Business Industry-Business Industry News

Advertising Biz Op Or Franchise Opportunities As Recession Proof is Dishonest

2009-06-10T03:01:00.004-07:00

Perhaps you have noticed lately how many business opportunity sellers are promoting their businesses as recession proof? This ought to be against the law, but no government regulatory agency as of yet has made a note of it. The reality is that no business is recession proof, as there are different types of recessions and different challenges in each business cycle.

Just because a particular industry does better than others during recessionary periods is no guarantee of it being recession proof. Thus, this notion and these types of advertising proclaiming such are falsely enticing business and franchise opportunity buyers to purchase these opportunities. This is wrong, and unfair and deceptive advertising.

Media outlets ought to put an end to this nonsense. And those franchise and business opportunity websites that allow such ads need to wise up also. Everyone that is in the loop has to take responsibility. Franchisors need to watch their marketing departments, ad writers, and master franchises. Businesses offering self-employment owe it themselves to do the right thing. And newspapers, radio, television, and websites need to be aware of this problem.

Further, those would be entrepreneurs who are considering a business of their own need to understand that there are many industries and niches that are recession resistant, but nothing is recession proof. There are far too many factors involved and the business and franchise sellers ought to come clean on this reality when offering their deals.

Perhaps, you were not aware of this problem, well, you are now, and if you'd like to see just how bad it is, check it out yourself, use the Internet search engine, and see. Please think on this.

Simplified Design - Develop Your Corporate ID Plan With a Clean Slate and an Open Mind

2009-06-10T03:01:00.003-07:00

One of the most efficient ways to build the graphics for your company is to start with the seed of an idea, and expand it from there. When you are looking for a starting point, write down the smallest of ideas in a portable notebook or paper pad. For those of you who are e-savvy, create a file on your blackberry, and keep these important tidbits in it.

Some ideas will hit you with force, and others may just float in on a cloud. As you write them down, review some of your older ideas. You may come across a past idea that doesn't seem to hold the weight that it used to when you were in the moment. Cross it off and move on. When your list is substantial enough, say 20 ideas, schedule and commit to a think-tank session with yourself only, or add a few or your associates to bounce these ideas around.

Choose people that you can take honest criticism from, and decide beforehand that you will not take their comments personally,since theses tidbits of info are your captive babies. Plan a barbeque with your buddies over a few beers - or a wine & cheese with the ladies. Whatever suits you the best.

Once you have narrowed the finalists down to no more than 3 ideas, create some rough sketches or doodles based on them. Even though you may not be a professional artist, this gives your design a good starting point from which to work.

You may even add a tag line at this point. Be reasonable and be brief with it. This is a short sentence which you can choose to emphasize characteristics regarding your product or service. It is usually used to reinforce brand recognition, de-emphasize competitors negative aspects, or just restate the obvious.

Remember not to get too crazy with the development of visual concept, at least not in the initial stages. There is such a thing as too much information. Your designer will thank you (maybe in not so many words), for not overloading them with concepts in the, well, conceptualization stages of designing your corporate ID.

Bring your open mind to the table when your designer is ready to present. You may have designated them to develop all 3 of your concepts. Sit back and let their creative juices flow as you take in their influences on your concepts. Being honest with them at this stage will be appreciated. If you are not direct, time could be wasted on a design less desirable plan.

As a last resort, for those of you who are not afraid to admit you do not have a creative bone in your body, leave all of the design work up to your graphics professional. Meet with them to share your vision and ideas. Don't be afraid to discuss colours and influences. This process may cost a bit more due to the extra time that your design has to designate to your project in the development stages, but it may very well be worth it in the end.

If you build and honest relationship, it will reap beneficial rewards on you both, as client and advisor!

Cyndy Robinson is a Communications Consultant and Graphic Designer. She operates her own business at http://www.webdocdev.com which is interactive and informative. Here you can sign up for her monthly newsletter "Blerbb!" and voice your communication by communicating your voice.

She is also employed for the business consulting company BizXcel which publishes Generating Greatness, the bi-weekly ezine for business professionals. You can access her articles here under the name Cyndythia Robinson.

If you are ready to push your business to new heights, make more money, save time and improve productivity, then get your FREE tips now at http://www.bizxcel.com Join the CFBE Network!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cyndy_Robinson

Digital Signage Advice - Content May Be King, But Who's Doing the Coronation?

2009-06-10T03:01:00.001-07:00

When I was a much younger man, a college professor warned me against the use of clichés in my writing. The problem with clichés, he said, is that they are by definition "hackneyed" and "trite" he told me. Leave it to a professor to send me back to my dictionary to figure out what he was trying to say.

Being worn out, however, seems to be a matter of opinion. After all, how many people drive cars with more than 100,000 miles, especially in today's economy? How many patch the knees of their kids' blue jeans? Who discards a dull knife?

To me, clichés become clichés because they succinctly bundle a truth into a few memorable words, which become used to the point of exhaustion because they so aptly describe something. To "reinvent the wheel" with an original phrase might leave you "looking for a needle in a haystack," requiring you to become "busier than a one-armed paperhanger" when a simple cliché would have conveyed your point without the fuss.

The media in general -and digital signage specifically- have their own clichés, "the mother of all" which is: "Content is king." (By the way, isn't it odd that Saddam Hussein would have coined a phrase that fast became a cliché in the United States? Or, was he simple the gateway for a cliché from his culture to ours? "But I digress.")

The kingship of content is easy to understand. If you want someone to read your newspaper, listen to your radio show, watch your TV program or look at your digital sign, you'd better give them a reason. That "tried and true" reason is content. It better be fresh; it better be interesting; it better serve your audience's needs; and it better look just as professional as the competition's presentation.

Those who are successful in the media understand these truths instinctively. However, the same can't be said for the digital signage universe. Sure, there are digital signage ad networks being put in place by megalithic media groups. Professionals in these groups understand the importance of content, but there is another vast group of digital signage users who aren't professional communicators. They run independent retail stores, car lots, local restaurants, bars, and any one of a thousand other small enterprises. These people "first and foremost" are business people concerned with all of the things that got them to the level of success they've achieved so far. Adding digital signage adds another responsibility, the implications of which may not be fully understood.

Obviously, these small business owners are adding digital signage because they understand the importance of promoting their goods or services. But they likely don't have the time, understanding or expertise to develop the content that fully exploits the potential of the digital signage medium.

For small business owners, this raises a critical question: If digital signage is king, who's doing the coronation? In other words, how does a small business owner with limited resources create -or afford to hire someone to create- digital signage content that attracts the attention of viewers, holds their attention and influence the process of making a purchasing decision? How do they make their content king?

While there's no simple answer that meets the needs of all small business owners, there are some straightforward, logical steps to make clear, effective, professional digital signage messaging possible. In my next blog, I'll review some of those steps to help small business owners put together the messaging they envision for their digital signs. Till then, at the risk of using a cliché, "stay tuned."

David Little is a digital signage enthusiast with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to more effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. He is the director of marketing for Keywest Technology in Lenexa, KS, a software development company specializing in systems for digital signage creation, scheduling, management and playback. For further digital signage insight from Keywest Technology, download our Six Basic Digital Signage Applications white paper and case studies. Or, visit our website for many helpful tips and examples on how digital signage can benefit your business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Little

Inventory data fuels rise in energy stocks

2009-05-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - A drop in petroleum supplies fueled a buying spree for equities tied to the oil and gas business as energy stocks rose convincingly on Thursday.

/quotes/comstock/10t!xoi.x XOI 969.64, +29.59, +3.15%

20%

-20%

-40%

-60%

Broadly, the stock market gained momentum from an unexpected rise in April durable goods orders, while weekly jobless claims didn't worsen.

Crude inventories dropped 5.4 million barrels in the week ended May 22, declining for a third straight week, the Energy Information Administration reported. Analysts surveyed by Platts had expected an increase of 1.8 million barrels.

The Amex Oil Index /quotes/comstock/10t!xoi.x (XOI 969.64, +29.59, +3.15%) rose 3.2% to 970. The Amex Natural Gas Index /quotes/comstock/10t!xng.x (XNG 434.41, +17.30, +4.15%) rose 4% to 434. The Philadelphia Oil Service Index /quotes/comstock/10y!i:osx (OSX .X 173.01, +7.14, +4.30%) gained 4.3% to 173.

Among movers, Marathon Oil /quotes/comstock/13*!mro/quotes/nls/mro (MRO 31.01, +1.77, +6.05%) jumped 6% to $31.01. EOG Resources /quotes/comstock/13*!eog/quotes/nls/eog (EOG 72.61, +4.34, +6.36%) added 6.4% to $72.61 and Transocean /quotes/comstock/13*!rig/quotes/nls/rig (RIG 78.71, +4.37, +5.88%) was up 6% at $77.71.

Oil Outlook As OPEC Freezes Output

As OPEC leaves output unchanged, Dow Jones Newswires' Adam Smallman says some factors underpinning $147 oil remain in place. (May 28)

Analysts at Houston research firm Tudor Pickering Holt noted that OPEC's production quota remains about 4.2 million barrels a day lower than the middle of 2008, as expected.

"Global demand will be the deciding factor for further production cuts or increases at their Sept. 9 meeting," analysts noted.

Meanwhile, crude prices rose $1.20 to $64.65, the highest levels since last November. See Futures Movers.

Sector leader Exxon Mobil /quotes/comstock/13*!xom/quotes/nls/xom (XOM 69.23, +0.93, +1.36%) rose 1.4% to $69.23. Chevron /quotes/comstock/13*!cvx/quotes/nls/cvx (CVX 65.81, +1.24, +1.92%) rose 1.9% to $65.81. Both oil majors are components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average /quotes/comstock/10w!i:dji/delayed (INDU 8,404, +103.78, +1.25%) , which rallied 104 points, or 1.3%.

Online Marketing Services For Business Improvement

2009-05-27T23:51:00.001-07:00

Online Marketing Services are a must for any business type want to survive over the net. The internet is very competitive and thus an online business needs very effective marketing strategies that keep it always ahead of its competitors. Execution of right kind of online marketing strategy at the right time can take your business to great heights. There are a variety of search engine marketing firms that help their clients with the most beneficial online marketing services.

In this world of businesses the need of online advertising company is crucial. An online advertising company can play a major role in assisting its client companies advertise their products on the Internet and reach their target audience. These companies have good online advertising network, as these companies help to connect websites with advertisers. Websites help to promote the advertisements and advertisers in turn run their ads through the sites. Online Marketing is incomplete without online advertising, as advertising has been an integral part of marketing since years. Without the powerful advertising marketing can never be successful.

In order to boost up your sales you definitely want to reach your target audience. This can be done only when your website gets higher ranking in various search engines. Website promotion is an effective and cost-effective way of getting good search engine ranking or search engine positioning in the listings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves. Various search engines techniques are used to promote a website.

There are various types of web promotion services to list your site in the search results. First it is required to select and list the keywords. Right keywords are the most essential thing in the online marketing services. Your website should support the keywords that the visitor might search for. Another part of online marketing services include pay per click management. Effecting link building, good and fresh contents on web pages also add traffic to your site.

For more information about online marketing services

Please visit : http://www.411services.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rahul_Awasthi

Business Strategy Planning Made Easy

2008-12-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

Ask Yourself three simple questions that affect your strategy planning...

* What direction is my business going in?

* How do I create my business strategy so that I can position myself as a leader in my industry?

* Where do I go to find out information about business strategy planning?

Have you found yourself asking these questions about your business? Well this article is written just for you. Learning what drives your industry will help you understand how to create a successful business strategy plan. The plan will help you stay on target with your yearly goals.

For the New Year, I wanted to share a few business strategy tips with you that will help you understand more about "Strategy Planning Made Easy".

Top Ten Business Strategy Planning Tools for Small Business Owners

1. Build partnerships with other businesses so that you can build a resource network.
2. Take the time to learn about your industry trends and how they affect your business.
3. Join online & offline networking groups that cater to your business and your personal interest.
4. Gain understanding about the business strategy plans of your resource network business partners.
5. Manage your business information before it manages you, don't let it overwhelm you.
6. Keep a positive attitude regardless of how the outlook of a business situation may seem.
7. Plan rest periods for you and your business, it will keep both of you fresh and alive.
8. Don't try to do everything yourself, hire a support team that will work to make you successful.
9. Make sure that your support team, your business, and you are a good fit.
10. Keep your plans in front of you and visualize your success.

More about Kim Beasley ~ Strategy Guru For You ~ Agape3, Inc.
After working in Corporate America and Ministry for many years, Kim Beasley decided to take her strategy planning experiences and share them with others. She believes in sharing real-life stories of encouragement with her readers so that they can be encouraged in their daily life. Kim is the editor of many newsletter and is also the "Strategy Guru" and owner of Agape3, Inc., that helps businesses and organizations to strategically plan for their future using her 5-Step Strategic System, R.A.C.E.S. Find out more about Kim Beasley, Strategy Guru and Agape3, Inc. at http://www.agape3.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kim_Beasley

Why the Travel Industry is the Best Business Industry

2008-12-05T08:23:00.000-08:00

Travel is one of the luxuries that won't be going any anytime soon. In fact, the travel industry is the largest commercial industry in the world. It is currently a 7 trillion dollar industry and it is predicted to double over next 8-10 years. That's crazy! The internet has really played a significant role in the growth of the travel industry. Forty-three percent of every dollar spent on the internet is spent on travel.

The travel industry is one that most business gurus are trying to get their piece off. The travel industry is so lucrative that even some of the richest people in the world are getting their piece. Donald Trump started his own travel company in 2006. Even Bill Gates has a piece. He bought a whole chain of hotels!.

Another thing that makes the travel industry a great venture are the baby boomers. The baby boomers are the largest target market out of any group of individuals. Ten thousand baby boomers turn the age of 60 each day. And with 74 million baby boomers, that's one every 8 seconds for the next 20 years. These retirees have time and money and they want to travel. With a target market that big, the travel industry is positioned to always be ahead of the pack. For more information on the baby boomers, check out my other article.

Copyright © 2008 Nate Falconer.
Nate is an entrepreneur who is currently involved in creating incomes via the Internet. If you would like to get in touch with Nate send him an email at nfalconer@gmail.com.

For more information on an industry targeted to baby boomers, please visit:

Solutions For Corporate Offices and Home Businesses

2008-09-01T22:04:00.003-07:00

In today's world, living in the American melting pot with people from all nationalities, customs, temperaments and generational differences, its no wonder there are so many conflicts in the work place. When there are people gathered together from different backgrounds - whether the setting is in an office, retail store, home based business in a team setting, school, wherever! There will always be conflicts and disagreements. Search on any news group on Google and all you see tragedy and conflict everywhere.

It's not to say that all folks are like that - some may become life-long friends, or just get along well enough to have a conducive work environment. Specifically I would like to address the flip side of that and talk more about resolving conflict and alternatives.

People have different experiences in life which shapes and forms who they are, why they act the way they do, and what their goals are in life. In our society until recently, the goal has been to climb the corporate ladder to success, but there's been a paradigm shift in that because of the economy and more pointedly - greed in some instances. Corporations are no longer stable. No longer do you really see 20-30 year veterans working in the same company anymore - they are a rare breed!

More and more - our society is focusing on building their own business. With the rising - exorbitant cost of Franchises, the more appealing choices are Home Based businesses. More and more people are discouraged with working a traditional "J-O-B", living paycheck to paycheck and are focusing on having control of their future, by starting their own Home Based Businesses. There's a deluge of Home Based businesses available to choose from, albeit not all are worth the time, effort and investment - but there are very good, reputable Home Based businesses to choose from.

I'd like to quote Actor "Rainn Wilson" who plays everybody's favorite workplace irritant on TV's "The Office" . Wilson had a few very interesting thoughts to say about real workplace offices when interviewed by "Business Week Magazine". One of the questions posed to him was what was his advice for those struggling to "make it" in their dream careers...his interesting answer was to give up immediately, move to Phoenix and go into Real Estate - he further states that in all seriousness, there's a big difference between living your dream and living in denial, you have to go where the universe is telling you to go.

What Wilson is trying to point out is that for your own well-being and benefit, if you're miserable in your job - whether or not it's the "dream job", it's time to reflect and decide if this is really where you want to be. Is this going to give you the kind of future you desire? Would you rather have your own home Based business that would give you freedom with your time, finances and family? There's plenty to choose from on Google for sure!

Changing gear a bit, if you currently are in a situation where your workplace has issues, here's a few tips to help you smooth things out:

Dealing with the "nasty 'tudes" -

Take a step back and reflect on what their childhood must have been like, what their marriage must be like, or how much they desire to have a partner but have none. Put yourself in their shoes for a minute and imagine how they must really feel about themselves. Even though they might make YOUR life miserable - you might just find some compassion for them, making easier on you when they rub you wrong.

Balance your work life and your personal life -

What is the main regret of successful business people on their deathbed? The majority regret not having spent enough time with their family! Too much stress, irritability usually means your life is out of balance. If you need to take work home, set aside a certain amount of time for it and the rest of the evening is to unwind and enjoy your family. If you have a Home Based business, set parameters as well. Work around your family's schedule, that's one of the benefits of having a Home Based business! You can work when and where you want, with today's technology it's easy to have a portable office. Balance is the key to keep your peace, sanity and family.

