Smaller companies make a major contribution to the UK economy, helping increase employment and playing a key role in the ongoing recovery from recession.
In fact, according to the Federation of Small Businesses, small companies accounted for 47% of private sector employment and 33.1% of turnover at the start of 2013.
Of course, that doesn’t make it easy to compete with large, multi-national corporations with their huge marketing budgets and large, diverse workforces.
But in a business world increasingly dominated by big data, limited budgets and personnel no longer need hold smaller companies back.
Regardless of their size, companies with the ability to process and analyse customer data have an immediate advantage.
That data contains answers to questions that can help organisations succeed, like:
Business intelligence (BI) software can help you use data you collect to answer questions like these.
It can give you visibility into customer buying habits and trends that may enable you to stay ahead of the competition. Here’s how:
Business intelligence software organises data so you can quickly access the most important information about every customer. That might include their purchasing history, or what they are and aren’t happy about.
Assembling, maintaining and finding this information manually would be labour-intensive. But because business intelligence puts these insights at your fingertips, you know each customer inside out. As a result, you can provide unparalleled service.
Business intelligence software can identify customer buying patterns. For example, if you sell disposable contact lenses, it could flag up when a regular customer is likely to run out. Then you can swoop in with a personalised offer, to make sure you get the repeat business.
You can also identify opportunities for cross and upselling. Your sales team can identify likely prospects more easily, rather than relying on speculative cold calls, which can alienate customers and prove demoralising for your staff.
Business intelligence enables you to identify wider customer trends too, from showing your best-selling products to providing insights into seasonal changes.
This can help you run highly targeted promotions and marketing campaigns that are based on data and fact, rather than on your gut feelings.
If you’re trying to compete against bigger businesses with their bigger budgets, this knowledge will help you really understand your customers. As a result, you’ll sell more, retain existing customers and win new ones.
This post is by Paul Black, CEO of sales-i.
New research suggests that 60% of consumers are reluctant to purchase a product or service when faced with paying over the phone. And just 1% of people feel that making payment over the phone to a call centre is secure.
The research, from telecoms firm Syntec Telecom’s third annual tracker survey (PDF link), suggests high-profile data breaches have increased consumer demand for new payment technologies.
If the findings are accurate, 75% of consumers think organisations should be doing more to prevent credit and debit card fraud.
That should give some food for thought to any business that takes payments over the phone. Are potential customers looking elsewhere because they don’t trust the payment process? Could introducing new ways to pay help them win more business?
It’s not as if these consumer fears are groundless. Sophie Keen, from CIFAS, the UK’s fraud prevention service, confirms call centre fraud is a real problem:
“Over 20% of the internal fraud cases reported by CIFAS members in 2013 were committed in contact centres with many of these offences involving staff disclosing customer or commercial data to organised criminal, third parties.”
According to the research, 46% of consumers feel technology should be used to hide card details from call centre workers. What’s more, 67% feel that — as a general rule — companies should not be allowed to keep card details on file.
Card payments made over the phone are a weak link because the customer has to read out all the information required to make fraudulent payments. It’s all too easy for an unscrupulous customer service agent to take a copy of the details for their own use, too.
There are lots of ways to reduce this risk in your business. You can educate employees about fraud, make sure you comply with PCI-DSS payment regulations, and make check the security credentials of any key partners.
There are also ways to shield your customers’ card details from the ears of your staff. Tools like Syntec’s own CardEasy service allow you to hand customers over to an electronic system when payment is required.
The customer can make payment by entering card details via their telephone keypad, before returning to the call to confirm their order. As the card details are never shared with another person, the risk of fraud is reduced.
Has your company lost business due to fraud? What did you do to set things straight?
IT for Donuts is our regular Friday feature where we explain a tech term or answer a question about business IT.
This week, we take a look at how to use your iPad to view Dropbox files offline.
Dropbox is one of the world's most popular cloud storage services. Once you've signed up (the basic package is free), you get a special Dropbox folder on your computer. Anything you save here will be automatically backed up on the internet.
Dropbox is good for three things:
If you're like me, once you start using Dropbox, you'll come to rely on it. If you have an iPad, you'll probably install the Dropbox app so you can see your files there too.
When your iPad is connected to the internet, this works fine. You go into the app, select a file, and Dropbox opens it.
But when your iPad isn't connected to the internet, you won't be able to view any of your files. If you're rushing to a meeting and had hoped to read a document on the train (like me, last week), this can be irritating.
It's easy to make files available offline on Dropbox for iPad. We've put together this video to show you how. Just remember, you need to be connected to the internet when you follow these steps:
Don't fancy watching the video? No problem — here are step-by-step instructions. We've assumed you already have Dropbox set up on your iPad:
You should be able to access every file you've favourited at any time, no matter whether you have an internet connection or not.
