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How to Protect a Small Business During an Unstable UK Economy
If you read the article “The UK economy 'limped' into the new decade as Britain heads towards Brexit” featured on Business Insider’s website in January, you would know all about how the UK economy fears recession, and just how unstable the economy is at present. What does all of this mean for your business? Should you be worried? The Guardian has also featured some pretty telling statistics on how things like Brexit, inflation, Coronavirus outbreak, imports, and exports are affecting the UK economy. What most businesses see soon is business disruption, and that’s never good for the bottom line. While it is never a good idea to leap straight into panic mode, there are measures that all entrepreneurs should take to ensure
that they can protect their business during tough economic times (not just during the Brexit transition).
3 Smart Growth Strategies to Protect Your Business in Tough Economic Times According to statistics released by PWC, the projected GDP growth in the UK in 2019 was 1.2%. In 2020, the projected UK GDP growth is just 1%. While that might not seem like much, 0.2% is a rather large chunk of change in the greater scheme of things. What can you do to protect your business from possible recession and tough economic times? Here are 3 things you can start doing right now:
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1.
Make Customer Retention a Top Priority
When the economy struggles, most client lists start to shrink. You might find that your regular customers start to fall off the map. You might think that you need to get new customers, but that’s not really the solution. It costs more to acquire new customers than it does to retain existing ones. And there’s also the simple fact that if you manage to boost customer retention by just 5%, you can experience an increase in profits of between 25% and 95%. How? You might be wondering how you can boost customer retention. It’s simple. Form a personalised relationship with your customers. Personalise emails and messages sent out to them. Provide them with educational content that inspires, educates and helps (maybe how-to pieces). Make sure that your customer services agents are enthusiastic, kind, and attentive. When the economy starts to suffer, customers who are extremely happy and feel catered too will stick around far longer.
2.
Boost Cash Flow
In tough times, it’s not just customers that feel the pinch. You will undoubtedly feel it too. Your business still needs to operate though and you can’t use all of your free cash flow to keep things running. If you start dipping into your cash flow, soon it will dry up and you will find yourself in a tough financial pickle. The trick is to boost your cash flow by acquiring external funding to pay for other business projects and expansion. How? How do you boost your cash flow? Short term loans are a great option for those who want a little bridging cash to boost cash flow, free up some funds for growth-inspiring projects and make it through to the other side of tough economic times. Short term loans don’t
have to spell years of debt for you either. If you are worried about having a poor credit score during economic recession and concerned about how that will impact on a loan application, don’t be overly worried. Leading short-term lenders offer unsecured loans even to those with a less than perfect credit score. What’s the catch? The catch is a slightly higher interest rate than the high street bank or a secured loan provider.
3.
Be Innovative and Flexible – Change with the times
Some would call this “perfecting your core product”. Others would call it being dynamic. Whatever you like to call it, being innovative and ensuring that you are flexible enough to change with the times (good and bad), means you will retain more customers and continue making sales. How? You can do this by focusing on providing your customers with the same service excellence and a product that is honed to suit a smaller budget. Budgets won’t be pinched forever, so make sure that you have a backup plan of a product that can be enjoyed by those on a budget, while the recession lasts. Perhaps it’s a smaller version of their current most-popular product or maybe it’s the same service, just with a few more self-service features. You really will have to brainstorm this one.
Last Word Ensuring that your business is prepared for whatever the economy may throw at it is tough. Instead of simply revelling in the good times and successes, make sure that you set aside some time to plan effectively and strategically for the possible tough times. And that’s the best way to protect your business in an unstable economy.
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1. Tell us a little about your work journey to date I graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University, receiving my first degree from the Philosophy Department and my Masters’ from the State Management
Department. After starting my career in the HR department of Merloni Elettrodomestici, a network of large international companies, I then worked at Artcom Worldwide Partners, an advertising agency.
