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The Cost of Cybersecurity and How to Budget for It

Posted: 20 Nov 2019 09:00 AM PST

With the end of the year approaching, businesses are busy crunching the numbers for 2020. There are a lot of factors that go into building an annual budget, and small businesses are often left to juggle competing priorities for where to invest.

Cybersecurity is one priority, in particular, that is on just about everyone's radar in some way, shape or form for 2020. With national news and anecdotes regularly featuring stories of cyberattacks to businesses of all sizes, small businesses are starting to wonder about the risks they face and whether they're doing enough to protect themselves.

As with many core business functions, cybersecurity often requires a monetary investment and therefore needs space on your budget. The need for cybersecurity isn't going away any time soon, it's actually becoming more and more relevant for small businesses. That's why it's important to consider cybersecurity as a business, financial and practical priority in 2020. This article will discuss what you need to know about budgeting for cybersecurity, including:

  • Why cybersecurity should be a part of your business – and your budget
  • The potential cost of a data breach and the resulting ROI of a cybersecurity program
  • How to decide how much to spend on cybersecurity
  • How to maximize your investment to best protect your company

Put the calculator down and the thinking cap on. Here are a few thoughts worth considering as you plan and budget for the year ahead.

Why budget for cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is an area that affects businesses of all sizes, including small businesses. In fact, about half of all cyberattacks target small businesses and 68% of small businesses have experienced a cyberattack in the last 12 months. In addition to simply protecting your company from the cost and disruption of a cyberattack, companies roll out cybersecurity programs for a variety of reasons:

  • Pressure from their board of directors or other stakeholders demanding improved prioritization and employment of everyday cybersecurity practices
  • Third-party cybersecurity risk assessments and other vendor requirements, which are becoming more prevalent across the board and increasingly a part of contractual considerations
  • Compliance standards (e.g. GDPR, PCI, and HIPAA) and national or state regulations that legally require companies to maintain cybersecurity standards
  • Need for a competitive advantage for large projects or contracts

Cybersecurity is a broad field, so defining specific goals and improvements can be helpful as you build your budget. We see small businesses investing in a few key areas to help with specific cybersecurity challenges:

  • Risk assessment, business preparation and continuity, and incident response
  • Training employees to be cyberdefenders, reducing the danger of phishing emails and other social engineering attempts
  • Network and website vulnerability identification and management
  • Regular scanning and testing, including dark web scanning and ethical hacking

Think your company doesn't have a seemingly obvious challenge or external motivator for prioritizing cybersecurity? Think again and consider an assessment to see just where you stand. In today's world and modern criminal landscape, all companies are at risk of a damaging and disruptive cyberattack. And it's not just your company that could be affected: Your employees, customers, and any third parties you work with could see fallout from a cyberattack to your business. The only way to help prevent an attack is to strengthen your understanding, posture, and defenses, a process that merits investment for every small business.

How much does a data breach cost?

The costs stemming from a cyberattack can vary tremendously but are inarguably significant. Recent studies have shown that the average cost of a data breach to Small Business can range from $120,000 to $1.24 million. And that's strictly limited to a small business market. Stepping outside the small business filter, IBM's 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report recently found that the average cost of a data breach was $3.92 million, and that breaches cost smaller businesses more relative to their size than large businesses.

It's important to keep in mind that the true cost of a data breach isn't always what it appears. Expenses can be spread out over time, with about a third of expenses coming after the first year following the breach. There are a wide variety of costs associated with a data breach, some of which are obvious and repairable, others of which are more ambiguous and/or irreparable.

For example, direct costs may include:

  • Monetary theft
  • Remediation and system repair
  • Regulatory and compliance fines
  • Legal and public relations fees
  • Notification, identity theft repair and credit monitoring for affected parties
  • Increase in insurance premium

Indirect costs may include:

  • Business disruption and downtime
  • Loss of business or customers
  • Loss of intellectual property (IP)
  • Damage to company credibility, brand and reputation

The IBM report also showed that key cybersecurity steps like incident response team and plan formation, encryption, employee training and cyberinsurance all helped to reduce the cost of a breach. So even if your company does experience an incident, cybersecurity can help mitigate the damage and reduce the cost. The concept of cyber resilience is gaining steam and something that deserves understanding and attention. Given the potential expense and negative impact of a data breach to a small business, any budget you can dedicate towards improving your company's cybersecurity posture is money well spent.

 How much should you spend on cybersecurity?