Isabel Gelo C. - Ultimate Chick,
Ultimate Home Biz Advocate
THE ULTIMATE TEAM
http://workfromhome4parents.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Isabel_Gelo_C.

How to Write a Plan For You Business Enterprise Like an Expert Initiator

2008-09-01T22:04:00.002-07:00

Expert initiators generally lay out all of their ideas thoroughly in their business plans. Therefore, you have to describe all your business ideas in as detailed a fashion as possible, so that investors feel free to invest into your company.

Your business plan not only gives you a feeling of integrity, but will also improve the likelihood of your business success. Even though creating a concrete written plan for your business is a lengthy and seemingly difficult task, it is actually not as trying as you may think.

The following is a simple guide detailing the ways in which you can construct a business plan just like an expert initiator:

1. Executive Review: Experts often have said that, it is the first item that investors are likely to notice and look at long before they notice the table of contents. Here, you need to write your business goal in three to four sentences, but make sure that you are thorough nonetheless. Also, be positive that these excerpts define your business distinctly, while grabbing the gaze of your investors.

2. Market Research: Often, experts focus on this area more carefully, as thorough information on the business sector shows your business potentiality. Therefore, you need to do comprehensive information gathering on overall market conditions. Include size, rate, trends and growth that may have a great effect on the industry. Also, show your targeted demographic describing the types of customers that your enterprise aims to cater to.

3. Business Description: After market research, you need to put in a section about your business in the plan. It must have the nature, objectives, aims, location and name of your enterprise.

4. Tactics Adopted: This section should have the enterprise's strategies such as sales activities, methods for distribution, kinds of sales for, methods for marketing and other growth strategies adopted by the enterprise.

These are some essential tips that expert initiators generally put into their business plans. If you want to be one of such expert initiators, then attempt to use these important tactics in writing your business plan.

Visit Here To Discover much more on how to write a business plan.

Benny Horowitz is a business initiative who has written dozens of articles on the subject of business world, business plan and how to start and manage your business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Benny_Horowitz

Business Capital - Resources to Fund Medical Transcription Services

2008-09-01T22:04:00.000-07:00

Whether you are just opening your doors or you are a seasoned veteran in the medical transcription industry, one thing's for sure-cash flow is a crucial concern for any business owner. The bottom line: if you don't have enough readily available cash to pay your employees, contractors, suppliers, and creditors you won't stay in business for long.

Defined as the movement of money in and out of a business, cash flow is the heartbeat of a thriving medical transcription service. Hence, the timing of its movement is extremely important to a company's overall health. Ironically, it's when business is booming that a company may start to have cash flow problems. Not only does more business create larger volumes of accounts, new growth opportunities also means purchasing new equipment and software, hiring additional medical transcriptionists and possibly building interfaces. In a nutshell, as a business grows, so too does its need for capital.

There are many reasons in addition to rapid growth that could explain why a company would need additional working capital. For example, seasonal influxes, local or national economic conditions, external economics and poor management decisions could all negatively or positively affect a business' cash flow at any given time.

Regardless of what has caused the increased need, it's important for medical transcription service owners to take the proper steps in identifying that need, analyzing it and preparing to help improve the company's bottom line and fill in any cash flow gaps.

Inflows, or sources of incoming cash, generally come in the form of customer payments. The typical invoice in the United States is paid in 45 days. The typical hospital takes longer, and physicians are all over the board. Keep in mind the impact of 15 days of receivables outstanding can be dramatic; so the first step a smart business owner can take to prevent headaches from the start is to have procedures in place to pre-screen the creditworthiness of potential clients and formalize a credit policy within his/her contracts.

Taking the time to invoice effectively after approving clients is an extremely important second step. Distributing invoices in a timely manner with the appropriate documentation is half the battle. Making sure the invoices are sent to the right person/department will also affect the length of time it takes to get them paid. The invoice should specifically articulate the terms of payment as well as reference penalty for late payment, if any. Some other ways to ensure speedy payments are to consider accepting credit card payments, requesting deposits or pre-payments and staying on top of collections.

Another thing MTSOs can do to help their cash flow is to create a working cash flow budget, which should include the following: a sales forecast with projected cash inflows (account receivable aging schedule) and projected cash outflows (payroll and tax obligations, operating expenses, upcoming purchases and current debt obligations). Upon reviewing the cash flow budget, a business owner will know if his/her company's capital needs exceed its capabilities. If this is the case, then it's time to consider funding options.

Before approaching any source of capital, it's important for the owner to do his/her homework. For example, if a business owner cannot answer the following questions, then the owner is not really ready to solve his/her company's cash flow problem.

* How much money do I need?
* How long will I need additional capital?
* What do I plan to use it for?
* How will the money improve my business?
* How am I going to pay it back?
* If Plan A doesn't work, what is my back-up plan?

Before seeking external sources of capital from investors or lenders, an MTSO should thoroughly explore all reasonable sources for meeting its capital needs internally. Even if this effort fails to generate all of the needed capital, it can sharply reduce the external financing requirement, resulting in less interest expense, lower repayment obligations, and less sacrifice of control. In addition, lenders and investors will be more willing to commit to lending if they see a business has already taken the steps to try to solve the problem internally. Some things to explore are increasing retained earnings, liquidating nonproductive assets, establishing more rigorous credit standards for customers, personally investing in the business and/or paying the company's suppliers a little slower than usual. Of course each of these options has their own benefits and disadvantages, so it's important to think through each before adopting one or all of them.

After running through the options above, the next best thing is to start researching debt capital options, namely banks, savings and loans, and commercial finance companies.

For short-term borrowing, the first step is to go to a commercial bank. Credit lines are reserved for businesses that have already established themselves as being worthy of short-term credit and the amount needed fluctuates from time to time. While lending institutions all have different standards; this is a particularly difficult time to qualify. A general rule of thumb to be considered a viable candidate for a commercial loan requires a business to have three years of operating history with at least two of these years being profitable. The profit should be significant enough that the business has positive retained earnings or owner's equity. The exact amount to be borrowed can vary according to the needs of the business but cannot exceed its established credit line.

Long-term borrowing comes into play when a business intends to borrow a lump sum and make payments on a regular basis until the loan is paid in total. When dealing with long-term bank loans, it's important to have a good understanding of the repayment schedule in order to plan accordingly.

The criteria which businesses must meet in order to qualify for a bank loan can be long and onerous. A bank evaluates the company's capacity to repay the loan, scrutinizes the owner's personal character, wants to know what kind of collateral can be used in the event that the loan cannot be repaid, will need to see a proven track record of the business' profitability and also takes into account any current economic conditions.

Being approved for a traditional loan may sound daunting, but there are a few things business owners can do in order increase their chances of being approved. Developing a relationship with a banker, moving accounts, fee income, wires and credit cards to that bank, and being honest and insightful about the business' challenges are all ways an MTSO can show the lender that he/she is a good candidate to receive the loan.

When considering funding options, a business owner also needs to understand the difference between a secured loan and an unsecured one. With a secured loan, the borrower pledges certain assets as collateral to protect the lender in the event that the borrower defaults on the loan. When it comes to long-term borrowing, fixed assets such as real estate or equipment are usually pledged as collateral. For short-term borrowing, inventories and/or accounts receivables are usually pledged.

With an unsecured loan, the note holder does not have the same protection as a secured lender because it does not ask for pledged collateral. So if a company defaults on an unsecured loan, the creditor can only re-negotiate the amount due or force the company to liquidate. The advantage to this arrangement is the borrower does not have to pledge collateral to secure the loan. However, the disadvantage is that interest rates are much higher and this type of loan is much more difficult to secure.

Outsourcing the company's accounts receivables to a medical transcription factoring firm is another option for a growing medical transcription service. Within a factoring arrangement, the medical transcription business sells its accounts receivable to a factor (buyer), which immediately converts them into cash. The medical transcription factoring company will generally advance 80 percent of the invoice and then works to collect on them, giving the business owner the ability to focus on other areas of operating his/her business. Medical transcription factoring is generally easier for a business to qualify for than a traditional loan as the credit decision is based upon the creditworthiness of the MTSO's customers rather than the business itself. Many factors will work with start-up businesses and will fund receivables without requiring the personal guarantee of the business owner allowing the owner to protect their personal assets. Medical transcription factoring agreements generally allow for generous "lines of credit" as factors are able to increase their funding as the MTSO's business grows.

The final option for business owners to consider when it comes to financing is equity capital. Finding investors is difficult and takes a lot of networking and creditability building, but the results of such efforts is equally rewarding. Because equity capital is permanently invested in the business, there is no legal obligation for the company to repay the invested amount. If the business thrives, selling equity in your business can often be the most expensive source of financing as the business owner has sold a percentage of their future profits. Some sources of equity include: friends and family, Angels and Angel Networks and venture capitalists.

This article has gone into great detail about how the need for capital arises and discusses the different approaches medical transcription service owners can take in order to establish a balanced cash flow. In the end, if a business owner is willing to routinely analyze his/her company's cash flow and respond accordingly to cash flow gaps, he/she is well on the way to managing a successful medical transcription business. The facts are all here, how a business owner chooses to use them is up to him/her.

Philip Cohen is the President of PRN Funding, LLC, a nurse staffing accounts receivable factoring company that provides growth capital to small and midsized businesses that service the healthcare industry. Prior to founding PRN Funding, Cohen served as the Senior Vice President/General Manager of The MRC Group, where he was responsible for corporate development initiatives as well as the company's speech recognition product line. Web site: http://www.prnfunding.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Philip_Cohen

QuickBooks Setup Help - Which Industry Should I Choose For My Business?

2008-08-25T23:03:00.002-07:00

While going through the initial setup in QuickBooks, the program prompts users to select their industry. Sometimes, a user's industry is not clearly listed. For example, "Computer Service & Repair," is not one of the choices. I'm sure there are many other businesses that are not clearly listed in the "Select Industry" section of the QuickBooks setup screen.

QuickBooks asks for your industry for two reasons:

* So it can load a Chart of Accounts that closely matches what you need
* So it can load preset reports that closely match what you may need

If your industry is not listed, don't worry. Select an industry that is the closest match by examining the source of your business' revenue. This will help you determine a close match on the industry.

To use the "Computer Service & Repair" example above, if the majority of this business' revenue is derived from retail sales, then I would suggest to select Retail as the industry. If the majority of this business' revenue is derived from consultations and service, then I would suggest to select Consultant as the industry.

Here's why you don't need to select an exact match on the industry:

1. QuickBooks is extremely flexible about the Chart of Accounts. Even though QuickBooks loads a preset Chart of Accounts customized for each industry, accounts are easily added or modified. When you pick an industry that is a close match, you can create or delete accounts that are custom to your business.

2. QuickBooks is extremely flexible about it's reports. In fact, one of the things I love most about QuickBooks is it's powerful reporting features. Although the preset reports for each industry are nice, custom reports are easily created and memorized, regardless of the industry chosen in the setup.

I'm a huge fan of getting QuickBooks setup correctly the first time. One of the most important parts of the setup is the Chart of Accounts. But don't worry if your industry is not immediately apparent, as QuickBooks is very forgiving if the incorrect Chart of Accounts is chosen. Just add, delete, or modify accounts as needed.

About the Author: Jennifer A. Thieme is a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor who loves to help people with QuickBooks. She brings unique insight, clear instructions, and over ten years of experience to all of her QuickBooks articles. Owner of Solid Rock Accounting Services, Jennifer's clients enjoy these same benefits on a personal and regular basis. You can too - visit http://www.jenniferthieme.com/quickbooks-help.html and get more QuickBooks help.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_A._Thieme

Why the Travel Industry is the Best Business Industry

2008-08-25T23:03:00.001-07:00

When choosing a business opportunity, it is very important that you chose one that is associated with an industry that is flourishing. The last thing you want is to have to market a product or service that is not in demand. One of the best industries you can chose to focus your business efforts is the travel industry.

Travel is one of the luxuries that won't be going any anytime soon. In fact, the travel industry is the largest commercial industry in the world. It is currently a 7 trillion dollar industry and it is predicted to double over next 8-10 years. That's crazy! The internet has really played a significant role in the growth of the travel industry. Forty-three percent of every dollar spent on the internet is spent on travel.

The travel industry is one that most business gurus are trying to get their piece off. The travel industry is so lucrative that even some of the richest people in the world are getting their piece. Donald Trump started his own travel company in 2006. Even Bill Gates has a piece. He bought a whole chain of hotels!.

Another thing that makes the travel industry a great venture are the baby boomers. The baby boomers are the largest target market out of any group of individuals. Ten thousand baby boomers turn the age of 60 each day. And with 74 million baby boomers, that's one every 8 seconds for the next 20 years. These retirees have time and money and they want to travel. With a target market that big, the travel industry is positioned to always be ahead of the pack. For more information on the baby boomers, check out my other article.

Copyright © 2008 Nate Falconer.
Nate is a professional network marketer who teaches others how to be successful in network marketing using both traditional and non-traditional methods. If you want to get in touch with Nate or learn more about network marketing success please visit:

Free Network Marketing Advice

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nate_Falconer

Top Internet Home Based Business In Travel

2008-08-25T23:03:00.000-07:00

A top Internet home based business in travel is a very viable preposition indeed. This is because of several reasons and we will mention some of them in this article.

The first reason why getting involved in a top Internet home based business makes a lot of sense is the fact that the world travel industry is one of the very few world industries that is not in decline. In fact thanks mainly to the World Wide Web, which seems to have fueled lots of traveling for both business and pleasure, the travel industry has been growing steadily in recent times.

Not even 9/11 and the disastrous after effects that are still affecting us all, has managed to halt the travel industry's consistent growth. This is one of the main reasons why this industry has to be classified amongst the top Internet home based business opportunities anybody can get involved with today.

The advantages of going into a business based on an industry that is experiencing growth are obvious. Growth and ultimately success is much more likely for a top Internet home based business that is in a growth industry than it is for one which is not.

Also, there is no ignoring the fact that some of the most successful top Internet home based business affiliates are in a travel related industry. This is one industry that is a natural for an Internet business. The World Wide Web makes it very easy to market with photographs, videos and 3D images that can give one a pretty accurate feel of what a hotel suite or travel destination really feels like, long before one has actually arrived there.

It is really difficult to compete with a top Internet home based business that is related to the travel industry.

Learn more about the best home business opportunity from a blogger who rakes in thousands of dollars... and growing from their home business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Kyalo

Funded Sponsoring Franchise System Is Revolutionizing the Home-Based Business Industry

2008-03-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

More and more people are leaving the office grind behind to work at home. Whether downsized, outsourced, or sick and tired of cubicle hell, people like never before are saying goody bye to the corporate life and starting home-based businesses. One tool making it easy for a person to have a home-based business is the Internet. Along with the Internet, comes a diverse lot of income earning opportunities and people are jumping on board.

One Internet based product tapping into the home-based business market is the “Funded Sponsoring Franchise system.” Now, why would someone develop a product like a franchise? Because, franchises are soooooo successful. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a McDonalds or Subway fail? Chances are you have not. Of course, there are key ingredients that are the basic components of ANY franchise. These ingredients are made up of providing customer service, taking orders and teaching others to provide quality customer service (training others). The reason a franchise system works is because it is duplicative. The process is simple. You provide customer service, take the order, and train new employees to do the same thing. Then repeat the same process. The system does the rest. People that buy into McDonalds or Subway know that they are buying into a simple process, a process that works time and time again. Get the picture? That is why they are so successful.

The same thing can be done with the “Funded Sponsoring Franchise” system. With this system, people know they are buying into a successful product. The reason it works is that it allows folks to make money without spending a dime to market. Now, how can this be possible? Well, I’ll tell you. This is where the “Funded” comes in. The system provides people with a low cost business opportunity that yields high value by consistently producing returns that can erase your expenses. Not only does the system create a never ending source of leads for you, but it also provides for residual income by constantly having something that the prospects will come in and purchase. You have a product which goes out and finds the prospects for you, weeds through them so you only have the serious prospects and then the retail product itself funds your advertising. Neat, huh? In return, you take those people and show them your business opportunity (the training part).

The Internet, print, and broadcast media are full of ads for great-sounding work at home opportunities. Sadly, the work at home industry is full of scam companies that advertise high income home-based jobs. Some ads are specific while others are vague and keep you in the dark about the exact nature of the pie in the sky venture.

Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Do your research before you plunge into any work at home opportunity. Talk with others who are working at home. Check out franchises or Internet opportunities with the Better Business Bureau. If an opportunity offers you a free trial, try it, but be sure you cancel within the specified time period if you decide the opportunity is not for you. Despite the scam artists, there are thousands of options in the work at home industry and one of them will suit you.

Recession-Proof Your Small Business With a Virtual Assistant

2008-03-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Everywhere we turn these days -- television, radio, Internet -- discussion focuses on the economy and growing concerns of a recession. George W. Bush, President of the United States, declared during his January 2008 State of the Union Address that "Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job. After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, and stock market declines, our economy is recovering -- yet it's not growing fast enough, or strongly enough. With unemployment rising, our nation needs more small businesses to open, more companies to invest and expand, more employers to put up the sign that says, "Help Wanted"."

