Marketlend Academy: 4 Signs Your Small Business Needs to Course Correct Now

So your launch was a success, and your new business is now at cruising altitude. Celebrate, by all means. But keep an eye out for tendrils of smoke in the vents.

That’s because some problems in a growing business are like a smouldering fire: you’re often unaware until it’s too late. If you know their early warning signs, though, and have plans in place to counteract them, you shouldn’t be taken by surprise. Here are some of those signs and the best countermeasures:

 

 

1.   You’re starting to pay your bills late

If you’re starting to having trouble paying creditors and employees on time, you might be developing major cash-flow woes. Cash is everything to your small business, and you need to figure out where the problem lies right away.

Ask yourself: Are you billing your clients quickly enough, with timely invoices? Are you checking the credit histories of your big customers instead of just giving them the benefit of the doubt? What about collections procedures for the deadbeats? Do you have those in place?

Cut costs wherever you can. The little expenses add up. Barter with other businesses for services; buy your equipment gently used; install a ‘smart’ thermostat; get a solar water heater; make staff turn off computers at night; employ freelancers for suitable tasks. You can even borrow items from a tool library so you don’t have to buy them.

Check your financial statements religiously. Identify any possible opportunities to boost your income, but don’t even think about trying to grow right now. If you’re having cash flow problems, now’s not the time.

You should be able to pay your bills, your employees, and even yourself–on time.

 

2.  You’re always reacting to emergencies

If you’re starting to respond to business emergencies day in, day out, something’s not right.Things should be running smoothly enough to let you plan and think strategically much of the time, and focus on building your business.

Perhaps you’re trying to have the business do too many things at once; or maybe you’re bad at setting priorities and managing time.  

The Eisenhower Matrix

Have you heard of the Eisenhower Matrix? It’s a formula developed by Dwight Eisenhower, the American World War II general, more than 60 years ago that has stood the test of time. Basically, Eisenhower split his workload into urgent tasks (returning a phone call from Winston Churchill, say) ) and important tasks (such as planning for D-Day)). He made sure to schedule time for his important tasks and to delegate the unimportant ones.  What he accomplished with this approach is none too shabby: he vanquished Hitler, became president of the U.S. and developed its highway system, among other things. And his formula is still alive today.

Eisenhower didn’t even have the benefit of project management apps, but you do. These can help you and your staff work together efficiently. Eisenhower also knew that having too many meetings in one’s schedule is a bad idea — they suck up lots of time.

Be realistic about your own weaknesses,  and consider hiring someone to help set priorities and establish your office systems.

 

3.  The staff you just hired is leaving

Once you’ve invested in training good people, you want them to stick around. If

they’re leaving sooner than you’d like,  schedule exit interviews with them to ask why. Then ask yourself what you can do to improve staff retention.

And take a look in the mirror. A good boss fosters enthusiasm, sets clear expectations, gives timely feedback and conveys a sense of mission. Then he or she gives the employees room to get the job done. If they do their jobs well, don’t micromanage.

Let your employees know you value their efforts (or at least, let the good ones know); pay them a decent wage; express an interest in them. They’ll reward you with loyalty.

If these strengths aren’t yours, consider hiring someone else to manage your staff. Outside consultants can also help identify why employees keep heading for the door.

Turnover rates vary by industry, so you might want to call your industry’s trade association, if there is one, to see how your rate compares.  

 

4.  You experience a sudden drop in sales

A sudden drop in sales could be just a hiccup, but it could also be a sign of bigger problems, so investigate immediately. Have your competitors beat you to the punch in some way?  Is your product or your way of selling it outdated? Do you need to adjust your  pricing or your marketing? If you have sales staff, are they hitting their quotas?

Are you targeting the right customers? Is technology revolutionising your industry in some way and changing your customers’ buying habits or methods?

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and try searching for your product and   business online. If you sell online, make sure everything on your website  functions smoothly, from landing to checkout.

Check in with your industry’s trade association, if you have one, to find out if the  drop you’re experiencing is part of a bigger trend, or perhaps customary at this time of year for reasons you might not have thought of.  

Now you have it — four situations, each of which could be a wisp of smoke telling you your engine’s on fire. Ignore them at your peril.

Marketlend Academy: Does your SME need a branding consultant?

Branding, where does it fit? Determining which job functions to prioritise in an SME is one of the most critical resource decisions you’ll make as a founder. The need to focus foremost on services and product development is obvious, but business experts often debate the merits of investing in strong branding.

