Admin

The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Maximum Efficiency

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Small business owners wear many hats and juggle numerous tasks all day, every day. With so much to do, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and struggle with productivity. However, implementing a few simple strategies can boost your efficiency and help you get the most out of every workday. In this blog post, we’ll explore practical tips and tricks that can help you achieve maximum efficiency and get ahead of the curve in the competitive world of small business. Whether you run a retail store, a consultancy or any other type of small business, these strategies will work for you.

Get Organised: The first step towards increased efficiency is to declutter your workspace. A tidy working environment reduces stress and distracts you from looming piles of paper. Set up a filing system for important documents, store items in their designated places, and allow ample storage space. In addition, organise your digital workspace and consider utilising project management software. This way, you’ll have a clear overview of your tasks and deadlines, and you can easily delegate work to team members if you have them.

Prioritise Tasks: One of the biggest challenges small business owners face is knowing where to focus their energy. Identify the most critical tasks that need your immediate attention and deal with them first. Create a daily to-do list and break each task into smaller, more manageable steps. Not only will this increase your productivity, but also help you maintain focus throughout the day.

Employ Time-Management Techniques: Good time management is about making the most of your working day. For example, you could use the Pomodoro method -a technique where you work for 25 minutes and take a five-minute break between sessions, then repeat- to combat procrastination and distractions. You can also make use of tools like RescueTime and Trello to track your productivity, identify your most productive times, and eliminate time-wasting activities.

Automate Processes: Automation is a fantastic way to streamline your workload and save time. Use software to handle administrative tasks like sending invoices, scheduling appointments, and responding to emails. This automation gives you more time to focus on growing your business, networking, and other high-level tasks that require your attention. You can also automate marketing and sales processes by using chatbots, social media scheduling tools, and email automation tools, among others.

Use Outsourcing Services: Outsourcing frees up your time and resources so that you can work on your core competencies, reduce costs, and increase efficiency. Outsource administrative tasks such as bookkeeping, social media marketing, and content creation to reliable and experienced agencies to further streamline your business operations. This way, you can focus on the essential aspects of your business, and the day-to-day tasks are handled efficiently by experienced professionals.

Running a small business is often a delicate balancing act, more so if you’re a first-time entrepreneur. With so many tasks vying for your attention, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed. However, by implementing the above strategies, you can increase your efficiency, reduce stress, and grow your business more. Just remember to keep the end goal in sight, stay organised, and make the most of each day. With focus, consistency, and perseverance, you can achieve, and even exceed, all your business goals.

T: 01903 688789 E: makeithappen@mbsmih.com

Are You Spending Too Much Time On Admin?

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No matter what field your expertise lies in, a common ground for businesses always seems to be a lack of time. But could it be that we’re all just dedicating the hours to the wrong things? Research shows that SME owners and executives spend a weekly average of 16 hours carrying out administrative tasks and duties – almost half of the average working week! Those extra hours could be crucial for growth and productivity, and yet we’re spending them on tasks most of us don’t specialise in. Of course, we’re not suggesting you start neglecting your admin duties (after all they are a vital part of any business). However, outsourcing those tasks to a trained team could give you back that precious time.

What tasks does admin cover?

There are many duties that fall under administration – each varying from business to business. Most of the workloads cover clerical tasks like organisation, communication as well as maintaining internal databases. In short, admin is often the backbone of your business operations – ensuring everything runs smoothly.

Will outsourcing admin cost more?

Quite the opposite! In most cases, outsourcing admin is far cheaper than expanding your workforce internally. It allows your management to utilize specialist, third-party employees instead of delegating admin duties to your existing team members. This results in higher office productivity, promoting business growth, and sales. Finally, since you’re only paying for the exact time spent per task – you’re cutting down the additional costs of an average salary. Lowering the costs of a salary, recruitment and training means the additional benefits of an extra budget to put back into your business.

How will this benefit my business?

The best use of your time is doing what you’re good at, and freeing up those extra, weekly hours can make a ground-breaking difference to business growth. Giving your undivided attention to core tasks, helps you to focus and produce higher quality services for your clients – ultimately increasing sales and reach. It’s easy to get lost under all the admin, there always seems to be a time pressing task. But to move your business forward you must invest your time wisely – into projects with more prospective potential. 

If you’d like to find out more or if daily admin is getting you down, reach out to our team. Our administrative services are always tailored to suit you and your business’ needs, offering efficiency and a helping hand. Get in touch:  

E: makeithappen@mbsmih.com   T: 01903 688789

We’re Hiring!

