We’re in an age where you no longer need to be within the four walls of an office to run a business. You could be at your home’s convenience or at a diner and manage official tasks on your laptop. But it takes leveraging the right set of techniques and tools to run a remote business effectively.
To put you on the right track, here are 5 tips to manage an online business remotely.
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Leverage technology
Every business needs technology to thrive in today’s ecosystem. As a remote business owner, it’s even advisable to use technology more than those who own more traditional businesses.
You can use:
- Zoom for video conferencing,
- Wrike for project management
- Slack for effective communication
- Quickbooks for accounting and bookkeeping
- GoogleDrive for saving all business documents
And lots more.
Keep in touch with your team and manage projects efficiently on the go.
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Adopt virtual mailbox service
As an online business owner, you would often have to attend to official documents and other tangible materials wherever you find yourself. You could be at home, on a bus, or on a yacht several continents away, and there’s an item on its way to you. So how do you receive your mails since you have no fixed office location? Through a virtual mailbox.
By owning a virtual mailing address, you’ll have a third-party service provider that’ll receive all your business mails and notify you online. So all you have to do is log in on your device, check the mail, and decide whether to have the package sent down to your location or discarded.
The virtual mailbox service provider will offer you a virtual mailing address, like a digital mailbox, to which people can send your packages. Receive your mails on the go.
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Outsource
One effective way to manage a business successfully online is to outsource. There’s social media marketing to do, as well as web-hosting and tech maintenance, among others. Perhaps, you own an eCommerce store. You’ll therefore need to fulfill orders through logistics. The truth is, you can’t do it all alone.
Rather than go through the hassle of hiring individuals to fit into each job role, it’s more efficient to outsource these services to third parties. Third parties, such as logistics companies, managed IT service providers, and freelance digital marketers, would have the required skill to help you compete with the big names in your industry. And you wouldn’t have to waste energy managing them as you would your employees.
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Set parameters
You’d most likely build a level of trust with your third-party service providers and freelancers (such as virtual assistants), so they can even log in to your business and execute some tasks. But it’s wise to keep some parts of your business exclusive to you, such as purchasing power.
You can achieve that by setting parameters in the platforms, you use for managing your business. Some software comes with the functionality, while others allow you to integrate seamlessly.
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Hire the right team
Having the right team is key to any successful remote business
When hiring for your online company, you should look for digital skills because everyone has to use technology efficiently. The second is the candidate’s ability to solve problems remotely without much supervision.
You should also put an ethics system in place to evaluate employees’ performance.
If your business is a small one, a virtual assistant is enough. No need to hire multiple hands.
With more businesses moving online ever since the world was struck by the pandemic, one has to be efficient and competitive to stay afloat. Stay competitive by leveraging the right technology and techniques, just as the big guns do.
