Starting a new business can be one of the most exciting ventures you pursue in life. The benefits of running your own enterprise include being your own boss and having the flexibility to schedule work around your family responsibilities. However, the perks of being a business owner comes with its own set of risks.
Statistics show that about half of new businesses stop operating within the first five years. While this is quite a sobering reality, it shouldn’t put you off pursuing your business dreams. If you are able to learn from the experiences of others who’ve pursued this path, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to achieve your goals and become a success. Here are a few handy tips to help new business owners get off on the right footing.
Research is Important
Before you get going, do your research. Find out about your competition, marketing platforms and industry trends. Remember that things in the business world change constantly, so it is important to stay ahead of the trends. Furthermore, in this digital age having a strong social media presence is another key factor in a businesses success.
Establish a Business Plan Early
Regardless of how small your business may be, you need a business plan which includes a detailed financial report. The importance of proper financial management is essential in ensuring business survival in this highly competitive environment. Ensure you have a little financial cushioning to carry you through the slower months. If you don’t have a head for numbers, it is worth enlisting the services of an accountant to help you manage the financial aspects of your venture.
Make Connections
Remember that people like doing business with people they know, so get networking. Whether this means attending conferences, joining industry associations or signing up to online forums, meet as many people as you can because you never know where you’ll find your next customer or business partner. The more people you connect with, the more exposure you’ll get for your enterprise.
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Be Pragmatic
Things won’t always go to plan in the business world, so as an entrepreneur being a pragmatist is important. Remember your initial idea may not be as lucrative as you once thought, so be willing to change it as you go along. You’ll also need to be realistic and come to terms with the fact that you have your limitations so stay humble and make necessary changes to meet the needs of your market.
Diversity
Placing all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. Regardless of the product you are offering it is important to explore other services that can be used to attract new clients and retain existing clientele. For instance, if you run a restaurant, expanding to provide a delivery service by introducing a kitchen management system could serve to broaden your target market.
Setting up a business requires a lot of hard work and dedication. You’ll need to mentally prepare yourself for the fact that there will be tough times ahead. However, if you believe you have what it takes to succeed, follow these useful tips to ensure you launch a resilient enterprise that stands a chance of thriving in this ever-changing world.
Fintech is one of the most recognisable terms in the financial services industry but sits aside its lesser-known compatriots, RegTech and InsurTech. Put simply, these terms represent the evolution and revolution of financial services globally, and the UK has firmly embraced the use of such advances. Evolution relates to the giants of the UK financial services industry who have been around for over a hundred years and revolution reflects the large number of start-ups who have not had to adapt old systems to new ideas but have had a clean sheet from which to design a process and solution using the latest technology. Simon Bonney, Partner at Quantuma and member of IR Global, explains to Finance Monthly how fintech has transformed the industry.
Background to the UK Fintech Industry
The UK fintech industry is worth around £7 billion and employs over 60,0000 people. It now has banks that only communicate with their customers through an online platform and have no physical branches.
The UK thrives as a leading global fintech hub for a number of reasons. As a world leader in the financial services industry, there is an imperative to ensure that we invest in, and utilise, the latest technology to facilitate our competitiveness. As well as a deep homegrown pool, the UK attracts a wealth of entrepreneurial and tech talent because of its status (42% of workers in UK fintech were from overseas in 2018), and also its investment. Investors put more money into UK fintech than any other European country in 2018 ($3.3 billion). In addition, the UK recognises the importance of striking a balance between the promotion of entrepreneurialism and the regulation of new ideas to provide confidence to businesses and consumers the world over through the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA’s regulatory sandbox, the framework to allow live testing of new innovations, has become a blueprint for fostering innovation around the world.
The Opportunity
The UK Government has recognised that fintech engenders a significant opportunity to create jobs and economic growth and also facilitate the birth of new start-ups in other industries which are able to utilise new technology to make their costs quicker and cheaper. In 2019, 79% of UK adults owned a smartphone and on average they spent over two hours a day on their phones. Access to financial services by smartphones, coupled with a loss of confidence in the traditional financial services industry following the Global Economic Crisis in 2008, has meant that consumers embrace the relative ease and convenience of fintech.
Technology generally has changed the way that consumers expect to engage with financial services and the UK financial services industry has recognised that it cannot operate the same way it did 10 years ago if it hopes to keep pace with the demands of customers. Fintech has changed and will continue to influence the experience and speed of transactions. It has had a significant impact on the cost of operations. For those businesses with legacy systems, there is a huge challenge in ensuring that fintech is embraced and implemented. In order to cope with this challenge, it is likely that banks will seek to further outsource their operations and hand over management of their legacy systems so they can focus on serving customers and finding new routes to market.
