FREE BUSINESS ADVICE – ‘it’s good to talk.’

Small business success report shows ‘it’s good to talk’

iBOSS loves to give free business advice to all our clients. This is our advice today!

A report in Business and Money highlighted that Allica Bank had commissioned a new study, the SME Guide to Success, revealing that SMEs’ prospects of success depend to a large extent on engagement and interaction with external institutions and resources. Chris Weller, chief commercial officer at the business lender, remarked: “In the UK there is a wealth of external advice and support for small businesses and we urge every company out there to tap into the external resources around them.”

iBOSS free business advice Comment:

There is no doubt that business networking groups like The Business Community and Collaborate as an example in the East Midlands region, are a rich source of information. These Groups help to promote business whilst also giving tremendous support to each other. These groups often have professional business advisors who can also provide direct help to new business start-ups or established companies that in these difficult times may very well need a fresh approach or are even considering remodelling of their business. Although business owners may have excelled in their given industry, they still in these unprecedented times may need a business review on how to maintain or better still, increase business profit.

Cyber Security and Working from Home

Dolly Parton sang about “Working 9-5” and for many office workers, this described their work week perfectly. Then COVID happened and working hours have become a lot more blurred.
Aside from the human implications of life and work becoming blurred, the Cyber Security implications can be dire. We have not only moved away from our office desks but also our office networks. Networks that are secured with firewalls, intrusions prevention systems and web filters.

We, of course, have VPN (Virtual Private Network) systems but many of them do not provide the same level of protection as our office networks.
This has pushed many companies to a more cloud based model and are utilising products such as Azure and AWS. This is definitely the way to go but does come with its own set of security challenges.

Here at iBoss, our consultants not only understand on premise considerations, but also which cloud implementation could be best for you, be that SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) or something in between. Not only that, we can help you make sure that you are safe.

Call us today for more information about how to secure your home in the virtual sense 🙂

New SME grant scheme launches this month

This week I sat in on a network meeting where Ruth Cozens from SEMLEP – South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership gave us an excellent update regarding a new grant-funding scheme. It launches this month to help SMEs recover from the impact of COVID-19. The £20m fund, will distribute grants of between £1,000 and £5,000 and will be administered by growth hubs led by Local Enterprise Partnerships. Understandably there will be huge interest and demand from SME’s. £20m does not go a long way these days!
At iBOSS we help SME’s the best way to start a business, turnaround a business or grow your business during difficult times.