 

It’s not necessarily a key factor in whether an investor may choose to fund your business, but it’s important to make a good impression. So how much money should you actually spend and who should you work with to build a reasonable branding plan? Consider some of the following factors to help you decide what’s best for your business.

 

What is your branding IQ?

 

If your idea of branding means paying a random designer $10 on Fiverr to create your logo, you might be underestimating some things. (That’s not to say this approach doesn’t magically work out well sometimes! Best of luck to you.)  Get real with yourself about how much of a priority branding needs to be in your business. Plan to invest some time. In fact, let’s pause for a moment. Complete outsourcing is not really possible when it comes to branding. This business is your passion and even the best consultant will need you to set aside a few hours a week to collaborate and extract authentic representations of your work from you. The absolute worst thing you could do is throw money at someone and expect a brand to materialize without nurturing on your end.  

 

How much can you expect out of your branding consultant?

 

At a bare minimum, a decent branding plan should involve 10-15 hours of work with a trusted professional who will create a roadmap for success. Advanced branding should be an integrated component of your overall marketing strategy. In the social media era, this usually includes a supplemental content strategy for which you would create assets like written blog content, graphics, photos, podcasts or videos. You’d also want to create a system for deploying this branded content to firmly-defined key audiences. A top-notch branding consultant should be able to help you conceptualize your aesthetic, your content and deployment strategy, and connect these efforts back to your sales funnel.   

 

Where can you find them?

 

As you begin your search, consider the merits of working with an agency versus a freelance individual. Intangibles, such as personal compatibility and working styles, are also important. Agencies offer more brain power and hands on deck; the access to a broader infrastructure can lead to increased operational smoothness and responsiveness.They are also more expensive than individuals, who often leave agencies to enjoy the benefits of self-employment. Be open-minded. Branding consultants are usually creatives who embrace flexibility.  Just be wary of anyone who presents themselves as a one-stop shop of expertise. Ask an individual who else they plan to work with on design and production, and find out if there are hidden or unanticipated costs for ancillary things like social media advertising budget on top of their fees.

 

The best bet is to ask colleagues for recommendations. You can also try LinkedIn searches. Sites like CloudPeeps, Dribbble, Carbonmade, and Thumbtack can also be a good bet. You may also want to research private Facebook groups for freelance creative professionals and see if you can post your job description.

 

How much should you invest?

 

Your budget will be a major factor in how things go with your branding consultant.

There are awesome, enterprising young people who are building up their portfolios willing to work for as low as $25-50/hour. A mid-career professional can run about $75/hour. Heavy-hitters will ask for $150+ hourly rates. Any of these folks might be willing to negotiate a flat rate deal with you as well. Agencies typically charge a monthly retainer from $2,500 to $10,000. Be willing to suggest a startup discount, services trade, or payment installment plan if it would allow you to work with someone you’re excited about. They might say yes!

 

How long should you work together?

 

The duration of your agreement is heavily dependent on your initial goals. A top-level evaluation from a major strategist could take a week. A first iteration and basic roadmap could be completed in 4-6 weeks. A more advanced engagement could last 3-6 months. Whatever you decide in coordination with your branding consultant, be sure to build a mid-point check in to ensure you’re on track to hit your agreed upon deliverables.

 

Marketlend Academy: Marketing Your SME

Let’s say you’ve come up with a cure for baldness. You’ve patented your formula, written a  business plan, lined up investors, hired staff and set up production. Ready for liftoff, right? Nope. Your startup would crash for want of marketing.

 

You can’t sell something, even the cure for baldness, unless people know it exists. Lots of people. Marketing is how you let them know your product exists, and also how you make it appealing. Product design, consumer research and advertising all come under marketing’s umbrella. Pricing strategy–or at least, the case you make to the consumer that the price is right–comes under marketing, too.

 

The elements are many, and your business needs an approach that incorporates some or all of them. The best strategy for any given business usually includes a mix. For example, logo development, media outreach, paid advertising and trade shows. Here are tips for deciding what marketing strategies might work for your startup and ways to get started.

 

 

Fine-tune your marketing plan

 

 

Ideally, your business plan addressed marketing to some degree, but you’ll want to flesh this out in a plan exclusively focused on marketing before you go live. You’ll want it to start with an explanation of why your product is better than your competitors’ and accurately describe your niche.This is called the “situational analysis.”

