Sage Blog

Alistair Darling announced a series of measures aimed at supporting small businesses yesterday in the Budget. It will be a £2.5 billion one-off “growth package” of tax breaks and credit access for businesses.

It’s encouraging to see this government finally putting the brakes on changes to VAT, income tax and National Insurance but does this go nearly far enough to simplify the tax system for small businesses, which was the biggest single change (34.3%) our customers most wanted to see, according to Sage’s March Omnibus of 1,750 UK SMBs.

Aside from tax benefits, the Government renewed calls for banks to increase lending to small businesses. It was well reported that in 2009, lending to businesses by banks was weaker than in previous years, which initially highlighted concerns that economic recovery could be slow. Mr Darling introduced new targets that are deemed more feasible to achieve, replacing net lending targets with gross lending targets.

Throughout the recession our customers have been crying out for banks to lend more. In January 2010, Sage UK’s monthly Omnibus revealed that 48.2% found it fairly difficult or very difficult for businesses to get credit from banks, so I am intrigued to see how many of our 800,000 customers actually get to benefit from today’s pledge that RBS and Lloyds will lend £94billion of new business loans. For the thousands of companies who have been ‘unfairly denied credit’, the Chancellor’s new service to fast track credit complaints from small businesses could be perceived as too little, too late and adding yet another layer of complexity and administration that companies could do without.

Brendan Flattery, Managing Director of Sage’s UK Small Business Division.

To do our bit for Sport Relief we turn our call centre over to become a Sport Relief Call Centre run by our very own team of Sage volunteers. It’s great fun and totally hectic!

Sport Relief

When it comes to being part of the Sport Relief Call Centre, our mailbox goes into overdrive trying to keep up with responses from volunteers.  It’s great for them and for us, and now in our fifth year we knew it was going to be a tough challenge to top previous years.

A live performance from a solo singer kick started the night with a real bang, followed with ‘survival’ packs, a magician and a buffet which all went down a treat for our team of 103 volunteers who took a staggering £100,379.04

Sage’s very own magician / balloon artist kept us entertained with rope and card tricks and made sure no-one went home empty handed, whether it was with a sword a dog, a palm tree or a hat.

Prizes were dished out left right and centre from, bottles of wine, meals for two,  basket ball and football tickets and plenty boxes of chocolates which went down a storm.

A few celebrity guests popped in to say Hi, and chatted to volunteers, Joey Barton, Steve Harmison, Neil Killeen and Phil Mustard, at one point we thought Joey was here for the night after he pulled up a chair to chat to a couple of volunteers.

After enough food to feed the five thousand, our traditional pizza fest arrived right in the middle of our busiest time of night again! But all was in good hands, out went our refreshment’s team with their hostess trolley’s whizzing in and out making sure everyone got a hot slice. With a lot of laughs and one or two green faces through eating too much it was yet another spectacular night.

Written by  Gemma Booth; by day a Sage Sales Administrator, by night a lean mean Sport Relief organising machine.

Georgie Cragg-James is a Senior HR Adviser for Sage HR Services

You may have seen a recent news report, highlighting the findings of a Business Link survey. The results revealed that two thirds of SMEs are failing to implement employment laws.

There were three reasons why:

• A quarter didn’t think it was their job to implement the law.
• A fifth weren’t sure how to do it.
• A third simply didn’t know what their legal obligations as an employer were.

I’m always interested to find out more about why businesses struggle to meet their legal obligations, but most of our customers agree that it’s clear, expert HR advice that helps them avoid employment law pitfalls and takes the pressure off them.

Failing to implement employment laws? How can this affect your business?

From the initial recruitment process through to people leaving your business, the entire employment cycle is governed by legislation. For example, there are employment laws concerning:

• Pre-employment residency and police checks.
• Discrimination, from the wording of your job advertisement through to employment practices.
• Grievance procedures, if an employee has a complaint.
• Retirement and redundancy.

Yes, this is a lot to think about and unfortunately simply being unaware of your human resources responsibilities is no defence. In fact failing to comply with the law could have serious consequences for your business:

• Employment tribunals that can be time consuming and stressful.
• Paying out fines and compensation, causing a financial burden on your business.
• A damaged business reputation that can result in lost customers.

So what can you do to stay on top of employment law?

A lot of businesses are concerned that staying legally compliant is too time consuming and holds them back from managing and growing their business. But it really is simply a case of putting the correct procedures in place now, making it easier for you to implement the regulations, and protecting your business for the future.

For a start, consider if you have documented processes around:

• Confirming employee’s entitlement to work in the UK, by checking and copying certain original documents.
• Providing compliant contracts of employment, no later than two months after the employee starts work.
• Adhering to the national minimum wage, the minimum level of pay allowed by law to most workers over the age of 16.
• Creating and distributing your staff handbook, providing your employees with valuable policies and procedures.
• Providing equal opportunity recruitment, by objectively matching the criteria of the job specification to the competencies, qualifications and skills of each applicant.
• Successfully managing poor performers legally, fairly and consistently, by having a structured process in place.
• Sensitively handling grievances, providing structured informal and formal avenues of communication.
• Having a clear retirement policy to provide consistency and clarity to leavers.

