry use smartphones and email. With that in mind, it makes sense to give up your paper cards and opt for digital ones instead.

Please take a look at thehaystackapp.com to see how you can create digital business cards, and how it’s possible to track who looks at or shares them with others.

Opt-out of paper communications

The term “paperless office” doesn’t only mean stopping the paper that your business generates. It also includes lowering or even halting the amount of paperwork that gets issued to it, too.

These days, many B2B firms offer their clients the option to opt-out of paper communications. Instead, their customers can elect to receive electronic or telephone-based contact. Taking that into consideration, it’s worth contacting firms that you regularly deal with and asking them to only contact your firm by telephone or email.

Use smartphones and tablets instead of printing things out

There are still people in the business world today that will go on their computer and print out things like maps. Sure, people in your business need to know how to get to unfamiliar destinations. But, there’s no need to print out directions! There are a plethora of mapping apps for smartphones and tablets, such as Google Maps. Use them instead, and save a tree!

Hopefully, this blog post will have given you some tips to make your business greener by running a paperless organization. Good luck!

The Essential Project Management Trends of 2020

Successful project management has changed scope in the last decade, largely driven by improved technologies and shifts in employee trends. For brands that are still using traditional methods of project management, they will inevitably start to fall behind their more forward-thinking contemporaries and competitors. Even just a decade ago, project management teams were smaller, had access to fewer tools, and relied on project simplicity to get things done. The modern approach to managing projects has resulted in larger teams and increasingly complex methods of finding the right solutions. 

As project management continues to evolve, here are the key trends in 2020 that suggest how the world of project management looks set to change in the next ten years. 

Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Project Management

There’s no escaping the fact that artificial intelligence is no longer a sci-fi concept and now another tool for businesses to leverage. Although it remains challenging to predict exactly how much AI and automation are set to change the world, there’s no disputing that project management is already feeling the effects of this emerging technology. Today’s best project management software offers solutions, utilizing the latest automation advantages while also providing project managers with key insights and analytics. AI and project management is only going to grow more interlinked.

The Remote Worker Problem

Project management is all about collaboration and feedback. Although the concept of the remote worker is no longer something that can only be imagined, the fact is that many project managers are still struggling to adapt to this shift in workspace presence. Remote workers are only growing in number, and that means project managers need to be aware of how best to use that workforce when they are not in the same geographical location. However, with the vast number of ways to communicate in real-time, remote working should not be a barrier to improved project management performance.  

Ensure that you:

● Have regular check-in meetings with your remote teams

● Use collaboration tools that are designed for project management

● Ensure that performance reviews are held regularly

Remote working is the next big shift in employment, so project managers need to be ready for that change.

Soft Skills Value and Development

Not all of the trends in project management are about technology. Soft skills are more highly valued than ever in the project management environment, partly because of the cold and logical approach afforded by machine learning and automated analysis. The demand for the more human approach is set to become one of the leading management trends in 2020, with emotional intelligence, teaching skills, and communication skills all highly prioritized. The recent report by the World Economic Forum highlighted the emergence of social skills as being the second-highest priority for employers. This means that project managers need to focus more on the people in their teams, as well as developing their own set of soft skills. 

While these are the most predominant project management trends to consider more closely in 2020, you should also consider the future of your role. The emergence of millennials as project managers will lead to further changes in business management styles and demands, and the ever-present threat of sophisticated cybercrimes continues to be of vital importance in the project management department. The more that you understand the trends that are going to transform project management, the easier it will be to continue making improvements to your efficiency and effectiveness.

4 Reasons to Outsource Your Business

Outsourcing earned a bad reputation in the 1980s and 1990s when huge corporations discovered its benefits and subsequently fired large proportions of their employees, but more and more people are now understanding the benefit of outsourcing. Outsourcing has become a staple of our current ‘gig economy’ and provides value to businesses all around the world. Here are some reasons your business plan should consider it.