Potential Challenges
Growing opportunities do not come without hurdles. The sheer speed of change in fintech means that regulation is generally trying to catch up, and in a number of instances, such as cryptocurrency, regulators are required to learn about the technology and the way it encourages people to behave before being able to effectively regulate it. However, that regulation will have an impact on development, as the costs of ensuring that new products are compliant will provide a barrier to entry. In addition, fintech is inextricably linked with data and the use and regulation of data will continue to feature in the spotlight.
A Note on Fintech Bridges
It is hoped that through the use of fintech bridges, the UK’s best and brightest fintech ideas and businesses will be able to thrive internationally, with automatic recognition by the regulators in those partnering countries. Collaboration has been a feature of the success of fintech, with open source solutions being made available to enable the improvement of all aspects of the industry for the greater good with blockchain being a prominent example. Collaboration on an international level should only provide a more stable platform for that innovation. However, Brexit has raised questions regarding the future of the UK as a behemoth of the financial services industry, and the nature and mobility of fintech and the use of fintech bridges means that competition has been increased across the world.
The UK has been able to remain at the forefront of fintech due to its history in financial services and its depth of talent and investment. Importantly it recognises the importance of remaining at the forefront and will strive to ensure that innovation and regulation continue to go hand in hand.
Sage, a market leader in cloud accounting software, announced at Sage Summit 2016 its strong commitment to future technologies, with a focus on new and existing partnerships that power business growth. Revealed during CEO Stephen Kelly’s keynote address, which opened the world’s largest gathering of entrepreneurs and business builders, Kelly spoke about how, through the use of the latest technologies and tools, Sage is levelling the playing field for entrepreneurs – and it’s just the start of the technology revolution all entrepreneurs and business builders of all sizes need to be a part of to compete and grow.
Investing in the future with the introduction of Sage Cloud
The dedication to helping businesses grow is a personal crusade of Kelly’s. Following the investment of £139m on research and development during FY15, the Sage CEO used the keynote as a platform to set out how all Sage products will now be connected to the cloud, with new mobile, social, chatbot and IoT offerings in the pipeline for the entire portfolio.
Sage Cloud will allow businesses to integrate all activity across Sage products quickly and easily. It will also make it possible for Sage customers to activate integrations with partner products within a few clicks and will eliminate the need for maintenance or change due to product upgrades. Sage further pledged its dedication to the developer community with the launch of Sage Marketplace, a new open, API-driven platform for Independent Software Vendors to showcase their Sage developer add-ons and apps.
Industry firsts – leapfrogging the competition
Another highlight was the official launch of Sage’s new admin bot, Pegg, a smart assistant that allows users to track expenses via their chosen messaging app. Pegg removes the complexities and enables entrepreneurs to manage finances through conversation. By digitising information at the point of capture, it takes away the pain from receipts and expenses, eradicating the need for paper and data entry.
Powerful new partnerships
This coincides with the news that Sage has partnered with Slack, which will act as one of the core messaging channels connected to Pegg. Having recently joined as Global Director for Mobile Product Management, Sage’s Kriti Sharma said: “With the rise of freelancing and the sharing economy, the number of small businesses is growing exponentially. Most of these business owners use messaging apps, and with Pegg we aim to bridge the gap between these apps and work, rendering accounting invisible to the end user and making running a business as simple as sending a text. We’re incredibly excited to partner with Slack, the fastest growing enterprise messaging app; together we share the vision that the future of the workplace is conversational, easy and fun.” Announced with a demonstration live on stage, the accounting industry’s first bot, Pegg is available now in Beta. New users can register to sign up here for Slack or here for Facebook messenger.
In an interactive live demo, Sage’s new EVP of Product Marketing, Jennifer Warawa, showed how the combined solution of Sage Live and TomTom Telematics works. The new software integration allows businesses with fleets of vehicles - small or big - to seamlessly record mileage and automate expense reports. Because Sage Live is running on the Salesforce platform it can easily use existing integrations with third parties such as TomTom WEBFLEET. Via the fleet management, service journey data is automatically available in Sage Live.
