Features

Britain’s SMEs are facing a crisis. In a time where everything possible is transitioning to digital, SMEs are struggling to acquire sufficient skills to benefit from constantly evolving digital technologies. Here, Kristian Torode, Director and Co-Founder of IT business support and communication technology specialist Crystaline, investigates the reasons behind the digital skills gap, and SMEs can become as future ready as their larger counterparts.

Research has shown that global users spend an average of nearly seven hours per week watching videos. Whether they are on YouTube, social media, or embedded on websites, videos have the unique ability to convey an audio and visual message to the viewer. In the world of digital marketing, this two-pronged attack can wield the power of persuasion. 

As your startup business grows, so does the need for increased working capacity.

When you’re a startup founder, every decision has opportunity cost. It’s one of the reasons that running an early-stage business can be so stressful because even if you make the ‘right’ decision, there are consequences.

In this era of digitalisation, data analytics has made it easy for businesses to understand the needs and preferences of their customers. Innovative workplace technologies are swiftly hitting the market, enabling organisations to adapt and prosper in a constantly digital environment.

Following the Queen’s Speech, and years of consultations and lobbying from the micro mobility sector, it looks like the e-scooter industry is in for a bumper year. The vehicles have until now been legal to buy, yet illegal to use on the UK’s public roads except through authorised ride sharing schemes.  However, this will now change through the creation of a new vehicle class for e-scooters specifically. 

Once upon a time, not very long ago, most businesses upheld an office-centric culture. Demanding boots on the ground, companies were limited to hiring employees that could be physically present five days a week, capping their talent pool and offering little flexibility. Now, in the wake of the pandemic, the seismic shift towards remote working has triggered a borderless working world, in which international companies can hire remote employees located anywhere.

Together employers and employees need to understand, and remove, the barriers in the workplace for greater inclusion for all.  Diverse and inclusive workplaces can not only grow your business, but they can also lead to real social change. The desire for more diverse workforces is apparent, with employees strongly supporting organisations that are taking action to create a workplace which is diverse and inclusive.

Zeinab Ardeshir, Co-founder of PillSorted, the healthtech that’s raised £4.5m to work with the NHS in getting medications to patients more efficiently discussed their journey so far with Startups Magazine.

When it comes to gender equality in the workplace, the financial services sector is regularly in the spotlight. Traditionally male-dominated, progress has been made in recent years to ensure women are encouraged to pursue a career in the financial services, backed by private and public initiatives like the Women in Finance Charter. This is promising, with more women taking on visible leadership roles. 

With dramatic increases in online shopping resulting from the pandemic, the e-commerce space experienced an unprecedented boom. Merchants and payment providers had to quickly adapt to and many managed to capitalise successfully, benefitting from consumers’ shift to online purchasing.

Over the last 10 years financial technology has become more than a subsection or merging of two industries, and has developed into a fully-fledged industry in itself.

“Start Up Bromley is fantastic… a role model”, David Smith, Economics Editor of The Sunday Times, said earlier this year when he was part of a panel of entrepreneurs and business influencers in Bromley’s Central Library.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned so far along my entrepreneurial journey is that  building and owning a startup is not a job, it’s a lifestyle. Despite no two journeys ever looking the same, something valuable can always be extracted from every founder’s story. 

Building anything from the ground up comes with its fair share of challenges, and the existence of this site is a testament to that. But if there’s anything we pride ourselves on, it’s being able to give little tips on how your business can speed up its growth from day one. Today, we’ll be talking about a few technologies that can help make the life of you and your customers that much easier. 

Setting up a new business can be an exciting time. Everything is new and the possibilities are endless. However, you don’t want to fall into the trap of making a few wrong decisions, leading to real problems down the line.

I was once delivering a sales pitch to a well-known British Public School where they were looking for entrepreneurial and innovative ideas to disrupt the education sector.

According to recent statements from Cabinet Office Minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, civil servants should return to the office to ensure Government buildings are at full capacity. Given that all legal restrictions arising from the COVID-19  pandemic were removed earlier this year, a full-scale return to the workplace has already occurred across many organisations.

There’s been much talk about the Great Resignation, with workers across sectors resigning en masse from their jobs in early 2021. The tech and finance industries were reported to have been hit hardest, but despite similar employment trends being seemingly apparent across marketing, advertising, visual arts, and more, the creative industries were conspicuous by their absence from reports. Driven by the pressing need to fill this absence, we ran surveys with the aim of better understanding the cause and effect of The Great Resignation in the creative industries and cultural sector.