How can small business do that when concerns over recession suggest they should be saving money instead of spending it? "Perhaps the best way to recession-proof your business is to hire a virtual assistant", says Sharon Williams, president of the 24 Hour Secretary and chair of the Alliance for Virtual Businesses, the online information portal to the Virtual Assistant industry.

The US government recently passed an economic stimulus plan designed to keep the US economy from sliding into a recession. Many questions remain for small business owners, including, what will this package do for my business?

According to a January 27, 2008 article entitled, Small Business Planning for Slump written by Jim Wyss of the Miami Herald.com; "Among a dozen small business owners interviewed last week, most said they expect things to get worse before they get better -- and many doubted the new economic stimulus package, which includes rebates for consumers and tax breaks on business expenses, will do much for their bottom line." Unfortunately, this same sentiment is echoed by small business owners located throughout the country.

Two suggestions to stimulate income and fight recession overrun are

(1) to increase the utilization of Internet-based technology

(2) outsourcing administrative responsibilities to Virtual Assistants (VAs).

Virtual Assistants, as defined by the Alliance for Virtual Businesses, are independent entrepreneurs providing long-term, collaborative, professional administrative, creative, managerial, technical, business office and/or personal support services for clients. From their fully functional home offices, VAs use the most advanced means of communication, and the newest and most efficient and time saving office products and work delivery, regardless of geographic boundaries.

Virtual Assistants are paid only for time on task and utilize time tracking software that records duration and billing information associated with the assignment. As a result, the client is not charged for downtime, breaks, lunch, leaving the office when emergencies occur, etc.

The list of tangible and nontangible benefits associated with hiring a VA is extensive. For example:

Elimination of costs related to providing employee benefits and paying taxes, purchasing furniture and equipment, and training opportunities.
Gaining additional time to focus on income-generating activities instead of time consuming back office administration, recordkeeping and other duties.
Paying only for time on tasks and compensation is based solely on the contractual relationship.
Time to concentrate on responsibilities that fuel their passion.
Development of a partnering relationship with an individual providing fresh insight into projects; an extra pair of administrative hands or an expert in Internet-based technologies.

Buying Questions Vs. Objections

2008-03-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

When completing a transaction, many of us in Direct Sales or Network Marketing programs often fear when the prospect objects to purchasing what you are selling. Even though most of us have heard such clichés as “the sale doesn’t begin until they say no”, when the prospect actually does say anything other than “yes”, our spirits fall. We think that’s it.

Here’s a secret: The number one reason that more business is lost in this country every day, the number one thing that keeps companies up late at night brainstorming, is “How do we teach our sales force the difference between a buying question and an objection?” It appears to be a huge ordeal, a massive step that would require years of training and practice to master.

Here’s the good news: it doesn’t take years and years of practice to “get it”. It isn’t an overnight process, and that’s because the way we can detect the difference between a buying question and an objection is primarily in the prospects voice.

You see, when a prospect says “I’ve got to talk to my wife before I buy this”, it could be a buying question or an objection. The difference is how it is stated. Buying questions / buying statements expect and welcome an answer. An objection is stated flatly. That’s the difference. A buying question simply requires an answer, more information, more explanation, etc. An objection requires a completely different process altogether.

The kicker is that if you answer an objection as a buying question, you will lose the business. If you answer a buying question with a rebuttal for an objection, you will lose the business. This is what terrifies companies. This is why tons of business is lost every day. If you answer a buying question with a rebuttal, you will actually raise skepticism in your prospects mind, you will force that prospect to object, at which point, you have very little recourse. You shot the sale, and it’s over. And if you answer an objection as a buying statement, you will simply frustrate the prospect, as they are looking for a solution to overcome the objection, and are not looking for simply “more information” or an elaboration of what has already been explained.

Developing the sense of being able to differentiate between buying questions and objections makes the difference between doing business and losing business. It is not some magical skill, but simply a skill that develops with use, just like anything else. The more it is practiced, the easier it becomes. The rough part is in starting out, because it’s tough botching up a sale, and having to go back and review it, find out where it went wrong, correct it, and then try it again.

But for those who are willing to go through that process, and are willing to develop the skill set necessary to answer buying questions and objections effectively, they are the people that will generate and income that will require the help of future generations to spend it all. For anyone attempting to grow a business from scratch, developing the ability to discern between buying questions and objections is an absolute must.

Important Aspects of Picking the Right Business College to Earn Your Business Degree

2008-02-26T03:00:00.001-08:00

There are many schools out there offering business degrees. Deciding which business college to attend is a decision that should not be taken lightly. When you think about it, every single industry is completely dependant upon the business skills of those it employs in order to be successful. That’s why choosing the right business college is crucial to your success!

For starters, you want to choose a business college that has a proven reputation- one that’s been around for a while. Basically you want to stay away from a fly-by-night operation that could leave town at the drop of a hat, leaving you and your new career out in the cold. Colleges offering accredited business degrees are the first schools to consider. Make sure that your business college is legitimate by asking them to you show their accreditations.

Next, you need to be sure they offer a curriculum that is designed and provided by the very best in the industry. Business needs and demands are constantly changing, so be sure that any of the business colleges you consider can adjust to whichever way the wind blows.

Current trends and tricks of the trade, as well as the know-how and understanding to help you over the hurdles and through the obstacles of earning your business degree, all while still meeting your personal obligations, such as work and family life - your ideal business college will be able to help you with this sometimes intricate balancing act. In fact, some of the more contemporary business colleges have programs in which you can complete all or part of your degree online. Still others will have the best of both, offering a blended-learning format which gives you the ability to take one class online one week and in the physical classroom the next. You just can’t get any better than that!

B2B ITAH - Business to Business Search Engine

2008-02-26T02:46:00.000-08:00

Overview :

ITAH is a robust business-to-business verticle search engine, powered by AsiaEP to which crawls across all industry top & trusted B2B sites and directories. B2B information seekers and searchers will be expecting to find relevant B2B websites, Hot Demand Products, B2B News & B2B Events. On top of that, image ads can be delivered through ITAH search engine result pages(SERPs) and in context throughout all ITAH partners' websites.

Goal :

The ultimate goal of ITAH is to provide potential B2B companies and business professionals and integrated B2B platform to access business information on industry specific goods, services, news, jobs, empowering them to make the right business decisions.

ITAH Advertising Center :

1. The study also called for setting up “ITAH Advertising Center” that enable ITAH to manage and communicate with potentials customer's enquiries and answering their querries and search marketing related questions.

2. “ITAH Advertising Center” will be position as the focal point to handle customer's accounts, assisting them in the signing up programe and supported by ITAH Business Supports personnels on dealing with products issues and problems.

ITAH Advertising Solutions :

1.ITAH Advertising Solutions main objective is to help potential customers to achieve the following objectives :

- Inceased Sales
- Improve Brand Awareness and Visibility

ITAH Advertising Product Solutions :

Under the banner of ITAH Search Marketing, ITAH offers the following custom tailored made online marketing product and services:-

I. Site Sponsoring / PPC Advertisement
II. Site Submit
III. Guided Search Directory

Woodworking Industry

2008-02-25T03:47:00.000-08:00

Woodworking industry association executives are the industry elite. Woodworking industry holds its market share will increasingly depend on the implementation of advanced woodworking machine tools within its production approach.

Woodworking

History in the United States, unlike Europe, there has been scant education for drafting as specifically tied to the woodworking industry. Promotion of wood use and the woodworking industry -Government made on 17 March 2005 a decision-in-principle on the promotion of wood use and the woodworking industry. German experts attending wood processing equipment and machinery fair in Ho Chi Minh City said Vietnamese woodworking industry has enormous potential for further development. The development of automation in saw-mills is also evaluated, showing the trends and potentials of new control methods to give a comprehensive coverage of the woodworking industry today.

Lahti – the city of carpenters – is a home for plenty of services connected with the woodworking industry. Within the woodworking industry, there is constant pressure to find technologies that add significant value by reducing production costs and minimizing environmental impacts. The Directorate of Technical Support received information regarding potential fire and explosion hazards in the workplace associated with improperly installed cyclone dust collectors in the woodworking industry. The woodworking industry is geographically concentrated; its location is influenced by the source of its primary inputs as well as by the location of growing economies with high construction activity.

Woodworking

Woodworking Middle East is a trade platform aimed at meeting the A-Z requirements of the region's woodworking industry. The event, besides bringing together some of the leading names in the global woodworking industry, will showcase various types of wood, as well as technology, including equipment, machinery, accessories and consumables related to the woodworking industry. In other words, Woodworking Middle East will showcase the entire range of veneers, plywood, laminates, glues, lacquers, fittings, accessories and supplies to machinery and consumables used in the woodworking industry. Woodworking Middle East: An absolute must for those who are part of this growing industry The Middle East woodworking industry, as a consequence of the massive growth in the region's construction sector, is expanding at a pace unheard of before.

Woodworking Middle East is the region's first and only focused platform that is solely aimed at accessing the potential of the region's booming woodworking industry. If the woodworking industry is your core business and you don't wish to lose your focus by participating in trade shows with large generic profiles, then Woodworking ME is the place to be. Wood Machinery Manufacturers of America has dedicated its time to the help US machinery, tooling manufacturers and any additional businesses that support them to increase productivity as well as raising awareness and promoting the advancement of the woodworking industry/tooling industry. The UNIMERCO Group is one of the world's biggest manufacturers of tooling systems for the woodworking industry. Among other products, UNIMERCO manufactures cutter heads, combi-tools, CNC-tools, window tooling and diamond tools for all segments within the woodworking industry".

A Lucrative Alternative To The Melting Mortgage Industry

2008-02-25T03:37:00.000-08:00

A massive shift is currently underway in the mortgage industry that is quickly gaining national attention among the financial professionals.

Frustrated, disappointed, under paid mortgage professionals, that are tired of working longer and harder to make less and less money in an industry that has been cut down at the knees, with absolutely no signs of recovery, can end their worries right now by observing a new shift that is currently taking the industry by storm.

Find out how fed up Mortgage Professionals can learn how the best of Corporate America, the best of Wall Street and the best of the Direct Marketing Industry, have come together for the first time ever to create the "perfect storm" of business opportunities for the already successful Financial Professionals who want to earn an unlimited income that is unaffected by economic conditions.

See how this unique, never before seen business model is attracting the attention of high level mortgage professionals and financial pros from all over North America and how you too can align yourself with these insiders before its yesterday's news and you are reading about it in the Wall Street Journal. (This has nothing to do with Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) or any other Mickey Mouse money game).

If your interested in finding out where the top financial insiders now play click on the link below to access information about this business model.This information may very well be the difference as to whether you keep treading water OR...Whether you go on to take control of your personal economy.

Make Your Business Boom by Joining Industry Associations

2008-02-19T02:21:00.003-08:00

If you are looking to increase your business and income (and chances are that your trying just that), joining associations and professional groups in your industry can help you accomplish just that. These organizations are set up to help members of the industry and by becoming a leader of an organization like that, you can increase your reputation, prove your expertise, generate publicity and free advertising for you and your business and increase your income all at the same time.

No matter what industry you are in, chances are that there is an industry association that you can join and work with. In the vast majority of cases, there are several. Mortgage brokers can join the National Mortgage Brokers Association and other professional can join similar organizations. These associations can help you advertise your services, decrease your costs and show your expertise to the community.

If you are a salesperson, you most likely introduce yourself to potential customers in a variety of different ways, but using your position in an industry association to show your expertise can help you in whatever way you introduce yourself. If you write a letter to a potential customer, you can include your position and the association or associations that you belong to. If you meet people in person, you can include a short list of organizations that you belong to on your business card.

By showing that you are a member or even a leader of an industry association, you are showing customers that your job is more than just a job. You are showing them that it is a vital part of your life, which it needs to be if you want to achieve unparalleled success. By joining industry associations, you can easily prove your expertise, save money through cooperative agreements, increase free advertising and publicity for you and your business all while increasing your income and improving your social standing. These are all things that you need if you want success, and something that you should do today.

Business Strategy Planning Made Easy

2008-02-19T02:21:00.001-08:00

Business Ethics; Is The Franchising Industry Self-Regulated Due to the Business Model

2008-02-18T03:56:00.001-08:00

Many government regulators believe that no industry can police itself and yet having been involved in a franchising industry I see that the industry itself due to its very nature and structure causes cooperation between franchisees who are the investors, and the Franchisors who want to expand their brand name.

Many regulators will say they encourage us to clear our minds and consider that Franchisor is like any business will push the envelope on regulations in order to make higher profits. And for those folks I say to you; I am completely clear, and yet cannot forget all my experiences, observations and listening to franchisees, lawyers, government regulators telling me what I was seeing was not real and therefore I am very slow to judge a franchisor.

You see, if a franchisor screws up then outlets fail and they go out of business. With fewer laws they have a better chance of making it and if they don't then they go out of business faster with nothing to hide behind, free-markets solve problems and bureaucracy makes them. And on the other hand I think I have seen my share problems in franchising such as the Decorating Den, Krispy Kremes, Boston Market, Schlotzky's Deli BK, Jiffy Lube crumble, 7-11 sold to Toyko Master franchise, etc.

Still, many of the companies, which had pushed the envelope on ethics and it up in last place in the franchising community and in their competitive industries. Where as those corporations and Franchisor's which were more ethical and it up on top in the long run. There is an inherent good in franchising, which promotes honesty and integrity like no other industry. Unfortunately the government regulators do not understand this fact and this is what causes increased and unnecessary over regulation in the franchising industry. Please consider this in 2006.

Cruise Travel Business Opportunities

2008-02-18T03:51:00.000-08:00

The increased use of computers and e-commerce are changing business operations. This is mainly true within the travel industry. The travel industry encompasses several different businesses. These include travel agencies and franchises, online travel agent franchises and cruise franchises.

In the cruise travel market, cruise lines are launching expansion ventures to new places. This makes it very difficult to operate numerous centers simultaneously. Cruise travel business opportunities are comprised of a variety of concepts that prove to be feasible and profitable business opportunities for many. Advertisements are placed in newspapers, the yellow pages and on the Internet. They include vending offerings, home-based opportunities, cruise franchises and other travel business services.

It is very profitable to be a cruise travel agent. People can earn money by working from home or from their present place of business. Many home-based travel agents offer the same perks and benefits as store- front travel agencies. There are a number of companies who offer training seminars on cruise ships and vacation resorts all over the world, at reasonable costs. It is also possible for people to obtain training online. The companies provide comprehensive programs with the know-how, training and the tools that are required by a potential agent to succeed in the industry. Parent cruise companies offer first hand training, to uphold an already established business pattern and maintain uniformity in various smaller centers.

Cruise travel business opportunities offer the means to earn without managing any stock or personal selling. They do not involve learning complicated technical information and require a small upfront investment. Regardless of whether individuals are looking for a way to increase their income on a part-time basis, or hoping for a full-time business opportunity, cruise travel helps individuals to build an independent business under the guidance of the parent cruise travel group.

Hot industries for small businesses

2008-02-14T02:33:00.000-08:00

Tracking consumer and business needs over the next decade is key to finding your entrepreneurial niche in the 1990s.

Finding the right business opportunity is like hunting for buried treasure. It's costly, time-consuming and there's no guarantee you'll hit pay dirt. Entrepreneurs can often be heard asking themselves the following questions during their quest: Is this industry recession-proof? Can I establish a niche? How much start-up capital will I need? Can I capture a significant size of the market? What are the industry trends?

Tracking consumer and business needs over the next decade is key to finding your entrepreneurial niche in the 1990s.

"When most people think of this industry," says Samuel R. Sacco, executive vice president of the National Association of Temporary Services (NATS), an Alexandria, Va., trade organization, "they think of the blue-collar segment. But the professional technical segment is seeing more growth."

The industry as a whole is growing. For the past two decades, the percentage of temp workers in the labor force has more than quintupled. According to NATS, revenue for 1991 was $20 billion, up 1.4% from 1990, and the industry's annual payroll also jumped 1.4% in 1991 to $14.5 billion. Modest growth, yes, but industry observers expect those numbers to rise as the economy creeps toward a full recovery.

"This is a great area," notes William J. Dennis, a senior research fellow for the National Federation of Independent Business Foundation, a Washington, D.C., small business research group. "Temps will be a thing of the future. We are seeing businesses attempting to scale back their labor force to meet customer demand. One way to do that is through temps. They allow companies to handle various sizes of demand without increasing fixed labor costs."

According to Sacco, the regions to watch are in the South and Midwest, specifically Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas. "Those areas have experienced growth," Sacco notes. "A lot of companies have left the Northeast. The South and Midwest weren't as badly affected by the recession." Another popular region is Washington, D.C., where a number of government agencies rely on temp help.

The industry continues to be a reactive one. It doesn't drive workplace trends; instead, it reacts very quickly to them. One of the key challenges business owners face for the remainder of the decade is to quickly respond to shifting customer needs. For example, 10 years ago, if a company president needed a secretary, the only requirements were that she type 50 words a minute and have a small degree of telephone savvy. Not anymore. The workplace has gone high-tech and become more complex. Today's secretaries are computer-literate and can operate intricate spreadsheet programs. It has become even more critical for agency owners to upgrade a temp's skills to meet higher performance standards.

