As business owners and leaders in your organisation, do you want to survive or thrive? I’m sure you already know the answer. But what if I tell you that creating an unfair advantage in your industry is easier than you think.
The modern workforce has changed a lot over the years, but a lot of SMBs haven’t kept up with the times.
What do I mean with this?
As you already know, running a business in this age is difficult. Growing it is an even bigger undertaking. But the main reason for that is most SMBs direct their resources on the wrong things.
They focus on putting out daily fires instead of investing in the future. They tend to rely on outdated software and hardware to run the business, causing more inefficiencies.
The modern workforce is more productive, have low security risk, and focused on their customers.
If your business doean’t have these three qualities, you will have a hard time competing in the market.
There are a lot of challenges facing Kiwi businesses, but they can be categorized into four groups:
- More competition than ever
- Barriers to entry getting lower
- Consumers expectations and buying behavior has changed
- More and more cyber threats
In this post, I’ll share the four challenges all businesses face today, and the only way to overcome them is by modernizing your workforce.
Almost all industries face the same challenges:
- A lot of competition
- Low barriers to entry
- Increasing consumer expectations; and,
- Looming threat online
But most New Zealand businesses aren’t like this. They spend their limited resources fighting fires everyday, dealing with corporate politics, and other internal issues.
4 Challenges Facing New Zealand Businesses Today
Challenge 1: More competition
According to the latest statistics from the government, there were almost 40,000 more businesses in 2018 than in 2017. This growth was spread across all industries. So, whether you’re in the manufacturing, construction, retail, and services sector, the fact remains that competition is high and is only continuing to grow.
Challenge 2: Low barriers to entry
In addition, barriers to entry have become so low that almost anyone can start offering the same services as you. Technology plays a big role in this because as tech grows and matures, the more it can provide. And at the same time, it also becomes cheaper.
Today, you can create a website in a few hours without knowing how to code. You just drag-and-drop things. 10 years ago, you’d have to hire a developer or spend hours learning how to code and do it yourself.
This just shows that technology is making it easier for anyone to start a business (and therefore compete with you) at a fraction of the cost.
Challenge 3: Increasing consumer expectations
The third challenge NZ businesses face is that consumers are more demanding than ever. Because of the internet, buying behavior has changed. People don’t like to wait. They want everything right now. This affects your business greatly if you can’t deliver your products/information immediately.
Challenge 4: Looming threat online
Cyber security is all over the news. In May this year, the popular graphics design software Canva experienced a data breach resulting to over 139 million users compromised.
As more and more people use the internet for their daily needs, these kinds of breaches will continue happen. That’s why it’s important to stay vigilant online.
What’s Next
These are challenges that every business need to overcome if you want to thrive, and not just survive in your industry. As business leaders, you need to do something about it now.
With more competition, low barriers to entry, increasing customer demands and loom threat online, status quo is not the solution.
If your business is not prepared to address these challenges, you’ll have a hard time competing. Head on over to the next chapter to find out why you should use Microsoft Teams to help you overcome these challenges.
