The summer is a time when visitors come from all over the world to watch our famous sports events including Wimbledon, test cricket at The Oval and the UK Grand Prix at Silverstone. To the side of these visits, many are also researching the UK as a destination for their new business. The UK is now one of the easiest countries in the world to do business in but there are a number of essentials you must have in place before you can start trading if you are a non EU citizen. Visa You will need a Tier 1 Entrepreneur Visa, or a Tier 1 Investor Visa. For the Entrepreneur Visa you will need to invest a minimum of £200,000 in your new business and employ yourself and at least two members of staff. For the Entrepreneur Visa you need to be prepared to invest at least £2m in the business. Business Idea You need to start with an idea of what product or service you want to sell. The first step is to think who might buy your product and why. You need a USP (Unique Selling … [Read more...]
Five ways to improve your business productivity
You will probably be familiar with the adage: Productivity = Potential – Interference. Many of us are battling daily with interference of one sort or another, both external and internal. Potential is not always something that is easy to quantify, or to realise. Growing a business, finding a market, and bringing in orders takes time and effort, and often a bit of luck. It’s also likely to take some time, so those frustrating interferences are the key focus if you want fast results. Productivity is critical Superficial measures do not always show the bigger picture – if two businesses are paying different wages, you cannot assume that the lower payer makes cheaper goods, without knowing their productivity. Obviously, if the higher-paying business is more productive than the lower payer, their output might still be cheaper. Higher productivity gives you the opportunity to take better control of your prices and margins, … [Read more...]
The Value of MEASUREMENT
Knowing what to measure and how to measure it can make running your business easier. To make better decisions you need to gather the relevant data and format it into a report showing the essential information. Your decision makers can then be taught how to use that report to make sensible decisions or to recognise that they need additional information or instructions from you. For Measuring your Cash Flow you need to know: Who your debtors are, how much they owe you and when they are likely to pay. Who your creditors are, how much you owe them and when you need to pay them. What your regular outgoings are (rents, rates, salaries etc). Only when you have gathered the data can you then make a reasonably accurate Cash Flow Forecast. This will enable you to make decisions about who to chase for cash and who to pay in order to manage the cash in your business. When making a decision on buying a piece of Capital Equipment you … [Read more...]
Why do earn out clauses often create conflict or end up in court?
How do you value your business when you're selling it? In recent years there seems to be more significant differences in expectation of valuation between buyer and seller, and increasingly the Earn-out clause has been used as an appropriate way to bridge this gap. The clause basically retains interest and motivation for the seller by holding back a portion of the sale price until certain performance criteria are met, and minimises risk to the buyer of overpaying for a business that doesn’t perform as well as its previous owners say it will. If it is planned and executed well then the buyer can gain more than originally envisaged, but it is full of risk for the selling entrepreneur and conflicts are almost inevitable. So what’s the problem? You might base the sale price of the business on an assumed level of financial performance over the next 24 months, but the seller is cautious and insists on part of the value being deferred and wrapped … [Read more...]
How to Stretch for Success – Business Lessons from our 3 x Ben Nevis Bike Challenge
Some businesses move from year to year making small adjustments but never stretch themselves for the big achievements. Other more ambitious businesses, and their leaders, try to find a way to achieve leaps forward that at first sight look too hard or possibly foolhardy. Some succeed and others fail. Without setting ambitious goals, taking calculated risks, implementing careful strategic planning and proactive problem solving along the way, the big leaps are rarely made. I would like to draw an analogy with a group of middle aged mountain bikers that I ride with most weekends, typically covering 12-15 miles on local technical trails. There was a collective desire for a more challenging project to stretch us. Various options for a suitable longer trek were discussed at “team meetings” - aka post-ride drinks at the pub. This compares with business strategy meetings where ideas are floated, discussed, filtered, and prioritised. In January 2018 the … [Read more...]
A Simple GDPR Audit for most small companies
To be ready for May25th and the need to conform to GDPR This does not include DPO, as you won’t need one. Information you hold You should document what personal data you hold, where it came from and who you share it with. You may need to organise an information audit. Communicating privacy information You should review your current privacy notices and put a plan in place for making any necessary changes in time for GDPR implementation. Individuals’ rights You should check your procedures to ensure they cover all the rights individuals have, including how you would delete personal data or provide data electronically and in a commonly used format. Subject access requests You should update your procedures and plan how you will handle requests within the new timescales and provide any additional information. Lawful basis for processing personal data You should identify the lawful basis for your processing activity in the GDPR, document it and update your … [Read more...]
How to select the best recruiter for your talent search
For a business to succeed I would prescribe a Business Success Cocktail (PIMS) consisting of: People – the means to expedite and create value Investment – time and money in working capital and assets Marketing – Accessing the market and customers Strategy/USP – A business plan, vision, strategy Of all these essential ingredients, a good strong team of people provides THE transferable premium value of a business as a going concern. Taking on staff is one of the most important decisions that a business owner will make. Getting the right fit can make an enormous difference not only to business operating performance but ultimately to the value of the business as a whole when the shareholders/ owners are looking to exit. When looking for the best talent the right recruitment practitioner can make all the difference. There are a large number of excellent recruitment practitioners but who should you choose and what are the … [Read more...]
Why chatbots are great for business!
Recently we’ve been seeing in the media how robots/chatbots/AI (artificial intelligence) are transforming how we do things and how robots might one day take over the world and we humans will become superfluous to most tasks. Worries over AI and how robots will become sentient beings has been dramatized in Channel 4’s ‘Humans’. That’s all well and good, but for now, the area that excites me the most is how chatbots will take over the delivery of repeatable knowledge that Tier 1 (lowest level) support technicians/engineers deal with via call centres. Most of us will have been on such a call to a support centre, to fix a software bug or a hardware issue, and been asked questions that are obviously being read from a script. Unfortunately, they need to assume one has zero computer knowledge and the pace is exhaustingly slow and incredibly boring for the likes of me. Indeed, I would be most surprised if that script isn’t in a decision-tree flowchart format whereby if the … [Read more...]
The Value of Time to Your Business
We are all allocated the same amount of time but some people make more of their time than others. Knowing the value of your time is essential to getting the most out of your business. When you are in business you must treat TIME as an ASSET like CASH. You need to look at how you are SPENDING your time and then ensure you are getting the best return you can on the time you are spending ON or IN the business. You need to list the tasks and things you have to do and put value them. You can then prioritise the things you have to do based on their value to the business. This may mean that monitoring your Aged Debtor report on a regular basis could be one of the director’s most important tasks to ensure that cashflow, the life blood of the business, is running in the right direction. When allocating your time you should also take into consideration the URGENCY of the tasks that need to be achieved. … [Read more...]
Fundraising success stories for early stage companies
We looked at London based companies that have recently successfully raised seed funding! The good news is that there is a constant flow of funding into very young companies - albeit with a technology bias. Companies with innovative ideas, strong management teams and good business plans position themselves for better funding success. We wanted to get a flavour of what's happening in the world of funding for seed level companies that are based in London. We found five recent funding success stories - we have summarised what they got, what they do and how long they have been going. Labrador (internet of things) We’d all like to sure we are getting the cheapest energy bill on the market, but even with the help of price comparison sites it can be a chore working out which supplier to go with and then sorting all the paperwork to change supplier. Labrador aims to solve this problem by paring with your smart meter and analysing your energy consumption … [Read more...]
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