As with any component of business, there are a lot of factors that influence how you build a cybersecurity budget. A few to consider are:

  • Your industry and company size
  • Compliance and regulation mandates affecting your business
  • The sensitivity of the data you collect, use and share
  • Requests from company stakeholders or customers

The actual amount companies spend on cybersecurity is often tied to their IT budget, which helps account for company size and IT infrastructure. Estimates of what companies currently pay vary, ranging from an additional 5.6% to up to 20% of the company's total IT spend. For example, say a 40-person company pays $3,000 per month to an IT managed service provider to cover their IT needs. Their cybersecurity budget would come in somewhere between $168 and $600 per month – a significant, but not unattainable amount – and well worth it given the potential cost of a cyberattack.

That's not to say that you have to spend a lot of money all at once. If you haven't had a cybersecurity budget before, try working a small amount into your 2020 numbers. A little bit can go a long way; for a relatively small investment, you can take the important first step of a cybersecurity risk assessment, then begin chipping away at key improvements.

Your cybersecurity provider can often help you identify the highest priority – and lowest cost – items to tackle with your limited budget. From there, you can tailor your cybersecurity program and slowly grow your budget in the coming years to provide enhanced protection and help mitigate risks. Just make sure it's just that: an ongoing program, not a one-time project.

Small businesses often operate on a tight budget, and in some cases, the person building and approving the budget may not know the value of cybersecurity. If you're facing hesitation from leadership, stakeholders or the board of directors, performing a basic risk assessment can be a great way to show them where your company stands and how an investment could bolster protection. Leadership – whether the board, C-suite or company owner – has a responsibility to guide the company in the right direction, and that includes protecting the company from threats.

The bottom line

Cybersecurity is no longer a "nice to have" – it's a "need to have" for business, and it needs to be a part of your business's budget, too. However, it's important to note that cybersecurity protection isn't purely a function of money spent. A comprehensive cybersecurity program doesn't have to cost a lot of money, but it does require prioritization and commitment from leadership, IT and employees.

On the flip side, no matter how much money a company dedicates to strengthening its cybersecurity posture, there's no such thing as a guarantee of 100%, complete protection. A company's best bet is to deploy a multifaceted, ongoing cybersecurity program using a combination of resources, training and time to help keep them cyber-strong and to potentially mitigate costs in the case of an incident.

At some point in the not-too-distant future, cybersecurity will be a standing line item on all business's profit and loss sheet. Just like small businesses build a cost for their accounting software or building alarm system into their finances, they need to start including cybersecurity as a standard expense and business priority. The cost of a comprehensive cybersecurity program is a small price to pay for the peace of mind you'll enjoy knowing your company is better protected.

Why Google Bots Refuse to Crawl Your Site

Posted: 20 Nov 2019 08:00 AM PST

Over 5 billion Google searches are made each day! Everyone's on Google to find answers to their queries and discover new things. In fact, Google is rated as the most popular website in both the global and U.S. markets. If your business isn't featured on Google's search engine result page (SERP), you are doomed!

Why are Google bots important?

Crawling. Indexing. Ranking. These are the three basic steps used by Google's search engine automated robots (also called crawlers or spiders) to generate results on the SERP. If your website is unfriendly to these crawlers, you stand no chance of attracting organic traffic to your site.

So, how can you make Google bots find and crawl your site? First things first, know where you stand. Conduct a thorough SEO audit of your site to gauge its on-site, off-site and technical SEO performance. Second, determine how many pages are indexed. Simply type, "site:yoursite.com" into the Google search bar. If the number of results is drastically lower than the actual number of pages on your site, Google is not crawling all the pages on your site and you need to do something about it. 

Six Reasons why Google bots aren't crawling your site.

Without further ado, let's understand what makes a website crawler-unfriendly and what webmasters can do about it.

1. You have blocked Google bots.

Is Google not indexing your entire website? In this case, the first thing you need to check is your robots.txt file. Look for code snippets that disallow the bots from crawling any page on your site and simply remove such code.

Further, check for a crawl block in the robots.txt file using the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console. If you see an error saying that the crawl is blocked by robots.txt, get rid of it to help Google bots crawl and index your page.

At times, it takes more than a week for Google to crawl a new website. In such cases, it is wise to open a Google Search Console account and point Google to your sitemap URL. If your site doesn't have a sitemap, create one now.

Another way of barring search indexing from your website is by having the "noindex" meta tag. If you see the following code in the meta tag, get rid of it to allow Google to index your site.

  • <Meta Name= "Robots" Content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

2. You haven't created a Google Console/Analytics account yet.

Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that collects and organizes traffic data into customizable reports and Google Search Console offers webmasters in-depth information on how Google sees a website.

