As we enter a new decade, businesses need to think about how to prepare themselves for the ten years ahead. Survival over this period of time will be key to success, and businesses which make it past the five-year mark have more chance of staying afloat. The frightening statistic is that 50 percent of small businesses fail within the first five years, so it is crucial to get off to a strong start.
Having a solid business plan which factors in the essentials and makes preparations for future trends is the recipe for success in the 2020s.
Insurance
If there’s one essential thing that needs to be considered in your business plan, it’s insurance. Companies that opt to go without insurance usually lose out in the long run, as they end up being crippled by lawsuits or hospital bills when an unexpected accident occurs. It’s so easy to get business insurance online, and there are various plans on offer to suit any company’s needs.
There are plenty of unforeseen circumstances that may not be accounted for in the Business plans. These could include a customer tripping over a loose tile in your store, or a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Small businesses simply can’t cope with incidents like these, and having insurance helps to keep business owners’ minds at ease.
Payment Methods
Businesses going into the 2020s need to think about what the emerging payment trends of the future are going to be. The 2010s saw the growth of a vast number of new payment platforms and alternative ways to perform transactions. PayPal was perhaps the most notable success story, and the system which was a subsidiary of eBay for most of its history branched off on its own in 2015. Its stature has risen dramatically since then, and now it can be used in 200 countries. The platform offers users a trusted and secure way of performing transactions, but there are some downsides such as the high cost of international transfers.
The way PayPal helped some people move away from traditional forms of payment such as VISA and MasterCard could have prepared them for the next stage in the evolution of online payments. Many economists are expecting cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to boom in the next ten years, as we continue the search for a global currency for internet users. The digital currency solves the problem of high fees for international payments, as it operates independently from banks.
Businesses starting up now need to consider how much focus they will put on future payments. Being ahead of the curve is good, but if bitcoin’s mass usage never comes to fruition, it could be detrimental to businesses which bet heavily on the currency now. For this reason, it may be most sensible to offer a combination of traditional payments along with payment systems of the future. This is something that a number of businesses have chosen to do, and it is a good way to attract a large customer base.
Enhanced Technology
If you cast your mind back to the technology that we used at the turn of the last decade, it has come an exceedingly long way since that time. Smartphones, in particular, have advanced massively, and the market has grown exponentially. Sales of the original iPhones were slow, but they sparked a lucrative industry. By 2018, revenue from the entire smartphone sector was worth $522 billion.
This underwhelming start which became such a huge success has offered hope to people who believe in virtual reality. Early expectations for VR were high when the first devices hit the market in 2016. But the hype faded away and the technology has yet to take off. This could be about to change, though, as older generations of headsets such as the Oculus Rift become more affordable. Projections see VR blowing up around 2023, suggesting that businesses should look into ways to incorporate the futuristic platform.
The new decade is likely to bring about a number of fresh challenges for businesses, but also a lot of lucrative opportunities. Jumping on emerging trends first and being covered in case of emergencies is key for start-ups planning ahead of 2020.
