15 Ways to Save Money in Your Business

15 Ways to Save Money in Your Business

1.Take advantage of the freelance and temporary workforce

Why not start taking advantage of a temporary team that is specialized at doing whatever it is you need done? Then the job gets done better, and you don’t have to hassle with huge overheads and adding up costs such as: sick leaves, training, vacations, insurance etc.

Having a flexible team working on a per-project or task basis will significantly reduce your business operating costs, improve overall key performance indicators, and will allow you to focus on more important tasks while minor things are getting solved by your dedicated virtual assistant.

2.Start an internship program

Get in touch with a local college and offer to establish mutually beneficial relationships (you get an affordable workforce, and many college programs now require students to participate in an internship program). Win-win.

There are also high chances of discovering true talents to hire after they graduate, before the recruiters snatch them up.

3.Become energy-efficient

Utility bills eating up a large chunk of your income? First, you can opt for compact fluorescent light bulbs. They may cost more, but they function a great deal longer; thus saving you a pretty penny in the long run.

Second, you can switch to using energy-efficient appliances. Again, they do cost more, but you can cut down the expenses with numerous government-sponsored rebates and it may make you eligible for green energy tax credits.

Or you can even go as far as this European company to save a pretty penny on energy costs – save money, save the environment!

4.Keep a virtual office

If any of your team members work remotely (or can), and you don’t have an ongoing need to gather in one place, why should you even bother paying huge rent for office space?

Business meetings can be held at any venue, co-working space or conference hall.

However, you still like to keep things looking professional and earn your credits, right? And occasionally you do need to fax something or print a bunch of promotional materials. If that’s the case, most virtual offices provide you with temporary flat rate printing solutions, VoIP phones with a personal message box, corporate mailing address and even a dedicated receptionist handling your calls – plus a bunch of other cool perks that tend to cost very little compared to what they would cost in a normal office.

5.Barter

Have you ever thought about offering your service or specialty that your business provides in exchange for another service? Bartering is no longer that difficult with a number of B2B barter sites, such as Trade Bank. These services are gaining huge popularity among small and medium sized business owners.

Plus, it’s a great way to grow your business connections and score potential new clients or partners.

6.Go paperless

Do you really think you need all those paper copies for everyone? Do they really even want them? Or will they just end up in the trash anyway? Now look at your monthly printing costs and think again.

Still opting for paper bills and invoices? That’s stone age with so many online payment and invoices systems available at reduced costs. Retain your clients with email marketing and ditch mailing coupons and advertorials by snail mail to cut down the costs even more!

 

7.Ask for discounts

Take the nerve and ask the retailers directly whether they can give you a discount as a small business owner. Surprisingly, most will say yes if you are shopping for big ticket items. Alternatively, sneak around for coupons and special deals, sign up to retailers’ newsletters to be the first to know when certain items come on sale, plus get a few money-saving apps installed on your phone to receive instant alerts.

8.Invest in self-education

There’s no better investment than education and in the long-run, spending time and effort on learning something new will pay off later on! As long as you have the time!

Ultimately, this can save you money that might otherwise spend on hiring a consultant.

9.Buy used equipment and furniture

Shopping in thrift shops and bargain sales is no longer shameful. It’s trendy. Loads of businesses prefer to equip their offices with shabby vintage stuff costing pennies instead of luxury designer goods (that often look pretty much the same). Businesses claim to save up to 60% costs merely buying used office equipment like computers, faxes and printers. Scroll through Craigslist, check out your local paper classified and online auctions like eBay to get everything you need at least two times cheaper.

10.Cut back on paid software

Nowadays, there is an open-source, free alternative to nearly any product in the tech market. Be wary of software salespeople that try to tell you otherwise! Also be wary of consultants that may partner with paid software, and try to tell you that you need a specific software. When it comes to data, make sure your data consulting guys are product agnostic.

11.Conduct timely technology and service audits

How many paid apps and subscriptions do you currently have? And how many are you actually using? Bet these two numbers differ quite a bit. If you have not used a certain technology or service for the last 90 days, it’s time to cancel your subscription and stop paying for things you obviously do not need. Make it a rule to review all the paid products you have every two months. Moreover, before getting yet another piece of paid software, visit Download.com and try hundreds of software products for free through trial downloads, limited versions, and freeware to make sure that it’s indeed a product you need.

12.Eliminate finance charges

A lot of businesses lose thousands dollars annually on ridiculous things such as: high membership fees on business credit cards, late loan payments and credit-card processing fees. Simply staying on top of bills and paying them exactly when they are due,  will save your business a great amount of money each year.

Yes, keeping up with the bills can get complicated, so try to automate as many financial processes as possible by implementing online payment systems and setting up special alerts when bills are due. Also, pay a visit to your bank and ask what better credit card options they can offer you as a business owner.

13.Opt for online advertising

Does your business have a Facebook page and Twitter and Pinterest accounts? Do you have a website properly optimized for mobile search?

In 2016 if your business is not online, it practically does not exist!

Compared to traditional marketing and advertising, promoting your business online is both cheaper, and faster. Start small by adding a blog to your website, offer expert advice, reach out to new media and bloggers with thrilling stories you can share, invest some time and money in social media marketing, and optimize your website properly to get a huge amount of targeted traffic and new customers.

14.Use the power of co-opetition

You can team up with fellow biz owners to collaborate and share expenses when buying new supplies in bulk. You can even share mailing lists and distribution channels with businesses offering complementary goods or services that may interest your customers.

Also, you can exchange advertising spaces on your websites; share each other’s coupons and special deals (for a small fee or percentage from each sale made, also known as affiliate marketing) and occasionally appear on each other’s business blogs to boost your rankings and attract a new audience to your websites.

