It’s difficult to make your business stand out from the crowd, especially in the 21st century digital environment where businesses large and small are competing for the same customers.

Remaining competitive is vital for any business. If you stay ahead of your competitors and hang onto your customer base, your sales stay stable and your revenues remain predictable.

But how can you do that in today’s increasingly challenging business environment?

Key ways to remain competitive in your market

No market sits still. And the competitiveness of your company’s brand will also fluctuate and evolve over time. But this doesn’t mean that you can just sit back and let your competitive edge fade away. The more proactive you are about your position in the market, the more you can do to preserve your advantage and keep your business ahead of your competitors.

Here are some helpful ways to boost your competitive edge:

• • • Provide a personalized experience for your customers – customer experience is everything in the digital age. A happy customer will buy more, so you need your CX to deliver every time, no matter what. Try analyzing your customer data and feedback, and then using that information to tailor the customer’s experience with your company.
    • Carry out competitor intelligence activity on your main competitors – competitor intelligence is an important activity for any company. It involves gathering data about your competitors, including their strengths and weaknesses. You’ll need to identify the competition, find out what they’re doing, and analyze the data you’ve collected.
    • Offer high-quality products or services at reasonable prices – you won’t sell high volumes if you don’t have a quality product or service. And you also need to offer a price point that your customers see as good value. If you’re not sure if your prices are competitive, take a look at what your competitors are charging. This will give you an idea of what people are willing to pay for the same products or services that you offer.
    • Develop new technologies that are not yet on the market – investing in new technologies is risky but can also be profitable. To help mitigate the risks of developing a new technology, it is important to research the market and make sure that there is a genuine customer need for your product. It’s also important to ensure that your product will be affordable and has potential for growth in the future.

Talk to us about reviewing your business strategy

Keeping your business at the competitive edge of the market can be a challenge. But by analyzing your customer and competitor information, you can do your best to remain competitive and keep your dominant position in your market or industry sector.

We’ll help you identify the risks, spot the opportunities and amend your business strategy to remain competitive, stable and profitable in the future.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

The increase in digital business systems has opened up forensic ways of understanding your customer base.

That’s a huge bonus when you’re aiming to build better connections, relationships and experiences with your audience.

Knowing what your customer wants is a fundamental piece of knowledge for any successful business to get to grips with. And when you’re running a modern, digital business there’s an overwhelming wealth of customer and sales data and analytics at your disposal – making it easier than ever to dig down into the needs and habits of your end user.

Detailed CRM records and customer notes

A CRM system becomes the heart of your customer management, business development and marketing activity, allowing you to log activity, keep notes and record progress throughout the sales pipeline.

The more information you have about your valued customers, the more you can do to meet their needs and deliver the perfect customer experience. And by maximising your use of this customer data, you can tightly focus your marketing campaigns and do more to make every customer feel understood, valued and (most importantly) satisfied.

Drilled-down sales records

Keeping tabs on your sales activity is central to any business model. In an ideal world, you want regular, repeatable sales from a loyal customer base. But sales activity can be hard to predict, especially when you’re setting ambitious sales targets for your team to hit.

Having detailed sales records and data at your fingertips has two key benefits:

• • • You know how sales have fared in the past
    • You know how sales may pan out in the future

Being able to run forecasts, based on your historic sales data gives you a stable foundation on which to build your future sales targets. It’s a solid projection, based on real business data. But this data also gives you an encyclopedic overview of what your customers have been buying.

This sales data helps you understand:

• • • Which products/services your customers want to spend their money on
    • Which specific products/services are failing to convert
    • Which points in the year will have peaks and troughs in sales
    • When it’s the right time to invest in more sales and marketing activity

This is all gold dust when it comes to planning out your strategy, assigning your sales and marketing resources and building engagement with your core audiences.

Marketing analytics and customer touch points

Marketing is a vital part of getting your brand message out into the world. Today’s digital marketing and email platforms make it easier than ever to see the results and analytics from your marketing campaign and to answer meaningful questions about the outcomes:

• • • How many customers clicked through from your call-to-action?
    • How many click-throughs were converted into sales?
    • How many views did your latest blog post get?
    • Who opened your latest email campaign?
    • Which one of your customer segments is most engaged?

With the marketing analytics that digital systems can provide, you know the answers to all these questions. That’s incredibly helpful when working out which campaigns delivered a good return-on-investment (ROI), which customer groups are most engaged and where your marketing is hitting the mark (or not, as the case may be).

