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The Success of Business Support Services Largely Depends on Location.

Business Support Services is one of the lucrative small business ideas one can start with low capital investment. Possibly you are not familiar with the term ‘business support services’.

You can equally call it business auxiliary services. In my country, people generally refer to it as business centre services. Whatever the name you call it, it is still the same type of business. You will agree with me that computer has become essential tool in today’s economy. You can rarely do anything relating to business without the use of computer. You will need computer to type, generate invoice, research and carry out other important tasks. However, a large number of people still don’t have a computer of their own. Some people who have computer still find their ways patronising small businesses offering support services. This may be due to lack of electricity for them to power  their systems. Economically, it can also be cheaper going to business support centres. If you want to go into business support services, your offering will depend on the resources you have available to you. Generally business support services include the following:

• Computer type-setting and printing
• Photocopying
• Lamination
• Spiral binding
• Internet services
• Fax sending and receiving
• Scanning
• Proofreading
• Resume writing
• Spreadsheet design etc

How do you start business support services?

Now that you are familiar with the operations or services involved in support business, you can now learn what it takes to start your own. below are the basic steps you need to take to start business support services.

Register your business name

You need to register your business name with the Corporate Affairs Commission. If you don’t want to spend much and you have some free time, you can do the business name registration by yourself. This will save you the money you would have paid to the agent. You don’t need to go for a limited liability company. This will cost you much in term of the registration and agent’s fees. Except you are an accredited agent, you cannot register a limited liability company by yourself.

Register With Tax Authority

It is important that you register your business with relevant tax authorities both at state and federal levels. As an entity, there are certain taxes your business should pay. Also, if you hire staff working for you, you need to deduct tax from their salary which you are expected to remit to the state tax authority. Doing otherwise will be seen as tax evasion. Of course, this has its own legal implications.

Open a Bank Account

It is important that you have a bank account for your business. Even though you have a personal bank account, you still need to open a separate account for your business where you can lodge all the business revenues. Also, you should make all the expenses relating to the business from the company. This makes you more accountable. At the same time, it will be easier for you to source loans from the bank when needed. Furthermore, having a bank account makes it easy for your accountant to prepare the financial statements of the support business.

Planning

Every sound enterprise is built on wise planning. You need to plan your support services business from the start. You can’t afford to start your business support services on a wrong foundation. You must prepare your business plan. Carry out a market research to determine the size of the market, your customers and their needs, your competitors and the location that you consider appropriate for your business.

Choose a location

When it comes to business support services, good location is very vital. You need a location that is easily accessible to your customers. A good location can be a school environment where students will need to type and bind their notes or projects and carry out some research. Also, a place where there is a cluster of small businesses will be a good location for business support services.

Purchase your equipment

The main equipment you need to start your business support services are computers, photocopying machine, printers (both colour and black and white), spiral binding machine, UPS and power generator in case of power failure. You also need office furniture. Depending on your budget, fairly used equipment may be cheaper. this option will save you some initial operational costs. However, you need to be sure that the equipment are in a good condition so that you don’t keep spending money on repairs. As you are beginning to have good cash flow, you can get replace the equipment will new and more efficient ones. If you are buying the used equipment, it is good that you allow expert to help you ascertain the condition of the equipment. The little amount you will pay the expert for rendering a professional advice on the choice of right equipment may save you a lot of headache in the future.

Obtain permits

You need to obtain business permits before you can be allowed to commence your business support services. Of course, you can actually start before making the payment. But if you want to avoid the harassment of Local Government officials, you should pay on time.

Start your business support services

You can now start your business support services. Apart from the choice of a good location, the following are key success factors:

• You must be available to meet the needs of your customers. If they try your place one or two times and you are not available, they may not bother to come at all the next time.
• Good customer service. You relate directly with your customers. Therefore you need to learn how to make your customers happy. You should also render quality services. Use good quality papers and genuine ink for printing.

As your business start growing and you are enjoying more patronages, you can include sales of computer accessories to increase your revenue.

Read Also: How to Increase Sales Without Extra Marketing Costs

SWOT Analysis of Business Support Services

Before you decide on starting a support service business, let’s analyze the business further by using the tool called SWOT Analysis. Essentially, SWOT Analysis helps you look determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. If you can identify your strengths, you will want to maximize them so that you can use them to your advantages. Your strengths are usually internal to you, therefore, you have control over them. On the other hands, your weaknesses are your weak points. They are also internal. That means you can take deliberate steps to overcome them. Opportunities are external factors that can be beneficial to your support service business if you choose to explore them. Threats are those external factors which can mitigate the success of your support business. You don’t have control over them. Therefore, you need to develop a strategy that can help your business succeed with them.

So, what are the possible strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of business support services? Let’s look at them below:

Strengths

The possible strengths are highlighted below:

Low Capital: Business support services do not require much capital to start. This means that you can start small. However, the business is scalable. There is beauty in starting small. You can learn from any initial mistakes you might make without the mistakes having much impacts on the business.

Self-funding: Since you may not require large capital, you may be able to fund the business support services yourself. This puts less pressure on you to return profitability immediately.

Less Overheads: Apart from the rent and electricity bills, you may not spend much money on overhead.

High Margin: Most of what you will be doing is rendering of services. Margin on services are very high unlike some products which only return low margin.

Experience: If you have prior experience on how to run a support business, this will be an advantage to you.

Trained Staff: Even though you are starting small, there is tendency for you to hire people who will be working for you. If you have trained staff in the area of customer service, this will be a plus.

Good Location: Having your support business located in a place where there are high traffic is a strengths. This will guaranty high patronage. As mentioned, a place in a school environment will be ideal for business support services. Also, if you can locate your support business in a place where there are clusters of small businesses, this will boost your revenue as most of them will require your services

Weaknesses

No matter your strengths, you will still identify some weaknesses about your business support services. Some of them may not be obvious to you. However, I will try to direct your attention to possible weaknesses your support business may have and these include the following:

No Competitive Advantage: If you offer what other people that offer business support services do, you may not have a competitive advantage over them. However, good customer services may be a way to distinguish yourself from others.

Less Knowledge: Whatever the business you want to invest in, you need to have adequate knowledge. Nevertheless, in case you don’t have enough knowledge, the weakness can be overcome by investing in training. You may also decide to work in another company providing business support services for some times before establishing your own.

Read Also: SWOT Analysis and How To Use it

Opportunities

As mentioned, these are external factors that can influence the growth and success of your support business. And these include the following:

Exclusivity: If you can find a place where you are given an exclusive right to operate, business support services will be a cash cow for you.

Threats

Change in Policy: change of policies in the locality where you offer your business support services may adversely affect the business. One happens if you wake up one day and you are told that you can no longer operate at your location? This will be a bad news. It may take some times for you to get another good location. Also, you will need to spend money transporting your equipment to the new location.

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