With businesses of all shapes and sizes finding themselves on the unpleasant end of the global staffing shortage, management needs to take a proactive approach to retain staff by evolving with workers' needs.

The freedom offered by remote or hybrid office solutions has made employees wiser about finding a work environment that suits their personal needs while cutting down on the daily commute and avoiding unnecessary office politics.

The last few years have been traumatic for many businesses. Between COVID-19 restrictions and rising expenses, it seems like there is always something that needs fixing or adapting to as businesses fight to survive in a struggling economy.

If you’d like to take your SME to the next level and move from just survival and help it to thrive, here are five top tips to ensure you are leading the way in your sector.

Accountants and accountancy firms are an essential part of the business landscape. They make a significant contribution to the efficiency and effectiveness of the businesses they service. This means that accounting firms themselves need to continually find ways to refine and improve their own systems and processes. This in turn enables them to function optimally, meet the changing needs of their clients, and grow their client bases.

Digital transformation is fundamental to achieving this and elevates the role of accountants. It does this by removing the tasks that add little value and allowing them to focus on those that do, empowering them to achieve more within their speciality. Process automation, data management, reporting, and analytic insights all contribute to better communication with clients, simpler processes, and improved cash flow, which are all critical to keeping a business running well.

In 2020 and 2021, businesses around the world had to spend money on IT to enable their work to continue remotely or through online customer engagement, whether they were planning to or not. With so much money already having been spent on IT, some small and medium-sized business leaders may be wondering if it’s time to reduce or simply maintain their IT budgets, but we think that would be a mistake.

The world has changed since COVID-19 and there’s no going back. We all know this and have heard it over and over again. But despite this, many businesses have yet to reflect these changes in their IT budgets and strategies. We think 2022 is the year that many will begin to prioritise IT, recognising that it can be a differentiator and, in fact, the backbone of a business.

We believe that a good IT strategy should be adaptive and continuously updated, coordinated and aligned with business strategies, and documented (not something held in the head of one person).

Every business has to be sensitive to costs, but focusing only on finding a lower rate is not necessarily the best way to ensure you get the best value.
Value goes beyond price – it’s about weighing the benefits against the cost. Sometimes that’s hard to do, however.

There are many reasons to consider partnering with a Managed Services Provider (MSP) for your business’s IT needs, but before signing a contract, there are several things to consider.

Liza Weschta, Cybersecurity Product Manager at Numata Business IT, received a legitimate-looking COVID-19 phishing scam/ business email compromise (BEC) attack.

The email looks as though it comes from the Gauteng Health Department regarding COVID-19 vaccination, complete with the legitimate logos and email signatures one would expect to see in an official provincial government email.

Scammers are always looking for new ways to breach security measures as they are improved. While more platforms are adding support for Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), scammers have now found a way around it, called consent phishing.

Attackers usually start by registering an app with an OAuth 2.0 provider, such as Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory. The attacker will make sure the app looks trustworthy. They might use the name of a well-known product, or an association with a particular respected brand.

Companies of every shape and size are re-evaluating the way their employees work. Forbes recently reported on several major UK companies anticipating a move to the hybrid model, where employees divide their time between the office and home. Nedbank, one of South Africa’s biggest banks, also announced its intentions to only have 60% of its staff on its campuses on any given day. In fact, Gartner estimates that by 2022, 25% of the global knowledge workforce will choose their home as the primary workplace, and 45% of the workforce will be working from home two to three days per week.