Business.com |
- Recovering Your Business Post-COVID
- How to Build a Digital Product Ready for Angel/VC Funding Amid the Recession
- Top Tips for Conducting an End-of-Year Review for Small Businesses
- Should You Offer a Sabbatical Program?
- Everything You Need to Know About QuickBooks POS
| Recovering Your Business Post-COVID Posted: 31 Dec 2020 01:38 PM PST  Over the last year, your business has been through challenges like none other. In order to stay alive, you've had to cut down essential costs, innovate new ideas, and defend your bottom line. The world will never be the same after COVID-19, and neither should your business – if you want it to survive, that is. Here are some ways to help your business recover after the panic and recession caused by the coronavirus. 1. Industry 4.0 is coming – and it will need better data.COVID-19 disrupted the shipping and manufacturing business in a major way. With so many industries and warehouses out of commission, the supply-demand chain broke down in a very public way. The rise of Industry 4.0 seeks to prevent this from happening ever again. Industry 4.0 is a method of harnessing communication technology and big data to feed machine learning systems over time. This will inevitably lead to smarter, faster, more cost-efficient production times that put high-quality products back into the market. Data intelligence from Industry 4.0's industrial internet of things (IIoT) will drive incredible changes that could support the post-COVID rebound of your business. There are various ways to get involved with the era of interconnectivity, but first you need to take a look at your company data. Ask yourself these questions:
If the answer to any of these questions is no, it's paramount to begin the auditing process right away. If the answer is yes to all, you can start transitioning into the future by implementing high-fidelity CAD data. Not only do these systems revolutionize the future of business, but they equip you to succeed in the post-COVID recovery period. 2. Your email marketing platform needs an update.Developing an email marketing system is hard, but finding the right email marketing platform is even harder. The pandemic quickly taught us how important email and other forms of digital communication are to our society. By 2024, an estimated 361 billion emails will be sent daily, with no signs of slowing down. For 90% of businesses, according to the Content Marketing Institute, email is the top metric to measure engagement with created content. The statistics on email marketing ROI are incredibly motivating:
Your email marketing platform will say a lot about how your company is positioned to thrive in the coming recession. The system you choose must be able to supply metrics that speak to your industry and professional niche. Ultimately, they must be able to get you closer to your goal without jeopardizing your post-COVID company. Look for ways to update boring or unpersonalized emails with snappy, brief and relevant copy. Do some A/B testing and geolocation to segment your market by demographics. Finally, look for a platform with integrations, automations, mobile optimization and list segmentation support. You'll be doing your business a favor. [Not sure where to look? Start with our reviews of the best email marketing services.] 3. Say goodbye to tradition and hello to the future.It's no secret that some industries will have a harder recovery period than others. Some businesses will be impacted by redirected sales or recession spending. Others may be forced to adapt to changing consumer sentiment. Many others will need to contend with the growth of technology in the commercial sphere, making it more difficult to compete. Take the auto insurance industry, for instance. Insurance companies have always relied on a system of risk factors and metrics to determine premiums. The more of a "risk" a person is, the more they will have to pay. Younger drivers, male drivers, and drivers with a history of claims may find themselves paying nearly twice as much as low-risk drivers. The development of autonomous vehicles will drastically change the way auto insurance is made. Massive databases tracking consumer driving habits and collision statistics will accurately calculate risk levels. Manufacturers of self-driving vehicles may begin to issue no-fault or split-fault insurance policies directly to consumers. As a final blow to traditional insurance, every new upgrade or AV model will reduce the cost of no-fault insurance premiums, making expensive traditional plans nearly obsolete. This sobering information should be a motivator for businesses recovering in a post-COVID world. The future can bring anything; you need to be prepared for whatever happens next. 4. Make your business stand out, or rebrand.To compete against larger businesses that suffered less during the pandemic, you will need to distinguish your branding from that of the competition. The psychology of business names is incredibly nuanced, and in an age when so much can be misconstrued, it is a vital part of brand recognition and success. If you plan to open a new business, it will be wise to consider how your brand will appear in marketing collateral, social media handles and more. If your business is well established or already off the ground, it would be helpful to reevaluate your brand perception among your target audiences. Rebranding a company is an expensive task, but it's better to pay upfront than address backlash or legal issues in the future. In a world after the coronavirus, brand recognition will be more important than ever. Equip your business to do better with a solid name. Times may be tough, but your business must