Decreasing Labor Costs

Labor is expensive in the developed world and outsourcing is one of the best ways to counter the costs. It’s similar to the economics of business assets like machines – you get the most value from a machine if it’s working constantly, so why would you employ somebody if you’re not going to give them enough work for them to be kept busy the entire work day? The solution to this is in outsourcing labor so you can save costs by only paying them when you need them to work. 

Timesaving

There are some reasons for outsourcing that are simply because it’s hard to have somebody that has the expertise you need on your payroll. This is especially true in the digital realm, where there is so much to know that you just can’t possibly know everything you need to do for your site. Take the case of eCommerce. You need to use expert information about security, SEO, analytics, conversion-rates, HTML, Javascript, data management, server hosting – the list is virtually endless. This is why sites like www.digivante.com can exist and be in such high demand – in this current age knowledge is power, and outsourcing is a great way to acquire knowledge without putting in the years learning about it.  

Clearing up your Core Business 

There are some functions in running the core of a business that can, simply put, get in the way of C-level executives efficiency. It’s easy for your team of chief executives to be overwhelmed by outside issues caused by problems with back-end operations.

In a world where time is money, you want them to dedicate as much of their time as possible to providing value to the company. The value they can provide to the company if they complete tasks relating to the core business is probably higher than the value they’d provide if they’d spend time distracted sorting out back-end operational issues. That’s why it can be better to outsource those issues, so you end up generating a net positive value, even after paying those doing the back-end jobs.

Keeping Customers Happy

If you outsource, you’ll have an increased efficiency and ability capability, which will lead to your customers being happier with the running of your business. You’ll be able to give them the services or products they need a lot faster and won’t need the bureaucracy of having different departments dealing with customer issues. If you put non-core tasks in the hands of a company that specializes in dealing with those exact tasks, you’ll be able to provide value to your customers that only a much bigger and much richer business could afford to do.

Your Business Needs A Reliable Delivery System

Your business is doing quite well for itself. You have plenty of staff who know what they’re doing, and as the boss, you’re excelling like you never expected. You have a customer base to serve--all in all, your business is worth quite a lot!

But there might be one more thing you need to focus on right now—your delivery service. If you want to take charge of your niche, and you want to make good money off of the good reviews you receive from all of your happy customers, then you’re going to need a reliable delivery service to see you all through. 

And before you do any more expanding, it’s time to make sure you have your warehouse sorted, and you’re able to meet customer expectations when the time comes to transport your products. 

Provide a Realistic Shipping Time

If you’re going to meet customer expectations, don’t promise them next day delivery when you know from the start that will not be possible! Provide them with more realistic shipping time, such as 2 to 3 days after the initial purchase, to ensure that you perform up to scratch. 

Try not to be flashy here. Try not to overpromise. Because even if you indicate a few days delivery time, you might just be able to deliver a little sooner than expected… That works wonders for your testimonials! 

Ship Your Packages Out with Protection

Packaging your products properly is a big deal. If you don’t, customers are going to receive bashed packaging at best and broken/ruined products at worst. And do you know what that’s going to do for your reputation? 

You might need to invest in some packaging design software to make sure each one of your parcels that needs to be shipped, whether nationally or globally, is wrapped up and sealed off in exactly the right way. 

Make Sure You Order the Right Stock

It might seem like a small point, but when you think about it, it makes up a huge part of your assembly line. After all, if you don’t have the right quantities of stock in the warehouse and you get an influx of orders all at once, you’re going to disappoint each one of those customers. 

It’s going to take quite a while to get their products out to them, at the very least. Stay up to date on what’s going on in your storage and/or packaging facility to ensure that you have stock on the shelves, and everything else will operate smoothly. 

Your business needs a reliable delivery service. You need to be sure you’re never slacking in an area that has direct contact with the customers you aim to make happy. Keeping ideas like these in mind will help to ensure this.

Preparing For The Most Threatening Internal Business Challenges

Pexels - CC0 License

Business challenges come from all directions. Most of them, we may think are external. For example, we see the competition we may have to fight against, we see how public opinion can quickly change, we see how our previous products may have been criticized, and we think that the most pressing challenges are outside the business. But this is not always the case, although it is true to an extent.