Manually activating these Google services will send a signal to the Google bots that you are seriously working towards building your web presence. In fact, Search Console can help you gauge the health of your website and fix issues that are stopping your pages from getting indexed.

For instance, if you have a new page on your site, it's quite possible that Google hasn't got a chance to crawl it yet. The URL inspection tool in GSC can help you find out whether or not the page is indexed and offer you a complete report. So, say hello to Google by setting up a Search Console account and visit it regularly to see how your site performs in the SERP.

Another point to bear in mind is that the old Google Search Console allowed webmasters to have Google test, render, crawl and index any URL using the "Fetch as Google"' tool. Though this feature doesn't exist in the new version, you can still ask Google to index your webpages.

3. Your website has a poor internal linking profile.

Internal links are key to helping Google find, understand and index your webpages. They enable users to easily navigate a site, establish information hierarchy and spread link equity through the site. For instance, according to Moz, the optimal link structure for a website should look like a pyramid, with your homepage at the top of the structure.

Most e-commerce sites like Amazon use this structure and add internal links from their most authoritative pages. Google will recrawl such powerful pages, enabling it to find the internal link and index the respective page. You can find the most authoritative pages on your website using tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Finally, Google bots do not crawl links with the rel="nofollow" tag. Nofollow internal links cause Google bots to ignore the link. Hence, it's important to remove the nofollow tag from the internal links unless they point to an unimportant page that you want to exclude from the search engines' index.

4. Google doesn't like your URL structure.

Google advises webmasters to keep URL structures simple and readable. Hence, you should avoid using complex long IDs that can cause problems for crawlers. According to Google, such complex URLs contain multiple parameters and create unnecessarily high numbers of URLs that point to identical content on your site. This will cause Google bots to consume more bandwidth to crawl the webpage or to not crawl the page at all.

Wherever possible, have a clean URL taxonomy that bots can understand. Further, use the robots.txt file to block the bot's access to problematic URLs if any.

Permalinks are URLs that help link your content on your web, enabling Google to find the page with ease. Google likes short URLs that clearly state the title or important keywords.

WordPress, by default, creates weird permalinks or URL structures that may contain day, date, month or post IDs. These aren't preferred by Google. If your site is hosted by WordPress, use the "Post name" structure in the Permalink Settings on the WordPress dashboard.

5. Google has temporarily removed your site from its index.

If your website failed to meet Google's quality guidelines or has a shady history, the search engine may deindex, penalize or remove your site from the search results.

  • Deindexed or banned. If a website is completely removed from the Google search page, it is deindexed.
  • Penalized. At times, a lurking manual penalty may prevent your site from getting indexed. If your website or a page still exists but cannot be found in the search results, Google has penalized your site. This penalty can be enforced by Google's algorithm or manually applied by Google's quality engineer.
  • Sandboxed. Google Sandbox is an alleged filter that prevents new websites from ranking high. If the traffic for your new site or page dropped suddenly and it wasn't deindexed or penalized, Google has sandboxed your site.

Generally, Google alerts webmasters when their website violates quality guidelines. In such cases, it is advisable to modify the site and ask Google to review the site after the issues are fixed.

6. You haven't optimized for Google bots.

Optimizing your website for Google bots isn't the same as search engine optimization. Once you submit your website to the search engine, Google bots crawl the pages for content. These spiders scan your site for meta content, keyword saturation, relevant content and certain other factors. Therefore, it is important to optimize your sire for such scans.

Build a site that's indexable and offers relevant information to Google bots. Pay attention to the technical ranking factors to improve your site's crawler experience. Here are a few parameters that you shouldn't ignore.

  • Good-quality content. Create relevant and high-quality content for your audience. Google's algorithm awards sites that offer original and relevant content with a higher ranking than those who use fillers or share duplicate content. Though canonicalizing pages makes sense, do so wisely. Canonicalization, when not done carefully, can confuse Google's spiders, making it tough for them to crawl and index your site. 
  • Easy navigation. Make sure your website has a navigation bar that links to all major pages on your website.
  • Text-to-HTML ratio. Since Google's bots read text, make sure your website has a high text-to-HTML ratio (ideally, between 25% and 70%) in favor of text. Further, minimize Javascript or make sure it loads after HTML as bots get signals from the text in the HTML code. 
  • Site speed. Your site's loading time is an important ranking factor that Google bots consider when indexing your site. Make sure you test your site's speed and take the necessary measures to improve its loading time. 
  • Structured data. Schema markup or structured data gives context to your website, allowing Google's spiders to make the meaning of the content and index the pages with ease. Boost your site's SEO by using schema markup.  