Thats exactly what Rosalind Clifton, president of Backlog Ltd., is trying to do. Backlog is a 4-year-old Chicago agency that grossed $700,000 last year. Clifton says she offers all her temps (for a slight fee) a six-hour multimedia training course. "In the past we just relied on a quick test and some references before sending our people out," notes Clifton, whose agency places medical claim examiners, clerical/customer service support staff and word processors. "Now we test them on a computer system to see if they know WordPerfect If they don't, we train them so we can give the client exactly what they're looking for."

It will take that kind of forward-thinking strategy for more black temp agency owners to succeed. Although the industry outlook is promising, the field remains fiercely competitive. Such upper-echelon agencies as Manpower Inc. in New York and Chicago's Kelly Services continue to monopolize clients. For example, according to Staffing Industry Report, a Cupertino, Calif-based industry newsletter, in 1990, those agencies alone had 1,407 and 935 branch offices, respectively.

Cynthia Cruickshank, president and CEO of Unique Support Services Inc., a 9-year-old New York agency, complains that most potential customers stick with agencies they've been doing business with for the last 10 years. For instance, Cruickshank says it took her four years to finally nab Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., the New York-based securities brokerage firm, as a client. "I called persistently, sent them introductory letters and profiles of my company, and all they said was they already had a list of vendors and they didn't need my services," Cruickshank recalls. "Then, all of a sudden, I got a call and they wanted me to do a proposal for them. I got the business in 1987 and provided them with secretaries and word processors."

Business Products Industry Association

2008-02-14T02:32:00.001-08:00

Members of the Business Products Industry Association have voted to reorganize themselves and rename their group the Independent Office Products and Furniture Dealers Association. The group contends independent dealers are critical to the success of the office products and furniture industry. Independents account for office product sales of $6 billion and furniture sales of $11 billion, according to the group.

Colorado's Green Industry

2008-02-13T02:17:00.000-08:00

The Green Industry and the Economy

As many have come to notice, Colorado’s green industry is growing at an exceptional pace. The term “green industry” includes everything from nursery and garden centers to landscape care and maintenance. Also included are such fields as golf courses, florists and greenhouses. With so much growth it is important for people to take notice of the many economic contributions the green industry offers to Colorado.

According to an independent study conducted by Colorado State University, Department of Ag and Resource Economics with support from GreenCO, in 2002 the green industry of Colorado contributed over $1.7 billion in sales to Colorado’s economy. The industry also provided 34,000 jobs and paid over $825 million in wages. While this data is a few years old, the new data for 2007 in my opinion will only improve on these numbers. This particular study conducted by Colorado State University is published approximately every five years. For more information on this particular study check out GreenCO’s web site: www.greenco.org

So even if you are not a business but a local resident of Colorado, it is important to consider your new home improvement project or even your weekly round of golf, a contribution to Colorado’s local economy.

Business Articles - How You Start Off Is All Important!

2008-02-13T02:16:00.000-08:00

If you are an expert in a certain industry or field than you are qualified to write business articles on your industry's topic and related topics. Getting a byline for that article is essential and can help you and your business in a few different ways.

The primary reason why writing business articles is important is that it portrays you as an expert, that potential consumers and customers will want to call on. Your business can realise revenue benefits of your writing business articles related to your company's field.

The first tip on writing business articles is to write on the industry that you know, and any other related industry. Offer tips and advice to consumers that offer them an inside glance at how your industry works and offer them help in resolving their problems and making a sound decision on which industry expert to call on.

You should write your title after you write your business article. If you're using some feedback form that requires that you choose an article title than choose and change later if necessary. Don't get cute with the title - it should be clear and enticing.

The initial three words of your business articles should always be very relevant keywords.

Your business articles, especially if written for the Web, should not be longer than 500 words. If you find that the material is lengthy and must be so, than break it up into more than one article. Do mention in each article that there is to be a subsequent one - if there is. If it really must be in one article, then set up sub heads and dividers that leave a lot of white space and allow the reader to take a break, as well as drawing them back into the article with a strong tease.

When you first start out writing business articles begin by making a short article outline to guide you through the writing. In lieu of an outline you can just jot down the main points you want to be sure and include in the business article. Think about sub themes and secondary points you want to make and issues you want to discuss.

Industry Jargon and Definitions Conflict with Common Language

2008-02-11T03:06:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed that Industry Professionals often create a new language to describe the things they are discussing? They often do this for reasons of maintaining common ground in their business endeavors. However often in making this new language and industry jargon they in fact borrow other words, which are common words used in society. If you are to ask these professionals why they chose words which are common words in the language to mean something else in your industry, they look at you and simply say; “So, that is irrelevant” we are using them this way here and that is just the way it is. Computer Industry was quick to take this egotistic approach and shun their responsibilities to the greater good of the common language. Yet, how on Earth can they say that public use of a words definition is irrelevant?

Yet these same industry gurus will say with out “common ground” in their own industry; that one is isolated? Then in fact they are saying that they themselves have isolated their entire industry from the rest of the civilization. If an industry is isolated then it can never complete whatever it is it is attempting. Often an industry, which masks itself and wraps itself in a jargon can run a stealth in its attempt to innovate past competing industries in the market place, yet in doing so it risks the synergy of explosive growth. By using trickery and stealth they attempt to distance themselves from others. In doing so they may not recruit the hard chargers necessary to hyperspace the industry.

Make Your Business Boom by Joining Industry Associations

2008-02-11T03:03:00.000-08:00

Six Things to Consider When Starting a Business

2008-02-08T02:45:00.001-08:00

Of course there is a lot to consider when starting a business. Here are a few thoughts.

1. If your industry (or even a closely associated industry) has a trade group, association or annual convention consider attending it. You could learn a lot about the suppliers, customers and even about your "competitors" in the industry. A good opportunity to network.

2. Check the internet for "forums" where smart individuals from your industry might meet. Get a great glimpse of some of the important issues and problems in your industry.

3. Seriously consider getting an online presence. Many businesses today have websites as a central and crucial part of their business. Many industries will have a hard time surviving without a web presence.

4. Get a good lawyer and accountant before you need them. Do a business plan to help focus your thoughts.

5. Get yourself a good computer and the software that might help you run the business. Sometimes, specially when you are starting out, good decisions here can save you a lot of money.

6. Decide what you want to outsource and what you will do yourself. Do a self assessment. Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Mitigate your weaknesses by perhaps outsourcing that task or working with others who complement you.

You do need to cover operations, cashflow/funding, and marketing. Businesses rise and fall on their customers. Make sure you have a solid plan to acquire customers with a timeline, budgets and goals. Once you get a customer remember it is far cheaper to retain a good, repeat customer than it is to acquire a new one. Treat them well.

Did The IFA Sell The Franchising Industry Down the River?

2008-02-08T02:43:00.000-08:00

The Federal Trade Commission has now completed its new revision of the Franchise Rule, a set of regulations, which has not been changed since the 1970s if you can believe it? Outrageous to think that the Federal Government could be so inept or non-responding to the needs of the free market or the Franchising Community, which represents nearly 1/3 of every consumer dollar spent in the United States of America.

One of the larger Franchise Organizations for the Industry, which is filled with lawyers, as well as franchisors, consultants and franchisees is the International Franchise Association, which recently put out a Press Release to its members about the new Law and Regulation changes by the Federal Trade Commission. In this press release they alerted media sources and the Industry of the phase in period of these new regulations in franchising, unfortunately the rules and regulations are still too restrictive and burdensome.

Indeed, it appears that after 10-years of input from the Franchising Industry on potential rule changes, not very much has actually changed other than the separation of the Business Opportunities from the Franchise Industry. This is because Business Opportunities have been the cause of so much consumer harm and the franchising industry none if any really.

Winning in the Cash Flow Note Industry is Not Just a Myth!

2008-02-07T02:35:00.002-08:00

If you are looking for a new career or looking to make money, then you might have heard of an offer to join the cash flow note industry. Perhaps you learned about people making thousands of dollars in a single deal. You may be wondering how this lucrative career field actually works. The cash flow industry is a legitimate market, taking in about 350 billion dollars a year, and has a definite target consumer: the note owner. Winning in the cash flow note industry is possible for anyone.

The note owner is the consumer holding the money, as an accounts receivable contract. Acting as a cash flow broker, you look for note owners who are willing to sell their notes to buyers searching for a long-term profit. You may wonder why a note owner would want to sell a note in the first place. However, the note owner has a great deal to gain from the transaction. He or she can exchange the concerns of a cash flow note for up-front cash.

The note owner might have a special arrangement for long-term loan financing. The note owner may not trust just any buyer that comes along wanting to buy the note, especially if the debtor is a close friend. Knowing the most common reasons why sellers do not sell can help you to succeed at winning in the cash flow note business.

Cruise Travel Business Opportunities

2008-02-07T02:35:00.001-08:00

No More Using Industry Statistics to Sell Business Opportunities

2008-02-06T02:32:00.000-08:00

In the past many business opportunity sellers would use industry specific statistics on their Web sites, brochures and even in videos, which they would mail to potential buyers. The Federal Trade Commission looked into this and found that many business opportunity sellers overused these figures to sell their wares.

In the future this tactic of using industry statistics may become illegal and considered fraudulent due to a proposed rule that the Federal Trade Commission is considering which would govern business opportunities. In the rule business opportunity sellers would have to prove and have records to prove that the statistics they use are actual statistics of people who bought their particular business opportunity.

Why is such a rule being considered by the Federal Trade Commission? Well, because there has been fraud in the past uniform of unsubstantiated earnings claims, which has damaged consumers. Below is an excerpt from the rulemaking section report by the Federal Trade Commission on their potential proposed rule;

Proposed section 437.4(c): Industry statistics

“As noted above, proposed section 437.4(c) would address a problem that is prevalent among business opportunity sellers: the use of real or purported industry statistics in the marketing of business opportunity ventures. It is common for vending machine promoters, for example, to tout what are purported to be industry-wide vending sales statistics. A matrix of potential earnings based upon an industry-average sliding scale of “vends per day” is typical. The use of such industry statistics in the promotion of a business opportunity creates the impression that the level of sales or earnings is typical in the industry, and by extrapolation, that the prospective purchaser will achieve similar results.

To prevent this type of deceptive earnings claim, proposed section 437.4(c) would prohibit the use of industry financial, earnings, or performance information “unless the seller has written substantiation demonstrating that the information reflects the typical or ordinary financial, earnings, or performance experience of purchasers of the business opportunity being offered for sale.” Accordingly, before a seller could use industry statistics, it must be able to measure the performance of existing purchasers and document that the industry statistics reflect the existing purchasers’ typical performance. For example, a start-up business opportunity with no or very limited prior sales would probably not be able to use industry statistics because it would lack a sufficient basis to demonstrate that the industry statistics reflect the typical or ordinary experience of the start-up’s prior purchasers.”

Make Your Business Boom by Joining Industry Associations

2008-02-06T02:31:00.000-08:00

Everything You Need To Know About Construction Equipment Leasing...And How To Get It!

2008-02-04T02:56:00.000-08:00

As a decision-maker in the construction industry, weighing all equipment acquisition options is a critical aspect of the job - especially given today's fluid marketplace.

With construction equipment leasing you don't have to worry about the overhead of the purchase while keeping your cash accessible. No matter how big or small your project you can always find leasing options from the financial institutions who specialise in this type of product. Plus, payments you make under an operating lease are tax deductible.

65% of the top businesses lease equipment, according to an ELA survey. The top reasons these businesses cite for leasing include consistent expenses in budget management, increased cash flow, and the ability to have the latest equipment.

As businesses prepare to compete and grow in a new millennium, many are searching for proven new ways to address their equipment financing needs. And the choice for an increasing number in construction is clear: equipment leasing.

If structured properly, as a "true" lease, construction equipment leasing has some very important tax benefits. The payments can be considered a rental resulting in a 100% expense write-off. At the end of the year you would simply total your payments and deduct them entirely as an expense. This is a much more rapid write-off than interest expense and depreciation.

Most leases do not have to be shown on your financial statement as a liability, since theoretically it is a contingent liability, and only has to be shown as a footnote. This keeps your financial statement from becoming overloaded with debt and is important if your bank lines require maintaining certain ratios.

The biggest benefit, however, is that you can get the most money with the least information.... Up to approx. $100,000 with a single page application!

For many in construction equipment leasing makes perfect sense. Especially when you consider the upside: Leasing allows you to keep your machine stock flexible. When your work changes, your machines can too.

It provides a planned schedule for equipment replacement, helping you run newer, up-to-date equipment so you'll have less downtime. It generally requires smaller amounts of money up front and monthly payments on your construction equipment leasing are generally lower than installment payments, thus freeing up cash and increasing the liquidity of your assets. And it doesn't lock you into a long-term commitment to purchase.

Heavy Equipment Leasing - Leasing Your Heavy Equipment is the Best Choice

2008-02-04T02:45:00.000-08:00

Let's face it, we are all in business to make money-right? That is the very reason that leasing your heavy equipment is the best choice. Compared to purchasing your equipment using a traditional loan, leasing allows you to keep more of your money on hand in your pocket. A traditional loan is going to require a down payment (sometimes a hefty down payment of 25% or more). If you opt to lease your equipment, it can often times be done with nothing down or a very small down payment. If you keep your cash on hand, how much money can you make with that capital? This is an excellent question to ponder.

Another wonderful benefit is the fact the lease payments are tax deductible. A traditional loan is only partially tax deductible. Once again, because of the tax implications you can hang on to more of your money. What can the money in your pocket do for you? Leasing your heavy equipment is the right choice. Always remember to consult your tax professional to summarize the tax savings available to your company.

If you buy your heavy equipment, you run the risk of being left with something that may become obsolete in the near future. If and when that happens, you can't get your down payment back. Also, you don't need to worry about selling your semi-useless equipment. If it's not working for you, then you may have a tough time finding someone that can put your obsolete equipment to use. At the same time, many leases are structured so that there is a one dollar buy-out at the end of the lease term. If you decide you'd like to keep what you have been leasing, you can probably come up with one dollar so that you can become the titled owner.

Last but not least, when you choose to lease the process is very simple. Many times one can acquire a heavy equipment lease with just a simple application (up to $250,000). This means that no financial statements or tax returns are required. Also, start-up companies and those with credit challenges have found equipment leasing to be their best option. If you've been turned down by a bank or credit union and were not able to buy the equipment that your business needs to survive, give leasing a try.

When it comes down to it, heavy equipment leasing is the best choice. This type of financing allows you to hang on to more of your money, has excellent tax benefits, eliminates the threat of obsolescence, and can be very easy to obtain. Take your business to the next level and choose leasing.

Building A Great Construction Business Plan

2008-02-02T02:34:00.000-08:00

There are many ways for those in the construction industry to strike out on their own, but creating a residential or commercial construction plan can be one of the most lucrative.

Of course before you can start that great new home building business it is important to first build a quality construction business plan.

It is important to give as much care and consideration to the creation of the construction business plan as you would to building that great new home or office building.

Make Sure Your Construction Business Plan Is Polished And Complete

After all, it is the construction business plan that will allow you to borrow the money you need to hire workers, set up an office, buy vehicles and construction equipment and acquire all the many things it will take to get that great new business off the ground.

In fact the first document most potential lenders, investors and business partners will want to see will be that construction business plan. It is important, therefore, that your construction business plan be polished, professional, complete and accurate.

Understanding The Specific Construction Industry Issues That Should Be Addressed

There are a number of issues specific to the construction industry that the construction business plan should address. One of these issues is the demand for high skilled construction workers.

In some areas of the country these workers are readily available, while in other parts of the nation workers are scarce and wages are very high.

It is important for the construction business plan to address the local availability of qualified workers, and to lay out a detailed plan for attracting and retaining those workers throughout the season.

Detail The Type Of Construction Business You Will Start

It is also important for the construction business plan to detail the kinds of construction in which the proposed company will specialize. Some builders will specialize in commercial real estate, while others will focus on the residential market.

Within the residential building marketplace, some builders will look to the luxury home market, while others will focus on building more affordable homes.

It is important for the construction business plan to address these differences and explain which segment or segments of the market the company will have as its focus.

Detailing Your Cost Saving Strategies During Slow Downs

It is important as well for the construction business plan to detail the cost saving strategies the company will use in the event of a slowdown in the market.

These market slowdowns are inevitable, and it is important for any construction business plan to include contingency plans which will be used to ride out such bumps in the road.

Having a solid construction business plan is essential to starting and sustaining any construction business, and this kind of planning will play a critical role.

Expanding Your Auto Detailing Business - The Pros and Cons to Aircraft Cleaning

2008-02-02T02:32:00.000-08:00

As the founder of an aircraft cleaning business, and after franchising it all over the country, I often get asked about the industry. Detailing and Cleaning corporate aircraft is a great business and the pay is very good. Recently, a successful operator of a car detailing company asked me about the aircraft-detailing sector as a potential place to expand his business.

Subject: Expanding into Aircraft - Looking at expanding our current detail business into the aircraft industry. Where is the best place to investigate the pro and cons of this segment of the detailing business?

