There are so many things to remember when planning anything in life, but this could not be truer when planning to open your own business. From the idea stage through to the grand opening, big and small details must be taken into consideration. For some budding entrepreneurs, they are being faced with the tough dilemma: do they open a business amid another national lockdown or ride the storm and wait until the seas a bit calmer. While the idea of opening a business during the current restrictions might be a business owners’ worst nightmare, we are confident that there are some people out there who are itching to jump at the challenge and to make the most of the lull in the market.

If you are one of these risk-taking, thrill-seeking company owners, you have come to the right place! We have listed below a helpful guide of the must-have digital tools for setting up a business. While there are usually physical tools required for these setting-up processes, in line with current government restrictions regarding lockdown, online tools are the focus for today. Get that pen and notepad ready and read on for more!

Website Hosting and Content

The first and most important aspect of running a business online is much like having a physical business; you need somewhere to base your business from. Having a company website is an excellent place to start and will provide your business with the means to access the online business world proactively and effectively. You cannot promote a business online if there is nothing to show for it! Several different digital tools are available for building websites, with the most common including the likes of WordPress and Squarespace.

Both website designing software come with a variety of customisation tools, allowing you to create a website that reflects your company’s products and services in the way you want them to. While it is crucial to have access to tools that allow the customisation and development of a website, you will also require the means for hosting a website on a server, allowing your website to be produced for the customer upon searching. These are the first steps to launching your business in the online world, which will benefit your growth in the long-term.

Social Media Management

In tandem with launching a website, you will want to ensure that you also have social media accounts set up. Not only does this allow you to extend the reach of your business and its brand, but it provides you with an excellent opportunity for corresponding with customers and a wider audience while building levels of rapport with them. Social media business posts can be both engaging but possess a call-to-action, encouraging the audience to go to your website – which should always be linked on the social media channels – and to purchase or hire the products and services you are providing.

While social media is an excellent and free digital tool, it can often seem time-consuming, especially when planning the posts’ content and the schedule for which they will be posted. This detail might not seem important to some, but it does affect how successful a post is. By using digital tools such as Hootsuite, you can monitor the traffic that is on each social media post, enabling you to alter your schedule to post when your audience is most active. What’s more, you can schedule social media posts in advance, so you won’t need to spend your evenings sorting that out!

Internal, Everyday Use Digital Tools

Microsoft Office is the staple in many businesses worldwide and provides many packages to suit a variety of tasks. While some have grown up using Microsoft, others might be at the beginning of their journey of learning about the ins and outs. Companies far and wide provide personal and professional support when setting up Office and Office 365 for home or business. Regardless of whether you have a large or small company, there are packages out there suitable for you and your business’s needs. Whether you are searching for Office 365 Edinburgh support or Office 365 support in Exeter, there is something out there for you! Texaport is an example of a company that provides Office 365 set up and support to businesses big and small, teaching you and your employees all you need to know about using this helpful digital tool. Perfect for the online, working-from-home environment we are once again faced with, this is a cost-efficient digital tool for your business in the long term and one that is an asset to any company.

Communication and Correspondence

While e-mails are useful for transferring documents and information, there are often times when we wish that we could discuss something face-to-face, rather than in writing. With more people than ever working from home than ever before, usage of Skype, Zoom, and other video calling platforms has increased exponentially. Digital tools like this enable you to communicate with the broader workforce at a click of a button and ensure that inter-department communication levels remain high. Allowing the workforce to stay connected, even while apart, is vital to not only the business but to your employees also. Ensuring that they manage their workloads okay and have adequate support during unprecedented times, such as the present, is paramount as a business owner. Not to mention, these digital tools can also be utilised when wanting to have a social function as a team. Zoom quiz, anyone?

While these digital tools are crucial to everyday working life, they will also be necessary when businesses eventually make it back to the offices. Some companies are considering using working from home more in the future, and therefore, these digital tools will be necessary then just as much as they are now. Investing in these digital tools is sure to pay off in the long term and be cost-efficient too. The work completed as a result of the digital tools being in place is sure to pay off the cost in no time!