be tougher.Surviving a countrywide recession, a worldwide pandemic and a series of international lockdowns is nothing to scoff at. However, your work is not over just yet. We have a ways to go until the economy is out of the woods, meaning that you'll need to work hard for some time. But there is hope; it will just take a little extra thought on your part. Focus on what it means to optimize your data for Industry 4.0. Update your digital marketing system with an email platform that spreads the word. Think toward the future, and don't be afraid to wave goodbye to traditional systems. If the world has taught us anything, it's that things change quickly. Finally, completely reestablish what your business means to the people who choose to shop with you. As we press forward into the later years of the 2020s, intentionality will be everything. Be intentional about your recovering business in a post-COVID world, and help it to thrive in a brighter, more hopeful future. |
| How to Build a Digital Product Ready for Angel/VC Funding Amid the Recession Posted: 31 Dec 2020 09:00 AM PST  Today's most successful unicorn startups like Uber, Airbnb and Slack have been founded during the economic downturn – why shouldn't yours? Regardless of the common expectations from the angel and VC funding in the COVID-19 crisis, experienced product creators say that the recession is not the reason to give up your startup launch. In this article, I share practices to release a successful product amid the coronavirus recession. This article will help you navigate these points:
Why start with minimum viable product (MVP) development?The MVP usually presents as a minimum number of functions as possible. If you feel confident when showing your MVP to the end user, you have likely overworked it. In common, a great MVP lacks some features, screens or design, because the startup usually doesn't have enough time and costs to develop them. And it's normal, because the MVP's primary mission is only to demonstrate the core idea. It's how an MVP differs from the product. I also suggest the following key reasons to kickstart your startup journey with an MVP: MVP: the budget-friendly opportunity to validate your idea.Your idea must make sense for your customers, not only for you and your team. Many startups forget this fundamental, losing lots of money and time when the product idea appears nonviable in the market. What works for you might not work for others. You should keep your customers in mind at all development stages. One of the primary benefits of an MVP for startups is that it shows you whether the product will be able to address user needs and generate revenue with the minimum costs and risks. You can test your product idea in the market, see the real target audience's response and decide whether it's worth investing in further development. Save time and money by quitting the non-viable idea.Sometimes, the best decision is to quit something at the right time to avoid more severe risks and losses. Quitting doesn't mean weakness, it's sooner the wise step that's often difficult to take. The MVP lets you make an early decision about rethinking the product idea or switching to an entirely new one. It helps you save two resources that are the most important for startups: time and money. Do the fieldwork to define real customer needs.You might have thought you knew your target audience before you launched an MVP. The feature, which seemed to be meaningful earlier, appeared to be unnecessary after the first interaction with the customer. An MVP is the faster and cost-efficient way to research real customer demands, pain-points, and preferences. Understanding your customers is key to the product's success. It allows you to optimize the product functionality and choose the right marketing strategy. Develop the product upon the real user feedback.Consider end users as your product-creation partners. They can give valuable feedback about your MVP and the right direction for the entire product development process. The MVP helps you avoid wasting costs on building a full-fledged product with features that your audience doesn't need in reality. Its primary benefit is the ability to develop features gradually and iteratively based on user feedback. Build early relationships with customers.An MVP is not a product but a process. It's the dialogue between the product creator and users, leading to countless iterations and improvements. An MVP lets startups meet their customers in-person and start building early relationships with them. Later, these people will be looking forward to seeing your product's next versions and trying them out. How to build a powerful MVP that attracts fundingRun an MVP scoping workshop.Before you start building an MVP, you need to create a scope of all MVP's requirements based on market research, business analysis and end-user investigation. Here are three things you should be aware of from the very beginning of MVP development:
