Sharing Is Caring About Your Finances

All business is all about one thing, money. More specifically it is about how much money you can make and that means increasing your profits while decreasing your outgoings. It is a tough thing to manage and consider, but manage and consider it you must and that is because most outgoings are on the rise. Rising fuel prices, renting costs per square-foot, taxes, and just about every other aspect that affects a business’s monthly outgoings.

However, the business world has recently looked to the predominantly domestic market that has seen disruptive technologies erupt from a culture of sharing.

Airbnb has been a hugely successful enterprise that allows people to share their homes in order to save money on their mortgage or rent.

Zipcar has revolutionized the world of vehicle renting by introducing the concept of car sharing. You essentially just share cars, meaning you can just use them when you need it. This takes all of the expense out of owning a car so that you just have one when you need it.

The same goes for Uber. It has turned the taxi industry a bit on its head, but amongst that, it offers people an incredibly simple way of sharing the cost of taxi fare without having to mess around looking for a change or dealing with the unfairness of paying more when others don’t have cash.

The chance to share the costs of outgoings has become one of the biggest trends in society, stretching right the way up to business. But how can you effectively increase your profits by sharing? Well, read on and we will tell you exactly how.

Hosting

When we say hosting, we are talking about web hosting and, more specifically, shared hosting. This essentially means that you share the costs of your website by hosting it on a server with other web hosting clients, which means the physical resources – memory, disk space and central processing units – all used on the server are split. But most of all, an external hosting company will provide you with an essential guide to website hosting. This could be invaluable. As such, this has become an increasingly attractive option for small and medium sized businesses because it has the advantage of being low cost and easy to use. What’s more, there will be no resource time wasted on learning how to manage the server or maintain it, and that is because the hosting company you choose will do all that side of things, from managing the server to protecting it, and even upgrading it. It is an absolute win.

Office

Office space is expensive. It is expensive to buy and it is expensive to rent. What’s more, it can be an extremely time-consuming thing to endure, with constant battles to be had every step of the way. There are utility bills, council taxes, office furnishings, and much more, all of which cost money and all of which have to serve two purposes; impressing clients and improving productivity. That’s where sharing an office space seriously excels. Office sharing frees you from all the hoopla that comes with having an office, such as furnishing it with everything you need. They will do all of that for you. Of course, you will need to have all your own hardware, but things like tip-top wireless connections, printing facilities and phone lines with an operator, well all that comes as standard, increasing your professionalism while decreasing your overheads. But if that isn’t enough, then fine, because there are more benefits, much more in fact. There is the fact you can utilize the existing IT infrastructures, be protected by the sophisticated security technology employed by most shared office spaces, give you the flexibility of a short-term lease as well as discounts for longer-term agreements, and give you some of the best networking opportunities you’ll ever come across. The latter is an amazing feature because networking proves to boost revenue. How? Well, shared office space almost always sees high-compatibility rates between tenants, that leads to recommendations, new clients, collaborations, and innovation, all of which pushes progress. Sharing really is caring.

Transport

A lot of businesses these days have a fleet of vehicles or cars that are available for their employees to use. As such, they have started to opt into car share schemes.The reason for this can be summed up in one simple fact: vehicles owned by businesses sit idle for almost 65% of the time. This means that companies are spending a lot of money on tax, insurance and other ownership costs for vehicles they barely use, a waste that could easily be avoided by getting involved in share schemes. Zipcar is obviously at the top of the pile in terms of offering a great service, and that is because it has a business model that sees them rent vehicles out to businesses for as long as necessary, but without all of the upkeep costs associated with ownership. Amazing. Essentially, this means that you can operate a pay-as-you-go system, making car ownership doable without paying the full costs of owning. Insurance is paid for and fuel is covered. You just have to pay an annual membership fee and use their vehicles when it suits you. Like we said, amazing.

The big link between all of these is technology. After all, the idea of sharing has been used for years, centuries even. For instance, hotels renting out their meeting rooms and car hire businesses renting out their cars has been around for ages now. However, these have required physical ownership of an asset. Airbnb and Uber don’t own anything, though, they just use technology to connect people who want to share. 

In short, access is the new ownership. People have come to realize that they don’t actually need a car, they just need mobility. They don’t need to buy a drill, they just need to put a couple of holes in the wall. They don’t need to own an office, they just need a space to work from. This means there has been a huge shift in mentality, and that is beneficial to businesses and individuals.

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