In a business world that is becoming increasingly competitive, retaining the best employees is becoming harder. Job hopping is becoming increasingly common, especially as millennials enter the workforce. In understanding that retaining your best employees is key to the long-term success of your business, you need to do everything you can to ensure they do not leave. In this article, we will look at how you can do exactly that.

Hire the Right People

Hiring the right employees for the right position is the first step in ensuring they remain in your business. If people do not feel like they are doing the job they got hired for or signed up for, they may start thinking about leaving.

This is why it is so important to ensure job descriptions are as detailed as possible. Then, businesses should ensure their hiring procedure is thorough enough to ensure the candidates who end up in the advertised positions are perfectly suited for those positions.

Optimise Their Benefits

These days, employee benefits are becoming as important as salary packages when it comes to not only attracting the best employees, but also keeping them. Although some standard benefits apply to all employees, like life and health insurance, a one-size-fits-all approach is likely to backfire on you.

Employees are increasingly looking for benefits that are tailored to them and their needs. A good example is looking at the needs of in-office and remote employees. While remote employees might need support getting the right workstations and equipment, in-office employees might not.

Managing different benefits packages for different employees can be an administrative nightmare, and this is why more businesses are turning to software such as the employee benefits platform from Zest benefits. These platforms are designed to help companies manage employee benefits by not only making it easy to select different benefits for different employees, but also making it easy for employees to see and understand the benefits they get.

Provide a Career Ladder

No one wants to feel stuck and if you do not show employees that there is room for growth and upward mobility, they might start looking for other opportunities. You have to show them that they have a future within the company and how they can make that future a reality.

Offering career development and mentorship opportunities are great ways to keep talented employees. Both of these help them to acquire more skills and show them a path of progress to get from where they are to where they want to go.

Create a Great Work Environment

A poor work environment is one of the top reasons why people move on to other companies. A great work environment makes people feel included as it celebrates diversity. This is perhaps one of the reasons why open and shared workspaces are becoming common in many businesses.

A great work environment also ensures employees enjoy where they work, spending time with fellow employees as well as their work. If you have additional facilities and amenities such as free coffee and snacks, fitness centres for businesses where employees are required to sit for long hours, or a Zen room, going to the office will not feel like a chore for your employees.

Ensure Proper Work-Life Balance

Employees have a life outside work and businesses that understand this have a better chance of retaining their top talent. If your employees need to come to the office early and leave late every day, they will start looking for other opportunities.

With how hard it is becoming to retain good employees due to the popularity of job hopping, businesses have to find ways to ensure it does not happen. Retaining your best employees will take some effort but, if done correctly, the benefits are massive for your business.

The pandemic has completely upended the world of work, with the rate of unemployment shooting up as economies go in and out of lockdowns. Even with measures like furlough schemes in place, swathes of people have been left in an uncertain position when it comes to job security. According to the UN, worldwide working hours fell by 14% in the second quarter of 2020 alone, equivalent to a loss of 400 million full-time jobs.

However, despite all of this, there are actually some career paths that are thriving during these uncertain times. So, if COVID-19 has forced an occupation change due to a lack of opportunities in your current sector, here are three jobs you should be considering.

1.    Developer

One of the safest bets in the current climate is to learn how to code, as the demand for developers remains high, regardless of the pandemic. “Coding skills are still a job market safe haven,” Romain Paillard, cofounder of coding bootcamp organiser Le Wagon, told Sifted. “I think tech companies in the current crisis are going to focus on improving the quality of their product — that’s going to boost the importance of developers even more.” And this bears out in reality, with two times as many developer vacancies as job seekers in the first quarter of 2020. With so many online courses out there, it’s possible to learn coding within just three months, while you may be able to teach yourself in only six. As such, getting on the developer career ladder can be unexpectedly simple to do, and tends to pay well too.

