5 tips for business owners

Running a successful business in the digital age takes a lot of time and effort. Truly successful businesses have owners who pay attention to detail and think about every aspect of the business and how it can be improved. 

Often the reason that business owners don't embrace certain technology that can improve their business is simply because they don't have a true understanding of it. For example virtualisation is a term that's much misunderstood in the business community but it's actually a simple concept, as this infographic demonstrates perfectly.

Virtualisation is just one thing that can improve your business. With this in mind, below are 5 tips for business owners who want to save money and ensure future success. 

1. See your website as an investment rather than an expense 

Far too many business owners view their website as an expense. This attitude will lead to cutting corners and not investing the time and money in your website that it deserves. For online businesses, your website will be the first point of contact for new customers so ensuring that it's optimised for a great user experience is essential. Here are five examples of website with great UX.

2. Embrace virtualisation 

Maintaining all of your data on your own servers can get very costly, particularly for larger businesses. Virtualisation enables you to improve efficiency in your business whilst also cutting back on expenditure. The three main areas of virtualisation that useful for business owners are network virtualisation, server virtualisation and storage virtualisation. By using one or all of these, you can eliminate the need for your own servers. 

Dell is one of the leading providers of virtual data centres and is trusted by many businesses around the world. 

3. Make security a priority 

Data breaches are the nightmare of any business owner so you want ensure that your data is as safe as possible. The prevalence of cloud computing, contrary to what people often think, has actually made business data a lot safer. The reason for this is that your employees don't need to carry around storage devices such as USB drives and hard drives to access data. Instead, using reliable cloud services is therefore an excellent way to improve security in your business. 

4. Invest in training 

Your staff are a vital part of the success of your business. Making sure your staff are well trained will not only ensure that they're able to do their job better but it's also an excellent way to create more efficiency in your business and cut down on errors that could be very costly. A key decision to make when training your staff is whether you're going to handle it in-house or outsource. This is an excellent article on the advantages and disadvantages of in-house training.

5. Use analytics 

Using analytics is incredibly helpful for forecasting sales trends and identifying marketing opportunities. Without access to the right data, it's very easy to make key decisions that are based on hunches and guesswork, which is never a good idea. By making use analytics, you can make your marketing campaigns much more targeted and appropriate to your customers.