/U/Money

The question is, which products or services are worth spending money on?

This blog post sheds light on a few areas of your business you may want to consider investing in, along with tips on minimizing risk and spending your money wisely. Hopefully, it’ll give you some ideas on how to allocate your resources next year. Check them out:

1. Invest in data and analytics

Retail is going to be a lot more competitive in 2015. The best way to compete is to arm yourself with tools that help you better understand your business and customers—and, in turn, make smarter, more profitable decisions.

Consider the story of T-We Tea, a San Francisco-based retailer that sells blended teas and tea accessories. They used Vend to analyze their inventory and identify their top-sellers.

The reports told T-We Tea that, while sales were increasing, their customers were purchasing more of their low-margin items (like accessories), instead of their house-made teas.

To address this, T-We Tea bundled up their top-sellers with their high-margin merchandise and sold those bundles at a discounted rate. This move, along with other tweaks, enabled the business to increase revenues by 300%.

You can achieve similar results by investing in the right reporting tools. Make sure that your point-of-sale and inventory system gives you the necessary intel to know exactly what’s selling and who’s buying from you.

Vend, for example, can generate reports that will show you sales totals for a specific time period, customer group, or supplier. These insights can help you make better merchandising and marketing decisions.

Tip: Are you a Vend customer? You’ll be pleased to know that we have even more powerful reporting features in the works! Read our recent announcement to learn more about Reporting 2.0 and get on the waiting list to try it out.

Also consider investing in foot-traffic tools, such as beacons, to get data on the in-store behavior of your customers. One company that enables this is Swarm, whose deeper analytics will reveal how much traffic you’re getting, what your peak hours are, and which parts of your store are getting the most and least traffic. Swarm can even connect to your POS system so you can link foot traffic data with sales and determine your conversion rates.

All that information could then help you make decisions on staffing, store layout, sales and more.

2. Ramp up your presence in other channels

Omnichannel isn’t just a buzzword. It really is the future of retail. Modern shoppers want the ability to research, browse, and shop across multiple channels and, in 2015, this trend is only going to get bigger.

As IDC’s Miya Knights noted in our post about Retail Trends and Predictions for 2015:

Consumers don’t distinguish between channels. They are channel blind; therefore, they expect the same service, products, offers, and pricing online as they do in-store and on mobile. This is why merchants need to make sure that their retail propositions are consistent across all channels.

Does your business have a presence in every retail channel? If not, find ways to change that. For instance, if you’re a brick-and-mortar store with no online presence, then invest in a website or e-commerce store so you can start selling online.

This also works both ways. If you have an e-commerce site but don’t have a presence in the physical realm, think of ways to reach people offline. Why not set up a pop-up store or hold offline events every once in a while?

If you already have brick-and-mortar and e-commerce covered, look into mobile. Create a smartphone-friendly website or introduce mobile ordering to give customers another buying mode.

That’s what Burger Wisconsin did when it launched mobile ordering with the help of Mobi2Go. Nick Rodgers, field service rep for the restaurant, told the Mobi2Go team, “We realised we were putting road-blocks in front of customers that gave them an opportunity not to order from us. We had always thought people would be prepared to queue up and wait for a great product. This is not true of the modern consumer, which led to a change in thinking.”

3. Invest in mobile devices

A lot of entrepreneurs find it worthwhile to invest in mobile devices such as tablets, which allow you to be productive practically anywhere. Take lifestyle coach Dianne Daniel, who says that the best investment she ever made in her business was her iPad.

“It’s become my go-to-accessory and I carry it everywhere. I can use it to transfer files, access and update my own websites, work on promotional materials, research information for articles and new products, and also keep up with information on forums I belong to that speak to my target market.

Other businesses are investing in iPads to streamline the checkout process and conduct business on the go. The Cheese and Wine Company, for instance, runs its point-of-sale and accounting systems on their iPad when in the shop, and on an iPad mini when they do outside events, allowing them to quickly and portably ring up sales.

Tip: If you already have an iPad (or are planning to invest in one soon), check out our resource piece on the top 20 retail apps to make the most of your iPad.