When deciding which sector to work in after you’ve skilled up, a SAP-based business could be a sensible move. The German cloud software is involved in 77% of all worldwide business transactions, and demand for developers with SAP expertise continues to rise. According to tech careers website Dice, the occupation has the highest projected growth of job listings requiring SAP skills. Consequently, you’re more than likely to find a role within the industry, and there are many specialist SAP recruitment agencies to help jobseekers with their search.

2.    Data analyst

Another job seemingly immune to the effects of the coronavirus crisis is data analyst. Research by Burtch Works and International Institute for Analytics has found that 42.1% of data analysts have felt no negative impacts in terms of layoffs or furloughs because of the pandemic. A further 7.6% reported an increase in team hiring during COVID-19, and 67.7% of respondents were positive about their professional situation generally. This boils down to the fact that “45% of organisations are keeping analytics front and centre” of their operations, this being key to navigating the crisis. So, if you’re good with numbers, becoming a data analyst could be a solid career choice.

Although many entry-level vacancies will require a degree in mathematics, statistics, or economics, certain skills will help you land a data analyst role regardless. These include proficiency in popular programming languages like R, Python or C++, the ability to manage and manipulate data, and experience in using software like Excel. There are also many online data analysis courses available that can give you the know-how you need. In terms of the best industry to work in as a data analyst, hackr.io lists market research, financial and sales companies as some where the demand for these skills are highest.

3.    Healthcare worker

With the World Health Organization’s State of the World’s Nursing report revealing that there was a global shortage of just under six million nurses even before the pandemic was declared, there were already plenty of opportunities available in the healthcare industry. This situation has naturally worsened over the last twelve months, as healthcare systems buckled under the strain of increased admissions. For example, there are now around 40,000 nursing vacancies in the UK, while a fifth of US hospitals are short on staff, meaning you’ll find more openings than ever in the sector. Working in the healthcare industry also has many broader benefits, including career progression, the chance to do good and help people every single day, and generous pay and benefits, particularly within the private sector. One option is being a travelling nurse in New York!

Although you would need to undergo extensive education and training to take up certain healthcare roles, like a registered nurse, surgeon or pediatrician, many have very few requirements at all. These include jobs such as healthcare assistants, medical assistants and home health aides. As such, you can start a healthcare career pretty quickly, and work your way up in no time.

Economies have scant seen as much turmoil and change as they did through 2020, and quick thinking, rapid adaptation and reactive working practices have arguably delivered business survival throughout the last 12 months. In every industry, across companies of all shapes and sizes, business has changed – and with the advent of the ‘new normal’ upon us, the year ahead will continue to see businesses need to sail a steady ship through tumultuous waters.

Of course, no financial commentators could quite have predicted the storm a global pandemic would bring to society, but as the world adjusts, there are some trends we can reasonably expect to see through business, and these make it clear that in order for survival, only those firms ready and willing to revise and re-adjust will make the grade.

Remote Working Will Stay For The Long Haul

Coronavirus restrictions saw millions of workers worldwide forced to adapt to remote working from their homes; whether they had done so before or not, and whether they had adequate provision to do so or not. Once initial issues were ironed out, many businesses embraced this change and saw a welcome decrease in expenditure on office premises and equipment as well as a widened talent pool due to increased flexibility in working practices. The likes of Twitter, Shopify and Upwork all announced permanent moves to remote working as a primary practice in 2020, and as more firms understand the cost-saving benefits, it is likely more will make the move in 2021.

Further Automation Will Be Adopted And Only Value Adding Activities Included

For a large number of businesses, 2020 involved a lot of reactivity to survive. In 2021, as business leaders are granted more time to reflect, it seems increasingly likely that processes, procedures and practices will be re-evaluated and overhauled. Anything that does not add sufficient value to the business must be changed and improved, and transformation made. Customer experience will be key to differentiating businesses from their competitors, and as a report into recent CX trends published by Feefo highlights, “brands in 2021 will have to experiment with protocol and enforce actions that bring solutions in the eyes of the customer”. For many consumer-focused businesses, their customer pools are shallower than before due to the public’s changing circumstances, so anything they can do to gain trust and loyalty will be crucial to retaining and gaining market share.