 

Add on a short description of your ideal prospective customer and their earnings, gender, age, family composition and consumer habits. Also Include the type of media this hypothetical person likes to consume–internet, newspapers, television, radio, podcasts, etc.. A person over 65, for example, is less likely to use Instagram than a person in their early 20s. This section will require you to do a bit of research, but it will bear fruit.

 

Next, list some very specific, measurable goals you want to reach, such as a 10 percent increase in sales in your second year of operations. You want your goals to be measurable so you’ll know if you reached them.

 

And of course, you need to list your tactics for spreading the word about your product so that it reaches prospective customers. Take into account the different stage of the sales cycle and determine how you plan to reach cold prospects and how you want to reach existing customers, whether its through radio advertising or loyalty programs. Options are many, from banner ads online to banners pulled by planes; from chatty blogs to the sparse wording on a billboard.

 

Set your marketing budget

 

Be prepared: marketing can be costly. Most startups decide on a marketing budget that’s a percentage of their projected revenue. But the recommended ratio varies by industry, so it would be wise to seek advice from your industry’s trade association.

 

Some companies spend up to half of their sales revenue on marketing  in their first year and 30 percent of that revenue thereafter. One school of thought holds that companies in their first five years of business should allocate 12 to 20 percent of their gross or projected revenue for marketing every year while older companies should allocate up to 10 percent. One tool that might be helpful is the National Australia Bank’s marketing budget forecast template.

 

 

Measure your results

 

 

Unless you measure the results of your marketing efforts, it’s hardly worth drawing up a plan in the first place.  Measurement helps you fine-tune your tactics so they’re better at reaching your intended audience. It lets you know when an approach isn’t working so you can regroup and try something else. Your metrics will hinge on your tactics. Print advertising could direct people to a designated phone number or internet domain and you could count how many calls or views it gets. Online promotions and clicks can be measured using internet analytics. If you use billboard advertising, the billboard company will have a way to measure the number of cars and pedestrians who walk past every day.

 

Planning backed up by careful research; budgeting that’s realistic; and measuring that tracks results are cornerstones of effective marketing. If you market your product well, potential customers will recognize your brand, distinguish it from your competitors and favor it.

 

Marketlend Passes The $50 Million Mark

$50 million! It’s time to take a moment to celebrate.  Marketlend is pleased to announce that we have hit $50 million lent through our first-of-its-kind platform.

Our strong investor community and our strong SME community is a major reason for reaching this milestone. We want to express our thanks to you for helping us make this happen, and supporting us as we grow into the future.

We’re not celebrating for long, though, because there is a lot of ongoing work to do.  We continue to develop better risk assessment methods, a richer tool set for our investors and more ways to support our entire community, including new lending channels and opportunities (soon to be announced!).

In other news, take a listen to Marketlend’s Founder and CEO, Leo Tyndall, talk to Alan Kohler on Qantas Business Radio here.

Marketlend Academy: Hiring an IT Consultant for your SME

Hiring an outside IT consultant is often fraught with anxiety for companies and their IT managers. Regardless of how well-regarded the consultant is, he or she is still accessing a company’s secure environment and encroaching on the IT department’s turf.

Reasons for management nail-biting abound. IT consultants are often authorized to do things with the system that the regular IT employees aren’t allowed to do. The consultants are typically tied in with a services contract – meaning they get paid no matter what happens. Consultants are there to do only what they’ve been contracted for, even if IT management disagrees with what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. Consultants also tend to cost a lot of money.

Perhaps most frustrating for IT managers is that the department could probably do the job themselves – if they were only given the proper resources.

 

Why hire an IT consultant?

For all the worry IT consultants may cause, they can be a key factor in improving a company’s information technology processes, spotting potential security risks or helping to retrain and recharge the department.

The consultants’ biggest strength is that they bring a knowledgeable outsider’s view to a company’s technology problems. For IT departments bogged down in the day-to-day challenge of keeping a network running and servicing users throughout the buildings (or handling IT in multiple buildings across the country or worldwide), it can be difficult to keep a broader, strategic perspective on things.

The right consultant can be a breath of fresh air for an enterprise that is looking for better, cost-effective ways to manage complex IT issues.

Still, companies need to make sure that an IT consultant has precisely the right skills for the project that they have in mind. They also need to make sure the consultant stays on task and works smoothly with the existing IT team.