However, consider an athlete, perhaps a boxer. Is a boxer’s greatest challenge fighting his opponent? Or is it in preparing, hard training, and becoming internally equipped to handle that fight? If he fails to train his footwork, or his dodging, or his stamina, odds are that his arrival at the match would be a sure loss from the beginning. This is where a business can take some notice from this kind of inquiry, and consider their internal business challenges the most pressing to take care of. If you consider this, it can truly make the largest difference as time passes on, and it may help you become more accustomed to the unpredictable situations that are externally pressed upon you.

With the following advice, you’ll know where to begin:

Inattentive Or Demoralized Staff

If your people are not with you, you have a problem that you cannot fix with immediate investment or a rallying speech. It’s important to ensure that staff is cared for first of all, that their working compensation package is adequate compared to their efforts and skill levels. If you are continually hanging expiring contracts over their heads, forcing them to work overtime or are cutting their job reliability, they will feel as though they aren’t afforded the same level of treatment you may wish for.

Additionally, allowing demotivated or inattentive staff to continue wasting time at your firm can be a real issue, and suggests a need for true course-correction. It’s important to hold regular meetings to see exactly where your team is and try to get everyone on the same page. Additionally, allowing a confidential reporting system to help you understand what the main issues or unhappy feelings stem from within this office can help you apply actionable solutions.

Inefficient Communication Systems

Inefficient communication systems can be confusing. Perhaps you both use Slack, Hangouts, Emails, VoIP calls, and another unnecessary service to bring staff together, or at least, this is the plan. But this overcomplicated nature, the fact that staff is only approved to use these services at select times or regular downtime can make communication quite hard to parse.

Additionally, failing to train staff in the use of professional email brevity can lead to misguided and unclear instructions, or may even lead to certain toxic communications becoming the norm. This is not acceptable. It’s important to continually review your communication norms to ensure everyone is on the same page, and that no one is left behind in how they freely communicate, ask questions, or address issues and conflicts professionally.

IT Challenges

When IT issues occur, it can be quite difficult to know where to turn. IT challenges can come from many different directions. Perhaps you may find that your server farm is struggling with the bandwidth usage when gaining a higher-than-normal amount of visitation requests to your website, and thus you experience downtime.

Perhaps your cloud computing service is confusing to use, or maybe your computing office setup is far past what should be considered industry standard. All of these issues and more can prevent us from enjoying the best route forward, and they can also demotivate us as we are trying to gain a solid foothold into the business world.

The biggest IT challenges are often user-created, or simple enough to fix. But to the extent that you have real trouble, using managed IT services or polishing up your understanding relating to what systems you use, how they are purposed for the tasks you need to complete as well as keeping your networks secure can all be an essential process to understand, no matter if you have to hire internally or outsource your systems to one secure company.

Branding Confusion

A company that struggles to understand its branding, or offers disparate branding graphic design can confuse both staff and customers alike. This is not something you should find acceptable, and it’s certainly not something you should aim for. Keeping your marketing, logo design, advertisements, campaigns, and website color palettes cohesive can ensure that your entire operation seems legitimate across the board.

Even smaller elements such as the font you use for your business must be kept in check. If your letterhead font is different from your business name font, immediately there are alarm bells in the heads of those who interact with both - and this can even affect those within your company. Keep it tight. Keep things cohesive. Before approving a branding strategy, ensure that it’s either only slightly updated or completely adjacent to the offerings you have utilized prior. This can ensure that everything is carefully put together as if emanating from the same vision.

Of course, rebranding your firm is a perfectly acceptable thing to achieve from time to time, but the same principles must also apply here. After all, why wouldn’t you wish for your business to steward the most cohesive visual impact, especially in 2019, where visual refinement can often cause the quick-scrolling social media audience to pay attention to what you have to say.

A Toxic Office Atmosphere

A toxic office atmosphere can tank a business perhaps more thoroughly than anything else. It leads to demotivated and unhappy employees, a harmful working culture such as through managers playing favorites or dumping work on one individual. It can lead to an increase in staff turnover and also a decrease in the number of skillful applicants who wish to work at your firm. After all, a toxic office atmosphere is not something that stays within your firm. Word travels fast, especially through resources such as Glassdoor.