It really is worth setting some time aside now to help  save yourself time and hassle in the future.

Georgie Cragg-James, Sage HR Advice Service

As well as translating the law into plain English, Sage HR Advice Service advises you of forthcoming changes to the law and gives you all the tools you need to remain compliant.

Alexa: who is visiting your website?

At the moment I’m working on a major project to totally redesign and rebuild our website. This means that I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what makes a great website, and more importantly what makes one that’s not so good. 

There are millions of words written on this subject, so much so that it can seem pretty daunting. But the simple truth is that the essence of a great website is one that has your customer at the centre of it.

This may sound like a marketing platitude, but it’s true. Customer-centric design is the only way to produce sites that do what you need to do. It doesn’t matter if your site is all about sales or brochureware or about providing a service – by putting the customer at the centre of designing, building and filling your site with content, you’re building a site that your customers will want to visit and recommend.

How do you create a customer-centred website?

Because it can be relatively quick to build a website, all too often proper  research isn’t carried out. It’s easy to start thinking about what your pages will look like before you think about what your customers want the site to do.

Who’s your audience?

Stating the obvious perhaps, but the most important thing is to always know your audience, whether they are current customers or prospective customers.

I’m not going to cover off in detail how you can profile your customers, but there are great online tools like HitWise, which requires a subscription – it’ll allow you to look at demographic and profiling information about people who visit your site, your competitors’ sites, or even your industry as a whole.

How people engage with your current site?

If you’re redeveloping an existing site, you must first get a picture of how successful your current site is. What’s not working, and more importantly, what is.

Using web analytics you can get a detailed picture of your site usage. Free tools like Google Analytics can now offer in depth and customisable reports, but also have loads of easy-to-use reports straight out of the box.

What you need to look out for:

• Who is visiting your site?
• What they’re looking at?
• How long they’re spending on your site?
• Where are they dropping out?
• Which journeys are  leading to conversions?
• Which pages are generating complaints?

How usable is your site

Web usability may seem like a difficult concept, but it’s incredibly simple – it’s working out how easy it is for your visitors to complete tasks on your site.

A whole industry has been built on usability research and consultation, and there are loads of experts out there who can review your site.

Whilst spending money on a usability study may not seem as sexy as spending money on page design or fancy apps, it’s money well spent. By eliminating usability issues upfront you will maximise your site conversions and lessen the number of people who leave your site without completing their task.

If you can’t afford to complete a formal usability study there are loads of resources like this great usability guide that will give you hints and tips on how you can go about running DIY tests. But remember that you should be testing with your actual customers and markets in mind. Think about their needs, abilities, likes and dislikes.

Usability doesn’t end with a one-off study. Throughout the life of your website, you should constantly ask how your customers would engage with your site.

What do your customers want to do on your site?

So far we’re focussed on getting a view of the here and now, but it’s also important to think about what your customers may want to do on your site that you’re currently not offering them. You could find this out in a few different ways:

Competitor analysis – What services do the websites of your direct and indirect competitors offering? How do they deliver them? What’s good and bad about them? How do they compare with your site?

Customer research – there’s nothing better than asking your customers who they are, what their wants and needs are, what they think about your site and what they might want from it in the future. There’s a range of ways you could do this from simple, free online surveys like 4Qsurvey through to in depth face-to-face interviews with current and potential website users. For the best results, a mix of quantitative and qualitative with give you a well rounded picture.

Building website personas

Once you know who your audience is and what their wants and needs are you can build a set of personas that will help define the site’s structure, look and feel and website content.

Much has been written about personas, but again, the concept is really straightforward. Personas are fictional characters that bring together the key things that you’ve learned about your current and prospective customers. What are their wants and needs, what do they need to get out of your website? What is their motivation for visiting? What are their likes, dislikes and frustrations?

You would normally create a handful of personas – between 4 and 6. Even if your customer base is incredible broad, you must keep the numbers of personas to low, so that they are practical. I’ve found a great free online guide to creating personas, but there’s lots of other stuff out there. 

Once you’ve defined your personas, you can then use them as a means to empathise with your customers when making decisions on your website. For example, if you’re creating a new design for your homepage, think about how each of your personas would feel about the proposed design – how does it help them achieve what they need to achieve?

Rinse and repeat

It’s become a bit of a cliché to say that the world of digital is constantly changing, but it’s true. Think about the sites you’re using today – were you using them two years ago? If so, did they look and feel the same? Chances are that they’ll have changed significantly.

It’s not enough to only think about your customers at the point when you build a new website. In order to ensure that your site is customer focussed today, tomorrow and next year, you must continue to review your web metrics, talk to your customers and evolve your personas. It can be time consuming and it’s not always easy, but in doing this, you will create a site that your customers want to come to and will recommend to others.

Ewan McIntyre, Web Implementation Manager