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We are constantly growing and always looking for new individuals to join our expanding team. All our roles are flexible and diverse, please see our latest advert below:

Role: Admin, PA and Accounts Guru

Hours: Varied and flexible

Rate: To be discussed – Varies dependant on the client’s contract choice

Set up: Self-employed, working from home. A secure laptop and insurance will be required. Team support, training and systems’ access is provided.

Details: MOMENTUM is a small successful growing company, that works with clients all over the UK, supporting them and their businesses by providing remote back office services. There are currently 7 team members, and all of us work from home. Even prior to the pandemic we have always been a remotely based business. We have been running for almost 9 years and during this time have become expert communicators and collaborators using the many digital tools available to us. We provide Admin Support, Digital Marketing (inc. Social Media), Accounts, Credit Control, HR and many more services to small and medium sized businesses.

We are looking for a motivated, organised and customer focussed person to join our team to help provide our varied PA, Administration and Accounts services. The role will suit someone with proven strong administrative skills, who is resourceful, self-motivated and confident.

All aspects of the role will involve supporting numerous clients and demand an ability to quickly understand changes and new requirements. Flexibility is extremely important.

Whilst we all work remotely, we are a close team and communicate with each other constantly. We’ll provide support and training on our internal systems and processes and you’ll always have someone to help you or bounce ideas off of!

If you feel this is an ideal role for you, please send an email, with your CV and details, to Mikki at makeithappen@mbsmih.com

5 Reasons Why You Should Be Using A CRM

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Looking after your customers is key to the success of any business. In today’s era of ever evolving technology we now have tools to help us do this in an efficient and user friendly manner without the use of client record cards, manual diaries, Excel spreadsheets or just your memory! Customer Relationship Management databases (CRM’s) have been around for some time and provide a number of benefits to any growing business.

Customer Engagement – CRM’s track and manage all interactions with prospects and customers  and flag opportunities that might require additional nurturing or follow-up. You can even link your email account to your CRM so you will have real time data as to when your customer or prospect was last contacted.

Customer Segmentation – CRMs allow you to sort contacts by the data that you’ve collected about them. You can filter by location, company size, or deal stage. This allows you to target specific customer sets and increase conversion rates.

Efficient Communication – CRMs offer a selection of customisable, ready-to-use email templates, proposals, quotes, invitations, newsletters, marketing campaigns etc. and allows you to easily select the customers you want to send them to and the email address you want them sent from. For marketing campaigns or communications with any large groups of customers, the CRM will also provide you with delivery and engagement metrics allowing you to see how many customers unsubscribed, opened the email, clicked any links in the content, were bounced back etc.

Automated Reports – CRM’s allow you to generate automatic reports to maximise your time and assist you in making strategic business decisions. You can create your own suite of reporting such as conversion rates, sales forecasting, customer contact, source of leads, and goal progress reports to name but a few. 

GDPR Compliance – CRMs can obtain and document your contacts’ permission to store and use their personal details, send automatic notifications to all new contacts informing that you would like to store their data, and manage your customers’ subscription to email communication preferences. This will ensure you are compliant with GDPR requirements.

If you think a CRM would benefit your business, there are a number of systems out there to choose from and we’d be very happy to chat through our experience and ideas with you. Just get in touch! 

E: makeithappen@mbsmih.com   T: 01903 688789

Passing The Baton – 45 Tasks You Could Outsource

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When you pass tasks that you are finding time consuming on to your virtual assistant, it leaves time and space for your company to grow. Your focus can return to what you do best – running your business. You may not have been aware of the incredible number of tasks that you could outsource, so here are just some of them that we offer to give you an idea…

VOICEMAIL CHECKING – Does your phone get full of voicemails? We can keep you up to date.

APPOINTMENT MAKING – Conducting calls to existing and prospective clients to make appointments.

DIARY MANAGEMENT – Keeping you and your diary up to date.

EMAIL MANAGEMENT – Sorting, cleansing and replying on your behalf.

DATA INPUTTING – We can help you keep your business records up to date and accurate.

SERVER AND ONLINE FILING – It’s easy for your server and online files to get out of hand. We can make sure that they stay clear and consistent throughout.

PREPARE TRAINING MATERIALS – Running training events or meetings can be time consuming with the amount you have to prepare. Whether that’s PowerPoint presentations or questionnaires, we can help.

COMPILING MEETING MINUTES – Attending meetings can take huge chunks of time out of your day, so the last thing you want to be doing is compiling meeting minutes, which can take up even more of your time. We can compile meeting minutes for you.