Social media interactions and feedback

Social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok, give your business a cheap and effective way of getting your brand messages out to a wider audience. Social media is a two-way communication channel. It’s a conduit for your customers and followers to message you, ask questions and give you feedback – and in that sense, it’s a vital way of understanding your customers’ needs.

As you scale and grow, an increased focus on social media will be vital. Hiring a social media manager, or working with a social media agency, helps you broaden out your social activity and really engage with your followers. Reply to queries, placate frustrated customers and share your latest news and updates. If you can be present and engaging in the social space, that’s going to help you cement your bond with these valued customers.

Online customer feedback and star ratings

The acid test of your customer experience is simple: are your customers happy? Satisfied and happy customers become amazing advocates for your brand. But, equally, disgruntled and unhappy customers can quickly undo the good work you’ve done in building a brand.

In the online age, bad news spreads incredibly quickly, and customer feedback, reviews and trust scores are a vital part of your brand’s equity. A series of terrible reviews for your cafe on a platform like TripAdviser can cause serious damage. So, it’s important that you engage with these reviews, run customer surveys and listen carefully to any customer feedback.

Ultimately, delighting your customer is your key aim as a business owner. Using your ears and listening to the feedback you get is integral to understanding what your customers want.

Hitting your growth targets, is far easier when you know the needs of your customers and can accurately target your sales, marketing and social activity.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

When your managers and employees have their own budgets to utilise and spend, it’s important to keep in control of these staff expenses.

It used to be standard practice to have a firm-wide company credit card that staff could use to make ad-hoc and recurring payments. But a company card can easily be misused and doesn’t help you keep your spending in check.

Today’s expense management systems, like Soldo, Pleo or Weel, all give you far greater control over your staff spending – with additional benefits that streamline your expenses process

The benefits of a cloud-based expenses management system

The evolution of cloud accounting and fintech software has led to a significant leap forward in the control your business can have over its staff expenses.

Expense management solutions are now fully digital platforms. Your team has flexible ways to pay for expenses and operational costs, with a greater level of control over how much is spent, who spends it and how these costs track against the company’s main cashflow position.

With a modern expense management app, you can:

• • • Use virtual debit cards to pay for expenses – team members can be issued with virtual cards that are quick to set up, use and cancel, if necessary. Having multiple virtual cards helps you keep track of specific spending and allows employees to make payments directly from their phone or tablet.
    • Align each card number to a specific budget or cost center – each card number is linked to a defined budget, branch or cost center. Instead of having one card that all staff spending is dumped onto, you have a defined card for each budget. This helps you track that person’s or department’s spending and produce drilled-down management information about their spending and outgoings.
    • Set card limits, so staff can’t overspend – each card can be given an agreed spending limit, to reign in overspending and casual use of the card without prior approval. Managers can approve spending prior to a payment being made, with full transparency over where the money is going and the agreed amount that can be spent.
    • Integrate your expenses system with your cloud accounting platform – if your accounting software has a suitable API, you can connect your expense platform to your digital accounts. This automates the whole process of recording, tracking and reconciling your outgoing transactions, saving you hours of data entry and admin time.
    • Get deep reporting on all expenditure – tracking all your staff spending through the one platform means you have unprecedented access to data and reporting. This gives you the ability to track each department or branch and follow a clear breadcrumb trail for all outgoing costs and staff expenses.

Talk to us about getting in control of your staff expenses

Spiraling staff expenses can have a profoundly negative impact on your cashflow. But with a cloud-based expenses management system in place, you’re in full control of every transaction, every cost and the overriding impact on your cash position.

Talk to us about which expense management platform is right for your business, and the best way to integrate your chosen app with your main finance system.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

For centuries, accounting was all about reviewing historic information – but that only told you about the past, not what was going to happen in the future.

If you’re only looking back at past periods and historic numbers, this limits the insights you can achieve for your business. With a backward-looking ideology, it becomes difficult to plan, run through different scenarios or understand the path of the business going forwards.

Forecasting changes this. With the right data analysis and forecasting tools, you can project sales, cash, revenue and profits into the future – and get in control of your business.

A forward-looking view of your business journey

Forecasting switches the focus of your financial management. By moving to a forward-looking view of your business journey, you can see further down the road – and that helps to spot any opportunities and avoid common business pitfalls.

