Reducing the Possibility of Theft & Fraud in Your Business

Theft and fraud are on the rise and small business owners aren’t exempt!

business theft - pic of thief

Rehmann.com states:

So what can your company do? The best starting point is to implement proactive themes in your workplace. The first of these is to create a culture of high ethical standards. CEOs and other executives who set an example for staff and expect them to follow this example are vital. This ethical culture begins before an employee is even hired by utilizing background checks to screen job applicants and carries through to a “zero-tolerance” policy when dealing with offenders.
Source: Rehmann, see below*.

I’ve personally never had the experience of staff stealing from me or attempting fruad (that I know I know of!) so it’s quite an eye opener to read around what goes on out there in SME-land.  Police Checking services like UrbanVerified.com can provide information indicating if there is any criminal background associated with a particular individual, which is a good start, but obviously doesn’t by any means protect a business.

Rehmann goes on to recommend several additional important steps:

A well thought out oversight plan should include:

  • A risk management plan that includes a written policy
  • Periodic assessment of your fraud risk exposure
  • Established prevention techniques that are adhered to
  • Established detection techniques to uncover fraud events
  • A reporting process that is designed to encourage input on potential fraud

Source: *http://www.rehmann.com/resources-insights/business-wisdom-2/item/906-with-fraud-on-the-rise-is-your-business-a-target

All food for thought, as probably all of us a bit on the lazy side with protecting our identity assets?!

What The Federal Budget Means to Small Businesses

small business

Following the recent Federal Budget, experts explained that for the South Australian economy the biggest gain was the $90 billion in defence programs for the state.

Another good thing though was the tax cuts for small business.

Also the treasury has confirmed that the small business retirement exemption will continue, so if you’re planning on selling your business, you can use it as part of retirement planning and contribute more to superannuation than the $500,000 lifetime after tax contribution cap.

Read more about what the budget means for small businesses at: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/experts-urge-sa-small-business-to-invest-create-jobs/news-story/369087b4f59273e309136d136b9e47c7

Paypal’s All-Male Diversity Panel!

Come on Paypal – are you serious??

Recently this guy Neville (@1FightingIrish) posted this on Twitter!!

paypals diversity farce

Check carefully the five bio pics – all blokes!

No doubt they are all experienced individuals whose opinions on diversity may be worth hearing, but isn’t it a bit hypocritical that there’s not a female in site?!

As Neville says: “Nice work Paypal”!

Loan Approvals for Small Business Soars

small businessIf you’re a small business owner looking for funding, there’s good news, according to the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index.

According to the index, March 2016 saw the days of mass rejection of small business loans coming to an end, following the analysis of 1000 small businesses.

It was revealed that big banks approved 23 per cent of funding requests in March which is an increase from the previous month.

Institutional lenders also improved their approval rates from 62.7 per cent to 62.8 per cent in March.

Find out more http://_http://smallbiztrends.com/2016/04/small-business-loan-approval-rates.htmlwp_link_placeholder

Why Your Small Business Should Start a Blog

blog

An interesting article on Entrepreneur.com discussed the importance of having a blog for the small business owner.

The writer discusses the importance of keeping your customers/ readers coming back to your site with a relevant, valuable, information-rich blog.

This marketing tool for the small business helps you position your product, find your customers and decide how to reach them.

Learn more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/271049

Business Predictions for 2016

News.com.au recently posted an article of 44 business predictions for 2016.

busiens predictions for 2016

While some of them are a little on the lame side, here is a sample of a few which are interesting:

“On-demand delivery and logistics will expand to small businesses”

New on-demand delivery and logistics services will emerge during 2016 to meet the ever increasing requirements of online shopping and fast food ordering and services like UberRush and Amazon Flex

Same-day delivery and cross-border selling will expand

This is a continuing reflection of the online selling platform and marketplace that we seeing growing like wildfire not only across nations like Australia and United States & the UK but indeed globally and across international borders generally, so the reason that these sorts of services will be springing up will obviously be to meet these kinds of needs. These kinds of logistical challenges present all sorts of difficulties for logistics providers but it’s exciting to see some innovative entrepreneurial solutions surface, as the demand for these sorts of services continues to increase in 2016 and beyond.

More businesses will come up for sale as Baby Boomers look to retire

And for sure we do know about the demographics of the baby boomer generation who are in their stage of life where they have accumulated significant wealth and built in many cases significant businesses, so the advice here is that if you do have a business you may want to think about selling it sooner rather than later before the number of business coming on the market reduces capital value.

Despite increasing internet connections, human connection remains the most important

This is an interesting at prediction and certainly has a lot of truth. We can see that from The massive rise of social media the fundamental human need for connection is not going away however there is only so much connection need that an online platform can provide and particularly in a business environment the challenges challenges facing us going into 2016 is how can we meaningfully increase the human connection or at least the perceived human connection or ways of customising personalised human connection through our various marketing and selling channels

Small businesses should tighten cybersecurity in anticipation of more cyberattacks

And again this prediction is closely linked to the massive rise of the commerce and the way in which we are living our lives more and more online one of the most important ways for small businesses of course is to look at the security of their website and all of their online communication and storage methodologies such as email and cloud based storage we recommend small businesses engage experts to address these issues proactively rather than waiting until it’s too late!

You can read more of the 44 small business predictions in the original article here: http://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/fortyfour-business-predictions-for-2016/news-story/e7a5ab49f0f7202ab701956a2b7ee340