Finance Will Decentralise And Income Streams Will Diversify

Something small businesses were able to adapt to early on in the pandemic was diversification; and the ability to increase or change their income streams with different products, services and offerings. Any business who thrived through 2020 did so because of rapid action and agility. This financial creativity will continue in 2021 as well as with fiscal options for capital raising or business development. Capital markets continue to be unsteady so the year ahead will see an increase in crowdfunding, blockchain tech and other decentralised finance options.

More Focus Will Be Made On Sustainability

Businesses who found tumultuous trading conditions a shock to the system will continue to focus on their survival – which will result in an increased turn to sustainability focus. The mainstream considerations of how better a business can operate in the environment they function within will shift and take on a wider picture of all of the aspects that could affect them in the future. Those businesses that have remained behind-the-curve with corporate social responsibility will now to shed its image as a ‘nice-to-have’ policy and work toward tangible, positive change.

Government Business Support Will Change

Whilst some sectors have seen unprecedented level of support from government agencies – financial and otherwise – the sheer amount of lending and support packages are unsustainable in the long term. Governments and other relevant authorities will move to lessen and withdraw support as restrictions ease and economies stabilise, and so businesses will have to work to remove their reliance on such schemes. This changing climate of business support comes aside from the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, new data laws and differing trade conditions, so it remains critical that businesses are able to access support as and when needed from a variety of parties. Banks and trade bodies will be expected to step up to the plate to offer further advice, but those operating outside of regulated industries may find their options limited.

Exactly what 2021 will bring has yet to be seen, and no doubt analysts will be more cautious than ever with their predictions for trends ahead. One thing does remain certain though, and that is that businesses need to remain agile, sharp and willing to adapt. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that ‘muddling through’ only works for so long; but genuine business change and innovation can ensure survival.

It is important to always be smart when using business finances, but particularly in times like this where margins are fine and companies need to do all that they can to improve their bottom line. So, what are a few good uses of company money in 2021? It will depend on your particular business and any issues that you are currently facing, but there are a few smart uses that could see a significant return on investment and/or take your business to new heights. Read on to discover a few of the best ways that you should be using your company money this year.

Outsourcing Instead of Hiring

First, if you need to bolster your workforce then you should look to outsource this work instead of hiring new employees (which can be a major cost). There is an enormous and growing pool of talented freelance workers that will help you to make big savings, lighten the workload for your team and still work to full capacity (and potentially increase your output).

Market Research

Market research is not just for when you first start the business and conducting research throughout the business’s lifetime enables you to stay current and find new business opportunities. Market research including customer surveys could be particularly useful in 2021, as it is clear that the pandemic has changed the landscape and there could be new opportunities to take advantage of or different attitudes that your target consumer has adopted. This market research could help you to get your business back on track this year and ensure that you are able to quickly adapt to a post-pandemic marketplace.

Cybersecurity

As if trying to handle the pandemic was not enough for business owners, COVID-19 has also led to a rise in cyber attacks with more people working remotely and phishing attacks becoming more advanced and looking to take advantage of people when they are vulnerable and so much is changing. A phishing attack could be devastating to a business in these difficult times, but you can discover how to protect yourself and your business by clicking here. Businesses will need to step up their game when it comes to cybersecurity this year and this will be an important and smart use of company money.

Remote Working Tools

If your business has struggled to adopt remote working during the pandemic then it is understandable that you will want to get back to normal. It may be some time before this happens, which is why it is worth spending money on remote working tools, including software, technology and equipment. You might find that this helps you and your team to overcome the challenges of remote work and start to reap the benefits that many businesses have been reporting since making the switch (and potentially continue with remote work once the pandemic ends like many are planning to).

Business owners need to be careful and intelligent when it comes to using company money this year, but the above are all good ideas that could help your business to thrive in 2021 and beyond.