“Make sure you understand the value proposition of your product and service,” Khara says. “How can you add to it? And who is the end customer?

“Some companies might say their end customer is anybody from 20 to 60 years old, but that’s very broad. And if you go that broad, you will waste a lot of money.

“If you can say this is the potential value proposition to these customers, and these customers would sit on these social networks, or these news sites, or these industry associations, and then target them, that’s where your investment needs to be.”

Make sure you’re open all hours

One benefit of the modern world is that you don’t actually have to sit behind your counter or next to your phone to be open for business. You’ve just got to set things up right.

“The customer is king,” Khara says. “You want to go and search for a product in a digital world, you can do it any time you want to, right?

“Make sure you have contact points on websites. If you have a telephone number, hopefully it’s not manned 24 hours a day, but instead you have a form that the customer can fill in to get in touch with you. Make sure your back-end systems are enabled – your email is enabled.

“And I think you have to invest in an e-commerce engine – depending on what business you are in – because that gives customers the flexibility to shop on their own terms, which is what people are looking for.”

Embrace remote working

Back in early 2020, the world started working from home. And many of us found that we liked it.

“My view is that remote working should be embraced – it’s here to stay,” Khara says. “If you do embrace it, it opens up more sorts of people that you can employ. Personally, I have no problem employing people from anywhere in Australia. If somebody is in a different state and is a fantastic person to do the job that I want them to do, it’s fine. ”

There’s evidence that facilitating remote working can be good for productivity as well as making staff happier. And Khara believes the next generation of workers might insist on it.

“People my age are used to the office. But the new generations think very differently. We need to be prepared to enable flexible working for them.”

Get your tech infrastructure right

Your remote workers are going to need laptops. But which ones? “Buying a laptop is really hard,” Khara says. “A laptop could be $300 or $10,000. There’s so much choice.”

And the decisions don’t end there. There is an endless stream of technical specifications that can be make it difficult for a small business to figure out exactly what they need.

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OK, but what if you’re suddenly managing a team of remote workers, do you need to upgrade your server? To what extent do you migrate to the cloud? And who’s going to fix stuff when the computer says no?

“It’s not just about laptops,” Khara says. “It’s about the whole infrastructure. You can reach out to enquire about purchasing new laptops, you can say I need somebody to come and install these laptops in my office, I want somebody to install the software, and I want someone to call if something goes wrong,” Khara says. “It’s sort of outsourcing your IT management team.”

Think about data security

It may be the big data breaches that make the news, but security is also a massive concern for small businesses, Khara says.

“You need to make sure your data is secure, and your customers’ data is secure. And if your workforce is remote, you need to make sure you’ve got the right security tools on your laptops.”

But, as with all tech investments, be wary of going overboard, Khara says. “Speak to a specialist or do your research before jumping in.”

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