Define core functionality.At this step, you need to define core features for your MVP and give up all nonessentials. Reaching a consensus regarding it might be challenging when it comes to teamwork. Everyone in the team will have their own vision of what's essential for the MVP and what's not. When defining the product's core functionality, you should ruthlessly cut everything that seems nonessential. Consider your product is something similar to SoundCloud. In this case, your MVP should only function around the primary KPIs (for example, the number of registrations) and shouldn't include additional features, like payments, social sharing, a complicated UI design, etc. Your MVP's landing page also has to be simple, give a quick understanding of how your product solves the problem, and visitors should be able to start using it easily. Last, work on design and implementation.When you have already defined a set of requirements for the MVP in general and for each feature specifically, you can move on to designing and coding. This stage includes user experience design, building a simple interface architecture, prototyping, creating wireframes, testing and implementing everything in code. Startup checklist: 11 steps to create a compelling investment pitch deckBacked by many years in product development, startup ownership, and communication with investors, I suggest 11 tips to create a pitch deck. These steps will help you prepare a product presentation for investors:
Investment trends that emerged from the COVID-19COVID-19 is just one of the factors impacting the market. It emphasizes the significance of mobility and online presence in the modern world. The coronavirus situation eradicates everything unable to adopt mobility or switch into online, creating a favorable market environment for online businesses. Consequently, investors are now more likely to fund startups that offer solutions for the current market demands affected by the coronavirus. We have witnessed the growing popularity of e-meeting services, online collaboration software, employee motivation tools, streaming platforms, productivity apps, delivery services, mobile kitchens and so on. Enter the market with a successful MVPEntering the market with a new product might not be easy. However, it's still worth attempting regardless of the recession and challenging market conditions. Hopefully, this MVP development guide will help you navigate this process more easily.
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| Top Tips for Conducting an End-of-Year Review for Small Businesses Posted: 31 Dec 2020 07:30 AM PST  The close of a year is a good time to take stock of how your business is doing. All over the world, people and businesses approach the new year with the intention to create change. There's a cultural belief that we can move forward and put the events of the past year to rest. And what a year it has been. As the name suggests, an end-of-year review is a summary of important events and changes that have taken place in your business. You can also note general updates and other information as a way to do a check-up of your business. For small businesses, doing an end-of-year review is important to understand the impact of the pandemic on their businesses. The review will help you come to terms with what's happening, and this can give you a clearer picture of the challenges and opportunities you have to deal with in the future. So, what are the different things you need to review? Here's a breakdown of important developments in your business to be aware of and how to leverage them. What to include in your yearly reviewNot sure what to add when doing an annual review of your company? Here are some of my suggestions for what kind of information to gather and analyze to help you understand the path your business is on. List your business's accomplishments.A good place to start is by looking at the positive achievements of your business for the year. And when you do this, make sure that you go into detail. At our business, we include the following details when creating a list of achievements:
These are just some details you can include when listing your business's accomplishments. It's important to do this, because it gives a clear picture of how your business has grown and what to expect in the future. It's also a great morale booster for people in your organization. Doing a review of your past accomplishments helps you recognize your strengths and the work done by your team. Tally the things that went wrong.There's no year that goes by without challenges, and these are often chances to grow your business. It's important to make a list of setbacks and changes that you consider negative in your business. Here are some things you can include as challenges faced during the year:
Creating a list like this will help you be better prepared for the next year. You can plan for these issues and figure out ways to avoid repeating any mistakes. For your employees, a review of things that did not work out can swerve as a cautionary tale and firmly embed dos and don'ts in your business culture. Review your company's charitable works.One of the important works that we include in our overall business review is the state of our charitable works or programs to do with corporate social responsibility. Updating yourself, your stakeholders, employees, and customers about these projects and how they've affected other people's lives is powerful. It creates meaning in the work that you do and builds a shared sense of responsibility in the organization. If you haven't been active in this area, a review can give the wake-up call you need to prioritize social responsibility. And if you're not involved in any such works, this can be the starting point for you to seriously involve yourself in giving back to the community. Include anniversaries and other milestones.When creating your end-of-year review, include anniversaries and significant milestones related to your business, the leaders in your brand, and your employees. This review can include the following:
