Business Tips to Help You Get Ahead of the Competition

We had a question come through about mobile device management and whether is it needed within the business world? Now in my opinion as a director of an IT company, I can say 100% that it is needed as soon as you are dealing with a business that uses business critical applications on the devices that they have, or if there's more than 10 devices under management.

Starting a business can be hard work. If you're a small business owner or have started a business, most of the time you have some sort of drive behind what was the inspiration. Some people get financial backing and some people don't and start from scratch and back themselves. I was lucky enough to be in a professional job where I was able to save enough of a safety net to start the business as a side hustle, while I was still employed by my regular employer.

A common belief is that everything slows down as the year-end approaches. People start leaving work early to catch up on last-minute shopping for Christmas and the New Year, fewer phone calls are attended because employees are either on leave or celebrating early, and new jobs are postponed until the new year starts. All these are indicators of slowing down. 

Today's question is: Remote working, is it worth the hype?

I think this is really, really interesting that I've been asked this question because I'm in a very good position where we are in IT company that operates with companies remotely. We employ staff that work with us remotely. So we are both the employer, and in a sense the employee of a remote workspace. In my opinion, it definitely helps productivity as long as you're in an environment that allows for it and you've got a mindset of success. You can't have someone who needs to be spoon fed working remotely. You need to make sure that you have the discipline and due diligence to continue to work day in and day out to get the job done, make sure that this is easily viewable, and you don't get ripped off.

In business, numbers are important. But all numbers are not equally important. Quantitative data has a way of becoming confusing, chaotic and irrelevant if the right parameters are not set. This does not mean you need to stop looking at them. What you need is caution. Be cautious that the numbers you are concentrating upon really matter. One of the basic truths about why most businesses fail in the first year itself is that they are not looking at the right set of numbers, the numbers that really make a difference.