Regardless of how many backlinks they have or what high-quality content they share, crawler-unfriendly sites do not exist in the eyes of Google. If your website or webpages have crawlability issues, Google bots will not be able to discover or index them, causing you to lose your online ranking. The information shared in this post will help you identify why Google bots aren't crawling your site, allowing you to take the necessary corrective measures.

How to Achieve Success With Small Business Digital Asset Management

Posted: 20 Nov 2019 07:00 AM PST

Small business digital asset management (DAM) solutions are systems for organizing, storing and sharing the rich media resources of a company. Creative assets such as videos, images, podcasts and media in other formats need to be effectively and efficiently stored and shared by different teams, channels, and departments to accomplish the goals of an organization.

In today's challenging economic environment, small businesses need to focus on cost-effective DAM solutions with the highest return on investment (ROI) to remain profitable. Innovations in technology enable companies to benefit from cloud-based communications and digital asset management systems for greater reliability, functionality, and productivity.

Editor's note: Looking for document management software for your business? Fill out the questionnaire below to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.

 

Growth of digital assets

The global DAM market is expected to see significant growth by 2024. According to the Digital Asset Management Market – Growth, Trends, and Forecast (2019 - 2024) report, the DAM market in 2018 was valued at $1,240.7 million and by 2024 is projected to grow to $6,901.6 billion. The projected rapid and exponential growth of digital asset management is due to:

  • Concerns about misplaced or lost data
  • The need for better collaborative tools and processes due to increased globalization
  • More focus on customer engagement and the need for consistent messaging across all devices
  • The increased use of cloud solutions and big data analytics
  • The emergence of artificial intelligence, including facial, optical character and speech recognition

The future of DAM systems will see companies looking for cost-effective ways to organize, store, find, retrieve and distribute digital assets with a high level of security. The top five projected trends for digital asset management are:

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Cloud-Based DAM
  • Metadata Management
  • Automation
  • Blockchain

How can small businesses benefit from digital asset management?

The digital revolution drives how consumers behave and what they expect. Digital and marketing tools enable companies to be more accessible and stay connected with their customers.

Traditionally, DAMs were attached to price tags beyond the reach of many small businesses. The cloud has revolutionized today's DAMs by delivering better user experience and more features at prices smaller companies can afford.

By using digital asset management software and tools, small businesses can boost productivity, collaborate better, save time, and reduce costs. For example, when preparing marketing promotional collateral and client presentations, being able to quickly find the necessary media files will speed up projects and waste less time.

Small businesses that use digital asset management software can benefit in many ways, including:

  • Saving time by integrating DAM software into existing workflows
  • Adding a layer of protection from theft and privacy with cloud-based DAMs
  • Spending less money on hardware storage with online cloud-based DAMs
  • Improving efficiency by using a DAM tool to handle digital assets rather than a team of people
  • Increasing productivity with faster deployment of marketing materials and campaigns
  • Easily accessing assets for team members and co-workers from one centralized location
  • Fine-tuning how assets are uploaded and distributed including setting expiration dates and file permissions
  • Ensuring brand consistency by reducing the chances of someone using an older version of branded materials across campaigns and channels
  • Saving time and money by reusing rather than having to recreate lost assets

Why manage digital assets?

Small businesses rely on using digital assets to reach potential customers. Images, videos and other forms of media are used in marketing campaigns and are sometimes products themselves, such as streaming music, online catalogs and e-books.

Being able to find these necessary assets quickly and easily to create, track, organize and distribute is the reason small businesses need DAMs.

Useful digital assets for small businesses

Digital assets are pieces of content that are stored digitally and are valuable to a business, consumer, or user. The most common types are:

  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Slide decks such as Google Slides and PowerPoint presentations
  • PDFs
  • Excel spreadsheets
  • Text files
  • Word documents
  • Graphics such as logos
  • HTML documents and other associated files such as CSS
  • Audio files

Some digital assets are more valuable than others. For example, videos and photos from a one-time event can't be replaced. Small businesses often pay a licensing fee for the right to use a photo or video. If the company can't find the asset, the only options are to pay for another licensing fee. This is a waste of money.

Another example is a project creating a digital user manual or e-book that contains a variety of different assets such as images, diagrams and charts. When putting everything together, having an effective digital asset management solution in place will save a lot of time and money.

