Business tips

A shortage of skilled workers in areas like IT, languages and ‘tradesman’ jobs are affecting UK businesses in two ways.

Customer service managers are more focused than ever before on delivering quality service and improving customer satisfaction.

T-mobile provides small businesses with a jargon-free guide to the benefits of mobile working. The growth in the range of devices that allow users to access information on the move is opening the flood gates for business people to work just about anywhere. It is providing then a plethora of options of where they can … Read more

Liz Rhodes MBE, former Director of the National Council for Work Experience (NCWE), explains how small businesses can utilise student talent to boost productivity. The very mention of the words ‘work experience’ has been known to cause many a small business owner or manager to shudder – images of pale-faced youths struggling to look busy … Read more

Search engine optimisation is one of the main ways to get your website found, but making the search engines want to rank your site highly can be difficult. These ten steps will help you get well on your way to optimising your site. Find Relevant Keywords Google’s keyword research tool is probably the best way … Read more

As was evident by the passing of the EU cookie law – to prevent / reduce gathering of personal data for targeted advertising – personalisation, in general, is big business. You only have to look at someone like Amazon to see the effects of a tailored web experience. There are ways in which you can … Read more

You’re unlikely to have missed the increasing prevalence of video in use online. It’s been the exception for the last couple of years when video, even on a small scale, hasn’t been part of a client’s content strategy for their website. Where video is being used as an additional information point on websites, I don’t think there’s … Read more

Most business owners looking for capital know that traditional funding from banks is now much harder to come by and increasingly expensive. Few of us have friends and family members who can collectively lend above the £100k mark and most businesses simply do not require the level of investment that attract the venture capital funds … Read more

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions about Dragons’ Den but one thing’s for sure: it’s brought about more awareness of business angel funding and its possibilities than the billions of taxpayers pounds wasted over the years on Government investor-readiness ‘programmes’. However, when a world that was previously shrouded in mystery has the light suddenly shined … Read more

Before any business tries to attract new capital from outside the “family”, there several questions that need to be answered: Do you really need new capital? Raising capital can be a long and stressful experience, so first look for other sources of funds. Perhaps there are asset or cash flow lenders who will help. There … Read more

Presenting your business to potential investors is like any other sales presentation, all the same rules apply. But remember you are not just trying to win one order of many, you are trying to attract funding which will change your business forever. You will probably read the rest of this and find yourself saying “Yes, … Read more

How to secure funding if your business is short on working capital and the finance required for continued growth.