Article credit: Sage 

As a small business owner, you are more than likely tired of paying expensive commercial rentals and fighting traffic daily to get to the office. The good news is that today’s technology means you can work from just about anywhere if you have internet access. By turning your company into a ‘virtual business’, you can trim costs, improve flexibility and give teams the freedom to work remotely.

Wi-Fi hotspots are widely available, fast mobile broadband covers you where Wi-Fi doesn’t, and you can access applications and data from almost anywhere in the world, provided you have a smartphone or notebook. It’s becoming increasingly viable and attractive for small companies to ditch their expensive brick-and-mortar offices, face-to-face meetings and endless paper documents to go virtual.

Here are a few tips on how to start or run a successful virtual business:

1. The right tools for the job

To run a successful virtual business, you need to invest in the right tools. If you’re working from home and doing a lot of video-conference calls, you need to invest in a cost-effective fibre internet package that offers excellent audio-visual quality. Spending a lot of time on the road means you should purchase mobile devices – smartphone, tablet, notebook – that are powerful, portable and comfortable to use.

You may also need to consider a reliable mobile data solution. It may make sense to invest in data SIMs from two mobile providers in case you’re in an area where your primary provider offers poor coverage.

2. Optimise and automate with cloud solutions

Running your virtual business using paper-based records or spreadsheets is outdated. The most successful virtual businesses automate business processes to save time and money. Today, you have many powerful cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools that can help you run a lean, efficient business. You access these solutions online and pay an affordable monthly or annual subscription to use them.

For example, marketing automation tools can help you generate automated direct marketing e-mails targeted at your customers, schedule social media and blog posts, track inbound sales leads, and so much more.

Cloud-based accounting and payroll solutions can enable you to streamline quotations and invoicing, financial reporting, compliance and reconciliations. Your investment in these solutions is quickly recovered in the time savings alone they deliver.

Bonus: If you have an accountant helping you, he or she can also login any time and have a virtual catch-up session with you to discuss monthly forecasts. Another bonus: with online apps, your data is automatically backed up to the cloud.

3. Build your virtual team 

If you’re going to build a virtual business, you can be more flexible about how and where you source talented people to help you grow your business. For example, it might make sense to get freelancers or contractors to help with finance or marketing.

You can employ an accounting firm to help with filing tax returns and financial statements, while collaborating online. If you do project-based work, you could round up the right team to collaborate with for every contract rather than employing full-time resources. It allows you to quickly scale your team based on the workload you have at any given time.

For admin-related tasks, consider a Virtual Assistant to help you with the mundane chores so you can focus on growing your business. Artificial intelligence can also be part of the team. Another tip is to look at using chatbots on channels like your Facebook page. They can answer basic customer queries and, today’s chatbot development tools don’t always require you to know any coding.

4. Work together 

The cloud makes it easy for you to interact and share files, ideas and data with your virtual team – wherever they are. Encourage everyone you work with to standardise on the same set of tools. For example:

• File sharing and back-up: DropBox, GoogleDrive or OneDrive
• Voice and video comms: Webex or Skype for Business
• Accounting and payroll: Sage 200 Evolution
• Slack or Microsoft Teams for messaging to make communication and sharing easier.
   

5. Create a bridge to the real world

Not all your customers may be ready to go virtual. However, providers such as Regus and The Business Centre offer virtual office services for an affordable monthly fee. Among the many benefits, they offer are a receptionist to respond to calls referencing your company and take messages, as well as boardrooms in prime locations for face-to-face meetings.

Article credit: Sage 

Article credit: Sage 

At a time when many small businesses in South Africa are already struggling as a result of the recession, the global COVID-19 crisis is a bolt out of the blue. It is an event that has caught even the best-prepared businesses by surprise, and it is a genuine existential threat for many of the small businesses we deal with in our daily lives.

While we await news about the government’s plans to help businesses through this difficult time, business owners are scrambling to ensure that their companies survive the next few months. It is going to be hard, but as the lifeblood of the South African economy, we need our small businesses to weather the storm so that we can rebuild the economy when the worst has passed.