Digital asset management strategies

Small businesses have many reasons for implementing a DAM such as:

  • Eliminating frequent requests for assets from co-workers or team members
  • Needing to centralize assets that are spread out over various cloud storage systems and personal hard drives
  • Tiring of spending too much time finding files needed to complete a task or project

Deciding to use a DAM is the first step for small businesses to get control over their digital assets as well as determining the best way to manage and analyze NTFS Permissions and data streams. However, without a comprehensive strategy, assets can get lost, stored without proper security or become disorganized. Develop a coordinated strategy that will identify what the assets are, why they have been created and how they should be used.

Outline your goals

Focus on the reasons for implementing a DAM and the high-level objectives. Define a coordinated approach to creating or acquiring digital assets, including third-party licensing issues and version control.

If your goals are for more efficient digital communication systems, then becoming aware of cloud communication trends, along with cost and productivity benefits in cloud-based communication assets can enable you to move into new areas of technology and communication efficiency.

If your goals involve improving internal processes, then avail yourself of the influx of process management software available to businesses and corporations. These tools can help you manage your assets, inventory, staff and more in productive ways. They enable expansion and better accountability. What's more, they are scalable.

Identify your criteria for digital asset management software

Analyze existing workflows to compile a list of criteria for choosing the right software. Consider:

  • The need to scale; how many current users will need access to your system and what is your projected growth?
  • Which hosting option will work best for your company?
  • How many people will be uploading and need access to assets to determine licensing options?

Perform a content audit

By conducting an audit of your assets, you will get a clear overview of what you currently have, how it is being used, and why it was created or acquired.

Identifying the why and how of your current digital assets will help you establish requirements on how to use and manage them moving forward. It will lead to the creation of better content and subsequently, a better return on your investment.

Understand the customer journey

Understanding the customer journey enables businesses to know what they are building and for whom. This knowledge will help translate business requirements into digital asset specifications that are measured and optimized to achieve business goals.

Organize the life cycle of digital assets

The life cycle of an asset encompasses everything from creation or acquisition to distribution and everything in between, such as:

  • Verifying the asset was added to the system without data errors
  • Checking the quality 
  • Updating, extracting or entering metadata information
  • Ensuring asset retrieval is a smooth process based on available criteria
  • Converting asset formation that is suitable for editing or delivery
  • Exporting asset files includes all necessary components
  • Storing and archiving large files on cost-effective long-term storage locations

Determine software requirements

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for digital asset management systems. Analyze your needs and requirements before spending money on a solution. Small businesses will likely need less storage space than larger organizations with multiple departments and locations. Choose the system that meets your objectives and needs.

Consider how digital asset management will integrate with other systems

Small businesses utilize many systems and processes to accomplish their business goals. Be sure the DAM you choose will integrate well with the other systems your company uses.

Implementing digital asset management

Implement the DAM in small steps by identifying the top priorities and acting on those first. Put together a task force of team members who will be implementing the DAM. Spend the necessary time to plan what will work best for all those who will be using the system and include them in the planning process. Taking this approach helps teams work together to build a solution that works before rolling it out company-wide.

Set-up best practices and enforce guidelines

To reduce the number of errors or mistakes, train your team on how to make the best use of the DAM you select. Explain the steps, reasons, and goals behind the system and encourage a culture of shared responsibility.

Use workflows

It's better to assign tasks to specific users rather than task everyone with all the steps of the workflow. Build workflows that define the operations of:

  • Obtaining files
  • Attaching metadata information 
  • Modifying or renaming original files
  • Organizing, cataloging and tagging 
  • Documenting the process in writing

Small businesses can maintain control over their digital assets and coordinate user access to content by implementing a DAM. A single repository where all assets are stored will streamline the digital asset management process.

10 Steps to Take Before Selling Your Business

Posted: 20 Nov 2019 06:00 AM PST

The decision to sell your business is a significant one. You've built it up from nothing and now you want to reap the rewards. But how do you go about getting your business ready for a sale? As someone who has experience on both successful and unsuccessful deals, here are 10 important steps to getting your business ready for a sale.

1. Understand how to price your business for sale

Whether it's an asset valuation, a price/earnings ratio, a discounted cash flow or an industry rule of thumb, you need to get your head around how businesses are valued. There are a number of ways to price a business, and these could take into account:

  • Value of assets: Add up the value of all the tangible assets (property, machinery, stock, etc.) owned by the business.
  • Future earnings or profit: If you have retained customers or subscribers who keep coming back for more, then your business could be valued based on the future revenue from those customers.
  • Intangible assets: Some buyers might be primarily interested in your brand and the goodwill it generates, your intellectual property or a trademark you own.