 

Where Kablamo fits in

One big issue companies may have with IT consulting firms is that the consultant may blur the lines between purely providing a service versus controlling or fundamentally changing the client’s way of doing things.

A consultant should take the time to really listen to a client’s needs and understand the challenges they want to overcome. He or she should be ready to dig in to discover the best possible solutions. These attributes help to prevent a disconnect between the client’s expectations and the outcome, as Kablamo’s co-CEO Angus Dorney explains.

The rise of enterprise cloud services has amplified worries about consultants’ role with an enterprise. Ditto with the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies. Now, companies looking to shift into cloud, or to add an AI element to their network – a technology segment still in its infancy – must contend with finding a consultant that understands what is needed to complete the shift. When it comes to cloud services, consultants need to provide a more complete package – a strategic overview of what’s needed, along with the experience and skills to implement  the shift to enterprise cloud. Figuratively speaking, a consultant cannot merely provide apples when what an enterprise needs is an apple pie.

 

What to look for

Say a company needs to evaluate the value of putting a majority of its IT assets into a cloud environment. The IT department may have employees who are able to handle some of this evaluation but may not be able to reassign those employees to perform an in-depth study of the company’s needs. They may not have all the resources necessary to do a proper assessment, either.

This is typically where management calls in a consultant. Knowing what to look for in a consultant is crucial to completing an accurate assessment that will help the company decide how much of its IT infrastructure to shift into a managed cloud environment.

Key questions to ask:

• What expertise does the consultant have? Does that expertise fit within a specific industry niche or within a broader strategic overview?
• How will the consultant work with a company’s IT team? Will the process be collaborative, with meaningful input from employees and stakeholders?
• Is the consultant familiar with the regulations and/or IT practices and policies of the company? What about government compliance requirements, if any?
• Does the consultant really listen to the stakeholders to try and understand exactly what the company is trying to overcome by bringing them in?

 

Tips for getting the most out of an IT consultant

• Have goals in mind before hunting for a consultant – you don’t need to have all of them, but some direction should be provided.
• Put together as much information about your company as possible to give to the consultant before they begin.
• Direct relevant departments to partner with the consultant so that effective collaboration or assistance take place. (For example, if a consultant needs to do a security gap analysis, make sure the IT department is ready and able to give him or her access to key systems.)
• Look at hiring a consultant as an investment, not as a luxury or as a necessary evil.

 

Empowering the IT department

A company should look at the IT department, or at the very least its management, as key stakeholders in any strategy or project developed by consultants. At the end of the day, the IT department must deal with whatever technology improvements and processes are put into place by a consultant.

Shifting into a cloud-native architecture, for example, can be a massive and potentially stressful undertaking by IT department employees – even more so if the consultant and employees aren’t working together to move a project forward. Relying entirely upon outside labor to complete the shift can generate some resentment within the department, particularly from employees who feel they’re capable of doing the job if given the right resources or simply the ability to give feedback on a proposal or project.

Companies need to look at the IT department as a key resource and partner for the consultant. Employees’ in-depth knowledge of a company’s technology needs and processes is very important to ensure a comprehensive plan of action is created. Otherwise, the risk of an unsatisfactory outcome, or even a compromised network, is a possibility.

Tips:

• Make IT department managers or IT executives key stakeholders on consultant-driven projects.
• Ensure open lines of communication between consultants and IT employees so they understand the consultants’ role.
• Give the IT department time to respond to proposed changes to the enterprise network, and to give feedback throughout the consultant’s study or proposed work.

Marketlend Academy: Investor Survey Results

The investor survey results are in!   We were genuinely surprised by the strong response and the results and believe it is worth sharing them with the wider community since many SMEs can benefit from understanding what investors are really looking for.

While not scientific, one of the most interesting things to note is how more “subjective” elements like strength of brand or originality of concept didn’t carry much weight with investors when it came to evaluating an investment.