In 2007, I joined IT company CROC and went on to become a corporate culture team leader after three and a half years. After being promoted to Chief Human Resources Officer some years later, I was appointed Deputy CEO for Human
Questions & Answers by Polina Khabarova from CROC
Resources in 2014. Now, I am also Chief Transformation Officer (CTO), in charge of
business transformation, which includes changing corporate culture and adopting new approaches to business development.
Over the last two years, I have ranked first among HR directors in the Russian
information technology sector according to the Russian Managers Association and Kommersant Publishing House. I am particularly proud of my efforts to
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address the underrepresentation of
Therefore, it was challenging to deliver
women in business and to have the
complicated content and negotiate
opportunity to initiate a discussion on
complex issues as a woman. I had to work
gender imbalance in order to help the
hard to overcome common gender
tech industry, both in Russia and globally,
stereotypes and I am grateful to other top
become a more creative and fair
managers who believed in my ideas and
environment.
supported me a lot to perform the change. I have been lucky enough to have worked
2. What have been your biggest challenges as a
in a healthy teamwork environment, with colleagues and friends supporting my aspirations.
woman working in the male dominated Tech Industry?
3. How have things changed
I would say I met my main professional
for the better for women in
challenge when I decided to leave my
tech over the last few years?
comfort zone of HR functions and broaden my responsibilities with those of Chief Transformation Officer. I spent a few years leading the transformation process within the company and then, once we saw positive results, I started sharing CROC experience within the Russian market.
Many people start to see and address gender imbalance in our industry, as this very industry will eventually benefit from a fairer approach. However, the reality imposes its restrictions, caused by many stereotypes, and I would bet that we need
two more generations before the true impact of current developments are fully realized – 20 years at least. Once
On the one hand, nothing significant
accepted, these changes will lead to the
happened after my new appointment as I
creation of a new cultural code.
kept working in the same company within the same team. On the other hand, as a CTO you interact mainly at the businessowner level, where 90-100% of employees are usually middle-aged males, who can be sometimes biased.
CROC has been always making its working
environment comfortable for everybody, while also establishing smart and creative platforms where men and women can work together. Our mixed project teams
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work in a friendly atmosphere, with everyone having equal opportunities to
5. What advice would you
develop skills and secure promotion.
offer for young women
Furthermore, almost half of our Board of
considering working in the
Director members are women.
4. Who has been your biggest source of inspiration?
tech industry? Simply do your best to become a good professional. Today, particularly in IT, there are less gender barriers if a person works hard and effectively. Compared with other industries, tech and consulting companies
Every day I meet and work with all kinds
are pioneers in innovation, showing great
of interesting people who inspire me. I
desire to help women develop their
find inspiration in their success and can’t
careers in traditionally male dominated
help wondering about how different they
areas. I also recommend using current and
all are. That’s why one of my personal
upcoming opportunities to join tech
KPIs is to network with external experts at
enterprises or to even launch your own
least once a month, whether via a
tech-related business. It is practically
conference, round table, skype call, or
impossible to always be your best, so be
messenger chat. I also try to stay up-to-
ready to experience ups and downs.
date on Russian and foreign business
Finally, always remember that you are your
community trends. If I come across an
own biggest challenge – give it a try!
interesting speaker, I’ll get in touch and
have a talk.
About the Author
In addition, my mother has always been a
Polina Khabarova is CROC's HR Director,
perfect role model for me – at 35 she
contributing to the company's strategic
already owned one of the first recruiting
development and being responsible for
companies in Russia. Therefore, since
supporting and supervising all HR
childhood, the idea of a successful
department practices, including staff
business woman has been the norm to
training and education, recruitment,
me, not something out of the ordinary.
human relations, corporate culture, and internal communications.
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Nevergi veupona dr eam becaus eof t het i mei twi l lt ake t oaccompl i s hi t . Thet i mewi l lpas s anyway. Ear lNi ght i ngal e www. s andr ahi ns hel wood. com
Six Ways You Can Prevent Yourself from Burning Out Malik Muhammad There’s a school of thought in today’s business culture that promotes instant gratification with an emphasis on immediacy. This is the sort of culture where most emails have these terms as their subject: ‘Requires an immediate response’, ‘Urgent’, ‘ASAP’ or the other classic ‘High Priority’.
commitments. Then you get to your personal life. Whether you are a business owner, highly skilled person, manual labourer, waiter, student, actively seeking employment, exemplary social worker or visionary educationalist; such demands can deplete your energy if they remain unchecked.
You are bombarded with impractical timelines, unrealistic key performance indicators, unnecessary paperwork, useless reports and this is before getting to interpersonal staffing issues, the challenges around teamwork and concerns over unsatisfactory pay.
Operating a business merely raises the stakes in the level of responsibility because other people rely on your ability to make the right decisions on a consistent basis. Your burn out or lack of performance directly impacts the team of experts with whom you are building your business (I say experts as a given because your business is
You also have a social life plus other family
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only as progressive as the people you employ/build with). Burn out or burning out is a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Its three primary characteristics are: reduced professional efficacy, increased mental distance from one’s job including feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job and feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion (see World Health Organisation 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD11) for a more detailed analysis). Burn out is not a medical phenomenon which means you can actively do something to prevent it. Here are the six ways we hinted at in the beginning of this article:
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Develop a nightly routine and a morning routine as these set the tone for how your day ends and how it begins.
Prioritise according to common sense - not based on what others deem important. The emails marked ‘urgent’ etc. will always be that way in the eyes of the sender. As the receiver,
you must action them in line with your overall agenda because you can’t do everything all the time.
3
Take a daily lunch break away from the work/project environment. If you claim to be too busy then you need to be more organised. Even a car overheats when driven for too long. Recalibrate your mind and your recharge your energy each day in that allocated time.
4 5
Light exercise, healthy eating, drink water, spend time with friends & family and enjoy a hobby.
Engage in continuing professional development. Attend seminars that have nothing to do with your expertise, do online courses, download audiobooks/podcasts or make the effort to attend industry-specific social engagements.
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Create 10mins every day to read something of personal interest.
About the Author Malik Muhammad was raised and educated in Jamaica, read law in London and the author of ‘Empower Yourself to Succeed’. He created The Empowerment Mastery System to influence, help and inspire businesses to cultivate their visions in a specific time frame. Malik enjoys vegan cooking and quad biking. He is an after-dinner speaker, event host and convenes empowerment seminars internationally. LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter | Website
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Manual Standing Desks: The Answer to Better Health? Studies prove that a sedentary lifestyle can contribute to major illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. Doctors have been recommending people to stand and walk more to increase their metabolism and blood circulation. However, since most people sit down for more than eight hours in the office, increasing physical activity at work can be a challenge. The perfect solution is the manual standing desks that provide the flexibility of working while sitting or standing. The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) initiated the “Stand Up To Work” research project to assess whether the usage of adjustable workstations (AWS) could result in improvements. The study took one year and Dr. Elizabeth Garland, who led the team, reported the following statistics on participants with provided adjustable workstations: • •
•
65% reported improvement in overall health and better concentration Since then, more companies are using “sitstand desks” (SSD) to improve employee health and wellness.
HOW SHOULD ONE CHOOSE A STANDING DESK? There are two kinds – electric and manual standing desks. The advantage of manual desks over electric, aside from being more affordable, is their ability to change height without power cords, electronic equipment, or motors. However, they are slower and may require more effort from the user to adjust heights. Various methods can adjust manuallyoperated desks: •
88% found their standing desks convenient to use 65% were more productive
• •
A crank mechanism located in the corner of the table Locking pins in the table’s legs Tools like gas-strut and spring-loading
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•
Counterbalance to glide up and down
plans to install a “treadmill desk,” the desk may need a higher height.
With electric standing desks, however, adjustment is powered by a motor that easily adjusts height at the press of a button. They are usually more expensive. If you have decided to purchase manual standing desks, here are some considerations:
Safety and ease of use
Weight capacity
As with any new tool, there are guidelines in their usage:
Check for the specified weight limit. Choose those that can handle the heavier weight, especially for crank-adjusted tables. It may be more challenging to turn the crank if the load is heavy.
Speed in adjusting the height
The desk should be quiet and safe to adjust.
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO USE A STANDING DESK?
•
For desks with crank mechanisms, it may take several turns to raise the height by one inch. Those with locking pins will require the user to remove all items on the desk before adjusting the height. The newer models are faster to adjust, especially those with counterbalance, gas-strut, and springloading.
•
Durability and stability
•
Frequent adjustments from sitting to standing height may cause the desk to wobble. Check for the strength of the locking brake mechanism.
Range of adjustment The desk should be adjustable to different heights in standing mode. As a general guide, most buyers follow ANSI/BIFMA certified products that base their standards on the median height of men and women in the U.S. workforce. However, if there are
•
Alternate between sitting and standing every 30 to 60 minutes. Standing for long hours would be detrimental to the legs and may even cause varicose veins. Make sure that the computer screen’s position is at the correct desk height. Consider using a standing desk mat and standing desk balance board to increase blood flow and reduce discomfort from standing more often. With the desk adjustment, change the keyboard and mouse position to reduce straining wrists.
Always take a break to walk around, stretch, and rest your eyes. With the benefits mentioned above, the “sit-stand desk” may be one of the best solutions given by ergonomists in this generation.
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Top 5 Reasons How Regular Office Cleaning Can Lead to the Reduction of Office Illnesses By Stephen Hooley Are you struggling to deal with the increasing problem of absenteeism? Have regular sick leaves brought down the productivity level of your organization? Somewhere in your pursuit of profits, competitive edge and business excellence you may have completely ignored the importance of a clean and healthy environment for your workforce. You don’t need to feel guilty if office cleanliness hasn’t been one of your top priorities so far. It is always the right time to make a positive start that will help in bringing down instances of absenteeism and create a healthy and vibrant environment in your office. Simple steps such as de-cluttering the desk and cleaning the IT components with top-grade cleaning products can go a long way in dealing with employees calling in sick.
Some alarming facts were discovered in GCC Facilities Management’s workplace cleanliness study. It showed that more than one-third of employees in the UK don’t clean their mouse, keyboard, and telephone ever and these become a breeding ground for illness-causing germs. Furthermore, the average telephone set at any office has four times the colonization of bacteria compared to a toilet seat! A lack of awareness coupled with indifference towards the importance of cleanliness poses a serious threat to the health of employees. Here are five reasons for how office cleaning will reduce cases of office illness.
1. REDUCES CONTACT WITH GERMS The telephone statistic may have come as
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a real shocker, but the fact is most office employees touch objects that are considered to be the least dangerous for accumulating germs. So if you are wondering how to prevent a cold and want to reduce the number of sick leaves that your employees are forced to take, you must opt for regular office cleaning. Regular office cleaning helps in reducing contact with germs for your team members and hence illness and leaves.
2. PREVENTS SEASONAL DISEASES
Arun Thiyagarajan, Health Clinics Medical Director, from Bupa UK.
3. PROMOTES CLEANLINESS Not every team member follows the highest standards of health and hygiene. Some are likely to keep their workspace cluttered and dirty which becomes the breeding ground for microbes. When they are working in a cluttered work environment those with poor standards of personal hygiene care little to keep the workplace clean.
Seasonal flu and other contagious illnesses often strike your office during certain months of the year. These can be hard to control as one ill employee can spread bacterial and viral infections among the entire team. This is where office cleaning is helpful as it reduces incidents of virus and bacteria transmitting from one employee to another. You will be able to bring down instances of a large section of your team falling ill at the same time.
This increases the vulnerability of falling ill among your entire workforce. Regular office cleaning is known to bring about behavioural changes and improve mental health in people since a tidy office can relieve stress and present a healthy first impression.