It's important to build a solid understanding of how businesses in your sector are typically valued for sale. The best way to do this is to speak to an advisor who has worked on a number of deals in your industry as they will be able to guide you as to what a buyer might be really interested in.

Once you understand the intricacies of this process, you will be able to build a realistic figure of what your business is worth. This is important because the process of selling your business is expensive (in terms of both money and time) and you only want to start that process if you have a good chance of completing it. Too many founders have "an idea" of what they want for their business that simply isn't based on reality. It's a huge investment to get to the offer stage, so you don't want to get there only to find it's all been in vain, because the offer is lower than you were prepared to accept.

2. Make sure you know the selling process

When you sell your business, you will typically go through these steps:

  • Appoint an advisor to represent you.
  • Analyze your business to find the points of value.
  • Create a financial presentation that shows the growth history and potential of the business.
  • Get ready for due diligence. All buyers will want to look under the hood of your business in detail. Make sure you are happy with what they will find.
  • Approach potential buyers. Your advisor will do this anonymously on your behalf
  • Meet with interested buyers so you can hold chemistry meetings and conduct financial presentations.
  • Negotiate on the price. You will hopefully receive multiple offers and therefore be in a position to negotiate a great deal.
  • Reach agreement in principle. This is when you have agreed on an amount that is subject to due diligence.
  • Appoint lawyers to represent you through the deal.
  • Conduct due diligence. The buyer examines your company to make sure they know what they are buying.
  • Complete the deal. This is the day the paperwork is signed and the money and assets change hands. Your lawyers will handle most of it.
  • Handle any post-deal activity. You will work with the buyer to announce the deal and integrate the business.

This whole selling process usually takes months, but can go on for years.  And you might have to go through it multiple times if your initial deal falls through.

Remember that the sale process will vary according to your industry. Look at your industry press to understand who is buying in your market, what they are buying and how often. It's worth getting a decent overview of what's going on, what's hot and who you might need to speak to. Spend at least several hours doing this before you start the sale process and it will help guide your decisions throughout.

Advisors are essential to successfully completing an exit. However, there's also a lot to be said for learning from the experiences of others. Most founders who have exited will be more than willing to meet you for a coffee to talk you through their experiences. They'll be able to share what worked for them, what they wish they had done better and which advisors really helped them. But they might also have an idea of who is on the market for a business like yours at the moment. These short conversations can be incredibly valuable.

3. Find great advisors to help you sell your business

From finance and HR to law and tax, surround yourself with experts in mergers and acquisitions. You can benefit from their enormous combined experience to make sure you don't make too many rookie mistakes. Many of these advisors will let you pick their brains over lunch before you have to sign a contract with them.

Perhaps the most important advisor is the one who will help you complete the process of selling your business. You want to look for a sell-side M&A specialist. This is someone who works for the seller to help them find a buyer. It's really important to choose someone who has expertise in your sector, as they will understand the quirks of selling businesses in your market and have an existing list of contacts or connections to approach on your behalf. They will represent you in the market and will do so anonymously initially. This ensures that word doesn't get out that you are looking for an exit. Most advisors will charge an up-front fixed fee and a percentage of the sale price upon the successful completion of the deal.

4. Isolate your unique value

What is it about your company that makes it special? Do you have some major, highly-sought-after clients? Do you employ the leading experts in your field? Is your proprietary technology top-of-industry? Is your product a market-leader? Is your brand famous? Is your real estate brilliantly located?

Whatever it is that makes you special will likely be key to attracting buyer interest. It's therefore worth implementing a plan to play to your strengths. How can you reinforce these points of unique value? How can you communicate them better? The best businesses to sell are those that are successful and unique, so make sure yours ticks those boxes.

You also want to remember that different buyers will find different elements of your business valuable. If your employees want to buy your business in a management-buy-out scenario, they will be interested in maintaining the current team, brand, and customers and building on your current foundations. However, if you sell to a competitor they could be most interested in taking your brand out of the market. And a private equity firm might be looking to roll your business up with others in the industry to create a super-brand.

5. Create an optimistic but realistic forecast

Your financial forecast should be based on facts but should lean towards the best-case scenario. During the initial 'dating' stage of an acquisition, one of the first things a potential buyer will want to see is your forecast. After all, they are buying into the future of your business. That means you need to paint an appealing picture of what that future looks like. Include secured revenues, expected revenues that are based off of your sales pipeline, as well as changes to staff and supplier costs. If you're not confident in financial modeling, then you need to get an expert to help you with this.