Forecasting adds value by:

• • • Highlighting the data patterns – a forecasting tool takes your historic data and projects it forward in time. This helps you and your advisers spot patterns, trends, gaps and opportunities, revealing the true ‘story’ behind your business accounts. For example, forecasting may reveal a predicted seasonal slump in the next quarter, allowing you to plan ahead and proactively take action to minimize negative impacts.
    • Giving you a future view of your business – instinctively, business owners will look back at prior periods to assess performance. There’s value to reviewing your historic actuals, of course, but using forecasting helps you to look forward, rather than just backwards. Forecasting is the satnav, showing you the road ahead, rather than the rear-view mirror showing you the road you’ve already traveled.
    • Helping you scenario-plan – with a financial model of your key drivers, combined with accurate forecasting, you can quick answer your burning ‘What if…?’ questions. Forecasting lets you run different scenarios, with different drivers, to see how business decisions may pan out over time. If option B performs better than option A, that’s invaluable information when defining your next strategic move.
    • Making informed, evidence-based decisions – having ‘the full picture’ of combined historic numbers, forecasts and longer-term projections aides your business decision-making. Forecasting gives you solid evidence on which to base your strategy, and helps to red flag any threats that are looming on the horizon – giving you the best possible information to keep your executive team informed and on the ball.
    • A deeper relationship with your accountant – forecasting also helps us to get a far more granular view of your business. This helps to spot potential areas of performance improvement, and to give you the best possible strategic advice, all backed up by solid, empirical data and management information.

Talk to us about the benefits of forecasting

If you want to get in control of the destiny and results of your company, come and talk to us. Forecasting helps you highlight your future threats and opportunities – and create a proactive strategy to improve the performance of your business.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

‘Business continuity’ is the process of planning out how your company can continue trading – when disaster hits. In essence, it’s your Plan B for how to set up a means of trading, when you don’t have access to your usual offices, workspaces or equipment.

10 key elements to include for your ongoing business continuity plan

Digital communication and cloud technology have given us the ability to access company information, applications and communication channels. For many businesses this will allow you to keep at least some of your usual day-to-day operations ticking over.

However, there are a host of important business areas that you need to consider when developing your company strategy to deal with an emergency situation.

Here are 10 important elements to factor into your business continuity plan:

1. Location and workspace – Does everyone in the business have a good internet connection for remote working? Make sure you agree on the guidelines for maintaining workflow. Schedule regular online catch ups to check in and agree on the priorities.
2. Key products or services – which products and/or services will you be able to offer? For the business to continue trading, you need to identify a core set of products/services. Review which product/services will bring in the required revenue and cashflow, and which activities in the business should therefore be classed as essential.
3. Key staff and resources – who are the core people you need for the company to operate? Based on your decisions regarding essential activities, identify who your key management and staff members are. Think about how much resource is needed to trade, how you’ll get approvals and sign-off and what critical knowledge needs to be shared within the team.
4. Key contacts and connections – who are your main stakeholders outside the business? And which of these are vital to the running of your business? Make a list of your key suppliers, service providers, property contacts and customers and ensure you can have open communication with all these connections. Also, look at alternative suppliers so you can minimise any disruption to your operations.
5. IT equipment, data and infrastructure – what equipment, tools and software do you need to continue working? Essential hardware and software will include laptops, tablets or smartphones for your staff, paired with cloud services, video conferencing, communication apps and effective, secure access to your customer and business data.
6. Plant and manufacturing equipment for essential businesses – if you’re a bricks and mortar business, or a product-based manufacturing business, what equipment do you need to carry on your operations? This will include any machinery, hardware equipment and vehicles needed to manage the essential operations you’ve identified for the business.
7. Financial management – how will you access your key financial numbers during any outage? It’s sensible to move to a cloud-based accounting system NOW, so you have continuous, uninterrupted access to your financials. A platform like Xero online accounting allows you and your advisers to see those all-important figures.
8. Cashflow management – how are you going to ensure you maintain a positive cashflow position? We can help put a process in place to run regular cashflow statements. Use forecasting to project your cashflow position forward in time – so you can take proactive action to avoid any cash gaps in the near future.
9. Insurance – does your current business insurance policy cover you for all emergency situations? Review all your existing insurance policies so you understand what your policy covers. Securing the business in all scenarios should be your focus here.
10. Leadership – who could take over if you (the owner/MD/CEO), is left unable to run the business? Having a nominated deputy, with a clearly defined chain of command, means you can be confident that the company will be in safe hands, even if you’re indisposed.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.