With the nights getting lighter by the week and Easter getting closer, spring is definitely in the air. This optimistic time of year when new life emerges and the sun finally begins to shine can be a great time, not only to spring clean your home, but to spring clean your business.
From trading dusty accounting books with a more sophisticated system, to rearranging filing cabinets in a more coherent manner, now is the time to inject new life into your business.
Take a look at Carrwood Park’s top tips on how to revitalise and freshen up your business in 2015 by giving it a well-deserved spring clean.
A marketing boost
Are your current marketing practices cost-effective? Are they bringing you the Return On Investment you are aspiring? Or perhaps you stand guilty of lamely neglecting marketing and need to start from scratch?
Whatever your marketing qualms are, now is the time to rethink a more comprehensive, cost-effective and powerful marketing approach.
For example, do you currently have a content marketing regime in place? According to the Content Marketing Institute, nine out of 10 B-to-B marketers are actively engaged in content marketing, regardless of their type and size of business.
Presenting engaging content and repurposing existing content across new platforms can be a cost-effective way to reach out for multiple-selling environments, such as websites, social media, press releases, and company brochures.
Battling on in the dark won’t heighten your brand’s identity - Get your message out there through valuable and engaging content.
A physical clean up
Getting elbow-deep in sorting out paperwork that’s been mounding for umpteen number of years, elbow-deep in ardently removing grease that’s been slowly building up all year on the oven in the company kitchen and elbow-deep is sorting out the stationery cupboard that seems to be full with anything but stationery, can be therapeutic and satisfying.
Having a clean office, an orderly filing system and neat and tidy drawers and cupboards, is likely to boost staff morale, not to mention your own sanity!
Re-think your premises
Whilst giving your business a spring clean, now is a good time to think about premises. Premises can be one of a company’s biggest expenditures. If you strive to cut down costs this year, it might be a good idea to rethink the location of your premises.
For example, finishing the lease on expensive city centre offices, in favour for moving into a serviced office on the outskirts of a town, could be a cost-effective move.
Giving staff the flexibility to work remotely from a location of their choice can not only help boost employee morale and ultimately company loyalty but it can also help lower costly office overheads.
Consider updating software and installing data protection
We all heard the news about a hacker group disabling the online gaming services of Sony and Microsoft, leaving millions of Xbox and PlayStation users unable to use their devices over the Christmas period.
The story proved that even the biggest of corporations are not immune to the increasingly sophisticated capabilities of the hackers.
With this in mind, if you’ve not already got an adequate firewall in place to help protect company data and cloud servers, now might be a good time to install data protection software to ensure company data remains protected and out of the hands of cyber criminals.
Reconsider accounting processes
It is not uncommon for small business to waste valuable time battling with accounting systems that are not capable to deal with information and data efficiently.
With the new tax year round the corner, it could prove provident to update the business’s accounting processes.
You might want to consider moving your accounts into the cloud. As Tech Radar advises, moving accounts away from traditional desktop software to cloud solutions can give small business owners greater flexibility to deal with invoices and keep on top of cash flow.
What might seem like arduous and time-consuming tasks in the short-term could help save you time, money and resources in the long-term, ultimately making your business for efficient and geared towards growth in 2015.
Don’t delay, give your business a spring clean today.
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