Well, perhaps the biggest cons to adding Aircraft Detailing to your mix is Time, Aggravation, and Cost.

Time:

It takes time to develop Aircraft Corporate Detailing Accounts, but once you have a few the word of mouth is good and brings you in lots of business.

Aggravation:

It is aggravating to have to deal with the many airport rules, background checks for all employees and the time it takes the bureaucracy to process your "Airport Activity Permit", but once completed it acts as a barrier to entry keeping out competition and gives you an exclusive on the captured customer base. Generally, there are only 2-3 aircraft cleaning companies on an airport.

Cost:

Cost is a huge consideration, as the airport will require increased liability insurance, and that could run you several thousand dollars, depending on the situation. Generally the airport wants to be additionally insured for 5 million or more in liability insurance. Insurance companies need you to pay some of that upfront, yet realize you have not cleaned your first aircraft yet. Worse, the permit at the airport can take as long as 3-months to process, usually faster, but it gets ridiculous sometimes.

What is KPO, or What is Knowledge Processing Outsourcing?

2008-02-01T02:07:00.000-08:00

Overview :
Knowledge Processing Outsourcing is popularly known as a KPO. Business Processing Outsourcing or BPO Industry turning into Knowledge Process Outsourcing. KPO Industry handeling more high skilled work than BPO Industry.

Todays information driven knowledge economy creating daily basis new business opportunities for companies. Knowledge process outsourcing or KPO will bring huge Jobs Opportunities in coming future.

What is KPO (Knowledge Processing Outsourcing)?

Information is Knowledge. Todays economy is Knowledge economy. Knowledge processing is a continuous process of creation and dissemination of information by bringing together the information industry leaders to create knowledge and see meaning in information and its context. This Information driven Knowledge outsourcing in known as Knowledge Processing Outsourcing or KPO.

Why KPO?

KPO helps companies to create huge business opportunities. Many new business concepts coming day by day in Knowledge Processing Outsourcing Industry.

Who can get Benefits of KPO

Emerging KPO opportunities in following sectors:

* e-Marketing
* Retail Industry
* Research & Development
* Business and Technical Analysis
* Learning Solutions
* Animation & Design
* Business & Market Research
* Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology
* Medical Services
* Writing & Content Development
* Legal Services
* Intellectual Property (IP) Research
* Data Analytics
* Network Management
* Training & Consultancy

How Data Synchronization tools can help KPO sector ?

Data Synchronization tools Software helping companies to access thier data from any locations. Companies can develop various types of softwares for different different KPO perpose and process data from Branch Automation Tool.

Retail companies can get sales and stock reports using Data Synchronization tools Software. Manufacturering companies can use branch automation tool to access thire Data from various locations. Dealers and Distributors can process purchase orders to manucaturers through Data Synchronization tools.

Strategies To Starting An Import-Export Business As A Career

2008-02-01T02:06:00.000-08:00

One of the most popular and rewarding industries of modern day society is the import/export industry. If you have the motivation to succeed in business, you may want to start an import/export business.

If you start an import/export business, you could, for example, import custom-made light fixtures and export paper materials. The possibilities are endless if you start an import export business. If you want to start an import/export business it is important to think about which type you would be interested in.

There are several types including an export management company (EMC), an export trading company (ETC), and an import/export merchant. An export management company is a business that usually specializes in a single product and handles all the export operations for a domestic company that wishes to enter the market overseas.

An export trading company focuses on learning what foreign buyers want to purchase and then locates domestic sources interested in exporting. Finally, the import/export merchant does not specialize in any single industry or product and therefore does not have a specific client base.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the import/export industry is a 1.2 trillion dollar a year industry. When an entrepreneur wants to start an import/export business, they have the world at their feet. Everyday thousands of products are traded globally.

One can import and export anything from food and beverages to jewelry, furniture, and clothing. Anyone in the import/export business will come to find that the demand for certain imports or exports can change quickly. For the savvy trader, any product can become part of the global merchandise inventory.

Creating PR by Way of Interviews

2008-01-31T03:11:00.001-08:00

One great way to create public relations and Internet community goodwill for your online business is to do interviews of people in the industry. This does two things; first, it makes you look good being associated with other people that you are interviewing and it makes you look like you know what you are doing and you are well connected in the industry so you must be very good and even an expert in the field or industry sub sector.

Additionally, it makes the other person look good and that means they are more likely to network with you in the future on industry projects and that can bring value to your business future sales. It adds one more important word-of-mouth advertiser in the industry funneling business your way. Creating PR by way of interviews is a very smart business tactic in marketing because it is a win-win situation for both the interview were and the interviewee.

What some people do not realize is that often in the interviewer can end up with more publicity, public relations and Internet community goodwill than the interviewee. Often the interviewee is someone who is very popular and already well known in the industry and that is the reason that they picked them to do the interview in the first place. By being associated with this person it upgrades their status in the industry as well.

The good thing about using interviews for PR is it also separates you from the interviewee in case sometime in the future the interviewee has any negative political or unfortunate negative press. After all you are not associated with them or aligned with them anyway because you merely did an interview. So interviewing people for public relations and marketing is a very smart idea and something you might consider in 2006.

B2B Marketing To Pharmaceutical Industry

2008-01-31T03:10:00.000-08:00

The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing many changes; more funds are being put into research, and the industry is getting bigger. Drug sales in the US have reached $165 billion, and with that kind of money, it is no wonder that marketers are making a beeline for the pharmaceutical industry.

Techniques for Market to Pharmaceutical Companies:

Here are some tips to successfully market to pharmaceutical companies.

1) Have your company represented at trade shows and conferences for pharmaceutical industry. Most marketing deals are signed at these events. Trade shows allow you to give a live demonstration of how your products can help the pharma companies.
2) Advertise on websites. Many researchers from the pharmaceutical industry look up information online.
3) Balance the sales talk with scientific data. You must remember that apart from being business entities, pharmaceutical companies also conduct a lot of scientific research and development.
4) Be aware of outsourcing trends in the industry, as this can have fallout on your marketing strategies in the end.

Marketing to Pharmaceutical Industry: Outsourcing.

The pharmaceutical industry is outsourcing much of its research and development operations to other companies. There is an acute need for vendors in the business. Vendors and service providers will be affected in many ways.

1) Vendors will play a vital role in innovation and product development.
2) Vendors will need to factor in global changes before marketing their products to pharmaceutical companies.
3) Merging of technology and business aspects will strengthen pharmaceutical industry and lead to boom in vendor services.

Pharmaceutical Industry: Drug Identification Systems.

In the pharmaceutical industry, there is a growing demand for new products and services. Vendors are needed to market their products for the Drug Identification Systems sector in the pharmaceutical industry.

From bar codes to radio frequency transmitters, pharmaceutical companies are trying all methods to check fraud. Vendors who specialize in industrial security and have the expertise in checking industrial espionage should market themselves to the pharmaceutical industry now. Patent security and drug trial reliability are on top of every pharma company’s agenda, so firms providing security services will find it easier to market their services.

Increasing sales of drugs worldwide, research activity and outsourcing have caused a boom in the pharmaceutical industry. Concurrently, the need for latest technology and innovative products has made the sector a marketer’s delight. Following the strategies outlined above, you can sell to the pharmaceutical industry and watch your own business ride the wave of success created by pharma companies. To know more about how to market to pharmaceutical companies, you can call in a business advisor who will help you find markets within the sector.

QuickBooks Setup Help - Which Industry Should I Choose For My Business?

2008-01-30T01:35:00.001-08:00

Indian Export Development

2008-01-30T01:34:00.000-08:00

Indian export development’s primary objective is to improve Indian industries competitiveness in international markets, develops, coordinates and implements Indian government export promotion activities. This is accomplished through the managements of an integrated export development program organized by Indian industry sectors.

The mission of each industry sector group in export development is to foster the competitiveness and growth of its industries and promote their increased participation in international markets.

This is accomplished through a mix of government and industry cooperation, analysis, export promotion and export policy development activities based on that industries export competitiveness needs and interests. Export development identifies and analyzes issues with respect to small business and recommends polices and programs to promote competitiveness.

Specifically, export developments takes a three-pronged program approach – policy development, industry analysis and trade promotion. To boost the export programs - first identify obstacles and export opportunities by product, industry sector and market by working with commerce advisory committees, industry associations and individual firms, then monitor foreign targeting practices and assess the impact of these practices on Indian industry sectors and develop priorities for industry specific programs and formulate strategies to advance export in specific sectors.

Export development supports ongoing efforts to reduce export barriers through bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations by preparing analysis, testimony and briefings for policy development purposes.

A business for export development identifies foreign and domestic government laws, regulations and polices which impair the international competitiveness of industry and develops initiatives to address such practices. Export development develops and maintains industry liaison through the use of private sector advisory mechanisms. The industry sector advisory committee on small and minority business for trade policy matters is the part of Indian advisory process.

Solo Professionals Who Buck the System and Industry Associations

2008-01-29T01:36:00.001-08:00

Solo professionals and consult need to be sure to have as many people as they can as friends who are associates in the industry. The solo professional consultant who bucks the system and the industry associations will find that some people will stay away from them and they will lose all the contacts of that particular person that they could have had to help them in their business.

This means fewer clientele and negative word-of-mouth advertising rather than positive referral reinforcement. Solo professionals should not buck the system too much and they should participate in industry associations. If they do not like the industry associations they should participate at lease to a small degree and not go negative against the industry.

Solo professionals who disagree with what the industry is doing should probably consider what our grandparents told us; If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say Don't Say Anything at All.

There is no sense in making waves in the industry if you do not have to and if you're going to participate in industry forums on the Internet or discussions at trade shows then you need to be cognizant of how you conduct yourself to benefit your objectives in your Solo professional consulting business. Please consider this in 2006.

Top Internet Home Based Business In Travel

2008-01-29T01:32:00.000-08:00

Music in the Workplace

2007-07-10T02:11:00.002-07:00

Over the ages, music has held a place in the working environment. From it’s use in the earliest of times until its near extinction during the Industrial Age to the present day, music has played a vital role to employees.

A Brief History

Music is a universal language that transcends boundaries. In Victorian times, handloom weavers sang as they worked. When the loud machinery of the Industrial Age came along, music in the workplace was nearly lost. During World War II, music was once again introduced to employees via radio. Employees, often children, would lose fingers to the looms while attempting to remove something that was blocking it. Child laborers would sing to keep themselves awake.

Railroad workers and farmers sang to relieve monotony and to stay alert to dangers. With the advent of machines in the Industrial Age, singing was literally drowned out. In quieter factories, women or orchestras were hired to sing and play among the workers. Music all but died during this time. (le Roux, 2005, vol. 7)

Radio was mainly used as a means to convey news, but in 1940, the British Broadcasting Corporation began running a radio program called “Music While You Work.” It ran twice per day and was geared especially for the factory workers. The bands for the show were instructed to play medleys in order to keep the workers’ attention. Also vital was for the music to keep a rhythm that would keep productivity up.

In 1942, the song “Deep in Heart of Texas” was banned due to the handclapping section that encouraged workers to momentarily stop and participate. (le Roux, 2005) Even in these earliest of times, the benefits of music in the workplace were recognized:
• Increased productivity
• Fewer accidents
• Improved alertness
• Team interaction

In response to the positive reaction, the company Muzak was founded in the 1950’s to provide music to companies. The company is still going strong today.

Modern Study of Music in the Workplace

In modern times, studies have been conducted to gauge the benefits of music in a work setting. These studies have proved much of what was already known, mainly that music improves productivity.

One study indicates that “positive affect and quality-of-work were lowest with no music, while time-on-task was longest when music was removed.” (Lesiuk, 2005, pp.173-191) On the other hand, “positive mood change and enhanced perception of design” (Lesiuk, pp.173-191) were complemented with the addition of music.

Additional studies have shown that music in the workplace promotes positive mood, sense of team, improves alertness and can lessen the event of accidents. Music “motivates workers, decreases boredom and leads to increased productivity perhaps because people work in time with the beat.” (le Roux, 2005)

Employers do need to consider the type of music played in a workplace. The mood and style should fit the business. Experts suggest all-instrumental soundtracks so that workers don’t become distracted by the lyrics. (Guess, 1999, p. 42)

Personal Headphones in the Workplace

Today, there is some movement toward personal stereos for employees. A study by researchers at the university of Illinois shows listening to music may increase the output of employees in all types of jobs. (Oldham, 1996, p. 95) The idea of personal stereos is that when a worker is allowed to listen to the type of music he or she enjoys, the better the quality of their work. While this idea is fairly recent, it does show promise.

Conclusion

Music has been the soundtrack to humanity undoubtedly since time began. It speaks to people on a primal level. Before researchers even began to study the effect of music on workers, people were weaving, working in their fields or and other jobs while humming or singing along. Now, researchers are proving what these people knew all along: music makes work go by faster and keeps spirits up.

Works Cited

How To Make Sure You're Getting The Very Most Out Of Your Critical Prescription Data

2007-07-10T02:11:00.001-07:00

As a person responsible for sales operations in a pharmaceutical company, you have an incredible amount of duties to support the sales staff. Your work can involve coordinating sales meetings, training, trade shows, CRM/SFA software, and marketing support. And, almost without exception, you are in a firefighting mode—responding to issues instead of being able to proactively improve the operations of your department.

So, when it comes to analyzing prescription data & xponent data that is available from IMS Health or Verispan, this often becomes a lower priority even though this data, combined with your own operations data, can be incredibly valuable. Or, if you are a smaller pharma company and don’t subscribe to this data, single cuts of the data that can be much less expensive can also prove to be valuable, even many months after the purchase.

There are three main points this series of articles will present.
(1) Is this data really that important? What benefits are there to analyzing this data, combined with our own internal sales operations data?

(2) Once our organization has decided that “yes”, this data is very important, how best to analyze it? What tools are out there? Should I outsource?

(3) What type of organization should I be dealing with if I choose to go the outsourcing route?

In our first article on this topic, we're going to focus on the following question:

Is the data important?

Absolutely. Medium and large pharmaceutical companies must have it because compensation is often based on how many scripts are written in a territory, and because the organization does not sell directly to its customers, this third party data is critical.

Smaller organizations, especially startups, don’t necessarily see the value of spending money for this data on a monthly basis and will try to craft compensation plans based on other criteria such as calls, sample drops, recruitment of doctors to speaker’s bureaus or events, and other methods thought to show a salesperson’s effectiveness. While this may work for the short term, the data gathered (calls, samples, recruitment) needs to be assimilated with prescription data to really know the effectiveness of various campaigns.

One example is an actual case with one of our medium sized customers. This customer ran a registry, and had doctors on their advisory board. When all of this data was merged and a query was run to see the script writing habits of doctors on the board, they found one key board member actually wrote no scripts of that company’s drugs and concentrated mostly on a competitor. Without the script data, a compensation plan based on calls, samples, and recruitments would have erroneously rewarded a rep for this particular “bad” doctor.

Medium and larger organizations usually have group management operations. With group plan track information, programs and support for these operations can become very important.

Most pharmas have some sort of relationship with insurance providers that provide for discounts at various levels of script writing. But how are these verified? With this data and tools to mine this data. And remember that these groups expend a great deal of effort to to continually get best pricing, so frequent queries must be run to make sure large groups are not changing policies and switching to competitors.

Continual monitoring of plan track data allows a company to make sure various insurance groups are meeting their obligations.

With the right tools in place you can streamline your presciption data mining and analysis efforts.

The E-Myth and Procedure Writing

2007-07-07T02:24:00.001-07:00

In his best selling book of the same name, Michael Gerber describes the E-Myth as the myth of the heroic entrepreneur:

…a man or woman standing alone, windblown against the elements, bravely defying insurmountable odds, climbing sheer faces of treacherous rock—all to realize the dream of creating a business of ones own.

Are entrepreneurs really like that? According to Gerber, most of the time they’re not. Much more common than the Promethean business owner forging success from ingenuity, inspiration and hard work is the burnt-out, bitter and in-debt business owner who wishes they’d never gone out on their own. How does this happen? What is the mistake that so many people make when they start their own business?

Their mistake is that they believe that business success comes exclusively from creativity and dedication. It doesn’t. Those qualities, as noble as they are, can’t do anything but postpone failure unless they’re combined with something a lot less romantic – systems.

To be successful, businesses have to be reliable, reproducible and measurable. You have to know what you did, what you’re doing and what the results are. Without that information any business becomes a chaotic mess. Too many people think that they can get by on guts and talent, when what they really need is a binder full of procedures.

What’s the magic of that binder? By writing down all of the things you do and breaking them up into pieces, you can take your business apart as if it were a vintage car. You can analyze it piece by piece and make sure that it’s working the way you need it too – or you can make it better. With those plans you can sell your business or expand it, based on a blueprint that you know works. With a binder full of logical, easy-to-follow procedures you have more than a great idea and a lot of hard work – when your procedures are completely recorded and optimized, you have a money making machine.

Most business owners recognize the advantages of having well documented business systems – the problem is actually doing the writing. Either they simply don’t have the time or they lack the perspective needed to make an objective assessment of all the components in their business.

That’s where technical writers can help. Technical writers specialize in describing complex procedures and systems. The same skills that describe how to maintain an engine or use a piece of software can turn your business into a logical system. Technical writers are experts at interviewing and clarifying specialized knowledge so that it can be leveraged throughout organizations.

The inspiration and hard work have to come from business owners, but technical writers add the organization and documentation that mean business success.

How to Avoid Business Burn Out

2007-07-07T02:23:00.000-07:00

At some point or another, anyone who owns their own business will face some degree of burn out. Instead of learning to cope with such burn out it is better to learn how to avoid it in the first place.

Below are several ways you can avoid business burn out.

1. Organization
Staying organized is one of the first steps in avoiding burn out. Utilize all the resources at your disposal such as filing systems for tax information, payable, receivables, advertising, marketing, etc. This will help you keep your paperwork in order and easily accessible.

Additionally, make sure you have a work place that is also organized. This could be your home office, studio or any other type of work place depending on the type of business you have. Making sure everything is organized and can be easily located will help you tremendously.

2. Time Management
Time management is probably the biggest challenge for most people. When you work from home it can be especially easy to get distracted from your work. While working from home allows you a lot of flexibility which is a good thing, it can also present challenges in regards to remaining focused. To help you, consider setting up a daily schedule for your self. Utilize calendars and tasks list to keep yourself on track. At the beginning of each week write out what you need to accomplish for the week. Keep the list handy in case you need to add to it throughout the week. It is also important to allow for those unexpected interruptions such as last minute doctors appointments or a trip to the office supply store. Additionally, consider setting up your weekly schedule based on what tasks you need to do on particular days. For example, tuesday could be a day you set aside as a marketing day. Every tuesday your focus should be on tasks that have to do with marketing your business.

3. Hire Help
If you find that you are overwhelmed most of the time or getting close to being overwhelmed, it may be time to hire some help. Help can come in the form of a virtual assistant, marketing manager, mailing list manager or simply from setting up a auto responder. Anytime you can automate certain tasks, the better. But for those times you can’t, consider hiring someone to do those tasks for you. You may find that even the small, menial tasks like sending out an email to your mailing list, is a task that you could hire someone else to do. Even all the small tasks that seem relatively simple add up and before you know it, you are spending a great deal of time on these things.

4. Joint Ventures and Partnerships
If you have a large project or new business idea, consider looking into establishing a joint venture with another business owner in a similar niche. The benefits of sharing the work load can be enormous. Also consider partnerships with other similar businesses in the areas of cross promotion and marketing. This could be in the form of exchanging web site links, mailing list advertising or other types of partnerships where the results benefit both of you.

5. Work Ahead
It is so much better to be ahead then to be behind. The pressure you begin to feel when due dates for finished work is upon you can be stress inducers. Avoid this by working ahead if you can. One example of work that can be completed in advance is article writing. When you have completed your daily tasks, consider taking a few moments to work on an article your writing. Another one would be blog posts. The nice thing about blogs is you can write a post in advance and save it for later. This is very true for several of the blog programs out there today. If you host your own blog, you can always save the post as a word document and post it later when your ready. Think of some of the other things you could work on in advance.

6. Take a Break
One of the best things you can do to avoid burn out, is to take breaks. Don’t wait until your in desperate need of one either. Take breaks regularly. Each day you should take breaks throughout the day. Also you need to set aside breaks that consist of either an actual planned vacation, day trip or a certain day of the week that you set aside for some needed “me” time. During this time, work is not allowed. I know it can be difficult but you have to learn to allow yourself to take these breaks. You will find you are better focused and refreshed when you do return to your work.

Managed Print Or Pay Per Page Offerings Are Not Always The Most Cost Efficient Way For Corporations

2007-07-03T02:50:00.001-07:00

Studies have shown that, on average, a company replacing monochrome laser printers with color laser multi-function printers (MFPs) that do not enforce printing policies and will use 10 times the projected toner in value.

There is, however, a way for an enterprise to provide its employees with higher quality print output and finishing capabilities without adding a large bill at the end of the year. If you read your pay per page contract carefully, strip out the paying for unused pages, at least the paper part, and consider making use of a document output management system, you can afford as many MFPs your company needs in the most cost effective way.

Before committing to any pay-per-page contract, assess what printing assets you have and what the cost of your current operation really is to discover what you need with an independent output management system. Keep in mind that part of a good output management system is that it can be used with any industry standard copy and printing device.

Enforcing policies that allow only certain users to make use of the color capabilities, for instance, are very effective and can be easily implemented using an output management system that requires user authentication. That way, the output management system knows who is requesting and can enforce the policies assigned to each user or user group.

Some organizations outsource their printing and some printer vendors such as Xerox have specialized in charging per printed page, implying to include all maintenance and support costs, with a caveat, of course.

The pay-per-print vendors do not like document output management systems as they significantly save toner and paper, the areas where the vendors make the most money. Often those contracts are based on an average number of prints a year and average toner coverage per page.

It is natural for people like color on pages, even if the information on the page is boring. So they will prefer printing them out in color as it is more pleasing to look at a colored page. A good document output management system will allow printing a color document in a scale of grays as well as reducing the toner coverage per page.

There are many other good reasons to deploy a printer vendor independent output management solution such as accountability, what you think you printed and what the vendor thinks you have printed, which printers are used efficiently and which ones are not. Compare toner use of policy enabled printers with those that have no control. And there is the convenience that your print can be collected at a printer near you and the security aspect that your print is not waiting in the output tray for others to see, accidentally take or throw away.

You can also use the best output management solutions to observe what printing assets you have and what their cost and utilization is to discover what type and capability printing systems you need where in your organization.

In a nutshell, owning your printers and having an output management system that integrates your whole fleet is the most cost effective way. However, if you do not have the internal resources to manage your printer fleet or other reasons to outsource the printing infrastructure, then you should make sure that your contracts have no penalty on using less paper and toner than predicted. A typical one is Xerox paper and color toner being dumped in your yard whether you need it or not followed by the second classic, a huge bill for overuse of toner due to higher coverage. So much for saving the rain forests and reducing the carbon footprint.

I am not saying there is no place for pay-per-page, merely that if pay-per-page printing is thought to be the easy option, it could also be an expensive option too, if selected for the wrong reasons. Also, that an independent output management system makes extreme sense no matter if you own your printers or contracted into a pay-per-page scheme.

Klaus Bollmann is a veteran in printer output management and has been in the forefront of innovative output management technology for more than 20 years. He was the original developer of many of the concepts used in today’s multi function printers including the FollowMe printing concept.

Some printer makes allow output management by independent vendors to run embedded on their printers as well as allowing independent manufacturer’s authentication readers to be plugged directly into the printers’ USB host ports, requiring no external authentication devices and making this a more cost effective solution rather than using external authentication hardware.

The Future of Innovation- A Conversation with Business Consultant Praveen Gupta

2007-07-03T02:48:00.000-07:00

>Praveen Gupta is president of Accelper Consulting in Schaumburg, IL, and an adjunct professor of business innovation at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Center for Professional Development. He has written several books on Six Sigma, business innovation and corporate performance. In this interview, Gupta predicts the role that smaller firms will play in business innovation during the rest of this century.

How can small business owners and leaders keep their performance yield high while minimizing cost cutting? Smaller businesses can compete with larger businesses based on performance and speed. Small businesses normally do not have as much waste as large business do due to smaller infrastructure. Thus, there is a constant battle between lowering the cost of products or services and offering value to customers. This requires that small businesses build customer relationships based on value-to-price ratio rather than just the price.

We have learned that every business, including small businesses, must focus on profitable growth by developing innovative solutions to grow customer demand. If we offer our customers what they "love to" have rather than what they have just asked for, customers will be willing to pay a premium, and won't be rushing to find the cheapest solutions. So, we must learn to spoil customers with our care and creativity, instead of the low-cost solution.

In an article in Quality Digest, you say that companies in a decline should focus on growth. Why should they do this, and what are some ways they can go about it? Many businesses have been implementing Six Sigma, Lean, or similar improvement initiatives to cut costs. The end result that I have seen is layoffs, which are very disheartening to workers. I do not understand how one can grow a business by shrinking it. Cutting costs is a vicious spiral that can only hasten the demise of a business because businesses in the U.S cannot win over the competition merely on cost – the rest of the world is cheaper than us.

Thus, we must focus on creating new value, seek opportunities to be able to command premium prices for the value and grow the business. This requires involving employees and empowering them to have fun at work so their creative juices can flow freely. I have learned that having fun means freedom to think, and that is critical for growth.

On the other hand, cutting costs curtails thinking, and that is counterproductive to growth. Thus, there is a need for balancing growth with efficient use of resources to sustain profitable growth.

In writing about performance management, you say that often the strategy is short term – meeting month-to-month goals, for example. How can organizations move from this to the long-term solution of communicating the fundamental business strategy to their employees and clients? Leadership must establish a two-prong strategy – long term for growth and short term for profit – and then balance the execution of both strategies. While we are fine tuning our operations for short-term goals we must not forget our longer-term perspective.

To achieve such a balance in our approach we must keep employees informed, enlist their support and expect them to do their best. The good news is if employees know what they are supposed to do, and why, they deliver – sometimes beyond expectations. And you must be prepared for surprises once employee power is behind the leadership's vision.

In your book "Business Innovation in the 21st Century," one of your takeaways in the chapter on the Information Age is that both business and civic leaders recognize the link between innovation and economic prosperity. How can small businesses use this knowledge to their advantage? Someone said that the main purpose of a business is not to make money, but instead to provide a product or service that a customer needs and, if done well, the customer will pay well, and then the company will make money. Today, we forget about this basic understanding and believe that making money is the only purpose of a business.

If you look at anatomy of a small business, it gets started by a passionate entrepreneur to make something out of one's knowledge or expertise. Nobody starts a business because one wants to make money; instead, one starts the business because one loves to do something, and wants to put it to productive use and make money. Then, the entrepreneur envisions hiring people, growing the business and creating jobs. We must maintain that same entrepreneurial spirit to do something different for producing value, and creating jobs.

Similarly, all business owners and leaders do have a responsibility to create opportunities in the community [in which] they operate by focusing on sustained profitable growth, rather than simply making money, which sometimes leads to actions adverse to the community needs.

Where do you see business innovation headed? What role will smaller firms play? Business innovation will be the way to be in business. In the past someone would start a business thinking one could produce an item at a lower cost than the competition. That will be less important over time as customers want more custom services in fast-changing marketplaces.

Thus, small businesses must be geared more toward producing customized solutions very fast utilizing intellectual resources in the company. In other words, the leadership must believe that business innovation is as important to small businesses as to larger businesses. Thus, they must learn the innovation process, commit to benefit from it and plan to provide newer and higher-value services to customers on demand.

This is different from the current paradigm of providing higher quality, and lower-cost solutions to customers. Remember, we do not always buy lowest-price products or services for our personal use; instead, we buy value for the money we spend. The same principle applies to the business world, where customers buy innovative solutions with higher value, well delivered and when needed.

The Profitability of the Canadian Furniture Industry

2007-06-29T02:36:00.001-07:00

The Canadian furniture industry’s profit performance – in relation to the profitability in overall manufacturing – depends on the kind of financial indicators chosen. The two most commonly used profitability indicators are:

– the rate of pre-tax profits to total assets (or rate of return on assets)
– the rate of pre-tax profits to total revenues (or pre-tax profit margin)

The furniture industry’s rate of return on assets has exceeded the same ratio among manufacturers in general in each year since 1997. In 2004 the rate among furniture manufacturers averaged 7.5%, well ahead of the 6.2% prevailing among manufacturers in general.

The rate of return on assets moves in step with the general business cycle. In fact, the rate declined significantly from is peak level of 13.2% in the boom year of 1999.

Pre-tax profits as a rate of return on total sales among furniture manufacturers exceeded the same ratio among manufacturers in general in 1999, 2001 and 2002. However, the relative strength of furniture manufacturers with respect to this measure does no longer prevail at the present time. The rates of return on sales among furniture manufacturers were well below those of manufacturers in general throughout most of the 1990s and again in 2003 and 2004.

The rate of return on sales – like the rate of return on assets – rises and falls with the stage of the business cycle both among manufacturers in general and among furniture manufacturers. In the furniture industry the rate declined from its peak of 7.4% in 1999 to a cyclical low in 2003, but rose again in 2004 to 4.9%.

With the growing competion from imports from low-cost countries, we fear that the fiancial health of the Canadian furniture industry may deteriorate in the years to come.

Manage Your Time And Reap The Benefits

2007-06-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

With so many businesses taking so many drastic cost cutting measures, it is strange to see how few of them really look deeply into the benefits of time management. Effective management of time is like effective management of any other resources - it can save your company a huge amount of money if it is properly implemented. With the huge cost of outsourcing and moving operations overseas, it seems like every measure should be taken at home to improve efficiency before such a drastic solution is proposed.

Of course, performance management is nothing new. Although the modern understanding of the benefits of time management is a little bit different than as it was originally conceived, the concept still goes back about as far as Henry Ford and the invention of the assembly line. Back then, workers were clocked to see how efficiently they were putting together cars. Various steps were taken to improve the program constantly, resulting in less work for the same product.

The benefits of time management are easy to see on an assembly line. In an office environment, however, time management benefits can be a little bit less apparent. This does not mean that they are not important! These benefits will show up in the books, but it will take a while. After all, the tasks that people have are usually a little bit less concrete. Rather than manufacturing a car, you have to type up financial reports, communicate with clients, and do other similar business tasks.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of time management is on the individual performance and job satisfaction of any particular worker. Without effective time management training, increased job duties can seem overwhelming. After all, when a worker is used to getting a certain amount accomplished in a single day, adding additional tasks on is never welcome. To do that without giving them training on how to accomplish other tasks is not only unrealistic, it is also unreasonable and unfair. This training is that it allows you to provide a way to ease workers into taking on additional responsibilities. If you provide them with adequate training, they will be able to cope. If not, you can often lose some of your best, most seasoned employees to greener fields. No matter what employee benefits you offer, if you stress them out too much, or stretch their time too thin, they will leave for another company.

How To Stop Email From Killing Your Productivity

2007-06-27T02:24:00.002-07:00

Email is one of the greatest innovations of the online world, but if you’re not careful it will suck up your time, and be a far detriment to your business than a benefit.

Here are some tips for taming the email beast.

Turn It Off

During the day when you’re working, turn off your email client. You don’t need to be connected to everyone at all times of the day. If you leave your email client running while you’re trying to work, as soon as that next new message comes in, you’ll get distracted. The constant barrage of new incoming email will break you concentration and make a project that would normally take only an hour of focused attention take four or five times as long.

Check It Infrequently

Once you’ve managed to turn your email client off, resist the temptation to keep turning it back on all day. Checking your email once or twice a day is plenty – really.

Schedule Email Time

If you typically get a lot of email correspondence that you need to reply to throughout the day, then schedule half an hour or an hour as replying to email time. Take care of all the email you need to reply to at once. You’ll find that by being able to put your focused attention to taking care of email, your replies will be thought out better, and you’ll be able to get all of your email taken care of far more quickly and efficiently.

Spam Filters

A good spam filter really can be a productivity tool. Fortunately, they’re readily available and surprisingly accurate these days. Put one on your inbox so that you’re not spending your time trying to filter out all the spam before you ever start replying to the legitimate emails.

Get A Personal Assistant Or Customer Support

If you really get a lot of email and a lot of it doesn’t require your personal attention – i.e. someone trained in your business could just as easily reply to it, then get yourself a personal assistant or customer support person who will take care of almost all the email and only forward the essential messages to you. This will free up your time to focus on far more important tasks like finding more customers and making money.

Introduction of a PDA in a Restaurant

2007-06-27T02:24:00.001-07:00

A PDA -- personal digital assistant -- is a system that makes it possible to increase to overall productivity of an organization. A restaurant is only one place where the tool could be used. The introduction of a PDA in a restaurant will impact the organization in various ways.

There are many functions and many different PDA’s, a restaurant requires one that uses:

* A simple product or service catalog
* An order unit that is able to accept the order of a client
* A communicating function that delivers the order to the kitchen
* Billing information that summarizes the order details and send these to the cashier

The PDA will have to communicate with other systems. In the first place with the kitchen, but also with the bar. Both this communication can only be done through an interface. If both organization work also with systems these interface will integrate both the PDA with the other system, otherwise the interface will have to be a simple user-interface; like a printer that is able to print the order from the client. The ticket will be used as a work order and after the kitchen order is finished for this client the agent (the waiter) will be signaled. Also in this case the interface can be as simple a Ok-sign marked with a pen on the printed order. In the same way the bar will sign-off drinks that has been “delivered” at the bar and distributed by the waiters. A simple paper interface will be sufficient here.

Information in the system will change from order to transaction once the orders have been delivered. Once the clients have finished their consumption the transactions from their table and served by the waiter will be summarized and sent to the cashier. This is where the last client-function is processed.

The impact of the PDA in this organization results mainly in:

* Interfaces. First of all the interface between the client and the waiter entering the data, but also the interface between the PDA and the kitchen, bar and cashier. Starting with the most simple interface would be recommendable as interfaces add much complexity in business. Printing is a simple and effective interface.
* Information management: prices, product details and catalogs need to be updated on a daily bases.
* Resource management. Not all waiters will like this type of work, where the younger generation will fancy this new gadget. Implement the technology without pressure, starting with who wants. When hiring new employees, PDA experience could be an extra benefit (or selection criteria).
* Relation with the client. Some clients will be offended, especially when there is a problem and the waiter is lost with the tool. Such incidents should be prescribed: what to do when the technology fails?

This last aspect is one that seems minor but in the end will bring the biggest change. The style of your business / organization. Technology could transform your business -- in this case -- from a traditional restaurant into a new modern establishment. Most other elements in the change are quite straightforward, interfaces, information management, resource management. The style element is less straightforward.

ISO 9000 – Management Systems for Business Success

2007-06-22T01:52:00.001-07:00

ISO 9000 is a management system produced by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The purpose of the ISO 9000 is the improvement of the efficiency and productivity of organizations. Businesses use ISO 9000 to make sure they consistently satisfy customers, and comply with their industry’s regulations.

Systems are often the last things on the minds of small business owners. Instead of organized processes, most small businesses rely on the expertise of staff and owners and their ability to communicate that expertise to each other. Unfortunately, individual skills and relationships don’t scale – as businesses grow, those that don’t have a management system become inconsistent, chaotic and inefficient.

Developing management systems is something all successful businesses have to do. Unfortunately, most organizations come up with systems in isolation from everybody else. Not only is this “re-inventing the wheel” but it also means that they can’t take advantage of management best practices.

ISO 9000 is an international, generic management system that can be applied to service and product oriented businesses, as well as public administrations and government departments. It allows organizations to take advantage of the latest models for setting up and running a management system.

ISO 9000 improves:

Customer Satisfaction – by focusing on improving what the organization does to provide value for customers, ISO 9000 promotes consistent high-level quality.

Efficiency – by concentrating on how processes provide quality to customers instead of simply the final product, ISO 9000 improves organizations’ efficiency.

Marketing – because ISO 9000 is an internationally recognized standard, using it communicates quality and reliability to customers and partners.

Employee Motivation – by establishing a consistent, comprehensive set of rules and procedures, ISO 9000 ensures that employees know exactly what their responsibilities are and how to fulfill them.

International Trade – because ISO 9000 is an internationally developed management system, adopting it significantly simplifies their relationship with organizations in other countries.

The ISO itself does not provide ISO 9000 certification. Instead, organizations can obtain certification from third party auditors. Certification is not required, and even businesses that choose not to go to the expense of having a formal audit can benefit significantly from implementing ISO 9000.

Work Life Harmony Rather Than Work Life Balance

2007-06-22T01:51:00.001-07:00

Work/ life balance as we know it at present isn't working, because it's based on conflicting demands of employer and employee for a share of the 24/7 day. There simply isn't enough time to achieve everything - and its getting worse.

Work life balance suggests people are living two lives - one at work and one away from work. But people don't ‘work' for five days (or more) and ‘live' for two days (or less). Work is just one of many roles that people perform in their 24/7 week. No matter where they are or what they are doing, day or night, people are carrying personal baggage, problems, responsibilities, personal goals and work goals. Separation of work and personal life roles has become a blur and, to many of us, almost a seamless link..

Family-friendly policies are now only one aspect of the work life balance issue. Work life balance has become a key factor in attracting and retaining good staff (male and female) in a ‘buyers market' generated by a shortage of quality skilled staff. People want more than money. They want quality of life, of which a quality working environment forms only one (albeit important) part.

This situation has arisen for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was because businesses in western society found permanent staff to be too expensive and resorted to down-sizing and outsourcing. Workers had to learn to manage their own lives; work life balance is now finally determined by the employee rather than the employer (to be effective, it of course cannot be decided unilaterally but by co-operative agreement between employee and employer).

Globally, business has had to come to terms with the fact that, while economic growth depends on the work ethic, employees are now opting for what I call a “life ethic”. Features of this ethic include:

• working to live, rather than living to work,

• personal goals being a higher priority to the individual than the employer's corporate goals and

• emotional needs as the determinant of material needs.

Business therefore is finding it has to seek ways of harmonizing corporate goals of economic growth with individual philosophies of “I'm here for a good time, not a long time”. This seeming dichotomy is frustrating older managers greatly, but emerging generations of employees don't see it as a problem. They still see work as important but only as a means to higher, more personal, ends.

Harmony is drawn from diversity. A choir or orchestra is a ‘mosaic' of unique individuals who come together periodically to produce a pleasing sound. Business has to find ways of maximizing the unique interests and potential of employees to achieve its own 'pleasing sound' - usually in the form of a quality service to customers and a satisfactory financial bottom line.

Sustained long-term business success is going to increasingly depend on employers and employees working together to develop a workplace culture that encourages a harmonious relationship between the personal goals of individual employees and the corporate goals of the employer.

Here are some initial steps you can take towards developing a Work Life Harmony strategy in your business:

• for the purposes of the strategy, regard the organization as a totally flat structure with all people on the same line and of equal importance regarding work life harmony issues (the CEO is as interested as anyone else in quality of life and various work and other roles he/she performs):

• arrange round-table discussions between groups of people from all levels of the organization, on issues that are presently inhibiting a satisfactory work life harmony culture in the organization,

• group recommendations towards a strategy that sets out actions in the following order:

o issues that can be most readily resolved with the least effort and cost,

o more difficult issues that require more time, effort and cost to be scheduled for attention in an agreed order and over a period of time up to, say, three years maximum.

Bar Code Label Uses for Your Business

2007-06-18T22:43:00.003-07:00

Bar Code Labels can have many uses within a business, and there are many types available, a few of them are listed below with specific purposes. 5 top areas covered are: asset tags, parking permits, product labels, general solutions / applications, and bar code types.

Asset Tags: Asset tags can be used to identify equipment, furniture and other physical assets in your business. They are usually printed with sequential serial numbers for tracking in database systems. Typical materials are white polyester, metalized matte silver polyester, security silver polyester, destructible reflective vinyl, Lexan®, or LexSaver®.

Parking Permits: Bar Code labels can be integrated on wide range of parking permit types; such as hang tags, bumper stickers and window stickers. Some materials used are PVC, LexSaver™, static cling, vinyl with permanent adhesive, and destructible reflective vinyl.

Product Labels: There are 100’s of uses for bar coded product labels. To name a few, industrial labels, media labels, Product ID labels, Property management, shipping / mailing, tracking / pricing and many others.

General Bar Code Solutions / Uses: Product ID Labels with UPC bar code on rolls or fan folded, product ID labels with UPC code on laser sheets, very small sizes, bar code only, no other printing on the label and blank laser, thermal and ink jet bar code labels.

Bar Code Types: Codabar (numeric only): Codabar bar codes are typically used in labeling solutions for applications that require sequential issuing and processing of information. Some examples would include library systems, membership cards, overnight package delivery systems, and other simple processing and tracking applications.

o Code 128 (alphanumeric): Code 128 bar codes are typically used when a high reliability code read is required from the label application.

o Code 39 (alphanumeric): Code 39 is the most popular, general purpose bar code printed on labels. Some examples would include serial numbers for any type of hard good (from automobiles to laptops). Asset tags and parking permits typically are printed with code 39 bar codes.

o EAN-13 (numeric only) EAN - 13 is often referred to as the international retail product code. EAN stands for European Alpha Numeric (bar code). This is the global version of the UPC codes used in North America. The primary bar code label application of EAN 13 codes is products that are to be sold in Europe.

o Interleaved 2 of 5 (numeric only) Interleaved 2 of 5 bar codes are the compressed version of EAN-13 code described above. Used to provide bar code product information on small products throughout Europe.

o PostNet (numeric only) PostNet bar codes were developed by the USPS to make automated mail a reality. Most PostNet bar codes are printed on labels and are ultimately applied pieces that are mailed through the USPS, ranging from envelopes to catalogs.

o UPC-A UPC-A stands for Universal product Code. The UPC bar code is required on all products sold in North America and throughout the world. Typically, the UPC bar code is printed on the product ID label.

o UPC-E Compressed UPC code used on small products sold in North America and throughout the world. Typically, the UPC-E bar code is printed as a separate label rather than as part of the product ID label.

o 2D Bar Codes: 2D (two dimensional) barcodes contain more information than typical one dimensional barcodes. One dimensional barcodes get wider as more data is encoded. Typically, 2D bar codes area applied to labels by a thermal printing device. 2D barcodes make use of the vertical dimension, allowing for more data to be stored. Bare in mind that using more square inches and a larger label which will add expense to your bar code labels. 2D barcodes have become possible as auto scanning CCD and laser scanners have replaced the original 'light pen' type of scanner. At this time most conventional CCD and Laser scanners cannot read 2D barcodes but low cost 1D/2D scanners are entering the market.

o Ink and Printing Methods for Bar Code Labels: Bar code symbols are printed in black ink. The rest of your label can be printed in spot (PMS) colors or in process (CMYK) colors. You also have a choice between excellent quality traditional flexo printing or high end photo quality digital printing. The example to the left displays the difference between the flexo and digital production methods. Either method will ensure excellent readability of your bar code. Digital label printing is best suited for label quantities of 5,000 or fewer. Traditional flexo printing is best suited for quantities of 1,000 or more labels.

GUILT: The Emotional Shackle

2007-06-18T22:43:00.001-07:00

Haven't been able to achieve the "American Dream" of home ownership? No matter where you turn to try to buy a home you're always "turned down" or your just "don't qualify". We cure your heartbreak through our Lease Purchase. Do you fit this scenario: you have a good job, good rental history, and could pull together $4,000 or $5,000, but you have a few glitches and blemishes on your credit report or maybe just some slow pays, a car repo, or maybe some other type of credit problem. Because you're not an "A" credit borrower the lenders are telling you that you need 10% or 15% down payment (that's a lot on a $400,000 home), closing costs (another $4,000 or so), plus you're going to get a high interest rate! After hearing that a few times most families throw in the towel.

With our Lease Purchase Program we turn your nightmares into a real dream come true. Take the following for an example. You go to one of our open houses in the Southern California area, you fall in love with the home, and you call us saying, "I want it." At that point you fill out an application. Don't worry about this part; it's simple! We just have to verify the information. Then you fax it to us. Within 24 hours you get the answer you've dreamed of. IT'S YOURS! You're able to put down a $3,500 option fee downpayment, pay the first month's lease payment, and you're able to move in. You have simply signed a "Lease Agreement With Purchase Option," and it locks in a specific sales price, and the monthly lease amount. Plus it allows you to enjoy the home while you pull together the rest of your downpayment and clean up your credit rating. There is no long pre-qualification process, no days and days waiting for an answer, and no more rejection. The full option fee downpayment is credited back to you at closing when you're ready to get a mortgage in your name. Sometimes there is even a "rent credit" (a % of the monthly lease payment) built in that's also credited back to you a closing. Now that you're getting a clearer picture of what can take place, read the following and get really excited about your possibilities.

The Advantages of Lease Purchase

You usually need only about $3,500 in downpayment for homes in the $350,000 to $400,000 price range. That's nowhere near what the mortgage company wants.

You can move in quickly and enjoy the pride of home ownership immediately. There is no long waiting period for tons of paperwork to be done.

You will have time (usually 12-24 months) to arrange your finances so you can qualify for a loan, save up the rest of your downpayment, and clean up your credit rating by establishing a solid payment history during the lease period.

You can arrange the "Lease Agreement With Purchase Option" to allow a portion of the monthly lease payment to be credited to you at closing, thus building equity along the way.

The full amount of the option fee downpayment is also credited to you at closing.

It allows you to distance yourself from any major credit problems.

You can wallpaper, paint, decorate and make improvements to the property knowing that the benefits are going to be to your advantage, not a landlord's.

Qualification requirements are not as strict as conventional financing.

There are no taxes or insurance to pay, however a rental policy is recommended.

Repairs are covered through a Home Warranty Plan, which we usually recommend you obtain.

Any appreciation that the property receives is your profit if you decide to sell one day. You're usually able to get a fair price with great terms and have your home ownership dream come true! If you’re looking for a home in the Southern California area, contact us, and we will give you a list of houses that we are offering "Lease Purchase" and all of the details on each one. We will help you not only find the home of your dreams, but we will help you negotiate all the aspects of purchasing a home "Lease Purchase" to your greatest advantage.

Motivation And Productivity - New Perspectives On An Old Situation

2007-06-12T03:06:00.001-07:00

MOMENTUM

Think of a period of time when you were so engrossed in what you were doing, that almost every moment of every day felt productive. When things are going right, energy flows, and action propels us forward. Candice Carpenter in the book Chapters describes this feeling as being in "the zone". When we are operating on momentum it is easy to lose ourselves in our passion.

The reality is that no one stays in this kind of high-energy state forever. We transition between periods when we are firing on all cylinders, to times when we aren't as motivated, to times when we feel just plain stuck.

When things are NOT flowing, it can be hard to gain momentum. We may struggle with a complex business problem and feel overwhelmed. And sometimes, it's hard to even define the problem - we just know something isn't "right". Everyone goes through down or less-than-optimal operating periods. However, sometimes they go on too long, and we are ready to move on, but can't seem to figure out how.

BACK TO BASICS

In a car, an automatic transmission works just fine, but car enthusiasts will tell you that a manual transmission is the only way to go, even though it requires more effort and concentration. Why? Because a manual transmission gives the driver more control of the car, allowing the driver to navigate actively rather than passively, and to be more involved in the process. The driver needs to make decisions based on driving conditions, and needs to think more clearly and be more aware of what he is doing - and this not only increases the driver's enjoyment of the driving experience, but also helps him deal more effectively with trouble spots on the road, such as bad weather conditions or bad driving by other drivers. Just as when driving a car on automatic, in business (and in life), sometimes we operate on automatic for too long - and when we do, it is often difficult to get out of "bad driving conditions". If you are ready to take back control, it may be time to take yourself out of automatic and take a closer look at the current conditions.

OUR REALITIES

"Be careful how you interpret the world: It is like that."- Erich Heller

Taking a fresh look may seem simple, but it isn't always as easy as it sounds. If only we could fly up in the air and look down objectively on our own situations.

Our deeply formed assumptions and beliefs can create blind spots that prevent us from looking at situations from new angles. These beliefs become what is "true" for us, creating a framework we call our "reality". Sometimes we get stuck in our own frameworks, "boxing ourselves in", so to speak. To break out of the box often requires someone or something from outside, to challenge our assumptions and test our realities.

I frequently hear statements like the following: "If I don't do it myself, it won't be done right. Nobody could possibly care as much as I do." "If we take time off to plan, the business will fall apart." "We must work 10-hour days -- there is no other way we can keep up with our customer demands Everyone in our industry does it."

Despite the fact that often people desperately want to improve their situation, their "truths" might be preventing them from moving forward. To change behavior often requires re-exploring beliefs.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
- Marcel Proust

A good way to start exploring our beliefs is by looking at our situations from some new perspectives. By consciously shifting into manual, you force yourself to take a closer look at the current situation. From each of the following perspectives, ask yourself some important questions.

Look at yourself

Are you satisfied with your career?
Are you applying your full potential?
Are you stimulated socially, mentally, and physically?
Are you living your values?
What if you applied more of your full potential in one of these areas? What differences would you expect? What if your employees did?
Where are you trying to get to long-term?

Where do you want to be in 5, 10, 25 years?
How do you define success?
What does your ideal day look like?
What trends are now occurring in your industry or in the marketplace that will impact your business, not just today or tomorrow, but years from now?
What's different about the markets you serve and the markets served by your customers? What will be different tomorrow?
How can these changes influence the products and services you offer?
What are you doing right now?

What are your priorities?
Do you have a plan to increase productivity? Improve time management?
Are you moving forward on your long-term goals?
Look at your business

Is your organization easy to do business with?
Do you understand your customer's needs, wants, and expectations? Once you do, you have the ability to structure your company so that you have a true competitive advantage. What do your employees care about? What are their long-term goals? What do they value? What does the outsider see?

Ask questions to see how you (or your company) is viewed from the outside:
What do our clients think about us?
Why do our customers buy from us and not the competition?
What is going on in the world and how might it impact how we need to do business?
What is really going on inside?
By looking at a familiar situation from a variety of angles it becomes easier to identify what is really important, and see exciting new possibilities.

SUMMING UP

In any organization, and individually in your own professional life, to gain momentum it's important to shift out of automatic. By shifting perspective with some strategic questions it becomes possible to innovate, problem-solve and challenge the status quo!

As Benjamin Franklin once said: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"

Is Time Management Training Worthwhile?

2007-06-12T03:05:00.000-07:00

When a friend of mine announced that she did not think time management training was worth doing, I had to take notice. She is an experienced trainer who had just started working for a large company and usually knows what she is talking about. Her comment did, however, cause me to question her, so she expanded on her statement.

She went on to explain that she had nothing against time management training in itself. Her issue was the way in which it was being used in her organisation.

Typically, line managers would send their staff on time management training whenever issues about efficiency or productivity cropped up. Little thought was being given to whether time management training was the right approach.