Even more interesting were some of the independent comments on what matters to investors which we learned from asking respondents to contribute things that didn’t fit in multiple choice.  Here’s a sample of what we learned:

• The honesty and integrity of all involved, platform included, is absolutely vital.
• 1. I believe a list of account suppliers should be submitted and some should be contacted randomly without notice of the borrower to find out whether they pay on time full. 2. All directors should be interviewed and asked random questions on the company and borrowing money. They should also be compelled to sign a supplementary document stating they are aware of the loan its conditions and they understand completely. I do not mean one of those ridiculous solicitors forms, and you insist it be done in front of a solicitor of your choice, not their choice. 3. Ask what type of car they own and whether financed. 4. Make a surprise visit and be a customer to see how they perform delivering their service or product. 5. Consent to judgment in the event of default so you are not in court suing under a personal guarantee for 4.5 Million plus costs on a loan I made. 6. Consider in expanding your horizons where you lend against T.A.C claims and also a case such as mine? People need money and will J.V. these claims and put a corporate up as a firewall for the transaction, so the credit laws are bypassed. These come to mind now. However, I will expand later in the week as I find this an interesting question as to me these questions a part of the platform in providing a loan.
• I look at the character / integrity of the people as best I can assess it. Even if the business goes down, the best quality people will find a way to meet their obligations.
• The uninsured loans I have rejected (most) have lacked credible purpose for funds or credible sources for existing funds or the documentation taken as a whole lacks veracity.
• When investing in a company and judging the likelihood of them defaulting, I take into account total equity.
• I like to see evidence of tax payments in statements.

To view the survey answers, click here.

Marketlend Academy: How To Work With Investors

It can feel like running a marathon just to go through the gruelling paces of building your business to the point where it is ready for investors. Once you cross that finish line, guess what? It’s time to run another one. That would be the race for investors.

 

Attracting investors and keeping them happy is another endurance test that comes with a lot of pressure. But how you do that can make all the difference in the financial health of your business and its future growth. Some of these tips might help you interact with investors in ways that concurrently discipline your organisation to become a better company.

 

1. Continue running your organisation with confidence and integrity.  

 

You may have offered others a stake in your business, but the worst thing you could do once you have their support is forget that you’re still in charge.

 

According to a recent MarketLend survey of our investors, the reason they’re most likely on board is because what you were already doing is working. More than 50 percent of respondents said they invest because of strong past financial performance, and another 23 percent do so because they were impressed with ongoing product or service innovation.

 

Investors will definitely bring critiques and opportunities to improve to your business, but you can’t let their opinions dominate your decision-making. If you do, pretty soon you’ll be spinning in circles instead of passing mile-markers on the way to your vision.

 

2. Make decisions and do things that prioritise revenue.

 

When you’ve finally got the big bucks, you suddenly have a chance to move forward many of your best ideas. It’s easy to fall victim to problems like mission creep or green-lighting risky strategies. If you find yourself spread too thin or tempted to veer off budget with your new-found cash, it’s time to course correct. Stick to your business plan.

 

In our MarketLend survey, 50 percent of investors said the best business plans sold them on the idea that the company has a clear path to revenue. Unless you have equally clear evidence that a change in course will yield better results without exceeding projected expenditures, do the things you said you would do.

 

3. Develop a strategic and consistent internal communication plan with your investors.

 

Investors will expect periodic reports on how the company is doing. At a minimum, they will expect and appreciate a consistent and transparent bookkeeping system that will reassure them that their investment is being well-spent. But this is also about relationship-building. Your approach going into these interactions—especially the first few!—will set the long-term dynamic.

You’ll want to establish openness and respect from the start, but you also need to know before you open your mouth or put up a PowerPoint presentation what kind of relationship you want with your investors.

 

Your investors don’t need to be overlords. They most likely don’t want to be. So don’t give them that power. After all, you know your business best. The entrepreneurial resource First Round Review has many relevant insights regarding how to achieve this relationship balance in its guide, “The Secret to Making Board Meetings Suck Less.”

 

4. If you have bad news, present it directly and have a solution ready.

 

You will inevitably have to deliver bad news to investors at some point in your relationship. This is normal, and it’s a chance to present yourself as a strong leader and a problem-solver..

 

If you have to drop negative numbers or acknowledge mistakes, according to recent research from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, it’s best to be direct. Don’t hide or gloss over the obstacle. Get it out there quickly, give investors a moment to process, and pitch them your ideas on what can be done to improve things. If you manage this well, your investors will have more confidence, not less, in your business and your ability to lead it.

 

5. Understand each investor’s expectations and keep them in perspective.

 

Whether you have a few investors with whom you have direct personal relationships or thousands of crowd-funders you’ve never met, try to find out why exactly they came on board. This can take place via 1-on-1 conversations or through a digital polling tool. When you know what they saw in you, then you can deliver on their expectations.

 

You may be surprised to discover how realistic your investors are about the prospect of your mutual success. It might even alleviate some of the constant pressure to perform.

