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Most people may look at a business consultant and think how can they tell you how to do a job that you’ve done for the past 5, 10 even 15 years, and the simple answer to that is they are not there to tell you how to do your job but simply how to run your business to maximise profits.

You can be the best electrician/plumber/roofer in the world but if your passion is in the trade rather than the business side of things you are unlikely to be able to maximise your profits yourself.

It can sometimes be difficult to know where to start if your business is struggling and spending money on a business consultant when funds are tight may seem disingenuous, however a good business consultant should be able to make you far more money than their fee and should be able to project these figures to you as an example of what they can do for you.

If you own your own company, there may have been a time when you had to do everything yourself, maybe when you first started up. This could be everything from the marketing to the accounts along with the technical side of the company. As the company grew you may have been in a position where you needed to take someone else on. This can be extremely daunting the first time round as you are having to let someone else in to your business and therefore you need to be able to trust them.

Ideally you may want to find someone that you already know or have worked with before but this may not be practical. When you come to chose what type of person to take on you need to have a clear idea of what responsibilities you will be giving them. This will help you look for specific skills and qualifications. I would always recommend either giving someone a trial run or an initial short term contract so either party can part ways should it not be working out.

A marketing company should not only carry out specific marketing task but should analyse your current business situation and create a marketing plan based on your requirements and budget. They will often become more of a consultant to your business than just someone that looks after your website and online and offline promotions. These people are the experts and therefore will be aware of any recent advances in the marketing world that may assist your growth.

Marketing is all about being proactive, it should be something that is on going and monitored closely. Any body spending money on marketing needs to be able to try and establish how successful it is so they can work out if they should continue to invest down that particular avenue.

Usually it is quite straightforward to monitor the performance of an online marketing campaign, offline marketing such as leaflet dropping or TV / Radio ads may require a little more pre planning to be allow you to monitor it.

If you own or run a business then you will know how important it is to make a profit. If a company does not make a profit, then it will not be able to survive long and often this means it is either sold or closed down.

If you are struggling financially in your business, then it might be time to bring in the pros to help you see what you are doing right and wrong. Often referred to as a business consultant or financial consultant, they are great at being able to analysis your business and show you where you can make money and where you can save it.

You may have a member of staff that you already employ that would be able to do some of this for you, as often a fresh pair of eyes can see things that you may not. If you have a valued member of staff that is good with numbers then why not ask them to look over things and see what they come back with.

If you are a business owner you may be considering hiring a business consultant. A business consultant will analyse your company and help you improve performance and efficiency.

The consultant will normal look in depth at all aspect of the business to access cost vs profit and how effective it currently is. Some of the areas include:

Staff: they will analyse your current staff levels including pay / performance / moral / skills and any out sourcing you do. From this they will make proactive suggestions on how to improve the efficient of your staff and if possible how you could save money.

Materials: in depth look into how much you spend on supplies and if you could cut your costs without compromising on quality. They may also recommend trying to increase your payment terms with suppliers to keep the money in your bank as long as possible.

A good consultant should more than cover the costs they are charging for their advice and expertises.

Following a recent study, it has been revealed that IT budgets are set to increase to a third of financial services organisations. Companies such as banks and insurance companies have stated that they are going to dramatically increase the money they spend on their IT infrastructure to improve the service their customers receive. With the issues we saw last year with some of the big name banks having embarrassing down time caused by IT issues, this comes as no surprise. They have actually stated that this takes over cutting costs within the business model. From the study carried out, 37% of respondents said that they expect to have the budget to carry out the necessary updates within three years. Some of the software and applications that these companies are using are so out of date that they are almost counting the days or weeks before something happens. This is a much needed change that will benefit all of us when it comes to dealing with businesses within the financial sector.

There often comes a time when an employee decides that they want to become self employed, or it may be that they have been out of work for a little while and want to start up their own business. You may find that you need the help and guidance of a business consultant or mentor especially in the early stages of the start up. Going in to business alone can be very daunting and if you are not aware of all the legal hurdles and costs and time involved you may find that you soon get in to trouble. A business consultant can help you with all of these aspects and go through each element with you to make sure you understand what you need to do. Very often you will need to create a business plan, this is not only useful to show to potential investors and banks if you are applying for a loan but for your own reference as it can make you think about your goals and problems that you may need to overcome.

Content Management Systems for multi-channel businesses are one of the best ways to ensure that the large information of content in an organization is handled securely by a centralized system. It is also much easier to handle the content within the organization instead of approaching a developer every time. Also, the content is saved only once, which ensures that there is no unnecessary duplication. Here are few benefits of using Content Management Systems (CMS).

1. You get to make changes the content as you see fit. This gives a great degree of control to the organization. Of course you will know your product ideas much better than any developer firm. So isn’t it much easier to do just create all the content yourself? There is also a lot of money saved because you won’t need to hire any external agents.

2. One of the most important aspects of content is that it has to be fresh. If it is not updated regularly, then the traffic generated will automatically reduce. CMS offer facilities such as WordPress or Joomla which enable you to schedule the delivery of content over a period of time. There is no need to get separate content on a daily basis. It can be done beforehand and delivered each day to keep things interesting.

3. Communication with clients is greatly increased with the help of content management systems for multi-channel businesses. These days it is difficult to stay in direct contact with clients as e-mails are becoming increasingly redundant. Also a large business will have difficulty in co-ordination various communication avenues. CMS offer a much simpler alternative which allows you to stay in close touch with all potential clients.

4. CMS also offers much tighter security compared to other systems. Even while editing, security is very tight so that your content is always secure. Even if the file gets hacked, the security measures ensure that the database is always completely safe. Of course, the security does depend on the type of storage mechanism used by the particular CMS.

5. Changes can be made in real time and exactly according to your wishes. The changes are also reflected in the search engine rankings. Quick adjustments help you stay ahead of the game as far as fresh content is concerned. All aspects including website layout and design can be changed by you personally. So there is no more dependence on third parties and you can work out your ideas on your own.

6. Content is stored only once in a CMS. This ensures better re use through multiple documents. All changes made to the content are tracked efficiently by the CMS. Hence, changes need to be made only once and it will get reflected throughout the database. This automatically saves time and prevents the possibility of confusion due to differing content. New products can be easily created using the existing content itself. You won’t need to go in for fresh ideas each time you want to create something new.

These major advantages over traditional methods have ensured that content management systems for multi-channel businesses are seeing a big surge in popularity.

If you have your own business you may be looking for consulting advice. You can employ and external business or financial consultant to help you in these areas. Although these professionals are normally quite costly, the advantages that they can bring to your business can be great. You do not have to employ a third party to do this for you if you have the time yourself or have an employee that you trust and is competent. There are many consultant training courses available that will give you an insight in to how you can be your own consultant.

You need to be able to take a step back from the business and analysis it from a far to see what issues you have and where you need to improve and grow. It may be that you decide only to look at a certain part of the business, marketing for example and then bring in an outside consultant to look at the financial side of things.

You may be wondering what type of help you need for your business and if it is a consultant or coach that you require. Below is an overview of what both has to offer and what they typically do within your business.

A business consultant will analysis your business and gives you advice on how you can improve it. They will brainstorm ideas with you and discuss marketing planes and other projects and tell you how they believe you should implement them. They are there to advise you on business matters.

A business coach will not generally advise you on changes required within the business but will spend their time coaching you, teaching you new skills and helping you with issues like time management, decision making and staff morale.  Then help the client to create success by focusing on personal development.