4. Work on product improvement and innovation

Product improvement and innovation can mean different things. For some retailers, it could mean introducing new products or features. For others, it could be using superior ingredients or materials. The key is figuring out how to make your products better, and investing in the means to do it.

Consider what Stephanie Adams-Nicolai did. Stephanie owns a skincare business and says the best investment she made was to spend extra on top-notch ingredients. She chose to use only the finest-quality oils and herbs in her products, and this move “paid off royally,” resulting in rave reviews and “a great reputation for excellence.”

How can you figure out what improvements to invest in? Look at your sales and product data. Read reviews about your business. And, most important, talk to your customers. Are there any products or features missing from the ones you currently offer? What can you do to enhance your merchandise or store? Take all that feedback into consideration and find ways to make changes.

Minimizing investment risks

No investment comes without some risk, but you can minimize the downsides. Here’s how:

Plan it – Don’t buy into a product or idea just for the sake of it. Run the numbers and see that the investment makes sense. How much will it cost? How will you get the funds to make it happen? What’s your estimated ROI and how long will it be before you see results? These are just some of the questions you should answer before making the investment.

Take advantage of free trials – If you’re investing in a new product or service, ask if you can trial it for free. This will enable you to see if a solution is right for your business without having to shell out cash up front.

Don’t get tied down – Pick a solution that doesn’t come with a long-term contract. For example, if you’re investing in a new POS system, go with a solution that lets you cancel at any time instead of a company that ties you to a contract for many years.

Or, if you’re investing in new products or supplies, opt for a supplier who doesn’t require large minimum orders. That way, you can test items or supplies without investing too much capital in inventory.

Welcome to the world of the super rich…

From superyachts to champagne – get inspiration from the oligarchs on how to submit your receipts this summer!

Email:

Chartering a superyacht for a week certainly doesn’t come cheap at a weekly hire cost of €770,000 for this amazing yacht within a yacht! To speed up claiming this one back, have your yacht broker email the invoice direct to your personal Receipt Bank email.

Mobile:

When spending £330,000 on champagne in the Monaco Billionaire Club, don’t forget to snap and submit your receipt with the Receipt Bank App for iPhone and Android smartphones.

DropBox:

Give your PA access to your DropBox, so they can submit those dog grooming and car valet receipts whilst you’re away.

We won’t all be off to Monaco spending big money this summer but whatever you are doing, all of us at Receipt Bank hope you have a great time!

You’d be hard-pressed to find an industry less affected by technology than finance. Or should we say more affected given its defensive posture? Whether it’s low-level lending or investing, things are still paper-based and run on bankers’ hours. Recently, Sharesight opened an online brokerage account for testing purposes and we had to go into the bank branch to finalise setup. After being pitched a credit card, a home loan, and a savings account, we huffed out after 40 minutes of pain (and still haven’t placed a trade).

A recent article in The Telegraph (UK), “The Silicon Valley of Fear” provides a snapshot on the state of play:

“Finance is one of the few areas that technology companies, which are defined by their almost limitless ambitions, have made few inroads in. Although internet and mobile banking have become must-have services, the vast majority of customers continue to favour the high street brands that have existed for decades. While the internet has changed many aspects of media, retail and communications almost beyond recognition, areas of lending, insurance and investing are unchanged from 20 years ago.” 

Indeed the only areas of improvement we’ve seen are in everyday transaction accounts. Most of the major banks’ mobile apps are very good, as is peer-to-peer money transferring. PayPass is also a convenient development. But in the States, for example, paper cheques are still widely used for recurring payments. Waiting seven days for a cheque to clear puts a bit of a crimp in your cash flow. 

The old-school areas of funds management and financial advice remain the most unchanged save for a few website facelifts here and there. This is a shame and an opportunity squandered. By using technology, investment companies could be targeting young people who are just beginning to invest and tech-savvy folks already in retirement, a.k.a. the “Silver Surfers.”

Scaled advice, for example, holds promise. Our partners at Stockspot have already put something similar in motion. Scaled advice companies offer online financial advice, using algorithms to select an appropriate mix of investments based on an investor’s personal data.

