SME Business News

Dragons’ Den Panelist Deborah Meaden, has this week launched a campaign in conjunction with the Federation Of Small Businesses (FSB), to urge more people to start their own business in the UK.

The campaign is aimed particularly at getting women to follow their dream and set up in business. FSB research has shown that just 11% of small businesses are 100% female owned and female majority owned account for only 3%.

The UK falls way behind the US in the amount of women entrepreneurs a fact that Meaden would like to see change in the light of this latest initiative.

The FSB back the campaign by saying that small businesses are the backbone of the economy employing 58% of the private sector workforce. The Federation hopes to help the bedrock of the UK economy - small businesses weather the economic storm, enabling the UK economy as a whole to remain strong.

Credit risk specialists Graydon have called on the Government to reassess regulations introduced ten years ago aimed at assisting small businesses in tackling the issues of late payment.

The 1998 regulations allow companies to impose interest on bad paying debtors, but  research has shown that the vast majority of SMEs do not  exercise that right. It is a fine line that most small businesses run, caught between the need to increase and maintain sales and keeping a constant cash flow. Many SMEs believe that imposing interest charges will result in losing business to rivals who are better placed to offer longer payment terms.

Martin Williams, Graydon managing director, said it was time for ministers to take action. “Late payment is starving businesses of cash which is rightly theirs and is heightening the risk of them going to the wall in an already incredibly challenging economic operating environment.”

Graydon’s claims are backed by small business groups Institute Of Credit Management (ICM) and Forum Of Private Business (FPB), who agree that the government must do something to prevent the further increase of the bad payment ‘disease’.

With a down turn in business looming large, whatever happens, it is likely to once again be too little too late for many struggling SMEs.

The campaign to delay the new Sexual Harassment Law coming into force on Sunday April 6th showed good signs of support from SMEs, although the new rules were implemented as planned by the Government.

The campaign was started by BusinessZone.co.uk and HRZone.co.uk, who on behalf of small business owners, viewed the plans as something that SMEs should have been consulted on before being passed through government.

Given the short time span between the announcement of the new rules and their start date, the campaign did particularly well, collecting over 600 signatures on the Downing Street website petition.

The campaigners see this as a positive move and are now urging more business owners to sign the petition as a show of strength, to show the government that small business owners will no longer tolerate regulation without consultation.

Dan Martin, editor of BusinessZone.co.uk, said: “We had very little time to set up our petition given the short notice provided by the government. But the level of interest shows just how firms feel about legislation being sneaked through without them being told about it.

“The government has admitted that it will cost small businesses almost £10m to comply with the new sexual harassment but has provided very little information as to how they should act.

“Although we have smashed the target of 200 signatories which we needed to force Gordon Brown to reply, I urge more small company owners and HR professionals to join us in calling on the government to always take the views of business into account when introducing new rules.”

A Lobby group working on behalf of SMEs, has urged small business owners to sign a petition on the Downing Street website, to delay the implementation of the new sexual harassment laws, laid down by Parliament three weeks ago. The changes will come into force today.

The group argue that SMEs need more time to ensure their businesses meet the new obligations.

“While it is important to protect employees from any form of discrimination, these regulatory changes have not been given adequate publicity and will take many business-owners by surprise,” said the FPB’s spokesperson, Phil McCabe.

“Given the additional administration and direct costs involved, the government needs to give smaller firms the support they need – which means more time to re-assess their employment policies and procedures to make sure they comply with the changes to the law.”

A Survey carried out by Barclays in Wales found that 48% of Welsh SMEs experience problems with late payment.

This isn’t really news to small business owners across the UK and I think it is fair to say that Barclays would find a similar result in any part of the country.

More disturbing for me, was to see the extent the problem of late payment is having on those companies surveyed.

The report says that 20% admitted that the impact of customers failing to pay on time threatened the day to day survival of their business. Almost half felt they wasted valuable resources chasing money, and worst of all, four in ten bosses are currently using their own money to keep the business afloat while they wait on outstanding payments.

On average SMEs are owed more than £1000 at any given time, from customers abusing the 30 day account policy. Although the majority of accounts are paid within a 45 day period-15 days late, there are always companies that drag things out for months.

With the economy as it is business owners should be more prudent than ever when supplying other businesses on account, and should always be aware of a customers financial history. If you don’t do it already, pay for a credit check for peace of mind. It could end up costing a lot more.

The chief executive of internet marketing company Bigmouthmedia, Steve Leach, will be the key speaker at the Growing Your Own Business Exhibition and Conference, to be held at Olympia, London, on April 4th.

Leach was recently announced as the International Entrepreneur Of The Year at the European Business Awards in Paris, a title he added to his 2008 Entrepreneur Of The Year For Scotland and The UK.