IT for Donuts is our regular weekly feature where we explain a tech term or answer a question about business IT.
This week, we reveal six simple PowerPoint shortcuts that can make your presentations super-slick. If you want to become a presenting pro, read on
All these shortcuts will work when you’re actually giving a presentation with PowerPoint, rather than when you’re editing your presentation.
Try them out before you use them in anger, to make sure you’re comfortable and happy with how they work.
During your presentation:
Does mobile roaming make you anxious? |
New rules have come into force that slash the cost of making and receiving calls, sending texts and using mobile internet in other EU countries.
Recent years have seen the EU clamp down on roaming charges by introducing caps to limit how much extra mobile phone networks can charge when you visit another EU country.
Over time, the maximum charges allowed under the caps have been reduced. Under the latest rules, you can be charged a maximum of:
The European Commission has created an infographic to show you roughly what €10 should now get you.
Ultimately, European leaders hope to eliminate roaming charges altogether. Yes, one day you may be able to use your phone anywhere in the EU without paying extra for the privilege.
So, this is the perfect good news story for the beginning of the holiday season, right?
Well, while most people would probably agree that roaming costs have been too high for too long, there are a couple of less-positive aspects.
For a while now, many UK mobile phone networks have offered add-on bundles to people who are travelling abroad.
For instance, if you’re travelling in Europe, EE will give you 100MB of data for £3. The data expires after 24 hours, but it’s a good deal if you plan to use the internet a lot, even compared to the new capped prices.
The thing is, many people get confused about how much data they actually need.
With standard roaming costs now lower than ever, it may be in the interest of mobile networks to push people towards bundles — even if that’s often not the best option for their customers.
Now EU roaming is cheaper, you can bet we’ll do more of it. And that raises a broader question: when we’re on holiday trying to ‘get away from it all’, is it really a good idea to stay in such easy contact with the office?
Going on holiday can make you feel better for weeks or months afterwards. Switching off completely lets you relax properly, rather than thinking about all the things happening back in the office.
That temptation to check your email while you’re on a break just got slightly stronger. Can you resist it?
John McGarvey is editor of the IT Donut
Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of websites were affected by the heartbleed security flaw.
Heartbleed was a massive headache, but also acted as a reminder that large-scale security breaches can — and do — happen.
It’s not just down to IT staff and security experts to take action. Business owners have a role to play, too.
There are many things you can do to protect your business from online threats. The security section of IT Donut is an excellent place to start.
One of the most important things to think about is anti-virus and security software. These programs scan your computers for viruses, spyware and other malware. They also monitor your network for suspicious activity, and can identify and remove email threats.
Just a single piece of malware can leave your systems wide open, paving the way for hackers to enter and steal your data. Security software is a key countermeasure.
It’s easy to realise that you need security software. But there’s a bewildering choice of options, making it actually quite hard to pick one that meets your needs and budget.
And even when you’ve chosen your security software, just having it isn’t enough. In order for it to be effective, it needs to be:
If you don’t meet these three requirements, your company will be at risk of a malware attack and data breach.
Got all that sorted? Great. The next things you have to worry about are user habits.
Security software is only effective if it’s running on all your computers at all times. Unfortunately, it can sometimes slow computers down, block other software or force you to wait while it performs a scan.
For these reasons, you might find that your employees close the security software on their computers, disable the scanning functions, cancel updates — or change settings in some other way that makes the software less effective.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the job of making sure your security software is running properly and checking your employees haven’t interfered with its settings.
And that’s where managed anti-virus and security software comes in.
Managed security software works much the same as other security packages. It helps keep your systems secure and free of malware.
The main difference is that the software is managed by someone else. This is usually done by an IT provider (like your IT support company), but can be done by someone in your business, if you have the expertise in-house.
Whoever manages the security software takes responsibility for ensuring the solution is installed on every system and is always kept up to date.
Usually, software on individual computers and servers will be managed from a central control panel. For instance, changes to settings and updates can be rolled out across all computers automatically.
This is great for many smaller businesses because it means they don’t need to worry about the installation or day-to-day management of security software.
If you adopt managed security software, it can give you the benefit of knowing your systems and data stored are secure, without having to get into the ins and outs of checking every computer and every setting yourself.
(c) Mirus IT, provider of managed security software to smaller companies.
The ways we pay are changing fast. No matter what sort of business you run, customers will expect to be able to pay by their preferred method.
If you only accept a limited number of payment methods, people may be put off buying from you. With that in mind, perhaps you should be thinking about contactless payment, because this is one option that has really taken off in the last 12 months.
Contactless payments are growing fast. Monthly spending on contactless cards exceeded £100m for the first time in March 2014, according to the UK Cards Association.