Orwellian this is not. Truth be told these algorithms are very similar to what the average financial planner would recommend based on a risk profiling engine, but a hell of a lot cheaper (fees being the best predictor of future returns). By looking at a list of investment options, scaled advice providers work out the best mix of investments considering salary, returns, risk, fees, and client expectations. If applied to index funds or ETFs, this model is hard to beat for young investors looking to build up core investments.

Specifically, we think this model has huge potential for industry super funds, in which there’s already a direct relationship with the end client and where commissions to intermediaries less of a factor. If clients are given a decent range of investments to choose from, that’s even better. Australian Super’s Member Direct plan being a prime example. They allow clients to invest in any company in the ASX 300 and a range of ETFs. Adding a scaled advice option on top of this would make sense. Paying a tiny per annum fee for a recommended investment mix and automatic rebalancing sounds like a fair deal to us.

An inverse product could be applied to those people who are in retirement. Why don’t asset management companies build a product that would help people find the right “glide-path?” Chances are, people could leave funds invested longer (increasing AUM fees, optimising tax, etc.) versus cashing out their entire nest egg in one go, thereby ending their relationship with the financial institution.

On a visit to a US-based financial planner last year at one of the world’s largest banking institutions (30,000+ financial planners), a Sharesight employee enjoyed the following exchange:

Adviser: “Use Mint.com to organise your spending habit info and then email me your login details, but make sure you send them to my personal email address”

Sharesight employee: “Why? You guys don’t have anything better in-house to track that stuff down?”

Adviser: “Ha! Our technology sucks. Take a look at this screen.”

The adviser proceeded to turn his computer monitor, which showed an interface that looked like MS-DOS.

Instead, this person has shared his Sharesight portfolio with the adviser, thereby eliminating the need to track down his investment holdings all over again. Plus, there’s no need to awkwardly share what should be private login credentials with someone else.

We can’t change the entire industry overnight, but we can empower investors to take an important first step: freeing their portfolio data.

Using Expensify can help significantly reduce the overall time it takes to finish a report. Even better, pair it with an incremental behavioral change and you might actually look forward to submitting your expense report every month (we can dream right?).

Putting Off Something That Sucks – Hey, It’s Natural!

Sit back and think for a hot second: how do you file your expense reports?

According to Leo Babauta from ZenHabits, we spend much of our lives avoiding or putting off our problems. People hate doing expense reports because it’s always been a long and tedious process that involves finding crumpled pieces of paper, manually entering a load of expenses and then triple-checking everything to make sure it’s all correct. As a result, you think of expense reporting as a problem that you want to put off for as long as you can.

At Expensify, we want to make those monthly, hours-long expense reporting rituals a thing of the past. We want to change the way you think about and do expense reports. How?

Try It Out: A Small Change in Behavior

Instead of throwing your receipt in your bag or pocket, use our mobile app and take a picture of the receipt when you get it. In doing so, you are accomplishing four things:

You reduce the amount of clutter in your bag or pocket. A photo of your receipt = paper receipt in trash.
You also minimize the risk of losing the receipt down to zero.
You decrease the amount of time it takes to file expense reports by handling your expenses at the time of purchase instead of filing a pile of them at the end of the month.
Your uploaded receipt can be sorted with categories and tags, which helps you organize expenses automatically.
Once you take that photo, our SmartScan technology will transcribe the receipt for you so you don’t have to enter the information manually. More importantly, by taking a picture of your receipt as soon as you get it, you’re creating a behavioral change that will fundamentally alter the way you do expense reports. This tiny change might seem inconsequential, but the power of habit is an incredibly powerful, subconscious phenomenon that can change the way you do expense reports forever. Repeat this action often enough, and you’ll be able to cultivate a strong expense reporting habit.

Take a Photo, Thank Yourself Later

With this small habitual change, a cursory glance over your expense report at the end of the month is all you’ll need to do before submitting it to a manager. No more high volume, last-minute scanning, organizing, or detailing. How amazing does that sound?

Don’t take our word for it. See what users have to say about how Expensify is changing the way they do expense reports: