How To Work From Anywhere
Running a retail business is a lot trickier than I was led to believe early on. Who'd have thought?! Well, to be fair, initially I thought that I was running an ecommerce business and now Nic Harry is a full-on multichannel affair. That makes it complicated and intricate for me as the founder. I have multiple stores to visit, a warehouse, meetings to have and my team of specialists to engage with. That's all without even touching customer service online, ecommerce management and the general daily operations of running a business.The most complicated part for me is that my team is never in one place at the same time, ever. That means that I'm on the go and engaging with them all at various points and places throughout the day.This makes mobile and remote work essential to my job.Let's take a short diversion here: In the past I have been very vocally anti-phablets. If you're wondering what a "phablet" is, it's a phone that's big enough to be mistaken for a tablet. I've mocked friends for using the iPhone 6+ (although I was probably more mocking them for using an iPhone in general, to be fair). Recently I was asked to use the Huawei Mate 8 device. It is massive. It's as big as the iPhone 6+ physical and they managed to fit a bigger screen into the device. I was very nervous using this device to begin with. But I have to say that it has turned out to be the best device I've used in the past few years.Now, back to business.
The Right Tools
There are some key things you must have to run a business on the move. From the start you need to set things up using tools that operate effectively on mobile devices. Google Apps for Business is the perfect tool across the board for this.Nic Harry uses for everything: email, documents, word processing and project management as well as a central resource for our team to find things they're looking for. Best of all, it's fully mobile optimised. Well worth the money.We also use Slack for all communication and short messages that don't require paragraph form emails (I hate emails longer than 5 sentences).Very practically it's important to all have data on your device and ensure that you have a phone that can access the 4G networks. Slow or no Internet is the end of your work day.
Practical Examples
I took the decision to spend money on data so that I wasn't tied to wifi networks when I absolutely have to do something on my mobile phone.Recently I was caught between stores and meetings and had forgotten about a Skype call with my investors that I had to be on. There's no real need to find a wifi network or an office when you can open up Skype on your device and make the call. I use my headset effectively too so that I can view the documents we're discussing while still on the call. With the Mate 8's huge screen I didn't struggle with this at all.For all of our stores we use Vend point of sale. They have fantastic reports that I use frequently throughout the day to keep my team of retail specialists engaged with our figures and performance. Opening up the reports, screengrabbing and sharing on slack is simple and there isn't really a need for a laptop or computer that's larger than the one in my pocket.The major key to working from anywhere is to be prepared. Have a mobile device that has tethering if you need to connect your computer, have data on your device and make sure that you are using the right tools for your needs.
