Business - Macmillan New Ventures

Beat the Competition with Daily Practice and Payment Innovations

As a business owner, being on the edge of technology and innovations should be your comfort zone because that is the only way to guarantee your survival and that of your enterprise. Currently, financial technology (fintech) is the leading disruptor of established commerce. If you are yet to get on the fintech bandwagon, then you are losing out.

Consider the number of choices a typical shopper has today to settle payments. You can pay via card, mobile wallet, or cash. When using a mobile wallet, the range of payment options increases exponentially. As a startup or a midsized company, failing to support the popular payment options for customers will result in adverse effects on their loyalty. Consider these tips for helping you sustain your brand’s competitiveness.

Make Payments Easy

The technologies you use should be making payment fast and convenient for your clients. Let them enjoy transacting with you. Consider supporting whatsapp payment as a start since it will not only give you brand a preferred image in the customers’ eyes, but also make it easy to collect data to help you serve clients better. Interactivity, when integrated with seamless payment options, will transform your business into an experience loved by customers.

Avoid Time Wasting

Bureaucracy at the workplace can introduce too many instances of time wasting. These wasted time resources turn out to be very costly. They consist of opportunity costs for serving customers, improving the well-being of employees, and understanding chances for implementing fast payment.

For instance, when using payment through WhatsApp, you will be encouraging you, clients, to receive fast turnaround times. A failure to have staff dedicated to handling the WhatsApp queries and payments would thus become a waste of the entire resource.

Focus on Essentials

Most businesses are only trying to outdo their competition on the latest features in their product. However, you can be ahead of them by sticking to the basics. Make your premises clean, increase your training of staff on front-service, answer calls in time, and make sure you are putting smiles on customers. Businesses are corporate citizens for a reason. You do not need a grand gesture to make an impact on your client base.

Collect Customer Details

It might be part of your company policy to let customers keep their information to themselves. However, it is often too late to act by the time you are reading by the time you are, you are responding.

A proactive approach where you actively involve your staff in the provision of customer care services, listening to customers on social media as they express their feedback, and talking to them directly through various platforms and chat options is the right way. Let your brand lead in customer support. Let technologies work for you. Use details to learn customer intelligence to get ahead.

Understand a Technology Before Implementing It

Most firms will remain behind the rivals despite investing capital and having the right innovative mindset. The reason is they are not taking time to understand the steps they are taking. One-Size fits all mentality will lead to eroded opportunities. Get in touch with vendors, ask consultants to train your staff, and seek certifications that help you to understand technology for you to customize it well for your needs.…

Three Ways to Secure a Startup from Financial Loss

Startups are growing in number. The world is more open to business than in the 90s. And many factors have influenced that development. The easy access to the Internet, the smartphone industry, globalization, and the increasing economic welfare of all nations seem to form an ideal environment for people to start new businesses.

However, competition has become tougher each day. Companies who do not adapt to the latest marketing and management technologies will hardly survive. And here, we are going to discuss three ways to protect our businesses from impairing financial loss.

Incorporating the Business Immediately

Entrepreneurs use business loans to build their companies. But because of a limited budget, many startups tend to delay to incorporate their companies. As a result, the business is not formalized, and all the possession of companies’ assets is not acknowledged and protected by the state’s law.

Besides, the loan of a non-incorporated business will hold the founders as the liability. And the banks will define that loan as personal. The situation means that the liable individuals will not be eligible for any more credits, including the income tax loans. And if any financial disaster happens to the company, the credit scores of those individuals will get affected.

A shortcut to this incorporation problem is to hire a capable business attorney. First, you can use the Internet to profile all the available business lawyers in your region. If they have client testimonies, evaluate their method. And if they provide a free consultation, you should use it. Second, check the lawyer’s reputation from fellow entrepreneurs. The questions you should as will be, “How long the process is going to take? How much is the service going to charge you? And will the attorney be co-operative for future legal issues?”

Dealing with the Tax Issues Correctly

When a company makes income, or when it sells stocks to capitalist ventures, the company is subject to pay taxes to the state. However, the typical strategy to deal with taxes is to postpone from thoroughly calculating it. And also, most entrepreneurs are reluctant to admit their ineptitude in filing taxes.

First, allocate your budget for the taxing. It is an obligatory step to prevent tax penalties in the future. And remember, the fines do not care about your condition. Always consider the worst by simulating how bad the situation is going to be if the tax auditor fines you during a depression.

Second, you can try either a tax software or an advisor. The program may help you for a while. But as your inventories grow, you may need to buy upgrades. As for employing an advisor, it is not a lavish act for a startup. In fact, tax advisors may charge new businesses with a price lower than usual in exchange for a long-term partnership. If you can make that deal, it will benefit you continuously.

Partnering with Insurance Companies

The risks for new businesses are always out there. Sooner or later, lawsuits are going to come to get you. For example, PayPal faced many legal issues in its early establishment. In 2002, Paypal was sued for violating the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) because the company did not create law-compliant dispute resolution procedures.

Paypal was among the first e-payment companies. But they could outmatch the others because they were the first to innovate their system to be integrated with credit cards and US banks. And because e-payment was relatively new to the world at that time, law violations appeared as the company was expanding.

If your business deals with innovation, you are most likely to break the law in one way or another. To overcome that risk, you should have a policy of general commercial liability insurance. The second insurance you will need is the professional liability insurance. It protects you from professional negligence lawsuits.…

2018-08-13 Business