5 Ways To Modernize Your Business

The businesses that succeed and dominate in their industries are the ones that modernize and stay current. Being adaptable like this is vital because it allows you to find ways to improve the running of your company, it can help you to satisfy your target market, and could improve the quality of the product/service that you provide. So, how can you modernize your business? It will depend on your industry, but there are a few key areas to focus on, which could have a big impact on your brand in more ways than one. Read on to find out the best ways to modernize your business.

  1. Flexible Working

Flexible working has been a trend on the rise for many years, but the coronavirus pandemic has forced businesses in all industries around the world to implement remote working, which has largely been successful. Flexible scheduling and remote working can bring many benefits to all and it is certainly a smart way to modernize your brand.

  1. Reduce Environmental Impact

Similarly, the pandemic has shown that reducing environmental impact can have a positive effect, so this needs to be an area that all businesses focus on. There are many ways to do this, such as:

  • Increasing recycling
  • Remote working
  • Functioning as a paperless company
  • Working with green suppliers
  • Using energy-efficient appliances
  1. Upgrade Your Equipment

Equipment is constantly being improved so it is highly likely that there are better items available, which could have a big impact on your daily operations. Fluent Conveyors can provide custom-made conveyor belts for your operation, which could streamline work processes, increase productivity, and make it much easier, quicker, and safer to transport material onsite. Smart upgrades such as these this can help a business to succeed in more ways than one, and they are always worth the investment.

  1. Automate Repetitive Tasks

Another area worth looking into is automation, as this can bring so many benefits to both the business and the employees. Automation can understandably cause some concern due to fears over job losses, but when it is used to help employees in their daily roles it can actually make work much easier for staff and allows them to focus on the area of their role that requires a human touch. Other advantages of automation include the reduction of errors, speeding up processes, and maximizing efficiency.

  1. Upgrade Cybersecurity

There has been so much focus placed on the pandemic in 2020, which is understandable because it has turned the world on its head, but it is important that business owners do not forget about the threat of cybercrime, which has previously been seen as the biggest threat to modern businesses. This means that you need to have high-quality cybersecurity products in place to protect your business from the latest digital threats, but you must also make sure that you are training your staff in how they can stay safe and protect business data.

Business owners should always be looking for ways to modernize so that they can stay competitive and improve their business processes, and the above tips are all smart ways to do this.

How to Set Up a Website for Your Small Business

If you operate a small business, having a website is essential. While businesses of the past had the option of utilizing a website for their products and services, today’s market demands that companies have a decent site. Otherwise, your business is likely to fall behind.

But just having a website is also not enough. Building a site that will attract customers and create conversions requires that it is appealing, functional, and easy to navigate. If your website is too slow or requires too many steps to make a purchase, you may lose customers forever.

If you’re brand new to setting up a website, below is some guidance that may be useful.

Establish Your Purpose

Establishing and defining the purpose of your website is absolutely crucial for its success. When potential customers land on your page, the purpose of your company and what you’re selling should be abundantly clear. The purpose will, of course, vary across businesses, and it may be that you don’t have much to explain. Just make sure that your purpose is crystal clear so that patrons of your site know what they are there for.

Decide on a Good Host

Hosting is vitally essential for the performance of your website. Popular hosting companies include:

  • Bluehost
  • HostGator
  • GreenGeeks
  • InMotion
  • SiteGround

Depending on your tech needs and budget, hosting can cost anywhere from $2 to $100+ per month. In terms of the type, you can opt for either shared hosting, which means you’ll share a server with other sites, or dedicated hosting, which means you’ll have your own private server.

The latter is obviously more expensive, but it means you’re not at the mercy of other websites and the potential for slow bandwidth speed. Whichever host you choose, ensure you select one that has everything you need in terms of support, security, and site performance.

Choose a Domain

Your domain name is as valuable as the name of your business. It is the URL that you will be sharing to promote your site, so it needs to be short, descriptive, easy to type, and jargon-free. Included in this is your top-level domain (TLD) and whether you will go for .com, .net, .org, etc. Depending on whether your site is international, you’ll need to do some research on the best TLD for your business. Once you’ve chosen your domain and TLD, you can visit sites like Wix, GoDaddy, or Squarespace to find out whether your name is available or already taken.

Create Engaging, Easy-to-use Pages/Interface

As you’re building your site, you must create pages that are memorable, engaging, and impressionable. The last thing you want is for people to land and leave, all before exploring your services. To do this, you’ll need to create an eye-catching interface with excellent content. As this can be the more challenging aspect of website building, you may want to hire a custom website design company. These experts can make your ideas reality while providing the technical know-how and experience to ensure the site is sleek and efficient.

Setting up a website for a small business is challenging, but not impossible. With the right guidance and support, you can be well on your way to having a well-designed and engaging site that customers will want to return to time and again.