Of course, this last idea works when you have a small business and people are in touch with each other. It's helpful to have a dedicated HR personnel or administrator to keep track of such information. But reckoning milestones and events like these add a much-needed positive note to your business activities. It reminds everyone that you celebrate your employees and care about them. Create a year-end financial review.And of course, one of the most important elements you'll need to create is your financial review for the year. Even if you follow an accounting or financial year format that ends in March, doing an end of year review now is a good idea, since you'll start the first quarter of 2021 with a clear idea of what your business's financial health is like. Create reports including your balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. These statements will contain all the information you need to do a basic review. You'll find areas that need improvement, expenses that need to be trimmed, and you'll have an idea of the kind of taxes you'll have to pay. Such information is critical for you to make the right decisions for your business. What to do with an end-of-year reviewDoing the hard work of creating a review is helpful in itself. You get clarity and arm yourself with information that leads to business growth. But you can further leverage your year-end review by sharing it. Let's look at who you should share an annual review with and how to do that. Share your year-end review with your audience.Your end-of-year review contains a lot of information that's worth sharing with your audience. Of course, you don't have to share every single detail. Instead, focus on content related to your growth so that it builds confidence in your company. To create full transparency and to show your audience that you're listening, you can also include some of the challenges you faced during the year and how you intend to address them. Some of our brands have dedicated pages just to showcase the end-of-year review. These pages are available to the public and are made in an infographic style. Instead of long paragraphs of text, we used graphics, bullet points and simple visual elements to highlight our achievements for the year. Digital marketing studies show that users recall 65% of the visual content they've consumed even three days after viewing it. Presenting our review in a visual format makes it impactful and memorable to our audience. Featuring how many of our plugins have been installed, the positive reviews they've received and other details make customers feel comfortable that we're going to be around to help them grow their business. Inform your employees.It's also important to do an end-of-year review with your employees. And in this case, you can afford to discuss the challenges your business has faced in greater depth that you won't want to share with a wider audience. In our business, we conduct a quarterly town hall where we talk about the state of affairs in the business. Employees are able to ask questions about the company, and we look at both the highlights and difficulties of the year. An end-of-year review can help you connect with your team better and creates transparency. Your team will feel more confident about the business and will know how to perform better in the years to come. Use these tips to make better decisions that will help you grow your business, especially when we're all dealing with a global crisis. |
| Should You Offer a Sabbatical Program? Posted: 31 Dec 2020 05:30 AM PST  It's one thing for an employee to take a week off for some quick vacation time. It's another thing entirely when an employee expresses a desire to take an extended break from work. While you at first might worry that your company will struggle with this employee gone for longer than just a week or two, extended breaks – often known as sabbaticals – have been shown to benefit employers as much as employees. Below, learn all about sabbatical programs and why your company might do well to implement them. What is a sabbatical?A sabbatical is an employer-approved extended leave from work. Sabbaticals typically last weeks or even months and include a guarantee of reemployment upon their ending. Employees and employers agree upon sabbatical leave if both parties decide that a sabbatical is necessary for the employee's personal or professional growth. They may also agree to a sabbatical if the employee needs to take a break after an especially stressful work period. Sabbatical programs have grown in recent years. In 2017, roughly 17% of employers implemented them as a perk for employees. And since growth and post-stress breaks are inherent to sabbaticals, these extended periods off can actually lead to better employee retention in the long run. How do sabbatical programs work?No two sabbatical programs are exactly alike, but certain provisions are common. For example, while unpaid sabbatical leave rarely requires that an employee undertake certain pursuits, some employers might grant paid sabbatical leave only if the employee plans to use their time off for professional development. Additionally, some employers will pay employees a percentage of their salary, not their full salary, during sabbaticals. In addition to purpose and pay provisions, sabbatical programs also differ based on who qualifies for them. Some companies offer sabbatical leave only to employees who have worked at the company for a predetermined number of years. Other companies offer tiered sabbatical leave in which, for example, a three-year employee can take a month-long sabbatical and a 10-year employee can take a three-month sabbatical. You should craft sabbatical leave policies to establish your program's conditions – later, we'll describe how to do so. Benefits of offering sabbaticalsAt first glance, sabbaticals may seem far more beneficial for your employees than for your company. In reality, both you and your employees benefit substantially from sabbatical leave programs. The benefits that employees get from sabbaticals include:
Among the benefits that employers get from sabbatical programs are:
Which companies offer sabbatical leave?Sabbaticals originated in academia but have since spread to all kinds of industries. Tech companies now frequently offer sabbatical programs as well. For example, five-year employees at Adobe can take four-week sabbaticals and 15-year employees can take six-week sabbaticals. Companies in other industries ranging from food to outdoor recreation and real estate also offer sabbatical programs. Corporate employees at The Cheesecake Factory can take three-week sabbaticals after five years of employment. REI offers 15-year employees four-week sabbaticals, and Zillow offers six-year employees six-week sabbaticals. How to develop a sabbatical programIf you decide to create a sabbatical program, you'll need to actually establish the intricacies of your policy. To do so, take the following steps: 1. Set your minimum employment threshold.You'll notice in the above sabbatical program examples that companies usually require employees to have worked at the company for a minimum number of years before qualifying for sabbaticals. You'll also notice that no company's sabbatical employment threshold is quite the same as another's. Put another way, you have full flexibility to set the thresholds that work for you. You'll also notice that Adobe has two employment thresholds for two different lengths of sabbaticals. You too can increase your company's sabbatical allowances as your employees' length of employment increases. No matter the thresholds you set, consider how long you think employees should work before qualifying for sabbaticals. 2. Set your minimum responsibility threshold.Your sabbatical program qualifications don't have to pertain solely to employment duration. You can also offer your program to solely employees of a certain seniority, such as executives and team leaders instead of administrative team members. In this setup, even some decades-long employees wouldn't qualify for sabbatical leave – but maybe you'll have promoted these employees into sabbatical-eligible roles after this long of a period. 3. Decide how long your sabbatical offerings will last.Another obvious variation among sabbatical programs: how long the sabbatical offerings will last. Keep in mind that sabbaticals are typically extended periods of leave, so you may want to offer programs longer than two to three weeks, which is a typical length for employee vacations. 4. Determine your sabbatical leave pay structure.Although paid time off policies are becoming more common, you don't necessarily have to pay employees while they take sabbatical leave. In fact, as mentioned earlier, some employers only grant paid sabbatical leave to employees who will use their extended time off for professional development. That said, you can offer fully paid sabbatical leave; employees who can take a break or focus on growth without financial consequences might return to your company even more prepared to contribute positively to your workforce. Of course, this is an expense that generates no immediate return for the duration of the employee's sabbatical. 5. Plan for when employees choose not to return from sabbatical.Although you can usually assume that your employees will return after their sabbaticals, occasionally, employees discover during their extended breaks that they may want to move in a different direction. If you pay employees during sabbaticals and they don't return, you can demand they repay you for their time off, but only if you explicitly state this requirement in your sabbatical policies. 6. Choose how to record your employees' sabbatical time.Let's say that you structure your sabbatical program like Adobe's and have two thresholds for sabbatical length. In this case, you'll need to decide whether the time the employee spent on their first sabbatical (if they took one) counts toward their time employed and thus toward their second, longer sabbatical. To use Adobe's structure as an example, let's say an employee takes a four-week sabbatical after their first five years of employment. In this case, you'll need to decide whether the employee becomes eligible for a longer six-week sabbatical upon their 15th anniversary of employment or once they hit 15 years and four weeks of employment. Keep in mind that a key objective of offering sabbatical leave is to help employees feel less stressed and thus happier. Quibbling over small details, such as this four-week difference, can come off pedantic to employees, thus potentially annoying them and achieving exactly the opposite of the engaged, happy workers you desire. Put another way, tact is as important in sabbatical policies as business concerns – after all, the improvements that employees bring back with them from sabbaticals can increase your bottom line. 7. Consult with an attorney.When crafting a sabbatical policy, consult with an attorney to ensure all provisions are legal and in compliance with any local, state or federal regulations. You should also guarantee that provisions are legally binding, such as requiring an employee to repay any paid time off if they choose not to return after a sabbatical. |
