If your business is suffering as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, please take a look at some of the latest governmental supports for SMEs in Ireland. Support is provided in form of grants, consultancy, webinars and other assistance that small and medium business owners so badly need in this uncertain time.
As the whole of the world has entered uncharted waters, businesses, particularly the SME’s RIKON typically works with are having to adapt to new ways of conducting their operations. The change can be more challenging for some than others, with many businesses struggling to survive and are forced to adapt. Although not all SME’s will have the luxury of allowing staff to work from home, it is important that where this is possible employers are aware of the challenges to be overcome.
Knowing what customers expect is the first and arguably most important element in delivering quality service. But sometimes finding out what your clients want is more difficult than it seems. Find out what the key to success is and how you can take the next step in delivering not just a service, but a true experience to your customers.
For over 10 years now, a businesses have grown accustomed to hearing term ‘omni-channel’. This term is particularly familiar to the organizations in the retail sector, where it is thriving.
Content creation is not only time-consuming, but also very challenging. It is a good idea to make it a routine process for your organization but when it comes to content, it’s always quality over quantity. Consistency is great, but should be matched by the appropriate quality standard of what comes out.
Businesses all over the world have been benefiting from Lean model for decades, but the concept doesn’t remain stagnant, continuously evolving and improving. In this blog we are looking at what to expect and what to look out for in 2019 when transforming your business model to Lean.
We have entered into an era where consumers are continuously connected with digital platforms and expect to get instant access to the services and products they need. People don’t even need to leave their homes to do shopping anymore.
Here is all you need to know about moving you business to the On Demand Business Model.
Starting a business enterprise is a daunting task that involves a million small and not so small things to take care of, making it easy to forget about the social marketing channels that are at your disposal. Here we take a look at how you can grow your business with the help of social media.
Many businesses still think that becoming a Lean business is just about continuous improvement of processes by using Lean tools. Of course this is part of answer but it is only half the solution. What many miss is the importance of respect for people.
In recent months, increased attention in the media has been devoted to the GDPR. However, confusion remains pervasive among micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), organisations of fewer than 250 employees, who are uncertain of what it will mean for them and how they should prepare.
If your business is part of this group, this blog post provides information and guidance that will help you ensure compliance by the May 25th, 2018 deadline.
While lean developed from the Toyota Production System, you don’t need to understand Japanese to understand Lean. And you don’t have to use this language if you want your business to be Lean. Essentially you don’t need to use Japanese language at all to engage and implement Lean.
If you think about flow for a minute you can imagine all sorts of things that flow. Clouds flow, people queuing to get into an event flow, air currents flow, and rivers flow. At the heart of Lean Thinking is the idea of making value flow. So if you can picture your business as a river and use flow as a metaphor you can imagine all of the processes that goes into whatever it is that you make as a process that flows. If you view every business as a collection of processes and sub-processes that are designed to complete tasks and create value for the company and the customer, you can see how it applies to virtually every business. Sometimes there are blockages in how these processes flow and for you to create effective processes it’s your job to remove the red tape and the unnecessary task from your business. That’s what Lean Thinking calls waste.
Social selling has been defined by LinkedIn as “leveraging your social network to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships, and ultimately, achieve your sales goals”. With the onslaught of company participation in social media activities the bar has been risen to never-before-seen heights when it comes to selling your products online. In 2017 LinkedIn and Facebook have introduced Lead Generation Tools as part of their advertising platforms. This article will discuss what this means for Irish SMEs.
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, for short is one of those phrases that has bandied around a lot in selling and marketing circles over the past eight years. In simple-man’s terms SEO is the process whereby you or any website controller is taking every possible action with its website to ensure that when Google “crawls” the web that the website appears as high as possible in Google’s organic listings.
While a significant portion of strategizing is thinking and planning, the leadership challenge for most organisations is to make sure that it is more than just a paper exercise and this is where the execution or implementation phase comes to the fore.
It is a great time to start your own business, largely thanks to the recovery of the economy and the large number of supports available to start-ups. While starting a business for the first time can be very exciting, it nevertheless involves risk.
Building a strong brand is a vital aspect of any successful business. It is an integral part of effective marketing strategy and can deliver significant benefits in the long run. However, small businesses often simply don’t have the capacity or budget for sophisticated marketing efforts and advertising campaigns, which leads to them putting brand development on hold.
Ever-changing competitive landscapes necessitate that business managers and leaders challenge the way they think about their business and how they can capture and capitalise on opportunities to create value. As such, it is pivotal to have a sense of direction and focus, and one way of mapping out where your business currently is and where it wants to be is to use a business model framework.
For years now, the retail sector has had to endure the doomsday scenarios concerning the migration from high street retail to online shopping. It would be the death of shopping as we knew it. Until recently these predictions have, anecdotally, seemed exaggerated. Several recent reports however are showing that the Irish may just finally be embracing the medium of online shopping in a manner that cannot be ignored if Irish companies are to keep competitiveness with their European counterparts.
Content marketing (which can be social media posts, blog articles, email newsletters, brochures, magazines, etc.) can be one of the most effective marketing strategies for small businesses, due to its low cost and high return on investment, and yet it is often ignored or misused.
Developing innovative ideas is a critical activity for growing companies of all sizes.
While all businesses start with an entrepreneurial approach, firms often become less forward-thinking over time, taking a more defensive position as they grow. The move to innovate, by many companies, is reactionary rather than ingrained into everyday culture. However, the most successful companies opt to innovate in order to raise the bar.