 

4 Ways to Teach Employees Best Cyber Security Practices

Cyber security is something that every business owner should have on their priority list. Not only do you need to be able to have methods of protecting your clients’ information that they have entrusted you with, but you also need to be able to keep your employees’ information safe and secure. Everything from personal information to bank details are susceptible to cyber threats if not safeguarded appropriately.

Unfortunately, despite your best efforts to implement the right systems and practice cyber security measures yourself, your information can still fall prey to cyber-attacks if your employees aren’t adequately trained in cyber security as well.

With that in mind, here are four ways to teach your employees the best cyber security practices so that you can help keep your company safe and protected from any attempted breaches.

1. Understand Cyber Security Yourself

The first thing that you will want to do prior to educating your employees is to educate yourself. There are a number of cyber security practices that you will want to learn more about so that you can be the one spearheading your security efforts. While there is merit to consulting with cyber security experts, there is no substitute for obtaining that knowledge for yourself. You can earn a degree pertaining to cyber security online via an accelerated program. Find out more information at https://studyonline.ecu.edu.au/.

 

2. Place an Emphasis on Training

You can’t expect your employees to maintain good cyber security practices without the proper training. Furthermore, that training shouldn’t be just a one-time thing. You should start the training process for cyber security at your company right from the onboarding process.

Furthermore, the world of cyber security is constantly evolving and changing. This means that the manner in which employees at your company are trained should be an ongoing process as well. Make sure that all employees are kept up to date with the latest developments as they pertain to your company’s particular security measures.

3. Check in Via Evaluations

From time to time it becomes necessary to conduct evaluations with your employees concerning various aspects of your company’s internal operations. Such evaluations might pertain to employee satisfaction or other things of that nature. These evaluations can provide you with valuable insight into how your employees are feeling about their job situation.

You can also conduct evaluations and surveys in order to discover where your workers are at in regard to their cyber security knowledge. If the results of the surveys and evaluations indicate a lapse in knowledge, then you will be able to conduct a training in order to bring people up to speed.

4. Encourage Questions

Oftentimes, employees can have a tendency to avoid asking questions out fear of appearing inadequate. When it comes to cyber security, though, you don’t want to leave anything up to chance. For this reason, you need to make sure that you encourage your workers to ask questions if and when they come up.

What You Need to Know about the Latest Cyber Security Threats

Nobody would disagree with you if you said that cybersecurity is essential. However, if you asked them to take time out of their day or inconvenience themselves in the name of cybersecurity, you might find that people are less agreeable. This is because although people understand the term, they can’t quite connect it up with how it is relevant to them.

What are the risks

The thing most at risk from threats to your cybersecurity is your sensitive information, particularly customer information. Hackers will try to get hold of financial information, which poses a clear financial risk, but they will also find and sell valuable customer information. This then not only damages the reputation of your business but could mean that you are fined for not properly safeguarding sensitive data.

Cybercriminals will also leverage fragile connectivity so that they can use ransomware to disrupt your business and, in particular, the IoT (Internet of Things). If you have a lot of smart technology, this could pose a great deal of risk.

They are evolving as technology does

Cybercriminals are intelligent. As technology evolves, the threats evolve too. More and more businesses are utilising the cloud to store customer data, and as they do, the threat to that data is growing. This is creating new challenges, especially for small businesses.

AI and machine learning are the emerging technologies that everyone is getting excited about. Unfortunately, just as we can utilise this technology to improve our businesses, so cybercriminals can utilise it to expose weaknesses in our defences and make their attacks more effective. Similarly, creative cybercriminals can ‘poison’ machine learning, by sneaking in malicious code that causes the programme to malfunction.

Even smart contracts such as those used by Ethereum aren’t safe. It’s such a new technology that researchers are still finding bugs that can be exploited. This is something that any cybersecurity policy will need to cover in the future.

How you can be prepared

For small businesses, staying on top of cybersecurity can seem like an unending task that is taking you away from the core functions of your business. Plus, because cybercriminals are evolving so quickly, it can be hard to stay on top of what you need to be doing to keep your business safe. To give yourself the best possible chance of keeping your business safe, you could enlist a small business IT support provider. You can pay the experts to keep your business safe, while you do what you do best.

There are also some measures that can be implemented quickly and efficiently to up your security level, both in your business and personal life:

  • Encrypt your data, especially customer data.
  • Backup your system so that if you are the victim of a ransomware attack, you don’t lose everything.
  • Educate your staff on cybersecurity, particularly on phishing attacks, which will often be targeted at employee email addresses.
  • Ensure that customer data is secured behind a firewall.
  • Be mindful of social media; people create fake accounts that they will use to gain access to your data. Only befriend people online who you know actually exist.
  • Limit the amount of personal data you put online. If it’s not there, nobody can steal it!
  • Keep your software updated. Software companies will release updates to fix bugs, including vulnerabilities to Cyber Attack.
  • Use multi-factor authentication. It’s a bit annoying but effective.

Finally, try hacking yourself. If you can get in, then you need to rethink your security.