| Everything You Need to Know About QuickBooks POS Posted: 31 Dec 2020 04:30 AM PST  For QuickBooks customers who want a point-of-sale system that integrates with their QuickBooks desktop accounting software, the company's POS desktop software is worth considering. Three plans are available, and it tracks inventory, generates reports and integrates with e-commerce platforms. Editor's note: Looking for the right POS system for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs. What's included in QuickBooks' desktop software?QuickBooks POS is designed for retailers and other businesses that accept payments. It integrates with QuickBooks desktop accounting software, supports online and in-store payments – including contactless payments – and comes with inventory management tools and several other features. "The desktop POS integrates deeply with QuickBooks desktop accounting software," said Susan Irish, product marketing leader for QuickBooks Desktop POS. "The desktop solution is for customers who want to buy the product and pay one time." For retailers who want a POS system that integrates with QuickBooks Online accounting software and prefer a cloud-based POS system, the company touts its partnership with ShopKeep, which provides the POS software, and QuickBooks Payments, which processes credit card payments for the system. QuickBooks Desktop POS pricing and termsWith QuickBooks Desktop POS, you purchase the software upfront rather than paying a monthly subscription to access the system in the cloud. QuickBooks has different pricing plans for its desktop POS software depending on the size of your business and the number of users. The POS hardware is sold separately. POS BasicThe entry-level package currently costs $720 (reduced from $1,200). It integrates with QuickBooks desktop accounting software, and you can perform the following tasks with it:
POS ProThe professional version of the desktop software currently costs $1,020 (reduced from $1,700). In addition to the features in the basic plan, you can use it to:
POS Multi-StoreAimed at business owners who operate several stores, this package currently costs $1,140 (reduced from $1,900). It comes with all the features from the Pro plan as well as support for multiple store locations. POS hardware pricingQuickBooks sells compatible POS hardware on its website, offering users the ability to purchase a bundle or stand-alone devices. It may also support your existing POS hardware. Before you purchase this POS system, check out its list of partners and supported third-party hardware. Here's a look at some of the pricing for POS hardware through QuickBooks. Hardware bundleThe hardware bundle costs $900, comes in white and black, and requires you to have a QuickBooks Point of Sale Payments account. It includes the following items:
mPOPThis cash drawer and receipt printer combo costs $449, is available in white and black, and works with QuickBooks Point of Sale version 19 and higher. POS peripheralsThese are some other POS accessories sold through QuickBooks:
POS processing feesMerchants using the QuickBooks POS system must use QuickBooks Point of Sale Payments as their credit card processor. You have the option to pay as you go or pay monthly. The processing fees depend on the plan you choose and how the payment is accepted. Pay-as-you-go plan
Monthly plan
QuickBooks POS featuresFrom its accounting integration to inventory management and reporting, you get a lot of features and functionality with QuickBooks Desktop POS. "It's a really integrated offering," said Maura O'Donnell, QuickBooks Online Global Payments' Platform Partnerships leader. "With one POS system you get QuickBooks Payments, you get a reader, automatic reconciliation with accounting, as well as reporting. It's a one-stop shop." Inventory managementQuickBooks Desktop POS offers a lot of inventory management features to support small businesses. Whether you sell online or in a store, you can get an accurate snapshot of your inventory in real time from one dashboard – even if you have multiple stores. You can also identity your top sellers and peak sales periods, and ensure that your pricing supports the growth of your enterprise. It has low-inventory alerts to remind you when it's time to reorder products, and you can run inventory turnover statistics to see which items you should reorder and which ones you should cycle out. ReportingQuickBooks POS has reporting capabilities as well. You can run a sales report on the spot, check the productivity of specific employees, check inventory levels, and see who your best customers are. You can also customize reports to get the information that matters most to your business. E-commerce supportE-commerce has become extremely important for many merchants during the COVID-19 pandemic, and POS systems that support the digital migration stand out. QuickBooks has partnered with ShopKeep to give its merchants the ability to set up an e-commerce shop, offer online ordering and offline delivery, and access SEO tools. This desktop POS system also integrates with Amazon, Shopify, and other e-commerce platforms so you can manage your offline and online businesses from one place. QuickBooks POS drawbacksQuickBooks POS offers a lot of features and functionality, including integration with QuickBooks accounting software, but there are some drawbacks that business owners should consider. For starters, QuickBooks POS is a desktop product. There is no cloud option other than its services offered through ShopKeep. That can be limiting if you want to access your POS data when you're not in your store. You'll make a large upfront purchase for the software and the hardware, which may be difficult for small businesses with tight budgets. You're also required to process payments through QuickBooks. Although convenient, it may not be the cheapest payment processing option available. All in all, QuickBooks Desktop POS is a fine option for business owners who use QuickBooks accounting desktop software, but others may want to look for a more modern option. [In the market for a POS system? Check out our recommendations and reviews.] |
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