Business Answers

Research in the first month of the New Year points to record levels of new businesses being created and high optimism amongst small business owners. Will this confidence convert into international trade and expansion? We hope so! Enterprise Nation founder, Emma Jones, offers four steps to going global in 2012 and announces a series of events with DHL and Regus that will help you along the way.

This will be a good year to grow sales and Go Global. A sizeable opportunity is opening up with growth in markets beyond the Eurozone where more people are going online and wanting to buy British made products and services. Here’s how to make the most of it:

1. Know your product/service – this sounds like a basic starting point but what I mean by this is focus on your niche. Clearly define the look/feel and cost of your product so you know exactly how to position it in new markets and where to promote it.

1. Look beyond the Eurozone – in late 2011 the HSBC Trade Forecast predicted world trade to grow by 73% in the next 15 years, with forecasts showing Egypt, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, China and Brazil being the international powerhouses that will drive growth. These countries are not natural trading partners for theUK and for reasons of culture and distance the European Union remains the largest recipient of exports from theUK. Political figures have recognised the need for British companies to look further afield with the Prime Minister urging businesses to seek out opportunities ‘in huge modern cities fromBogota toIstanbul where people are hungry for the skills and servicesBritain is best at.” Research and visit emerging markets to assess the potential for your business.

1. Make the most of powerful platforms – upload products and services to international trading platforms and/or source the talent you need to serve new markets. Elance.com is a good place to promote yourself as a business service provider or identify experts and professionals and Alibaba.com is the platform of choice to source from and sell toAsia.

1. Seek help – there has never been so much support available to help you Go Global. Seek advice from peers who have been through the experience of international trade, from government agency, UKTI, and from industry experts and service providers.

Enterprise Nation is on hand to help and has partnered with DHL and Regus to deliver a series of events throughout 2012 to help you Go Global. Speakers at the free events are well qualified and include Christian Arno of Lingo24.com who will show how to localise your website to increase sales, Gabriela Castro-Fontoura who will offer a guide to doing business in Latin America and Tony Wheeler will share the story of how he co-founded Lonely Planet and built it into the UK’s largest independent travel guide publisher before selling a majority stake to the BBC. 

The Go Global series will offer the guidance and support you need to make the most of what is a growing opportunity to take your business to the world.

This is a guest post from Emma Jones, the founder of Enterprise Nation www.enterprisenation.com. @emmaljones. Please click here to register for the Go Global events http://goglobalworkshops.eventbrite.co.uk/

Productivity is the result of habits and practices that we learn. Change them and you can increase it. Ignore them and you get the productivity you deserve. (See 10 myths about productivity.) Despite a lot of gurus who make a lot of money telling you how to do it, the only person who can figure out if a given technique is going to work for you is you. Here is what works for me. I hope you find some of this useful.