As most businesses can be made or fail through the skills of the employees they attract, it’s important to see just how pernicious this issue can become. As someone hoping to prepare for the most threatening internal business challenges, it’s not hard at all to see how a toxic office atmosphere may be your first priority. Through allowing confidential services to help to bully or those who contribute to the issue to become reported immediately, you will be able to regulate the main culprits of this issue and come to a worthwhile result. This is only the first step of the journey, but it can make a true difference.

The Blame Game

One negative aspect of toxic office culture, something that requires its own category all on its own, is companies that play the blame game. Perhaps the marketing campaign that just started is hardly getting any engagement. Perhaps the marketing department will blame the silly brief they had to fulfill. Perhaps your PR department is aggressively shouting at the other departments due to how much blowback they have received. Perhaps another department feels slighted, and from there the entire process continues and continues and continues until everyone feels isolated, annoyed, and somewhat peeved.

This is not how a business should work. A home full of infant children arguing over a lost toy perhaps, but not a business. Doing everything you can to erode the blame game and impartially measure your metrics of success will not be there so you can allow your departments to pass the buck, but to accurately understand what went wrong, and how you can improve next time.

Lessening the harsh penalties that you might have for a lack of success, or hiring better managers that are motivational rather than those who throw all of their stress downwards can help you eviscerate this problem - but also consider how your office culture may be contributing to the problem.

Too Much Demand

If you promise to help out with a certain job, or you are unsure as to how you’re actually going to make good on a large order, or you have agreed to promotion despite not being sure if you can fulfill the terms, you put your business in a tough spot. Not only might you feel motivated to aggressively work your staff to the point where they are no longer happy in their jobs, but more than that, you may truly alienate those who have had their talents wasted.

This can be a death spiral for a firm, and it’s essential that you do not let it happen to yours. With that in mind, you will be much more forthright and considerate when communicating with your staff, when assessing your actual capabilities, and in balancing how to make use of opportunities while never eroding your business potential.

With this advice, we believe you can find a better means of dealing with internal business challenges, through and through.

Taking The Next Step With A Home Business: What To Think About

Many businesses start from home, and it can often be the ideal scenario. Working from home gives you a chance to work on your ideas, fine-tune different things, and work at your own pace at times that suit you. But as your business progresses, so will your need to think about what might be the next step?

With that in mind, here are some of the situations and things to focus on to help you progress your home business to the next level of success.

Image source - Pixabay - CC0 License 

Upping your social media and business presence

One of the first things that you could consider would be to increase the digital presence your business has. We all know that there is huge power in building an organic audience and an engaged following, so you now need to grow that and build upon it so your business can reap the rewards. It could be that you need to change your social media strategy and the type of content that you share. Or maybe it is time to start thinking about mixing the content up so that you can encourage people to do business with you. 

Coming out of the home and into a business location 

Another thing that you could consider would be to come out of the home altogether and take that big step into a business location and premises. There could be different options that you consider, such as a place-based around needing storage, a shop where you can sell products, or a nice location to meet potential clients and customers. A look online will help you figure out if you can rent a commercial property and can also help you to determine things like leases, budget and any other considerations you may need to make. 

Expanding your products and/or services

Maybe the time is right to start thinking about expanding your products and services, and this can be an excellent way to make the most of popularity or an increase in digital presence through social media. There might be a natural expansion you can make, or it may mean introducing completely new products and services. But it could be the ideal way to grow your business and continue on the path to success. 

Outsourcing certain aspects of your business

Finally, when you start at home, you are responsible for every aspect of your business, and so it can become all-consuming when your business grows and you may not have the time to complete every task. This is when outsourcing can help. Think about areas of your business that might not be your strong point. It could be accounting, IT management, or website development, for example. There are dedicated agencies and individuals that work freelance that could take on those tasks and dedicate time to them. Helping you to focus on the areas of the business that you can make the most difference. 

Let’s hope these tips help you to take the next step with your home business.