If you are currently self-employed, freelance or sole trader and are experiencing some growth in your business you may have considered expanding and taking on employees of your own.
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At this point, many people start to fear the idea of setting up an office, renting the space, insurance issues, contracts, building maintenance, and all the employee benefits you need to include. Maybe you don’t need any of that.
In our modern business landscape, it’s never been easier to set up a remote office. You no longer need a brick and mortar space to build a successful business. All aspects of your business and teamwork can be done completely remotely.
Thanks to advances in computer software and communication, having a remote team made up of people from all over the world can be set up in a matter of days. Here is how you do it.
Assess What You Need
First things first, what does your business need to thrive? How many people do you need and what hardware and software do they need to get the job done?
Ask yourself these questions first so that you can plan out exactly what you need to set up to hit the ground running. If you are a designer looking to start a remote design business you will need as a basic, design and collaboration software. This will allow you to design and communicate with all the other people in your business, including your clients.
Use Freelancer to Help Set Up
This is the beauty of the online business world. When you need help you can find helpful and professional people just like yourself to assist you. If you need help with branding, copywriting, marketing, sales or anything else you can imagine you will be able to find a freelancer who can help you at a good price.
This can make setting up your business much easier with a lot less stress. Take advantage of the online community to help you build your business.
Centralize Your Systems
Computer software has made huge advancements in the last decade that can significantly help a small business to become efficient, productive, and organized. By centralizing all your work into one piece of software you can ensure that all your employees are working from the same hymn sheet.
For example, if you want to run a remote marketing company and you deal with thousands of multiple format files including images, photos, videos, icons, logos, and documents it’s useful to have them all in one place. This way, you can find everything you need with the click of a button, nothing can get lost, the latest versions are always available and your team becomes far more efficient as a result.
To make things even better you can now get digital asset management software that not only centralizes your work it can integrate your software, emails, call answering services, and even your accounting. It’s like having an entire business on one easy to use platform that can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere in the world.
Use Workflows
A good workflow system allows you to stay on top of all your work at all times. You will never miss a task or meeting ever again. It also helps you stay on track with your employee’s work allowing you to see the work they have completed or when they are due to complete their next task or project.
Smart online workflows can be automated so that your workforce is always up to date with the latest work, notifications can be set up to remind people of an important task or event, new events can be automated, and all of this can be analyzed using built-in analytics that helps you to see how your team is performing to ensure you are providing the best service to your clients.
Run Trials
When you feel like you have finally set up your mini-remote business you can try to see if everything works as it should. Run a few small and less important projects through the new system and see how it works. Once complete, identify any issues and tweak your system accordingly until you have a well-oiled machine.
Once you have successfully completed a few projects using your new system and with the help of your new freelance employees, you can make the full transition and become a successful and completely remote business.