Things required to be done to make your small business successful

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William Smith | 14 Feb, 2011
Many of the people think they are not meant for regular employment and do not want to work under any boss. It is very much possible that these people may not be of sound financial background and they may want to get ahead with Small business and gradually want to reach at medium level and then big. But do you know most of the business people do not get sufficient revenue to get onto the next step and some- times results into shut down of the firm. The common reason is that they start running the business without proper thoughtfulness. There are many things which a person should consider before getting ahead with his venture.

Interest level and capability: - Let's start like this. Firstly, the person should check his interest level as his new business totally depends upon his dedication and commitment to the business. If the person is not that much interested in that field, it is very much possible that he may lose some very good opportunities. At the same time person should match the nature of the business with his capability. He should be skilled enough to run such kind of business.

Proper market research:- Second thing, the person should do the market research and check the facts like culture and mentality of the targeted prospects which decides the feasibility of the business success in the planned market area. As it is very much possible that Business can do wonders if it is operated in the right market and vice versa. Most of the business which make success stories can prove to be a failure in different culture or different geographic and demographic location. So market can decide the faith of the business and success of the business heavily depends on the same.

Budget and cost factor: - A new small business starts with risk. So, the person should not invest heavily in a new venture and a safe budget should be invested. It is because in case of loss, the person will still be having the money to survive with. At the same time person should also look to save the operational cost. As "every penny saved is every penny earned". There are a lot of things where a business man can save good amount. Few of them are:-

1) Minimum staff: - As a small business cannot afford to have large salary bills the owner should start with minimum staff. He should give regular employment to only those people which are required to perform the main operation. Apart from that, other things should be outsourced to the specialist/Professional who will provide the same quality in less cost. For ex: - To maintain the accounts one can outsource it to a CPA who will come on monthly basis and will charge according to the work. There is another example where one can take the tech support from tech support specialist companies on the monthly subscription rather than giving heavy salary to the tech support employee who is occasionally required. Most of the tech support companies are providing 24*7*365 support with the amount which is only 10% to 20% of the salary of a tech support guy. It really saves a lot of cost of the small business.

2) Infrastructure cost: - Undisrupted Infrastructure plays a very important role in the success of a business. Many of the businesses which are running on Knowledge and technology rather than physical labor uses infrastructure which can be divided into two parts:-

* IT infrastructure: - As most of the businesses are dependent on Information technology, it requires a costly infrastructure even if a businessman cannot recover the cost invested in it. It is better if Small business owner do not invest heavily in IT infrastructure. Rather than that he/she should go for the outsourced services like Cloud Computing or Application Hosting which removes the requirement of hefty investment in IT infrastructure. One can avail these services on sharing basis as these services are available on lease on per month subscription. There are other benefits like free data backup, free tech support on the hosted applications, multi user access which creates the desire in the mind of the small business owner to go for this. This service also removes the system dependability and location barriers.

* Telecommunication investment: - One should avoid traditional PBX telephony system which requires a web of wires in the office and quite likely to be disrupted physically. Has it happened with you that you are required to call a client on very urgent basis and your telephone system got down. You must have lost the deal in that case. Every opportunity is crucial for the survival of a small business and losing them just like that is not affordable at all by a small business owner. The small business must opt for services like hosted PBX system for telecommunication rather than going for traditional PBX. By this, A small business owner not only gets "always on" telecommunication system but at the same time he saves a lot of money as hosted business PBX system comes in cheaper package without requiring any hardware to be installed in the office premises.

Continuous return on investment: - A small business owner should regularly monitor the ROI to have a fair idea about the position of his business. He should also maintain the data which will give him regular update about the health of his business and its progress.

Alternatives should be readily available: - A small business person should always have alternatives which could be used to combat the sudden loss in the business. The business man should not take the things for granted and should avoid speculations or assumptions. One should go through the facts regularly and should make the action plans accordingly. All the steps should be taken on consolidated facts and any sort of assumption is recommended to be avoided.

These may not be the only things which are crucial for the business but these are few of the things which may help the small business to grow and reach to the next level.

(Source: Articlesbase)
* William Smith is a freelance writer.
* The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely his/her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of SME Times.