Category: News

Small and medium-sized firms in Britain still type planning-suite names when cash is the problem that keeps them awake. A new analysis of UK search behaviour finds that demand for CRM and ERP software is running about 6.7 times higher than demand for the tools

Every small business is asked to do more with less. IT hardware rarely tops the worry list, but it should: the computers your team works on are a recurring, often underestimated cost — the purchase price, the electricity they draw, the desk space they occupy

Especially among SMEs, outsourcing is becoming more commonplace; here, Michelle O’Connor – Chief People Officer at Hive Support Services – discusses the benefits of doing so, alongside some of the challenges her team is seeing across the UK business sect

For a long time, payments were treated as a back-end problem: pick a processor, integrate it, move on. That assumption held while everyone did roughly the same thing — card payments, one or two acquirers, a standard checkout. It stopped holding once mark

For twenty years, the small business search story was a story about money. Bigger competitors bought more links, published more content, hired bigger agencies, and occupied the first page. An independent firm could win a narrow local niche, but the broad comme

Think about the last time a company won a significant new customer. The sales process, the demo, the proposal, the negotiation. The onboarding. The first few months of the relationship, where every team is on their best behaviour, every response is prompt, eve

For any small or medium-sized business, sales management is a critical process that directly drives business growth. One of the biggest challenges SMEs face is a lead management process scattered across disconnected tools. A form here, a spreadsheet there, a N

Many small businesses run on spreadsheets longer than they should. In private healthcare, the same pattern often appears inside prescribing operations. At the start, a spreadsheet can feel practical. It helps a small team track patients, prescriptions, payment

A practical guide to the Level 4 AI & Automation Practitioner Apprenticeship Most SMEs have already tried AI. Staff use ChatGPT or Copilot, someone has built a useful prompt, and a few tasks take less time. What usually hasn’t changed is the process

A spreadsheet can serve a small UK brewery when the product range is limited and a few people know what is stored where. As the brewery grows, more batches, seasonal lines, customer orders and storage locations mean more stock information has to be kept accura

One day, you enter your office and find out your director is charged with a criminal offence. The first thing that comes to mind is your company’s reputation and financial position. SME owners spend years gaining a competitive edge. Just in a moment, losing

For many people, their tools are their livelihood. Plumbers. Electricians, carpenters, gardeners, mechanics; without their tools, their jobs become impossible. And if things go wrong, it’s often not a case of simply buying more.