“Surfaces and equipment can harbour dirt, viruses and bacteria that can remain active for months. Without regular office cleaning and good personal hygiene – e.g. antibacterial hand washing – there’s an increased chance of these surface germs transferring to you and giving you illnesses like flu, food poisoning and diarrhoea.”- Dr
4. IMPROVES AWARENESS OF RISK OF EXPOSURE TO CHEMICALS
A tidy and neat office can present the impression that the company is professional, likewise that of a particular employee.
It isn’t always the lack of cleaning that can lead to health issues at the office but also the use of wrong cleaning products. The market is flooded with cleaning
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agents and the chances are some people are using some of them to clean desks and IT equipment, particularly without knowing the risks that can arise from using cleaning products without any training experience on using specific equipment or the chemicals some products can contain. Injuries can be sustained from using cleaning products ineffectively as the exposure to concentrated chemicals can lead to eye injuries and lung damage. By regularly cleaning your office cleaning with commercial cleaning companies with expertly trained staff, this will prevent office sickness from occurring as it will prevent employees trying to clean areas of their office themselves without fully knowing about the dangers of the products that they are using.
5. INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY A healthy workforce is also an agile workforce. When your team members are in the best of their health you can expect them to be at their most productive
levels. You can’t expect an employee down with cold to stare at the laptop screen and identify the emerging trends in the market from large volumes of data. Nor can you expect an employee not to the best of his/her health to put in the extra effort to push your sales or production high. Numerous studies have proven that when people are at their best physical health they are also at their highest productivity levels. Whether it is a team supervisor or the person working at the bottom of the pyramid in your organization you need to take proactive steps to offer them a healthy work environment to maximize their output. It’s evident to see why regular office cleaning is important for businesses as it can to lead to an increase in workplace productivity and reduces the rate of absenteeism. Furthermore, these 5 tips need not only apply for general offices, but they are also applicable to a variety of commercial environments too and you can view a range of commercial cleaning services available here.
About the Author Stephen Hooley is the Marketing Manager for GCC Facilities Management. They provide the full range of facilities management services so you need not look anywhere else to meet your requirements. No client is too big or small. They are a privately owned company, established in 1975, committed to achieving the major recognised accreditations in our industry.
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J us twhent he cat er pi l l ar t houghtt he wor l dwas over ,i t becamea but t er f l y. www. s andr ahi ns hel wood. com
A London SEO Agency’s Tips to Boost Your Small Business Rankings For most modern businesses, traffic from search engines is crucial to the survival of their brand, and the importance of online presence is higher than it’s ever been. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise when you consider that Google alone now handles over 60,000 searches every second, creating a huge, global audience that your company can tap into. But, there is one catch - they have to be able to find you. In a sea of almost 2 billion other websites this could seem like a bit of an impossible challenge, but luckily SEO exists and it can help you get those coveted top-ranked positions in the search results.
What Is SEO? SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of using a variety of different techniques to make sure your website appears in relevant searches and that search engines push it to the top
of results. If you have the budget, an SEO agency is usually the best way to help boost your business; SEO can be pretty timeintensive and technical, so getting a team in who know what they’re doing is a wise choice. But, if you don’t have the investment or prefer to manage your own marketing, here are some top tips from Grapefruit SEO in London to make sure you can still succeed in the competitive world of online search.
Choose the Right Keywords A large part of SEO is based around targeted keywords, and making sure you use the right ones is crucial to making the most of your optimisation. Look at the content of your website and what you’re trying to sell before coming up with a set of keywords that suit what you’re offering for example ‘fine dining in London’ could be
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a keyword for a restaurant in London that’s a little more high-end. You can then start working these keywords naturally into your content to help boost your SEO. An important factor to remember when picking your keywords is to opt for ones that have high search but fewer competitors, which can be calculated using SEO keyword tools or you can hire an agency to do it for you. Getting that perfect balance is essential to your SEO success too little search and you won’t get the traffic, but too many competitors and you’re not as likely to reach the top spots.
