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.

“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.

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.

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.

These are the five things that will help new freelances create a sustainable business that gives them freedom, joy and money as they help shape their industry.

In today’s world, it is commonplace for employees to regularly change jobs. Indeed, the average UK employee changes jobs 12 times throughout their career. And with people changing jobs so regularly and the advent of autoenrollment, employees often accumulate and lose track of multiple pension pots, which could threaten many people’s long-term financial wellness.

Diversity is crucial to the tech industry’s development and success, and female representation is an important piece of the puzzle. One Deloitte Insight analysis predicted that female representation in technical roles in large technology companies would increase by 0.6% from 2019 to 2022.

Banks and big business are racing to get behind sustainable frameworks as the world sets its sights on net zero. But should startups feel the same urgency too?

Ensuring that anyone with potential can get on in life makes good business sense. It means that women should have the same opportunities as men to start their own businesses and be represented in business at every level.

Due to the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, side hustle and startup businesses are becoming increasingly popular in the UK. In fact, according to a recent report by digital marketplace Airtasker, 46% of British people are using side hustle businesses to generate a second income to fund their lifestyles. According to the Business Statistics Bulletin, there were 810,316 new businesses launched last year, making it a 21.8% increase from 2019.