 

As one MarketLend survey participant said: “I look at the character and integrity of the people as best I can assess it. Even if the business goes down, the best quality people will find a way to meet their obligations.”

 

Marketlend Academy: 5 Questions Every Small Business Must Answer Before Moving to the Cloud

Are you a small business considering Cloud services?  With so many industries moving their workloads en-masse to the cloud, the question of risk versus benefit is more critical than ever for potential cloud migrants. As a business eyeing a higher level of IT infrastructure, you need to be aware of the dangers of public clouds and how you can avoid the pitfalls that have compromised so many companies. We now have more information than ever about the real value of moving to the cloud, and whether it really is the respite for on-prem IT infrastructure woes that it promises to be.

 

Before your company changes to a new, public Cloud, it’s essential to perform an evaluation and look at what works and what doesn’t. This list of questions will help you validate your cloud transformation strategies.

 

Will I Get a Tangible Reduction in TCO?

 

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is one of the most important pre-migration metrics to assess. Aside from the cost of the migration itself, what is the tangible cost benefit post transformation?

 

To properly evaluate this, you need to work closely with your finance team to come up with the right numbers. If a particular service runs 24/7, moving it to the cloud may eat up your profits.These cost dynamics will call on technical as well as financial minds, but the extra time will put the most transformative apps first in line for the migration.

 

Am I Prepared for a Major Cloud Outage?

 

Technology is susceptible to breakdowns and a cloud is no different. Don’t assume that a cloud provider made adequate provisions for redundancies in case of a widespread outage. Make sure you can still maintain the level of control that you have with your current infrastructure. One way to plan for such an event is to consider a multi-vendor approach so critical processes have a failover, or a backup system on standby, on a completely different public cloud.

 

Netflix offers a great example of proper planning. The video streaming service outage-resilient architecture is designed to handle the unexpected. The company admits that they spend more because of the redundancies they use, but that’s the price you must be willing to pay when one hour of service disruption costs you $200,000.

 

How much would an outage cost you in dollars, not to mention the loss of goodwill and possible customer exits? Building redundancies might cost more than you planned, but it could help you in the long run.

 

Will I be Locked Into a Service?

 

One of the biggest USPs of cloud service providers is the flexibility to scale up or down as required, but if the service doesn’t perform to your expectations or your monthly bill is higher than you expected, you need to be aware that migrating your data is expensive. Depending on what workloads you migrate, it could weigh down heavily on your IT budget if one vendor doesn’t work out and you want to move your applications elsewhere.

 

Technically, there’s no lock-in because all providers use a pay-as-you-go model. What they won’t tell you is that the cost of ‘pay-to-go-elsewhere’ can be prohibitive to smaller businesses and startups once the bulk of workloads are running on their cloud.

 

Consider using a multi-vendor approach. AWS offers greater ease of automation, while IBM SoftLayer’s bare metal offering affords more control over server configuration while eliminating the ‘noisy neighbor’ effect of multi-tenant servers. Can your business leverage these differences to get the best of both? That will not only increase your level of control, but it will make cross-vendor transitions more cost-effective because your workloads are spread out.

 

Will I Have the Same Level of Control as Before?

 

Control is about how much visibility and accessibility a cloud provider offers you. The multi-tenant model – where hardware, applications and compute resources are shared between several users or tenants – won’t allow you to customize your environment like you can with your existing system. A bare-metal server with the attached cloud, on the other hand, will give you more control over latency-sensitive workloads because the virtualization aspect that leads to things like performance degradation and the noisy neighbor effect are absent.

 

Bare-metal obviously costs more because it’s a dedicated resource, but it gives you more control over critical applications. An ideal middle ground would be to use bare metal servers to complement your virtualized services so you leverage the cost benefits of a virtual environment but safeguard your critical processes by using bare metal.

 

The question your business must ask and answer is, “how much control can we afford to give up so the cost benefit is still meaningful?” That will help clarify what type of public cloud deployment works best for you while retaining optimal control.

 

Other Questions to Ask Before you Decide

 

Assuming that public cloud vendors have adequate security measures can leave you exposed. Information systems security uses Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, (CIA), as a framework of evaluation, but such evaluations often ignore the architecture element. Moreover, security, scalability and reliability are still major issues with the multi-tenancy model even when it is well architected.