1. Flow. Single minded immersion or ‘flow’ in a single task is the essential requirement for maximum productivity.
2. Positive feedback. I try not to be too ego-led, but I know that I work harder for people if they have previously given me some positive feedback. Just saying ‘thank you’ is often enough.
3. Concentration timer. I use the free timer on my Articulate Marketing website. It helps me re-focus every five minutes, helping me to recover if my mind wanders.
4. One thing at a time. Multitasking can reduce productivity by up to 40%, partly because of the ‘switching cost’ as your brain reconfigures to cope with a new task.
5. Working when other people don’t. I get my best work done on weekends, early mornings, early evenings and that lovely time over the Christmas holiday when nobody else is in the office. I’m more relaxed, more focused and more productive.
6. Peace and quiet. I work in a quiet one-person office with a silent PC. This helps me concentrate. For more on this see: how to sound-proof your writing room. Sometimes, just ear plugs are enough.
7. Process review. In programming, choosing a better data structure or algorithm can improve performance much more than optimising a piece of code, for example by rewriting it in assembler. It’s the same in work. There’s usually a smarter, more efficient way to store or process information but you have to stand back and think about it first. For example, I used to carefully index and file all my receipts for the year. Now I just put them into a folder and figure that the time I may have to spend to search through them later is much less than the time I save now by not filing them so meticulously.
8. Ubiquitous task list. I use Microsoft Outlook tasks and TaskTask on my iPhone and iPad so I the same task list available with me almost anywhere. This means I can jot down tasks whenever they occur to me and filter or prioritise them later. This is David Allen’s great insight – don’t carry around your to-do list in your head. It’s too stressful and difficult.
9. Avoiding meetings. I try to avoid them or find a better way to do them. For example, back when I was a journalist I realised that I could do a lot of my interviews by phone and save the travel time. It was a huge boost to my productivity. Now I try to do meetings using IM or web conferencing wherever possible. Much more efficient.
10. Automating routine tasks. I’m a pilot and I love checklists, standard operating procedures and automation such as autopilots. In the cockpit the more stuff you can automate or simplify, the more processing power you have to think ahead, deal with emergencies and cope with an increasing workload. Same for work. For example, I have simple checklists for packing for a trip or getting ready for a presentation etc. and I have a series of operations manuals for stuff like updating my blogs, booking trips etc. This means I don’t have to figure everything out from first principles every time and that it is easier to delegate tasks.
11. Delegation. I hired a PA. Best decision I made last year. She takes care of dozens of routine tasks that used to take me hours each week. The way to be maximally productive is to spend more time on tasks that only you can do.
12. Removing distractions. I try (*try*) to clear my desk and email inbox every day and my paper in-tray every week. I know that I find it hard to concentrate when things are piling up.

Small businesses depend on the motivation and productivity of their staff. With fewer employees, the work rate of each person – and especially the boss – is vital. These tips will help you use IT to become more effective.

• Keep track of all your tasks in one place. . If you want to get on top of a growing list of things to do, gathering all your tasks in one place is a great way to start. Microsoft Office Outlook makes it easy to track tasks and emails that need follow-up.
• Take action now. Each time you pick up a piece of paper or open an email, make a habit of dealing with it there and then. Do something about it, file it for future reference or bin it. Putting papers back into your in-tray is a recipe for procrastination.
• Purge unnecessary stuff. Clutter and irrelevant papers get in the way of what is important. Spend some time sorting out your office and get rid of anything that you don't actually need.
• Go wireless. Wireless networks are great for growing businesses. You can connect to the network and the internet without expensive fixed cabling. People can use their HP Notebooks anywhere in the building – at other desks, in meetings and for presentations. Choose wireless access points and routers that support the latest high-speed Wi-Fi standards because this gives greater range and speed (and it's compatible with older wireless networks).
• Share information. Using an intranet is a great way to share key information in a team. It's like a private company-only internet site. Setting up an intranet is a great way to get people to rethink how they store and share files.
• Choose productive notebooks. Look for Notebooks that have built-in productivity features. For example, HP Business Notebooks include HP QuickWeb, which lets you boot up your computer and get online in a matter of seconds, and HP QuickLook, which displays your Outlook diary and email without having to boot Windows.
• Use collaboration software. Email isn't the only way to collaborate digitally. Microsoft Office Groove lets you create workspaces that you can share with colleagues. They can include file libraries, image libraries, calendars and other kinds of information. When you're online, you have access to the latest information, but when you are not connected, everything is stored on your computer and remains available and gets re-synchronized the next time you're connected.
• Go paperless. Save paper: don't print unnecessary documents and emails. Save space and filing time: scan documents in rather than photocopy them.
• Centralize your filing. Set up a central filing system, under lock and key if necessary, so that all your company's important files are kept together (and can be copied and taken offsite as a backup). Similarly, consider investing in a file server and Windows Small Business Server software to run it, so that you can keep all your computer files in one place and control access to them.
• Set up a filing system that works. Create a structure for your paper files so that it is easy to find things. Consider scanning important files into a central computer server using a scanner with a sheet feeder.
• Choose productive computers. The latest PCs are more powerful than ever before. Batteries last longer, processors run more applications at the same time and they come with more storage. Perhaps it’s time to upgrade?