15.Use Big Data

Crazy Facts Business Leaders Should Know About Data and Money

Crazy Facts Business Leaders Should Know About Data and Money

  1. 90% of all the world’s data has been created within the last two years.
  2. 25% of organizations now have a data scientist on staff.
  3. According to CIO, $3.2 billion was spent by companies on big data in 2010; it is predicted companies will spend $16.9 billion on big data by 2015
  4. $300 billion could be saved if big data was used effectively the US healthcare sector; thereby reducing expenditure by 8%
  5. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, uses Big Data as part of its “pay as you drive” program, offers drivers the chance to lower their insurance premiums based on real-time analysis of their driving habits.
  6. 328 million things connect to the internet each Month!
  7. 91% of marketing leaders believe successful brands use customer data to drive business decisions.

 

More Facts About the Big Data Revolution

Monetizing Big Data

Monetizing Big Data

When we think about Big Data, we don’t typically directly associate it with money. To some extent, this is true; raw data alone is pretty much useless, and worthless. However, when it is analyzed and used properly, it can be an organization’s most valuable asset.

We all know that knowledge is power. And in the case of business, knowledge is profit. If you have enough information to determine how many staff members you need on the floor of a restaurant at all times, you can save a lot of money, and keep your customers happy. If you could identify how to store more supplies in a smaller safe, you could save real estate, and money. And if you can figure out what will keep your customers coming back time and time again, you will increase your profits.

To gain access to all this information, and to gain all this knowledge once seemed impossible. This is precisely why the terms “intuition,” and “business acumen” came about. But really these are just fancy terms for “educated guesses.” Data eliminates our need for guessing when making business decisions.

But of course, it’s not that easy. Just because a business or organization has access to data (every one does), does not mean that they can all monetize their data.

The first step to monetizing data is to consolidate that data. The term “big data” means that there is a lot of data, from many different sources. In order to understand the data and put it into context, you need to consolidate it all, to understand the whole picture.

Once it is consolidated, it needs to be properly analyzed. It is this analysis process that transforms the raw data into information.

But, you also need to make sure that this information is put in front of the right people. These people will transform the information into insight.

Then the insight can be used to make transformative business decisions.

 

So…monetizing Big Data isn’t exactly easy. But if you can do it, it will transform your business for the better. This is precisely why you need to hire the best data scientists you can, that truly understand the architecture of everything data. It is naive to think that you and your IT team can accomplish all of the above on your own – by the time you learned how to do it, it will have changed.

Saving Money and Saving Lives With Crime Analytics

Saving Money and Saving Lives With Crime Analytics

Collection and analysis of Big Data are crucial to business and government in order to be sustainable and competitive in industry.  With the easy accessibility of Big Data, we must ask ourselves how can we use it to its full potential? What limits should be placed on its use? And how can the law enforcement community take full advantage of it and simultaneously retain public support?

Crime analytics is the applied application of analytics by analysts to support crime prevention and investigations as well as intelligence-led policing. It is a prime example of how advanced analytics are about the application of methods and tools by people not just the tools alone. It is important to remember that one does not occur without the other. Moreover, that the role of the human in the analytic process is key to making informed assessments to decision-makers.

As criminals are becoming smarter and more creative using the Web, law enforcement agencies are in need of technology that allows them to stay a step ahead.  With the amount of knowledge and insight Big Data can provide, public safety officials have an obligation to protect the wider community. Law enforcement organizations and the private sector working together can enable us all to prevent future crime, reduce costs and prosecute criminals.

This is not something new as crime analytics have been in use since the mid-90s.  For example, at the Seattle Police Department, each morning’s schedule begins with review of Google Maps and computer algorithms to determine where officers should focus their attention.  For now, predictive policing programs are solely focused on property crimes.  This has included recordings of movements of vehicles that are stored for later investigations.  Unlike most police departments, Seattle requires officers to vet each citation.  For the public, the police department even created a Twitter account for residents to report crime in their neighborhood.

Seattle also has bought on a new software package, PredPol, for predictive policing.  It looks at short and long-term patterns in property crimes and can forecast risk.  It is in use by 11 other police agencies including those of the cities of Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, California.

On the east coast, the Durham (N.C.) police department’s analytical services group used analytics technology to help reduce the amount of violent crime in a two-square-mile region of the city by more than 50 percent during a four-year span (2007-2011).

In order to be successful using these technologies requires communication to the consumer and close oversight of security and privacy policies.  If the public understands their information will be handled securely and that they will benefit then they are more likely to be comfortable with sharing personal details. Trust will take time to develop and proven success in how the data are managed towards the ultimate goal of a global community and secure network.

What Does a Data Scientist Do?

What Does a Data Scientist Do?

What makes someone a data scientist? This question keeps coming up continuously, so we’ve finally decided to write a blog to make it clear.

It is difficult to come up with one, single definition, because data scientists perform a wide variety of activities and have a wide variety of skills.

Typically, a data scientist can be best utilized working alongside an engineering and product management team to help develop products, and to help provide valuable insights to the business. Some data scientists will even refer to themselves as “data detectives.”

Here are some of the values/services/skills that a data scientist can provide:

  • Product Analytics: To understand how users interact with the product through analysis of the logs
  • Data Engineering / Data Pipeline: To automate data collection, aggregation, and visualization to produce metrics that are actionable
  • Experimentation (A/B Testing): To establish causality that is otherwise too messy or not possible through observational study
  • Data Modeling: To build predictive models

However, it is important to note that each of these is an individual skill and job. A single data scientist cannot perform all of these job positions.

 

Here is a great podcast where a data scientist explains in her own words what a data scientist is:

Big Data Podcast – What Is A Data Scientist?

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