LEGAL FORM COMPLETION – We can take the process of completing necessary legal forms away from you by taking care of this remotely. One less thing for you to worry about.

FORM CREATION – Forms can be useful tools to gather information. We can help create these for you.

PREPARING PRESENTATIONS – Preparing an engaging, well laid out presentation can take time. Our malicious attention to detail and keen eye for design can take care of this for you.

DATABASE CLEANSING – Keep your database free of irrelevant documents with our database cleansing service.

EXCEL DATABASE CREATION – We love a good spreadsheet! If you need one created, look no further than MOMENTUM.

REPORT CREATION – Need daily, weekly or monthly reports but don’t have the time in your day to create them? Pass the task on to us.

 DOCUMENT CREATION – Need a specific type of document created, but not sure how to do it, or simply don’t have the time? Let us help you out.

ONLINE RESEARCH – Collecting data via the internet.

CUSTOMER RESEARCH – Gathering information about your customers’ needs and preferences.

KEYWORD RESEARCH – Research into keywords that people enter into search engines relating to your business.

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS – An assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. 

TWITTER SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT – We are experts in the ‘twittersphere’. We’ll help you stay connected sharing relevant, frequent and direct messages to your followers. We help clients in a number of industries reach their target market in 280 characters or less!

FACEBOOK SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT – Our skilful social media gurus can help you gain organic page likes on this popular social networking site, making sure details of your offerings and expertise reach prospects and existing customers.

LINKEDIN SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT – We can help you reach even more businesses and contacts. Let us start building your business presence on LinkedIn by creating your Company Page, attracting followers, and posting regular updates to drive engagement.

PINTEREST SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT – Pinterest is a great social network for sharing details of your images and videos – including links, making this the perfect platform for us to promote and visualise your products and services.

BLOG CREATION – Helping you to get regular messages and insightful content to your online audiences.

PROOF READING – We can read over everything you’ve written, checking for errors and ensuring your grammar and tone are consistent.

COPYWRITING – If you’re creating or updating a website, we can help by creating bespoke keyword focussed copy.

EMAIL CAMPAIGNS – Targeted messaging, monthly updates, one off communication and much more.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION – We can help you to achieve high ranking search results.

CONTACT DATA – Turning your business cards and other contacts lists into functional databases.

NEWSLETTERS – Regular digital communications providing key updates and marketing opportunities.

BUSINESS LISTINGS – Getting your business noticed and supporting your SEO strategy.


CREDIT CONTROL – Building relationships with your customers to improve your cashflow.

REDUNDANCY AND TUPE – We can provide specialist employer advice on making employees redundant, dealing with business transfers, or changes to service provisions within your business.

DISCIPLINARY AND GRIEVANCE – We can support you with developing a disciplinary or grievance procedure, or to provide advice and support when managing an employee disciplinary or grievance case.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT – We can support you throughout your organisational changes to allow you to focus on your day to day business.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT – We can provide you with specialist advice or training on managing performance, and we can support you with developing an effective performance appraisal system.

RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION – We can help you with writing job specifications, job descriptions, recruitment selection frameworks and support you through the selection procedure. We can provide job offer paperwork and contracts of employment, and even support you on your induction procedure.

CONTRACTS AND EMPLOYEE HANDBOOKS – We can review your existing contracts, policies and procedures to ensure they are up to date with current legislation requirements. We can also tailor our templated frameworks and policies to suit and protect your business.

HEALTH AND SAFETY POLICIES – We can review your existing policies and procedure to ensure they are up to date with current legislation. We can also tailor our templated frameworks and policies to suit and protect your business.

INVOICE CREATION – Creating and generating your invoices for your customers and clients.

SENDING INVOICES – Ensuring your invoices are sent regularly and on time.

CASHFLOW FORECASTING – Ongoing predictions based on historical data.

 PROJECT MANAGEMENT – Planning, organising, staffing, leading or directing and controlling your project.

 PROJECT SUPPORT – Assisting with any aspect of your projects, and supporting managers.

 EVENT MANAGEMENT – Contacting and liaising with suppliers, gathering information needed for the events and finding the best prices. Planning, organising and managing your events – what, when, where, how, who. Researching venues and suppliers, finding the best venues and suppliers to fit with your event and budget.

We pride ourselves on adding value to every single task that we undertake. Whether you need your admin organised and taken off your hands, a virtual PA to keep you and your business on track or more substantial support with your HR, projects or events, we are here to make sure you can make it happen..

E: makeithappen@mbsmih.com  /  T: 01903 688789.