There were several new partnership announcements, as well as details on how existing ones have strengthened. In front of an audience of 15,000 and over 35,000 on LIVE stream, Stephen Kelly announced that Sage’s award-winning real-time accounting solution, Sage Live, will harness the power of Salesforce Lightning. Via the integration, Sage customers will benefit from Salesforce’s new Lightning Experience – a reimagined consumer-like experience that’s modern, efficient and smart – which will be accessible via Sage Live across every device.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined via video to announce the coming together of Microsoft Office 365 and Sage 50 – making Sage the first ever software company to partner with the platform. The Sage CEO also welcomed Sir Richard Branson to the stage, where they participated in a conversation on their shared vision of the future of business and giving back.
Champion of Business Builders
Sage’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurs at every stage of their growth was underlined with Kelly revealing new stats on entrepreneurs’ dissatisfaction with the support they get from the US Government. He also reiterated his criticism of ‘out of touch’ events like the World Economic Forum in Davos and announced a series of policy events around the world
The Giving Economy
Broadening out to touch on Sage as a participant in its communities, the keynote highlighted how Sage will expand its corporate philanthropy initiative, Sage Foundation, through work with three distinct communities; military veterans, young people and women. Sage’s Chief People Officer Sandra Campopiano launched a new open grant process with a donation to an inspiring Chicago charity that seeks to inspire more women to work in the technology sector.
She awarded a $50,000 donation from Sage to Brave Initiatives, a program encouraging high school girls to see themselves as capable coders and tune them into community issues.
Sage CEO Stephen Kelly said: “It was almost impossible to tell the story of the technology revolution at Sage in one keynote. With a more connected world comes new demands on our hero business builders, and we are fired up by doing everything we can to support entrepreneurs in following their passion. We are working on making concepts like the Internet of Things, machine learning, blockchain and data sciences into a reality for businesses, accountants and partners. This is way more than cloud and mobile-first. It’s designing and building technologies that truly power businesses, freeing entrepreneurs to grow and win.”
For those not attending Sage Summit 2016, all of the keynotes and more can be viewed at the virtual event http://bit.ly/29N0zbE
More Information on Sage Live can be found here
(Source: Sage)
Sage, a market leader in cloud accounting software, welcome over 15,000 entrepreneurs and Small & Medium business owners from around the world to Chicago for this year’s Sage Summit, the world’s largest gathering of entrepreneurs and business builders.
The theme of the event (July 25-28), which is expected to almost double the capacity of last year’s event in New Orleans, features some of the biggest stars of the entertainment and business world, invited to share their passion for business, life, and helping others.
Sage is expected to unveil new product launches, with CEO Stephen Kelly using his keynote speech to announce new tools, technologies and partnerships. A donation to an inspiring Chicago charity will also be announced and surprise guests will join the keynote speakers throughout the week, including local Chicago heroes. To close the annual event, The Killers will perform hits like ‘Mr Brightside’ and ‘When we were young’.
Joining Stephen Kelly on the keynote agenda is Sir Richard Branson, alongside:
Gwyneth Paltrow, Oscar-winning Actress, founder and CCO of goop, a lifestyle newsletter that sets trends.
Zooey Deschanel, actress, singer-songwriter, and co-founder of HelloGiggles, a positive online community for women which was recently acquired by Time Inc.
Robert Herjavec, founder and CEO of Herjavec Group and investor on ABC’s Emmy Award-winning hit show “Shark Tank”
Daymond John, Founder/CEO of FUBU, Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, star of ABC's Shark Tank and CEO of The Shark Group.
Ashton Kutcher, actor, entrepreneur, tech investor, and producer
Yancey Strickler, cofounder and CEO of Kickstarter
Bringing together Sage’s customers, partners, and colleagues, Sage Summit is designed to encourage learning and networking, while celebrating the power of the global entrepreneurial Business community.
For the first time, Sage Summit will have a dedicated series of events for millennials to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs, building on Sage’s commitment to invest in programmes to give this group of talent the right business foundations.
Stephen Kelly, CEO of Sage, said: “This week, Chicago becomes the hub for the world’s entrepreneurs. This community is the most powerful driver of economic prosperity in the global economy, creating two thirds of all jobs. This week, we celebrate these business builders, and we also seek to support them and inspire them, giving them a voice on the world stage and creating the technology of tomorrow. Sage Summit will be like rocket fuel for their businesses and we can’t wait to welcome them to this unforgettable event.’
Sage Summit is being supported by Microsoft as Titanium Sponsor, Salesforce as Diamond Sponsor, Fairsail, Scanforce, U.S. Bank, and Website Pipeline as Platinum Sponsors and Aatrix, Acom Solutions, Altec, Certify, Edisoft, Expensify, Kimble, Nextec, One, Vertex, ZAP as Gold Sponsors.
(Source: Sage)
