Top 10 money-saving tips
We're all looking at ways to save money at the moment. And small businesses are no different to large ones in that respect. In the Microsoft Small Business Centre we've put together a list of 10 money-saving tips which we recommend you take a look at. The first four items on the list are all about free resources - free websites with Office Live, free Office Accounting Express, free templates and clip art, and finally, free software trials.
Digressing slightly here - there is a point so bear with me - there's a BBC2 TV programme called ‘All Over The Shop', in which business guru Geoff Burch visits small shops around the country and shows them how they can improve their business prospects. This is how the Telegraph describes it:
"All Over the Shop, BBC2's new factual series which starts this week, is both heartening and slightly scary. Heartening because, in these difficult times, it tries to demonstrate that small businesses can improve their fortunes with a dash of fresh thinking and a few inexpensive changes. Slightly scary because it shows British shopkeepers making blunders that would be endearingly comical if only their financial troubles weren't so severe.
While filming the series, its presenter Geoff Burch came across shops which had misspelt signs - or which didn't have a sign at all. In Taunton he found a flower shop with no flowers outside it. He asked the owner why not. ‘Well,' she said, ‘if you put the flowers out, they'll die...'."
The edition I saw included a gift shop that had no website, and despite selling to trade and public, had no catalogue. And they had no record of previous purchasers so couldn't mail them to tell them about new stock or promotions. So, going back to my initial point about using free websites, software and templates, I think this demonstrates that small businesses can achieve significant business gains without having to spend very much at all.
