Advice on growing your small and medium sized business, SME, in the UK. Hiring and managing staff and finance plus marketing all on one website
It’s astonishing to consider that the world of business was almost entirely different a decade ago. The internet still lurked on the side lines, speeding through its infancy, high street stores weren’t shutting rapidly, and people still looked vaguely suspicious at Amazon.
Our columnist Johnny McGinley shares his thoughts this month in an exclusive feature on how to prepare your SME business for sustainable change management.
Don’t start writing a business book until you have a valid business case for doing so – that’s according to Sue Richardson of SRA Books.
“A new job and a better salary” – the exact words you don’t want to overhear from your employees on the topic of New Year’s resolutions. This is perhaps one of the most common New Year’s resolutions going, right up there with losing weight and quitting bad habits like smoking and drinking.
At the time of writing, Manchester City FC currently sits at the top of the Premier League pile, ahead of England’s other top-flight teams. This won’t come as a shock – with a strong squad and some eye-catching summer signings, Manchester’s blue half are working hard to capture their third title in five years.
We all know the story of the Star Wars space opera: an epic battle of good and evil involving knights, princesses, dark forces, an amazing range of aliens and one of the most famous twists in film history.
Say the word Google to anyone and they’ll probably give you the same response. “Well, it’s a search engine, right?” Certainly, Google is the world’s biggest tool for searching the internet and it has even become common parlance for browsing the web: “I’ll Google it”, as most of us have said at some point.
Mark Wright, winner of The Apprentice 2014 & Business Matters new columnist talks emojis and digital marketing
We have a look at some of the coolest companies of 2015 and find out what makes them so good
Black Friday is fast approaching, the day where bargain hunters across the UK try and grab themselves a great deal before heading into the festive period. According to retail analysts, this year’s Black Friday is set to be the first time UK shoppers spend £1bn in one day , providing retailers with a golden opportunity to maximise sales and profits before the sun sets on 2015.
One of the time-tested ways of establishing yourself as a standard in your industry is to win an industry recognised award. An award serves as independent evaluation of your company’s quality – an evaluation that your customers are more likely to trust than your own marketing material.
With age and experience comes wisdom, but all too often in the business world, hubris can come along for the ride too. Subconsciously survivorship and confirmation biases are at work; good decisions are reinforced, and poor ones fall out of the memory – which distorts their real importance.
It’s widely accepted that if you can bring on a Finance Director to help you in business, you should. Having a viable idea for a business doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to run the books – and the analysis, insight and advice an FD can offer your venture will be invaluable.
Capital Gains: the good news/bad news tax. Good news … you’ve made money. Bad news … well, it’s a tax.
In any challenging and fast-paced organisation, it is important to remember that creativity has underpinned some of our greatest achievements. It has helped us treat diseases, find new energy sources and put a human on the moon.
Need data that holds up in the boardroom — and the press? Trends Research is the UK's specialist SME research company, with a 750,000-strong panel and a 2,000-response minimum on every survey. AI-augmented analysis, headline-ready insights, and 38 years of trust built through Business Matters magazine. Trusted by Vodafone, BT, O2 and top UK PR agencies. From brief to deliverable in 10 working days — or 3 for press-led work. Request a quote today at https://trendsresearch.co.uk/
