Article by Andrew Pearce, CEO of Powwownow, the UK’s leading free conference call provider
Do you run a home-based company? If so, do you use conference calling and other business solutions available that could enable you to keep costs to a minimum at the same time as optimizing output?
If not, you could be missing out on some impressive savings and preventing your business from evolving, expanding and becoming more efficient. What’s more, some of the business solutions available – like phone conferencing – also have environmental benefits.
Here are a couple of business solutions to consider:
- Free conference calling. The ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of different people – whether internal or external – is vital. Clients, staff, suppliers and potential future customers – you need to stay in regular contact with many different people on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. But spending hours and potentially days at a time attending meetings is not only expensive, but also has a negative impact on productivity as key members of staff are away from their home offices for a lengthy period. So, why not hold conference calls instead to rid yourself of the hassle and costs associated with going by air, road or rail to meetings? The calls themselves are cheap – and in some cases free – and convenient as well as being easy to set up or join. Video conference calls and webinars are two other possibilities to ensure you don’t have to leave your home office to attend those all-important business meetings.
- Freeware. There’s some pretty nifty free software – or freeware to give it the proper name – available that are useful business tools. With Unforgiven Organizer, for example, you can manage your time effectively and make sure you never miss that scheduled meeting or deadline. If accounting and finance in general is not your strong point then something like Xero Accounting software might be able to point you in the right direction. OpenOffice is another piece of freeware that may be of interest as it allows users to create graphics, presentations and spreadsheets. Of course, there are limitations with freeware so it may be a case of trial and error, but they are certainly an option to consider and give you plenty of food for thought.
- Introduce flexitime. Allowing flexible working hours among your workforce can help to enhance productivity and also improve job satisfaction. The significance of empowering should not be underestimated.
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