Here are some ways small and medium businesses can cope with the coronavirus and keep operations running:

1. Approaching suppliers and creditors

If you are running a consumer-facing business like a restaurant or retailer, you may run into a cash crunch in the next few weeks. Business owners who have lived through difficult times know it’s wise to speak to suppliers, landlords, banks and other creditors before they need to default on an expected payment. Your business partners need you to remain in business once this crisis is over and many of them may be willing to help you restructure your payment terms.

2. Focusing on what they can control

It’s understandable that business owners are panicking about the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses. But seasoned entrepreneurs know that the key to survival is to focus on what they can control rather than worrying about what they can’t. For example, you can manage some of your input costs by buying stock in bulk for your shop or switching to a cheaper supplier. Or you can do some tactical marketing to let people know you’re still delivering goods from your store even when you can’t keep your shop’s doors open.

3. Selling vouchers and giving rain checks

Given that most businesses are facing the prospect of complete or partial shutdown for a while, many are looking for ways to bring in some cash in the short-term. If you’re running a retail store or restaurant, you can sell vouchers to bring in some revenue. Or a guesthouse can offer a discounted stay to a guest who needs to postpone their trip. In some cases, it might help to offer a discount, gift or another sweetener to convince people to invest in your future.

4. Caring for employees

If you’re running a small business with a close-knit team, you are facing some heart-breaking choices and conversations in the next few months. Now is the time to be as kind and generous to employees as your cash flow allows. This is especially true when you have employees living in tough conditions in informal settlements or townships who live from one wage payment to the next. For example, if you did not offer paid leave to casual employees in the past, consider doing this now. It’s better for someone who may have COVID-19 to stay home than to come to work and pass the virus on. Also, in a country with 30% unemployment, we need to preserve jobs as best as we can for the sake of social stability.

5. Getting through it together

Small businesses will stand a better chance of surviving if they stand together and do right by one another. In much the same way as you’ll be asking your corporate customers to pay quickly, prioritise paying your small suppliers and service providers. Meet up with small businesses – virtually, of course – to share experiences and best practices. This is an unprecedented situation in our lifetimes, and sharing knowledge and resources gives us all a better chance of emerging intact on the other side.

6. Coordinated response

Ensuring the economic survival of small- and medium-sized businesses in South Africa should be a priority over the next six months. Not only are they job creators, but they are the beating heart of our communities.

With commerce and industry drying up, everyone from government to unions, big business to consumers will have a part to play in keeping small businesses alive. Now is the time to support your local small businesses as best you can, to work with employees to keep them healthy and productive, and to navigate this crisis carefully and deliberately.

Article credit: Sage 

It’s all about preparation and not panic when it comes to business resilience

Now more than ever, businesses need to adapt. With the COVID-19 outbreak declared a national state of disaster in terms of Disaster Management,  contingency planning has become a critical factor within business worldwide. This kind of preparation is useful in any event, whether it be for coronavirus, inclement weather, or train or bus strikes. It might keep managers awake at night, but it shouldn’t have to, especially as there is plenty that businesses can do now to prepare for operational resilience.

To help your business, we offer workplace advice on four areas to focus on, along with actionable recommendations, so your teams can try to keep operating no matter what’s happening in the world.

1. Work from home policy

If your business uses cloud technology, your employees can work from the comfort of their homes if there are business disruptions, and you can trust in the knowledge that your people will stay productive. Your finance team, for example, will be able to stay on top of managing cash flow and invoicing by accessing accounting software even if they’re not in the office.

Amid global events, many businesses around the world recognise that flexible work is beneficial (http://bpcc.org.pl/uploads/ckeditor/attachments/14371/IWG_report.pdf). According to 82% of employees for organisations offering flexible working say they’re more productive, while 58% say it improves job satisfaction.

The best policy is one where a culture where home working at any time is normalised for employees where it’s a realistic option.

