Article provided by SchoemanLaw
According to publications such as Moneyweb, only about 1% of businesses starting with less than 5 employees have grown to employ 10 people in a period of 5 years. This when we know that successful businesses drive a healthy economy. This is a disappointing statistic, to say the least, particularly in a country with such high unemployment rates as ours. It is therefore crucial that these numbers must change!
When digging deeper into the reasons for businesses failing – the reasons at the forefront are lack of access to funding and markets. However, these are not as simple as they may seem as there are complex root causes to these problems.
We live in a world where business moves faster than ever with technology driving most of this and dictating the pace. This means businesses supporting those entrepreneurs must be able to keep up and if they can’t – their support is either discarded or is placed on the “back burner”. The problem, particularly with legal support being discarded or placed on the “back burner” is that it has a domino effect. If legal is left unattended for long enough it often results in an inability to obtain finance due to a lack of legal structure – which most financiers require in order to fund. In addition, it also often leads to issues to access markets in an indirect manner because breaking your way in inevitably requires budget and cash flow. However, when your legal affairs are not conducive to your customers paying on time or your agreements and structures are inadequate, the lack of access to funding and markets are merely the symptoms of another underlying cause.
It is therefore a fact that access to speedy and reliable legal services are crucial to the longevity of any business. What is more, for small businesses, smart cash flow management is as crucial. Therefore, the fact is many law firms are simply inaccessible to many small businesses from a price perspective. Another reality is that running an in-house legal department does not make much cash flow sense either – specifically not to smaller businesses. Besides the associated high cost, legal services are not a revenue generating expense. Yes, it aids revenue generation, but often is not viewed as having any direct relation.
As such, there seems to be a disconnect between the legal profession and the reality of an entrepreneur. That has led to the creation of the SchoemanLaw SME Self- Service DeskTM. This is disruptive technology challenging the status quo. In essence we are automating legal processes and documents and we are doing it in such a way that both large and small businesses can reap the benefits. And this is only the beginning of where the revolution will take us. Leveraging technology in driving legal needs has the ability to propel businesses into success in a very efficient manner at a fraction of the traditional direct time and cost.
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