6. Get on top of your admin

After you have accepted an offer, the due diligence process begins. That means the would-be acquirer will want to look under the bonnet of your business. You will sign a non-disclosure agreement to protect you during this phase. Save yourself heaps of anxiety and stress during the process by making sure your employee contracts, client contracts, insurance, leases and supplier contracts are in place. Get organized so you can get everything signed and buttoned up.

7. Share your plans internally

It's definitely not a good idea to announce that you're planning to sell to your entire team for a number of reasons. Firstly, the knowledge might spook people who don't understand what it means for them. Secondly, you lose control of the message as rumor takes hold. Additionally, an exit is only news once it is completed. You don't want the entire industry to get wind of the fact that your business is up for sale. If your exit plan fails, that could affect future attempts.  Just like a house loses value if it sits on the market for too long, the number of potential buyers of your business is finite. You don't want people labeling your company as "one that just can't sell."

However, it is a good idea to let key people in your team know of the plan confidentially. They will be able to help you get the business ready for a sale. They'll be instrumental in wooing potential acquirers and the context will be useful for them when it comes to making decisions in the general course of business. For example, they might think twice about signing a three-year contract with a supplier if they know an exit is potentially on the cards within 12 months.

8. Get your story straight

Anyone who is interested in buying your company will want to know why you are selling now. You need a good answer to that, and that answer should be positive and forward-thinking. For example, are you looking for an expanded market? More senior support? Tech synergies? Whatever it is, make sure that the answer is honest and makes sense to a potential acquirer.

9. Review your online PR

When a potential acquirer first becomes interested in your company, they will start with some basic online research. It's worth investing in some good PR and SEO services to make sure your company is positioned in a really positive light when they do this. An award-winning, well-known company with a positive brand is always going to be more valuable than an unknown.

10. Prepare yourself emotionally

If you decide to go ahead with the process of selling your company, you need to be forewarned as to the impact it will have on you personally. You've built your business to its current level of success, which means you are emotionally invested in it. It'll be hard not to take it personally when potential acquirers pick out its small faults and ask difficult questions, or try to negotiate the price down at the last minute. And there will be many wobbles on this journey, with loads of opportunities to change your mind. You want to make sure you only pull out of the process for genuine business reasons, rather than driven by your own anxiety.

And if you are successful, you might find yourself without a job right after the deal is completed, since the new owner is under no obligation to keep you employed. You need to make sure you are emotionally resilient enough to weather this process while keeping your business running. The exit process could take months or even years, and it'll require quite a lot of your time. Add to that the pressure to keep the business performing throughout (if performance drops, the value of your company drops) and it should be clear that being mentally prepared is an important part of the process.

The decision to sell your company is a significant one. Stack the odds in your favor by preparing the right way.

How to Choose a POS Cash Register

Posted: 20 Nov 2019 05:00 AM PST

  • A traditional cash register is a basic system used to store cash and record sales transactions.
  • In addition to recording sales and storing cash, a point-of-sale (POS) system has features for inventory tracking, employee and customer management, and integrations for other business programs like your accounting software.
  • POS systems are available at price points that can fit any business's budget and needs, and are the best choice for most small business owners.

Processing sales transactions is an essential part of running a business, and the cash register system you purchase to handle those payments is an important decision. With several register types available, small business owners are often left wondering, "Which is the best cash register system for my business?"

As is the answer with most things in business, it depends.

Whether you own a local retail business or a multilocation restaurant, there is a register system to fit your needs. You can choose from traditional cash registers, point-of-sale (POS) systems and mobile POS systems.

To help you choose the best cash register for your business, we analyzed the different types of cash register systems to determine why you might prefer one option over the other. 

What are the different types of cash registers?

There are several systems available to help you process and manage sales transactions. All cash registers fall into one of three categories: traditional cash registers, POS cash registers or mobile POS cash register systems.

Each option has its own benefits and limitations. The system you should choose depends on your business size, industry, budget, the features you need and your personal preferences. 

Traditional cash register

A traditional cash register, also known as an electronic cash register, is a basic system used to manage sales. Ron Mansfield, sales team lead at Flux Shop Manager, a POS system for automotive repair shops, said a traditional cash register typically comprises an adding machine and a cash drawer. Its capabilities are very basic; it essentially just adds up the cost of items, automatically applies sales tax if required, and generates a total. A cash drawer opens when a receipt is printed.

Mansfield said that, with the increase of newer payment types like Apple Pay and Bitcoin, these systems aren't as popular or practical as they used to be. Since this type of system is a bit outdated, it is not ideal for most businesses.