Leach is set to reveal the secrets behind the success of his business, during a speech on ‘What makes an entrepreneur unique.’ He will talk about the virtues needed to build a better business, how to overcome key obstacles, and his experiences in building his own company.

The event runs for two days April 4th and 5th and will feature speeches from other successful business men as well as providing practical guidance and advice to small business owners.

Choose good key words, it is worth spending time on this, as this is the main criteria used when others are searching the web. It is worth considering words or phrases that others would use to find your product, so ask friends or relatives what terms they would use, and try to incorporate them into your list.

Keywords should be included in title tags, header tags and meta description tags as well as within the content of your page. Do not stuff these areas with just keywords as this will be read by search engine robots as spam, but rather use a good description in all areas incorporating keywords particularly near the beginning and end of the page.

Make sure that your site is easy to navigate ensuring the home page is never more than two clicks away. Avoid using Flash as this reduces the effect of any SEO on the site.

Submit your site to the major search engines and directories. A submission to dmoz.org is considered to be time well spent, although it can take months to be accepted. Free directories are a good source of getting links, but always choose carefully. If the directory looks awful avoid it.

Build links with other related sites. While a one way link to your site is best, it does not have much value if it comes from an unrelated market. Reciprocal links are easier to obtain but once again make sure to swap links with product related sites.

This is an ongoing process and requires a regular amount of time to be put aside each month to improve your sites rankings.

Getting quicker results can be achieved by using a pay per click (PPC) campaign. This means that you agree a figure to be spent on certain keywords and in return search engines place your site at the top of the search list. This is best managed by an SEO expert.

A report earlier this year by Cranfield School of Management, analysing SMEs attitude to the internet, showed encouraging results with 84% of small business owners having a website and 97% having an e mail account.

This is extremely good news on the face of it, more business is being done on the internet and SMEs should be best placed for a share of the market. However things are seldom that straightforward and where the internet is concerned, having a company website is simply not enough.

Many of those companies will have been forced by ‘peer’ pressure to bring their business in to the 21st century, and many business owners feel that it is necessary for their company to be represented on the web.

The truth of the matter, simply having a website is not enough. The site should firstly be of a good design, avoid the temptation of homemade or cheap sites, they will invariably end up costing more than they are worth.

Secondly, the site needs to be ‘optimised’ for search engine recognition. This sounds a more daunting task than it actually is, but without it, no-one will ever know you are out there. There are many companies that make a living from Search Engine Optimisation or Internet Marketing. Costs vary a great deal, so always shop around as there are good deals to be had.

For those with the confidence and time to attempt SEO themselves, I will be adding some tips, on my next post, that you will find useful, and also questions to ask SEO experts before parting with your money.

Specialist insurers Hiscox, and brokers Allison & Partners, have this week launched a partnership aimed specifically at offering insurance to small businesses and SMEs.

The partnership will go under the banner of INSPIRE and will specialise in professional insurances for UK and European small and medium size businesses.

The company will offer a range of business and business related products, tailored to individual companies needs. Insurance cover will be available for emerging professions, such as, IT, Marketing and Management consultants.

Covers are industry specific and include professional indemnity, internet and e mail insurance, directors and officers’ liability as well as complete office packages that include building, contents and business interruption cover.

The company will be run by former recruitment professionals, who say they understand the needs of this market. Lets hope that this facility is available for the smaller businesses that are currently being refused the appropriate business insurance, because they are too small, or being ripped off for cover they don’t really need.

INSPIRE will be available from Allison & Partners offices in London and Essex and it’s products available direct or through brokers.

Post Office owners in some parts of the country have received a shot in the arm from local County Councils. Portsmouth councillors have become the latest local authority to throw a potential lifeline to local Post Offices, faced with the threat of closure.

Gerald Vernon-Jackson, leader of Portsmouth council has backed ideas put forward by Essex CC, to investigate whether it can take over post offices after a national consultation on the future of the service.

The Essex CC leader Lord Hanningfield says that fifty local authorities have expressed interest in combining local council and post office services.

 Lord Hanningfield said: “I am delighted that we have been able to enter into serious negotiations with Post Office Ltd that will enable Essex County Council to step in and keep open a number of post offices that had been previously set for closure. This is a unique and groundbreaking deal.

‘This is exactly what local government should be doing. Identifying local needs and priorities and delivering on them for local communities. The principle of allowing local people and their representatives to run and deliver local services has once again been underlined here. Essex County Council is setting the benchmark in delivering what its residents want and I am pleased to offer what we have done here as a potential model for others.

‘Let me also stress that this is also not about replacing one public subsidy with another. Our intention is very clear; the money that we will be investing on behalf of the people of Essex will be used, over the course of the next three years, to help each branch to move, as far as possible, to become financial self-sufficient and cost neutral to the council.’