If you run your own business, you probably spend a lot of time worrying that you lack the resources to make every day a success. While capital, manpower and time are all in short supply these days, making the best of what you have is important to the success of any startup.
Luckily, there are several helpful strategies and services that take tasks off your hands and assist you in managing the rest. Here are five ways to save valuable resources for your small business.
Check Your Connection
Owners of small and mid-sized businesses need to be able to communicate with the outside world. Services like Phone.com provide businesses with advanced cloud-based PBX capabilities, making it easy to scale up the abilities of phones as your business grows. You don’t even have to buy new phones – you can keep what you already use. And if you want to put a whole call center in the cloud with no effort at all, you can use services like VOIQ.
Negotiate With Your Suppliers
You could be paying a lot less for office supplies than you are now. But because bargaining for better deals is a hassle, you may want to have a company like Negotiatus do all the heavy lifting for you. It’s a free service that typically shaves off between 15% to 20% on orders for supplies. You can sign up on their site and tell them what you want to order—you’d be surprised at how much you’ve been overpaying on everyday items like ink and paper towels.
Outsource HR to PEO
A professional employer organization (PEO) can handle employee-focused areas like insurance, payroll, retirement benefits, and others. In other words, where your HR expertise ends, an outsourced solution like TriNet begins. Using their services can free you up to spend more time and energy on the day-to-day operations of your small business. Even if your business is very small—like, five people or fewer—payroll services like Gusto offer tons of great features.
Go Paperless
Want to save resources by cutting down on paperwork? Make your documents and contracts paperless with a solution like SeamlessDocs. Upload a PDF and convert it into an interactive document that can be filled out, edited, and electronically signed from any device. You can even build documents digitally.
Use Robot Assistants
Yes, robots are taking everyone’s jobs. But that’s not a bad thing! Try x.ai, a virtual personal assistant that’s powered by artificial intelligence. Created by someone who was tired of manually scheduling and rescheduling countless meetings, this intelligence has a name: Amy. She examines your calendar and emails, and schedules those meetings for you—with a digital smile.
Photo: Flickr / Keith Cooper