More than 370 contactless transactions are made every minute in the UK. That’s six per second — three times more than a year ago.
Although contactless is seen as a new technology, it’s actually been around since 2008. The same technology powers Transport for London’s Oyster card system, where passengers pay for public transport journeys via contactless cards pre-loaded with credit.
Contactless cards use a short-range wireless system called near field communications (NFC).
Contactless debit and credit cards are fitted with an antenna that connects them with devices up to 5cm away. When the cardholder passes their card close to a contactless payment machine, their payment is registered.
Because it’s so easy to make a payment, the contactless system has been designed to minimise the chance of duplicate or accidental transactions.
The terminals make sure only one payment is taken per transaction. To make a second payment, the card has to be taken out of range of the card reader, and then reintroduced.
Even then, a second payment will only be taken if the sales assistant has initiated a new transaction.
Software in the cash register or point of sale terminal also checks if there’s more than one card within range. It will reject the transaction if there’s a risk of the wrong card being charged.
‘Tap and go’ contactless transactions take less than a second, making shopping quicker and easier. If you run a shop, this reduces queues, makes customers happier and gives you more time to engage with them.
Major high street names such as Marks & Spencer, Costa and Boots are all using contactless. Although uptake among smaller businesses is harder to measure, it seems widespread.
There’ll already be at least one business on your local High Street that accepts contactless payments. More are joining every day.
This post is by Andy Macauley, chief operating officer at Handepay, which offers a free guide to contactless payments.
IT for Donuts is our regular weekly feature where we explain a tech term or answer a question about business IT.
This week, see how to reduce the size of Microsoft Word documents containing images.
If you're working on a Microsoft Word document, you might have notices that the file size increases — often significantly — each time you add an image.
This is because images take up much more space on disk than text. Long documents with lots of images can grow unfeasibly large, making it harder to work with them or to share them with other people.
Microsoft Word includes an feature that reduces the amout of storage space images take up. It does this by compressing the image files in a document.
This slightly reduces the quality of images, but you can balance quality vs. size by choosing from a range of compression levels.
You should only compress images once you're sure you don't want to re-crop them or change the size again, because the compression option optimises the image for its current size.
Here's how to do it (these instructions should work with recent versions of Microsoft Word on Windows computers):
That's it. When you save the document again, you should notice that it takes up less space on your computer.
Copyright: Tupungato |
Marks & Spencer’s new website — which launched in February — reportedly cost an enormous £150m. No, we’re not quite sure how on earth it’s possible to spend that much on a website, either.
Yet despite this huge investment, things haven’t gone quite to plan.
The company’s online sales dropped 8% in the 13 weeks previous to 28 June, despite this shiny new site that was — presumably — intended to make it easier for consumers to part with their cash. Oops.
It’s tempting to chuckle at the online misfortunes of a big retailer like this. But in truth, launching a new website is a high-stakes game for anyone.
No matter whether your online business is a one-person micro-company or a 130-year-old icon like M&S, you never quite know what’s going to happen when you flick the ‘on’ switch.
For starters, some current customers will almost certainly be confused by and resistant to the change.
Even if your old website was a nightmare to navigate, your most loyal visitors will have got used to it. When you redesign it, you force them to learn a new way of doing things.
Every website redesign faces this problem, but M&S appears to have compounded things by forcing existing customers to re-register on the new site.
Yes, even if you’ve made regular online purchases in the past, you’re apparently forced to re-enter your details before you can buy online. As anyone with any experience of selling online will know, that’s bound to affect conversion rates.
We can only assume that some kind of serious technical issues prevented M&S keeping the old user database, because it’s hard to understand why any retailer would choose to start from scratch again in this way.
More worryingly, some industry commentators think the site faces fundamental issues. According to this Marketing Week piece, retail analyst Neil Saunders reckons the new M&S.com has forgotten some of the basics:
“…it falls down in the more critical function of making it easy for customers to purchase. Indeed, there are some parts of the site where it is extremely difficult for customers to understand the path they need to take to buy product.”
It’s far too early to tell whether the M&S website will be a long-term success. But if you’re planning to re-launch your ecommerce website, here are three ways to avoid similar problems:
If not, or you’re not sure, steer clear. It’s easy to get distracted by bells and whistles during the exciting process of creating a new site. Yet visitors want a simple site so they can buy what they want, fast.
On bigger website projects, it can be helpful to build a basic prototype, to see how people fare when they use it. Is it easy to find your products? Can customers figure out how to check out?
For instance, you might use A/B testing tools to show 20% of visitors your new site, while the other 80% see the old one. Once you’re confident the new site is performing, you can roll it to 100% of visitors.
Have you launched a new online shop recently? How’s it performing? Leave a comment to let us know.