• Adopt social distancing and implement remote working strategies

Consider the need for a work-from-home strategy for those areas of your business that can support remotely. By adopting remote working systems, your employees will be able to work when and where they need to. Encouraging employees to take their laptops – if they use them – home each evening in case the business or its environment has to close following an outbreak. Essentially, you need to equip your staff to work wherever they find themselves – in the office, at home, or even out on the road if they visit clients.

• Put the right tools in place

Do you have the right ones to ensure your employees can still be operational if they cannot make it into the office? Do they have access to laptops, work phones and adequate internet connectivity?

Technology is essential to ensure your people stay connected in situations such as this – not only with the company but your customers too. It will ensure work can happen in real-time and collaboration can take place across functions seamlessly. In the very short term, if you haven’t already adopted cloud computing, then tools like shared file service Microsoft OneDrive or the chat/meeting tool Microsoft Teams can be put in place. These will probably be part of your existing Microsoft Office subscription, so should bring no additional outlay.

• Avoid non-essential travel

Travel of any kind, including freight transport, can be affected. You may have considered travel bans within the business which, for sales staff, can be a severe blow. However, the same technology that enables remote working can enable them to continue to do their job via virtual meetings, rather than face-to-face. Unfortunately, there’s very little to get around freight transport and other logistics problems. Still, the situation can be helped by ensuring your suppliers and customers are in-sync about what’s feasible under the circumstances. Check your existing contracts for clauses that might deal with events such as this to work out where you stand legally.

2. Work advice and communication

Keeping your people connected, engaged and updated is critical when business continuity is concerned. Having the right mechanisms in place and using them at the right time is crucial to ensuring no panic or misinformation is surrounding what they should do.

You also need to keep lines of communication open with your customers, clients and suppliers. Let them know what they can expect of you and be sure you know what you can realistically expect of them.

• Establish communication channels

Have channels that allow you to send written updates and mobile updates in time-critical emergencies. You might want to put in place Coronavirus workplace posters explaining what’s happening in your business and to give advice. For your employees, consider introducing a teamwork hub that fuses group chat software with collaboration tools to enable teams to work and be updated together. Again, tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack are useful for this. Ensure email addresses (personal and company ones) are correct as well as mobile numbers. Do you have a company newsletter that you can tap into or an intranet?

• Maintain regular updates

Send regular (establish what you think regular looks like) updates – but importantly not too many, which could not only worry rather than reassure employees, suppliers and customers/clients, and annoy them especially if you are not saying anything new.

3. Create a workplace plan for emergencies

Take the opportunity to build-out what we’ve discussed above to create a contingency plan that’s fit for any similar level of the world event that might impact your business, your employees, your suppliers or your customers.

Here are five suggestions for how to get started.

• Assign an owner: all plans need a single point of contact and a single person who “owns” the plan and can delegate. This needn’t necessarily be a senior member of staff. But people need to know who it is. This person should be the critical sense-checker for the plan – the person who ensures the plan makes sense, and that nothing has been assumed.

• Invite input from all sources: the granularity of the plan will depend on your needs. You may decide that each function or department within your business needs its plan, for example. You may even decide that individuals should create their own plans. But they should all sync-up and be combined into a larger workplace plan.

• Consider your entire ecosystem – from supplier to customer/client: your plan might include a list of alternative suppliers for certain essential resources, to be used if your existing supplier becomes unavailable. It may include specific plans on how to treat individual customers, especially larger and/or more important ones.

• Make this a living document: don’t create it once, and then forget about it. Ensure your plan is reviewed periodically, and don’t be afraid to make changes should they be needed.

• Communicate: once the plan is created, ensure it’s available to all – and that all know what it is, where it can be found, and what it means for them.

Final thoughts

Strong technology roots and good communication processes mean your business can continue to operate effectively even when challenged with incidents out of your control. Couple this with a supportive flexible-working culture, which empowers and enables colleagues to make the right decisions, and you’ll find that companies don’t have to slow down in a downturn.