Top 5 Essential Investments For Business Owners

Posted on 29th August 2023

From basic bookkeeping to conducting staff training to navigating negotiations, a day in the life of a startup entrepreneur or seasoned exec is likely to be equally eclectic. One of the most crucial skills you can develop as a business owner, however, is the ability to make well-informed investment decisions. Your company capital is a valuable asset, and allocating funds towards growth opportunities can be ‘make or break’ for your business. So how do you know what’s worth investing in, and what you can do without?

To help, we’ve compiled a list of the top five investments that are sure to be essential for all business owners. Read on to learn how you can spend your capital effectively and propel your enterprise to greater heights.

1. Tailored business insurance cover

As business risks continue to evolve, suitable business insurance should be considered a foundational expense for your enterprise. And when we say ‘suitable’, we mean insurance that provides tailored cover so that your full insurance premium is providing value with minimal waste.

For instance, if you manage a production plant, business insurance can provide cover for your facility as well as all of its equipment. Contrastingly, if you operate a service-based business, securing professional indemnity insurance can help safeguard your company in the event that claims are made against you. Litigation has a knack for disrupting business in a major way, so ensuring that you at least have access to emergency funds amidst legal proceedings can naturally help keep your workplace and staff on track.

2. The right industry talent

Nine times out of ten, your staff are the reason your company is presented with a growth opportunity. In this regard, having the right industry talent can help your business deliver an output to a high enough standard that additional opportunities will start to come your way.

But how do you know what the ‘right talent’ looks like? Hiring is notoriously one of the more difficult parts of being a business owner, after all. And when it comes to hiring new staff, many business owners have found they’ve learnt more from their mistakes than they have from their successful recruits.

Thankfully, there are some universal characteristics to look out for. These include a proactive approach to learning, strong communication skills, resourcefulness, and self-awareness. Hiring managers can tailor their hiring process to help identify these skills in their candidates.

3. Employee training and progression opportunities

It’s essential for business owners to ensure that their workforce have an abundance of opportunities to further themselves. Employment is a ‘give and take’ between employers and their staff. In return for their hard work, your employees should receive respect, remuneration, and recognition – ideally in the form of progression opportunities.

Your employees are also more likely to stay invested in their work if there are additional benefits or rewards in store for them as your company grows. So share the wealth, whether it be as a salary or in the form of an upskilling opportunity, or both!

On a final note for this particular investment, it’s important to keep in mind that employees who are actively learning in their workplaces are more likely to maintain a high level of job satisfaction. And happy employees mean a lower rate of staff turnover too.

4. Project management and analytics tools

As your business grows, you’ll likely start looking into methods for streamlining your company operations. This can be achieved in a number of ways, including hiring more staff to manage your growing workload or investing in business automation tools to cut down manual operational processes.

Project management software and marketing or performance analytics tools can not only make your business run with greater efficiency – it can also help you access data-derived insights to help shape your business development strategies.

Leveraging digital technologies is one of the most effective ways that you can equip your business to thrive in the digital age. But with the sheer abundance of digital tech solutions on the market today, business owners can benefit from being selective with the software they invest in.

Remember that SaaS technologies do come with their own expenses, as do most of the other investments we’ve included in this list. With this in mind, business owners should step carefully when it does come time to sign up to a subscription plan for any of these business technologies.

5. Diverse industry networks

Lastly, all modern enterprises can benefit from being part of a far-reaching community, whether it be your local community or a more dynamic industry network. This isn’t necessarily about having ‘friends in high places’ either, but more about equipping your enterprise with access to trusted advisors.

You could learn a lot from chatting with a trusted financial specialist or even a digital marketing expert. And if you ever need assistance with a legal issue, communicating with a legal professional that’s also an unbiased third party can provide you with some much-needed direction. Your company network doesn’t even need to be industry-specific – in fact the more diverse it is, the better.

There are also benefits to forging strong relationships with other companies within your industry. Some of these benefits include being able to receive referrals from clients that they may not be able to take on due to a conflict of interest. Communicating with some of your ‘competitors’ can also provide you with templates for organising your business investments or implementing business operational procedures. You can learn a lot from watching others, but you can learn more from talking to them.

With these five investments, business owners should find that their enterprises have all the resources it needs to generate commercial success. So take your time to cultivate the right community, workforce, and armada of tools for your business. In securing all the ideal solutions and investments to suit your enterprise, you’ll find that your business can grow organically and sustainably over fiscal years to come.