Use the Keywords Properly Once you’ve selected your keywords, it’s time to start using them. First of all, make sure your four main on-page elements are all optimised with the target search terms. This includes your URL, meta title, meta description, and H1 tag. These are easy ways to boost your SEO and help search engines rank you for the pages you want. You should also create on-brand content that naturally incorporates your target keywords, again proving your relevance to search engines. Be sure not to overuse your terms or you could get penalised, and make sure they read naturally in your content or your audience could be put off. An easy way to create content that helps boost SEO whilst also engaging your audience and building lasting connections is with a blog.
Set Up Your Profiles There are some incredibly useful tools out there for businesses that can help boost your SEO, so be sure to make the most of them. We recommend setting up a profile on Google My Business for Map Rankings, and be sure to optimise it with locationbased SEO. This works particularly well with small, local businesses, so take advantage of it. You should also set your company up with Google Search Console and Analytics so you can monitor vital performance information and use it to perfect your SEO strategy.
Set Up Your Internal Links Another easy way you can boost your small business rankings is with internal links. By linking within your site to other pages, such as having a link to your home page on every other web page, Google can get a better idea of how your pages link together and how valuable each individual one is. The pages that it deems most valuable will be pushed higher up the search rankings, so be sure you create a strategy before you start adding your links. SEO, when it is done right, can be one of the most affordable ways of marketing your small business, but with so many different methods it can become pretty time-consuming. If you find yours is taking up too much time, look into hiring an SEO agency who can take over the work for you.
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How Well Do You Know Your Customer?
Customers are a part of the business cycle and play a massive role in the business industry. If there are no customers, your business will only go down the drain. Customers are the foundation of one’s business success, so in every business process, you need to consider what your customers will feel and think of your products and services. Aside from that, it is essential for business owners to know who their customers are and establish a strong foundation of the customer-seller relationship. Know your customer (KYC) may sound informative already to some people, but in the business world, it means more than that.
What is KYC? In business terms, KYC stands for “know your customers.” But it has a more complex meaning when it comes to business. The process of knowing your customers is not only knowing them by their name, contact information, or address but their identity as well even before they are in the business with you or during the business transaction. Banks, insurance companies, and financial firms always use this term and come in handy all the time when they handle and verify their clients’ profiles. Banks have become one of the largest supporters of KYC. However, KYC does not only limit to them but can also be used in any business.
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How is KYC done? KYC has tons of policies that clients and customers should comply with. KYC process includes requiring customers and clients all their necessary and detailed information about themselves for them to make sure that they are not involved in money laundering, theft, corruption, or any criminal-related cases. These KYC policies continuously expand through time, and their importance has grown globally. A lot of companies, not only financial institutes and firms, have realised the impact of KYC on their businesses and have started practising them. These policies have evolved over the years and have become more useful than ever. KYC policies have made it possible for companies to offer transactions legally to their customers. This also ensures that customers are working with licenced, professional, and legitimate companies.
Components of KYC There are four components of KYC, which are: • Customer Acceptance Policy • Customer Identification Procedures • Monitoring of Transactions • Risk Management
Tips in Knowing Your Customer The program has practices that one should learn how to do it. These practices are the following: • Establishing the identity of the customer • Understanding one customer’s nature and activities. Your customer needs to have a legitimate source of funds.
•
Explain what money laundering risks are and what are the things that can be associated with the risk with the customer for purposes of you monitoring their activities.
As a business entity who instils trust between you and your customer, you need to practice these KYC elements: • Primary Customer Due Diligence. CDD is the type of information that businesses should get for all customers to verify their identity. • Enhanced Due Diligence. EDD is the additional information that is taken from customers who have a high risk of the business they are dealing with. It comes with a more in-depth understanding of the customer’s activities that are associated with high risks. • Customer Identification Program. CIP consists of the collection, verification, and record-keeping of the customer’s identity and information. This is also used for screening customers via their backgrounds and will let you know if they have criminal records. KYC is an essential practice that all businesses should apply in their business system, especially when they are acquiring customers. This serves as a security for both the business entity and the customer itself and would lead to a more safe and trustworthy transaction in the long run.
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