 

Container technologies like AWS Lambda, a serverless computing system that runs your code on the cloud, can certainly help mitigate these problems, but it has limits. Have you planned for it or are you simply relying on the service provider’s features to provide the isolation and security that your customers’ data needs? Answering this is critical to deciding what type of implementation is ideal for your workloads and what specific applications can be entrusted to the cloud.

 

There aren’t any standard answers to fit every business, but answering these questions in the context of your business will give you a 360-degree of what to expect and what to avoid when moving to a public cloud. The risks are still there, as they are with an on-prem solution, but they can be neutralized – or at least minimized – when the planning involves foreseeing specific scenarios.

 

Marketlend Academy: Why You Should Write A Business Plan for Your SME Before You Start

Are you thinking about getting yourself out there and finally starting a small business of your own?  You’ll need a business plan. 

 

What’s a business plan?  

 

In the simplest terms, a business plan is simply an outline of what your goals are for the small business, and how you plan to go about accomplishing them. Some people refer to it as a vision for your business.  We like to refer to it as a road map to accomplishing your goals.

 

How small the business does not matter that much, coming up with a comprehensive outline for your business is definitely the best way to start. Same as you cannot build a house without a blue print, you shouldn’t start a small business without a business plan. 

 

Your business plan is supposed to be very clear and precise, defining the essentials but kept simple. It should be a written document and will be a tool you will return to again and again in managing the business as it grows.

 

A plan should include the following (but it’s not limited to these):

 

1. Executive Summary.

This should be the very first thing you do when coming up with a business plan for your small business. Generally, you are providing answers to questions you would have had developed in a five-minute interview (imagine someone interviewing you or, better, actually have someone you know interview you and write notes). Give a detailed description of the business.  What’s the deliverable or product, who are  your customers and what is the path to get them.

You should make this executive summary as enthusiastic as possible, while keeping it concise with a fine touch of professionalism.

If you intend on seeking a loan, make it clear how much money you need and how the money will be used.

 

2. Business Description.

Here you are going to tackle your small business’ mission statement, its legal form of ownership, its objectives and its key offerings.

In a nutshell, you will be describing the business as a whole. Here, you may also want to talk about your strengths, competencies, why you think your small business will succeed, the experience and skill you are going to be bringing to this new venture.

 

3. Marketing Analysis/Strategy.

It is here that you are going to justify your sales forecast.  Base it on market research.  Basically get your hands on as much information as possible (surveys, industry data, media reports, etc.).  Consider doing your own hands-on research with potential customers in do-it-yourself focus groups.  There is nothing like getting real opinions from real people. Your aim should be to make it clear that your small business is viable and that the sales forecast made are reasonable.   

This is also the part of the business plan where you do an in-depth research about your competitors so you can come up with a better strategy of surpassing them. Every business has a competitor or will have one soon.

Determining your physical location in your business plan is very important as it tells a lot about operational realities, consumer traffic, marketing landscape, etc. 

 

4. Management and Operations. 

It has been noted that one of the major reasons behind businesses falling is poor management. In this section of the business plan, you will make sure you state clearly your management qualifications and the structure itself. You may want to attach the resumes of the people involved.  The success of any company also depends on its ability to recruit, train and retain quality employees. Take some time to consider if you need full-time, part-time or Gig economy help.

 

5. Miscellaneous

In this section of the business plan, you are going to attach any information which you were not able to make fall under the other above mentioned sections.  Be creative here and use this as a catch-all for additional ideas.  You never know what additional thoughts and concepts can come in handy.

Marketlend Academy: Investor Survey

Are you a sophisticated investor?  It’s time for our first for entertainment-purposes only investor survey (we’ll be doing a series for borrowers, too, so please keep an eye out).

 

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE INVESTOR SURVEY

 

At Markeltend, we always want to learn.  The more we know about what matters to our investors and our borrowers, the better we can make the experience for everyone and the stronger the community becomes.

 

We’ve turned to SurveyMonkey this week to try something new.  If you have a minute (literally, we timed it) please take this short investor survey.  It’s intentionally broad and even a little quirky, but it’s designed to explore the different things that influence investment decisions.

 

After all, sophisticated people often approach the same activity very differently.  Inevitably, they’ll make decisions on what businesses to invest in based on a wide range of factors, from a company’s profit and loss statements to the appeal of its brand identity.

 

So if you’re a sophisticated investor, what factors do you consider in your business investment decisions? Please take our brief survey so we can all learn a little bit more.  We’ll share the results in future posts.  Thanks!

 

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE INVESTOR SURVEY