POS cash register

A POS cash register, also known as a computerized register or a POS system, is more advanced than a traditional cash register and commonly used by small businesses. These modernized systems can do a lot more than just tally totals and print receipts.

"A POS cash register is a computerized register that is connected to a wider control system and will usually have multiple individual registers on the network processing sales and accepting payments," said John Moss, CEO of English Blinds. "POS systems also track inventory and stock levels and report back on these, track sales and sales patterns, and even monitor customer data via loyalty programs."

Depending on which features you need, you can choose a very simple POS system or one that has advanced capabilities and integrates with third-party business applications, like your accounting software and email marketing service. Many small business owners like cloud-based POS systems that run on tablets or from browsers, as they're both affordable and full-featured. A fully integrated point-of-sale system can automate business operations, reduce human error and increase business efficiency.

 

Editor's note: Looking for the right POS system for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.

 

 

Mobile POS cash register

Mobile cash registers, also known as mobile POS systems or mobile credit card processing solutions, have many of the same functions as standard POS systems while offering more flexibility in processing and managing payments, since they run on tablets or smartphones.

"Mobile systems are handheld devices, either a mobile phone or tablet, that come with a card reader for payments," said Mansfield. "Bluetooth printers are occasionally used for receipts, but often receipts are emailed to the customer instead."

William Dawsey, vice president of finance and payment solutions at Chetu, a custom software developer that works with payment service platforms, said that mobile POS solutions can be very versatile in the types of payment they accept.

"Developments in payment technology allow transactions to be held on ubiquitous devices, such as mobile phones, that utilize near-field communication (NFC), Quick Response (QR), barcode configurations, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology," said Dawsey. "Additionally, mobile payment systems can utilize cryptocurrencies and digital wallet services."

Although mobile POS systems are designed to accept credit card payments, they must be paired with a cash drawer if you need to accept cash payments. Mobile POS systems are ideal for mobile businesses like food trucks, retail shops that sell at local events, and restaurants that want to accept payments tableside.

What is the difference between a cash register and a POS system?

The primary difference between a traditional cash register and a POS system is the breadth of functionality that POS systems provide. Traditional cash registers are simple devices used to record sales transactions and dispense cash, while POS systems do much more.

"The key feature of traditional cash registers is that they're stand-alone units that aren't connected to any centralized system, or to other registers within the store or company," Moss told business.com. "They don't provide any reporting features and sometimes can only be operated manually by means of inputting pricing data."

Although you can use traditional cash registers to complete business transactions, they are limited in their capabilities, which is inconvenient for business owners. In addition to recording sales and storing cash, POS systems help business owners manage their sales, product catalog or menu, inventory, analytics, customers and employees. 

"POS systems are fully functioning payment systems that facilitate digital transactions of currency and, as such, adhere to contemporary consumer protection standards, including Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS), EMV, Check 21 and other payment standards," said Dawsey.

As the need to accept digital payments increases, business owners should place high importance on finding a system that complies with current security guidelines to protect their customers' private information.

When would you want a cash register vs. a POS system?

Traditional cash registers are much cheaper than most POS systems, so they may be useful for very small businesses working with a tight budget. Moss said that traditional cash registers are typically only beneficial to business owners who operate one small store with one register and have the time to manually check, monitor, and control things like stock levels.

Additionally, he said, business owners who use a traditional register will also have to know every item's price or have a quick way to determine them. These users will need other ways to determine things like sales trends, popular items and fluctuations.

"As is self-evident, this means that a traditional register is very limited and will only be appropriate for a very narrow demographic of store owners, and aside from the purchase cost saving of a traditional register, they offer few to no advantages and many disadvantages," said Moss.

Dawsey also warns against using traditional cash registers for transactions in a predominantly cashless society, given the shift in fraudulent activity accountability to retailers and small businesses. Even in a business that mainly takes cash, he said, traditional cash registers create data silos, hindering integration with other critical business software.

Conversely, a POS system can be beneficial for businesses of all sizes and will likely be more desirable for your business than a simple cash register. Although the best POS system for your business will depend on your specific needs and budget, several options are available.

If you are working with a tight budget, you may consider starting out with a free POS system, and then switching to a robust paid version when your needs and budget permit it.

"Many small business owners are reluctant to invest in both the purchase cost of a POS system and also the time required to train management and operators in its usage," Moss said. "However, POS systems pay for themselves many times over in a reasonably short period of time when you view the big picture."

Although a POS system may seem like a costly acquisition, it is a worthwhile investment for most businesses. Assess your needs and weigh the pros and cons to determine if a traditional cash register or a POS system is best for your business.
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