One of my recent jobs involved completely re-building a client's existing website on Weebly. It looked pretty much the same, and the client was delighted with the work. Why? Well they had paid rather a lot of money for a developer to build a nice looking site on a totally inappropriate platform - probably one they were really familiar with. The result, a site which looked good and worked well for someone browsing the site, but didn't work for the staff. They were having difficulty updating the site; even simple tasks like uploading photos were just not working for them. Getting hold of the developer for updates was almost impossible. Re-building it on Weebly means they now have a super easy to update site. If your website isn't working for you, give Martin a call on 0210 515 388

In my last post I mentioned the idea of using freelancers such as myself. You can hire a freelancer to do practically anything you can think of which is outside the line of your normal business - writing marketing material, building a website, designing a logo, book-keeping and so on. 

I've been doing a bit of copywriting work recently for non native English speakers, and it got me thinking. We have a large immigrant community here in New Zealand, many highly skilled and or qualified and often wanting to add to our economy by contributing their own entrepreneurship.  Whilst being able to communicate quite adequately they may lack the finer linguistic skills to polish off an important  document such as a 

I build web sites and write stuff. It's what i'm good at. It's what people pay me for. Then there's the other stuff that needs to be done, book-keeping and accounting for all of us, maybe banking, paying staff and all that entails if you employ them. You know the stuff - it has to be done, but you're not necessarily very good at it and hate spending your time doing it instead of doing something which earns you revenue. Outsourcing may be your answer. You carry on doing what you're good at and pay someone else to do the things you don't want to. Because you're paying an expert to do a job, they can do it a lot quicker and more efficiently that you, so it may not cost as much as you think. Even big companies do it if they believe they can get things done more cost effectively by someone else.

I don't want to do myself out of a job, but there are many tools out there to help small businesses without paying someone to help. Digital Boost is a Government funded service to provide free online learning tools aimed at small business. There are lots of short videos introducing different aspects of the digital world. Now may be the perfect time to have a look at what's available, whilst we're waiting to get back to normal business life. Rather than me going into detail here, why not take a look and sign up for free: https://digitalboost.co.nz/.

A few weeks ago I came across a lady who had set up a small business filling a niche she had identified in the market. She had discovered, quite by chance, an activity which many companies were doing by hand, by highly trained individuals, when there were several readily available software packages online which enabled the activity to be done in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. 

With just a bit of research to find the most suitable software, she had established the business to carry out this activity herself, without any training, and now works on contract, providing her services to these same companies who are able to get the job done much quicker and cheaper. A win win all round. 

This was very much a case of you don't know what you don't know. Many businesses carry out activities like this, doing things the way they have for years without realising there is a very cost effective alternative. Sometimes a business may need a little help identifying these opportunities.

Up until now the focus of e-solutionz has been on providing website design and copywriting services, mostly to small businesses. These are just two of the many services which a small business can benefit from due to not having the necessary skills, experience and/or time within the business.

Spending time with small business owners and employees I see many other examples of where businesses can be made more efficient by the use of external resources. As a small business owner you may be aware of where you need help, and maybe that's how you came across us; but in this rapidly changing digital age, new time or cost saving processes can be found in areas you wouldn't have dreamt of, as well as some which you may be aware of. In future posts I will aim explore some of these.