Serving Small Businesses
This Blog has been on my list for a while and only now I get to make my first post….
For over 18 years, I have worked with many businesses (small, medium & big) in diverse industries, as a business consultant, a line-manager and lately as a service provider. Over the past few years I have predominantly worked with small businesses (in fact a lot of them micro businesses) helping them in a several areas -streamlining systems & processes, analyzing data and building decision support systems, online marketing & building their online presence to enhance the effectiveness of internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) & search engine marketing (SEM).
Two typical operations-related problems that small businesses face are:
- The business owners manage most of the critical functions by themselves, which is not a serious problem but they are often bogged down by non-core tasks and administrative which take up significant portion of their time that they are unable manage the core functions effectively
- Attaining critical mass in any function is difficult resulting in sub-optimal performance of most functions. Though almost every function requires a certain level of specialization, there is not enough work always to have even one full-time staff with the appropriate skills for the function.
Small business can benefit if they are provided a reliable and consistent business support by service providers. But I found that small businesses are under-served and do not get the service that they deserve even when they pay rates comparable to a big business.
InteleANTS Virtual Workforce was founded to support small businesses in every conceivable need. We have been working with over 150 small businesses – single employee to around 40 employees and revenue ramging from $ 200,000 to $ 30 million a year.
I have helped small businesses outsource work globally and to successfully engage with the service providers virtually; I have built a virtual business and also enabled my clients in building virtual businesses.
Through this blog, I will to share my knowledge in general and attempt to help small businesses understand how to outsource work & how to manage a virtual business successfully by sharing:
- my experiences with small businesses & my knowledge in specific areas that I believe would benefit small businesses
- information supported with analysis on areas of topical interest to the small business community
- useful tools & other resources that I have found and possibly help you with using them
I will make at least one post per week except when I am on vacation which is usually once a year.
I welcome your comments and suggestions.