IT for Donuts is our regular Friday feature where we explain a tech term or answer a question about business IT.
This week, see how to add a header and footer to Microsoft Word documents.
Headers and footers explained in this video by Webucator.
Headers and footers are standard items that you can insert at the top and bottom of pages in Microsoft Word.
Unsurprisingly, the header is at the top of the page and the footer at the bottom. Headers and footers often contain page numbers, a company logo or a small amount of text.
Microsoft Word includes an option for headers and footers. This allows you to create a header or footer once, then add it to every page of your document.
Here's how to create a footer in Microsoft Word. The process for creating a header is exactly the same, except you should edit the area at the top of the page rather than the area at the bottom.
(These instructions apply to recent versions of Microsoft Word.)
There are lots of other things you can do with headers and footers, and there's plenty of information about working with them available on the Microsoft website.
A flooded office in Windsor, Feb 2014. Image: Steve Mann / Shutterstock.com
IT security experts talk a lot about avoiding viruses and spyware. In the wake of the GOZeuS malware issue, you can't move for advice on how to avoid phishing.
But although a lot of IT security advice tends to focus on issues like these, there are many less high-tech threats to your business IT.
For instance, according to research from Inhance Technology, over 20% of people are more worried about being mugged for their smart phone or tablet than they were a year ago.
So, in the race to keep your devices free of viruses and your servers locked down from hackers, are you neglecting the more basic precautions?
As a reminder, here are five ways to protect your servers, computers and mobile devices from the low-tech threats that can damage your business:
Have you been caught out by any low-tech security issues? Leave a comment to let us know.
Image copyright: Dr. Cloud
New research from terribly-spelt online marketplace provider Mirakl suggests that online shoppers are still most attracted by the prospect of a bargain when choosing where to buy.
The survey asked 1,000 UK consumers to identify factors that influence where they buy from online. Almost half (49%) of respondents said that price was important.
Consumers also look for retailers they trust (23%) and value good customer service.
However, the ability to order online and collect instore was much less of a factor. Only 3% said this was important to them, while just 2% said that having a good mobile-optimised website was the main reason to buy somewhere.
There's good and bad news here for smaller businesses. If your competitors include online giants like Amazon, competing on price is always going to be difficult.
However, with brand recognition and trust also important, it may be possible to turn the might of online marketplaces like Amazon to your own advantage.
Quite simply, you can often reach a wider audience by selling your products through these sites as well as — or instead of — running your own online shop.
If you sell online, it's certainly worth investigating. If you can't beat 'em, why not join 'em?
Get advice about selling through marketplaces from Marketing Donut.
The Hootsuite dashboard, showing several searches
IT for Donuts is our regular Friday feature where we explain a tech term or answer a question about business IT.
This time round, we explain how to monitor Twitter, so you know when people mention your business or another topic of interest.
Since it was founded in 2006, Twitter has grown into a worldwide phenomenon. It's common to see brands promoting hashtags, running competitions and talking to customers on this social network.
But one problem with Twitter is its sheer size. Thousands of tweets are sent every second. Unless you somehow manage to follow all the right people and spend every second online, it's easy to miss when someone mentions your company.
In fact, there could a conversation about your business happening on Twitter right now. And you'll never know who's having it or what they're saying.
Because it's impossible to monitor Twitter manually, there are a number of different ways to track mentions of certain topics on the social network.
Most of these work in the same basic way. You set up an automatic search for something (perhaps your company name, or the products you sell). Then when someone uses that term, you get notified.
You can do what you like with that information. You might monitor tweets without getting involved. But if a customer expresses dissatisfaction, you can step in to make things right.
Two of the most popular tools for monitoring Twitter are TweetDeck and Hootsuite.
Here's how to start monitoring Twitter with Hootsuite. For this example, let's assume we want to know whenever someone mentions 'British Airways':
That's how easy it is to search Twitter automatically. But actually, Hootsuite is a very powerful tool that you can use to run your whole Twitter presence.
It's worth exploring further, and you can learn more about using Hootsuite over on Marketing Donut.
You should never use something like 'password', '123456' or your name as your password. Not for anything. Most people know this, yet plenty of us still do it.
Now artist Lorrie Cranor has come up with an original way to highlight rubbish passwords. She's had them printed on a dress.
Yes, she really has. No, this isn't a joke.
As Lorrie explains over on her blog, she used Wordle to create a word cloud of the most popular passwords revealed by the RockYou hack, then rearranged the resulting words before having them printed onto fabric.
She subsequently made this into a striking dress. The larger the word, the more common the password.
As way to start conversations about IT security, we suspect this is hard to beat. And given the coverage it has received, it's done a good job of raising the profile of poor passwords.
Now we just have to stop using them.