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Many businesses are started on tight budgets – you may find yourself trying to go cheap wherever possible. However, there are times when it can be worth investing a little extra in order to save costs in the future or simply improve efficiency from the start. Here are just a few major investments every startup should make.

Training

Before launching your business, you may want to invest some time and money into training. This could involve training yourself certain business skills such as sales tactics, accounting or leadership tricks. There are various courses and workshops across the country that can help you to build these skills. Meanwhile, if you’re employing staff, you may want to dedicate some time beforehand to training your staff up to the highest level so that you open your business with the best workforce available.

Market research

Market research is also worth investing time and research into. This can help you to build more focused marketing campaigns as well helping you to identify the needs of your clients. You could arrange focus groups, create online surveys and spend time analysing the competition – all of this could help you to locate that gap in the market and target it.

Security

A growing number of startups are becoming the victims of burglary and cybercrime. By investing money into security from the beginning you can lower the risk of being targeted. In certain instances, security may even be a legal requirement such as in the case of GDPR. Try looking for reputable security software and invest in cloud storage in order to keep data protected – this is the easiest way to comply with GDPR regulations. Other general security features worth investing in could include a burglar alarm, a safe and legal costs such as patents/trademarks to protect your ideas.

Health and safety

Health and safety may be something that you’re required to invest in by law, especially if you’re taking on employees. Health and safety features worth spending money on could include safety equipment, signage and devices such as smoke alarms. It could even be worth investing in a health and safety risk assessment – a professional will then be able to advise all the areas of your business that can be made safe, helping you to prevent employees and clients from getting injured or ill.

Green technology

It could also be worth investing in some green technology. The whole world is going eco-friendly and businesses are setting the example. Green technology could save you huge costs in energy in the future. This could include buying computers with a good energy rating, buying LED bulbs, insulating your office and potentially even installing a renewable energy generator such as solar panels or a wind turbine. Going green could be particularly useful if you plan to use a lot of machinery, otherwise you’ll be paying huge electricity bills.