Tips for reducing small business costs

Money's tight, but things look to be on the up. This blog wanted to make sure you are using the best possible tools to ensure your business is cost-effective and super!

Here are some tips to help you on your way.

1.       Use technology

By using technology, you are instantly saving money. It is a great advantage that technology allows business to save money and advance methods that weren’t possible five years ago. From Cloud Services, to easy-to-use operating systems like Windows 8, to free security
tools
, there are many ways you can reduce business costs with technology.

2.       Ditch your landline

Traditional telephone lines can be expensive and sometimes are an unnecessary business cost. Small business owners who opt to use smart phones, Lync or similar software will save money.

3.       Go Paperless

Ink. Paper. Printers. It all adds up. Going paperless by not printing when absolute necessary will help. Transitioning to a digital invoice bill payment system, and filing all important paperwork on your computer instead of a file cabinet can help you reduce some of the most common
recurring business costs.

4.       Start marketing your business online

If you haven’t jumped on the Internet marketing bandwagon yet, why not? You are missing the potential of fast-paced, high-result, low-cost marketing. You can start with a business blog, social media marketing and then move on to online advertising, where you have the potential to see a relatively quick response at a very minimal business costs.

5.       Create and stick to a business budget

No one likes to budget, but unfortunately companies need to be more proactive in doing it. It’s impossible to make start financial decisions without a clear idea of the money you have coming in and going out of your business every month.

6.       Explore an alternative place of business

The expenses that come with having a physical place can be costly and almost unavoidable. You change the situation by downsizing or moving to a co-working arrangement at somewhere like Modern Jago.

Posted by Steven Woodgate.

We, at Microsoft, are happy to announce ‘Talking Business’ to help entrepreneurs and business owners’ succeed. We believe in your ability to innovate and in the ability of technology to help, so to support ‘Talking Business’ we have many resources available for businesses like you. We have an informative newsletter, blog posts by people in the industry, and a community looking to help small business succeed.

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