Her frustration stemmed from the fact that managers were effectively trying to fit the problem to the solution rather than the other way around. They were not making any real attempt to work with individuals to find the root cause of the issues they were having.

The outcome was that people were attending whole day training courses run by my friend but getting very little out of this. The training she inherited was generic and had not been tailored to the needs of the business, let alone the individual participants.

Over a bottle of wine we spent sometime discussing how to fix this problem, and came up with a plan.

Step One: My friend would contact all managers requesting time management training for their staff, and probe them so she could understand the need. This would include revisiting what has been discussed with individual staff members so far. In many cases individuals were not aware that their efficiency was in question.

Step Two: Where necessary, she would conduct some on job observation to understand the situation first hand.

Step Three: She would design a new training solution based on the needs of the business areas and linked to specific business issues. However, she would also make alternative recommendations in individual case where she considered time management training would not be appropriate.

Step Four: Individual nominees would be briefed by their line managers three weeks before the training. Both parties would agree the outcomes to be achieved. The individual participants would also be briefed to complete a daily time log for two weeks, to help identify how they use their time now. A key part of the training event would be to link with the briefing and the time log. Individuals would not be allowed to attend the training without completing this step.

Step Five: The training event itself would end with each individual producing a plan of action.

Step Six: Follow-up one to one coaching linked to the action plan produce during the training. . In some cases this would be carried out by the line and in some cases by my friend. The amount of time spent on this phase would depend on the needs of the individual. This important step ensures that the training is set down to practical outcomes.

With a proper structure now built around time management training my friend confessed to being confident of success. She also admitted that time management training is worthwhile after all. Or was that just the wine talking?

Complete Customer Information in the Palm of Your Hand

2007-06-07T04:09:00.001-07:00

Feature-Rich Software

Sage SalesLogix Mobile gives you access to contact and sales data at the click of the button. Whether you’re in the field or in the office, you have the same terrific information at your fingertips. Sage SalesLogix Mobile replicates familiar Sage SalesLogix functions on your mobile device. This gives you real-time delivery, rich functionality, and the unbeatable convenience of wireless.

With SalesLogix Mobile, you don’t have to cart around stacks of papers, or drive all the way back to the office for updates. Just click on your handheld device, and review detailed customer history. Check information on previous sales, customer support tickets and issue resolution records. Features such as handwriting recognition, speedy lookups, filtered searches, and one-click telephone dialing help you work more quickly and efficiently.

Users especially enjoy the advanced features built into SalesLogix Mobile, such as:

• Account and Contact Management
• Calendar and Activity Management
• Opportunity Management
• Ticket Management
• Lookups and Groups
• One-Click Dialing
• Handwriting Recognition
• Pocket Outlook Integration
• Multiple Synchronization Options

Even Better With Outlook Integration

Okay, so you’re convinced of the importance of SalesLogix Mobile. Now you need the final piece of the puzzle – the ability to use all your regular functions on Outlook. Of course you need access to your e-mail, calendar, and contact features.

Sage SalesLogix Mobile now integrates with Outlook, as if the two were one single system. One click, and you can save the e-mails you send through Outlook in your Sage SalesLogix database. Your Sage SalesLogix address book is readily available in Outlook. Plan meetings and manage your calendar in a breeze. The calendars in both applications are integrated, too. That means you can schedule, accept or decline a meeting in either system – and have it automatically update in the other.

Once you see Sage SalesLogix Mobile integrated with Outlook, you’ll instantly recognize how it will streamline your workload and improve efficiency. QISYS is expert in both SalesLogix and Outlook implementation and service, and would like to illustrate the benefits of integration.

Interactive Dashboard on Sage SalesLogix v7 – More of What You Need At a Glance

2007-06-07T04:07:00.000-07:00

What’s so great about the SalesLogix’ dashboard, compared to its competitors? Simple. It puts most-used features right on the dash for instant access, including:

• “Today’s Schedule” for easy event management
• “My Activities” so you can sort both business and personal activities
• “Pipeline Status” figures, to streamline your day and improve sales
• And much, much more!

Leading CRM Software is Easier Than Ever

Sage SalesLogix is the leading customer relationship management (CRM) software solution for small and medium sized businesses. Now the interactive dashboard feature built into v7 offers users countless new ways to access key and relevant data all from a single screenshot.

This remarkably simple interface gives your sales force access to everything they need to manage their customers and sales. Users also have complete flexibility to customize the appearance and organization of the dashboard for their specific needs. These tools will help you and your team to maximize sales, bring in more repeat business, and improve long-term customer satisfaction.

Unprecedented Control Over Your Day -- and Data

The “Today’s Schedule” feature in SalesLogix Dashboard gives users a new level of control for managing daily activities. You can organize events and sort them by type, time of day, project and urgency. The dashboard feature even lets you distinguish between business and personal activities.

Similarly, the “My Activities” feature on the dashboard lets members of your organization plan their day on a more intimate level. Select from business and personal appointments, then click the mouse to perform a sort. This lets people view all daily activities on a single screenshot, for enhanced efficiency.

The “Pipeline Status” feature will blow your socks off. Use it to analyze the dollar value of all the tasks in your sales process. Customize the names of sales levels to meet your organization’s unique business needs. Many business owners say this is their all-time favorite feature of the dashboard, because it puts tasks into a monetary perspective, and

takes static data to a whole new level of interactivity.

“What we like best about the Pipeline Status feature is that we can view the total volume of business in each stage of our sales process in real-time,” says Colin Masterson of Toronto. “It has let us spotlight weak points where sales are being bottlenecked, fix them, and therefore close more deals and hit sales goals. We’re also now able to see instantly how many opportunities are available, the sales potential of each deal’s stage, the weighted amount of the sales value, and the average days deals have been at specific stages of the sales process. It’s great!”

Generate Graphics Too

With the Pipeline Status feature in SalesLogix v7, you can generate a screenshot whenever you want, graphically representing any step of your sales process for easy visual analysis. Click on any stage of your sales process, from qualified leads to potential clients needing analysis, demos in response to inquiries, negotiations you are currently involved in for contracts, and decisions that need to be made. Then choose whether you want to view your data in graphs, charts, or in spreadsheet form.

A Clutter S Diary

2007-05-25T02:17:00.002-07:00

Ever felt cluttered? I hate to feel cluttered, feeling cluttered is like feeling stuck, feeling that something is weighing you down and feeling out of control. Is it psychological? I hope not, but it might as well be, I used to have my little mess well stacked one on top of the other, it wasn’t working out, until I came across a system that helps me get organized and rearrange my workload.

If you’re not using a blackberry or a palm, one thing I’ve learned is you need to organize your work according to priority, the most important to the least important, then divide them into sub-categories, it depends on what system you want to use, you need to see the end first, what feelings do you want to have at the end of the day? feel that you have completed something, you want to have that sense of accomplishment.

As an entrepreneur, I know how challenging organizing your day, events, agenda, and contacts can be, that’ s why I suggest that you evaluate your needs carefully when it comes to organizing your business, and your work. If you want to use a professional go ahead, be my guest, cause at worst clutter can be stressful and unmanageable.

Another important factor to remember when it comes to manage your customers, if you don't have a good CRM system in place, you will end up with an overflow of information and not efficient enough to manage your customers, it is a risk you don't want to take which I will cover in my next article.

Office Space and How its Location Affects Productivity

2007-05-25T02:17:00.001-07:00

Whether you are looking for office space rentals, or managing some, or are already working in one, you have your own reasons for liking the space - or not. What if you could do one enhancement, and like your space even better, like the job even better, and feel more well-being in general?

Rachel Kaplan, PhD, and husband Stephen Kaplan, a professor in both psychology and computer science, are leaders in research on what they refer to as "restorative environments". The results of their studies show that individuals who can see a portion of green nature, from their place of work, do better. So it appears that what one can see from one's desk, or one's window, really matters.

Terry A. Hartig, PhD, MPH, is another researcher who also concludes that nature helps people recover from what he expresses as "normal psychological wear and tear".

In a research paper "The Surprising Connection to Green Play Settings" by Andrea Faber Taylor, and Frances E. Kuo, their introduction begins with the following statement:

"Attention Restoration Theory suggests that contact with nature supports attentional functioning, and a number of studies have found contact with everyday nature to be related to attention in adults."

So, back to office space, office rentals - and last but not least - your home office space - it seems that there could be a very simple way to enhance our environment to support our drive to produce and succeed, optimizing our energy and moods at the same time!

For example, if you have an office space at home or in a business building of offices, and you do not have a window (never mind the coveted "corner office") studies show that you would do well to add at least one attractive plant. It doesn't even have to be a real plant, but it should be where you can see it, and it should be worth looking at.

If you have a view of real greenery, appreciate it, notice it, drink in the scenery...but if not, you could add a wall calendar with gorgeous photos or paintings of nature, or an art print. Many offices provide some art work and plants because their managers and consultants have read these studies too. Then again, some don't.

If you have a window behind you with a view of tree tops or landscaping, put up a mirror wherever you can. Failing all else, you can put a tiny convex mirror on your computer monitor, the kind you get for your rear view mirrors.

Just turning around and taking a few deep breaths while you view the available greenery, is a very restorative quick break.

Speaking of breathing, I will digress shortly for a comment on real versus fake plants. There are volumes written on indoor air pollution - particularly relative to office space, though the same data is true for our homes. Many green indoor plants remove noxious fumes generated by everything that is in the typical office space - from the paint, the carpeting, the furniture, the machines - everything! Fresh air created by air purification machines is a bonus of course, but plants in your office space area do a tremendous job in cleaning the air.

Greenery in urban office spaces is important. In a home office, or corner of a room, (as that is what many of us have), we have direct control over what we look at - real greenery, or reasonable facsimiles.

It seems a simple way to add to our techniques of manifesting success - managing internet marketing means managing a lot of detail. Adding greenery would be one of the easier ones! So whether you sit in a huge office in an urban commercial office space, or you sit at the corner of your kitchen table, it matters. Everybody matters, you matter.

Win The Battle Against The Clutter!

2007-05-25T02:15:00.000-07:00

We all lose the battle against the clutter because we do not equip ourselves with the requisite tools. What tools, you may ask in puzzlement? The tools that will help you organize yourself and discipline the paper that pours into your office. Oh yeah? What are they? You ask. Well, I had those questions too, till I discovered the wonderful power of using office accessories for doing my job. It helped me win the war against the paper regime and establish total control over my business.

Here is what I did. I purchased two desk trays to help me clean my desk. The first one I labeled inbox and the other outbox. I decided to put everything that came in into the inbox and everything I disposed into the 'outbox'. That took some time to become an established habit, but in the end, I achieved what I set out to do. The paper on my desk became more disciplined and the chaos reduced gradually until there was none. My friends who mocked my efforts soon followed suit and the office began to take on an appearance of neatness and orderliness.

The achievement was all the more pleasing, because we began to realize the peril we had been in. The messy desk was burying all our important documents and forcing us to waste precious time in searching for it. We were attending to trivial work while our important work was gradually getting delayed. Then we were getting into a panic and messing up on the work in our hurry to get things done. The desk tray was an excellent idea.

The beautifully crafted desk trays that I had picked up from SuccessImage added beauty and grace to the room and enhanced the look and feel of the desk at which I worked. We all loved looking at the beautifully polished hand finished hardwood pieces that matched with the paneling of the office. Functionally the pieces helped us clean up our desks and create space for files that were current, reference paper required for information; archive files and papers that had been closed; and so on. We examined every single paper on our desk and took the required action. We threw out irrelevant paper and made an effort file all the loose papers. The desk trays were very useful in organizing this process.

When we had done the preliminary task of cleaning up the desk trays helped us keep track of work efficiently and control the volume of flow of paper. In due course we added a third desk tray to our desks and labeled it pending. All mail that could not be attended to immediately found its way into this tray and stared at us till we disposed them off. In fact we began a race to clear our pending trays so that we could pat ourselves on our backs and claim to be efficient.

All of us are now at a stage where we think we need to augment our desks with a fourth tray called Reference. We shall be getting it in pretty soon. What a boon the desk tray has been!

Will The Cardscan Executive Save You Time or Make Your Life A Hassle?

2007-05-25T02:14:00.000-07:00

The Cardscan Executive is a new type of desktop card scanner which also comes with a contact management software package. What it does is it scans and reads business cards in seconds and then places them into a database and is then able to create a digital address book for the user.

Because you are able to not only capture but also consolidate, sort, and search as well as use all the contact information in one easy to use system it makes it much more efficient if you run a sales orientated business. Plus it provides you with a great CRM system so that you are able to know exactly all your customers wants and needs yet no longer do you need to sit in front of your computer with the business cards by your side entering the details supplied on each card one by one. All you need to do is feed the business card into the Cardscan Executive and it will do all the work for you.

The Cardscan Executive is not fool proof, some of the data that gets feed into the system will end up in the wrong location. So will need to check to make sure that everything is in the correct data field. The Cardscan Executive can also have a difficult time with cards that have weird fonts and different backgrounds.

Unfortunately for many companies with a large sales force most of these people are away from the office a large part of their working lives and so by having a database set up using a card scanner they can easily gain access to all their customer or clients details just as long as they have an internet connection and the right passwords in order to gain access to the company's site.

Plus the software that is provided with the Cardscan Executive can easily be synchronized with both Outlook, PDA Smart Phones, ACT, Lotus Notes and Goldmine. Plus the scanner used is color and it takes around 3 seconds for it to scan a business card so no longer does staff need to waste time having to enter details of their new customers, clients or contacts themselves.

HON Lateral Filing Cabinets Make Office Organization A Breeze

2007-05-25T02:12:00.000-07:00

Working in an office can be a disorganized mess or a breeze depending upon the type of filing system you are using. There is a wide range of high quality lateral filing systems available online, along with many other office storage options including vertical files, office desks and chairs and storage cabinets. You should make sure furniture pieces are always shipped fully assembled in order to ensure that they are ready for use immediately following arrival.

We have reviewed some of the most popular lateral filing cabinets that are available online. They come in four different finishes: putty, black, light grey and charcoal.

The HON 600 series Lateral Filing Cabinets: The HON 600 series of lateral filing cabinets offers files which are 30", 36" and 42" in width and 19-1/4" in depth. These filing cabinets were created in order to accommodate both letter and legal size filing, and leveling glides are adjustable. There is a three-part slide suspension which telescopes and is operated on a suspension with steel ball bearings. Whether you need a two-drawer lateral filing cabinet system, or a five drawer, HON's 600 series has exactly the filing cabinet to suit your needs.

The HON 700 series Lateral Filing Cabinets: The HON 700 series of lateral filing cabinets offers filing systems in 36" and 42" wide, with files which are 19-1/4" deep. All file drawers in the HON 700 series have drawer pulls which are full-width. The 700 series shares the same three-part, telescoping slide suspension which operates on ball bearings made of steel. The 700 series cabinets also have counterweight in filing systems with two or three drawers. The lateral filing cabinets in the 700 series are available with as few as two drawers, and as many as five.

The HON 400 Series Lateral Filing Cabinets: The HON 400 series of lateral filing cabinet solutions offers filing systems that are 30" wide, with files which are 19-1/4" deep in both two and four drawer styles. These lateral filing cabinets offer "one key" interchangeable core removable locks, and have a mechanical interlock in order to prevent tipping by allowing only one drawer open at a time.

The HON 500 Series Lateral Filing Cabinets: The HON 500 series of lateral filing cabinets offers cabinets which are 30" and 36" in width with file drawers which are 19-1/4" deep. These filing cabinets feature a flush case and monochromatic drawer pulls in addition to drawer-front stiffeners in order to provide an extra level of sturdiness to the cabinets. These cabinets are available with as few as two cabinet drawers and as many as five cabinet drawers.

The HON 800 Series Lateral Filing Cabinets: The HON 800 series of lateral filing cabinets offers cabinets which are 36" and 42" in width with 19-1/4" deep cabinet drawers. These cabinets are available in four and five-drawer styles with a shelf that rolls out and a receding door. Units with five drawers are also available with a posting shelf which is full-width and rolls out as well. These filing cabinets are available with as few as two drawers and as many as five, along with the option for up to two roll-out shelves.

The Hon 10700 Waterfall Edge Series Lateral Filing Cabinets: The HON 10700 series of lateral filing cabinets are high pressure laminate accented to be both stain and abrasion resistant. Rounded corners and a waterfall edge allow for a contemporary look, and the cabinet systems are available in three different finishes: Henna cherry, medium oak and Mahogany. HON's Waterfall Edge lateral filing cabinets feature HON's "One key" core removable lock, and come with a HON limited lifetime warranty. These cabinets are available in two or four drawer versions only.

A Few Important Business Mistakes to Avoid

2007-05-18T02:45:00.001-07:00

In a competitive marketplace every decision trickles down to the bottom line. Of course, no one is perfect, we've all committed ourselves to decisions we later regretted. Unfortunately, once the ball is out of the pitchers hand there is no turning back. However, bad decisions do provide us with significant learning experiences.

If sales are slow you may be tempted to take on a bad client. While the deal may look nice at the end of the day you most likely will end up getting burned. the big lesson here is simply to trust your instinct when tasking on new clients and always draft contracts with specific terms that leave nothing to interpretation.

Along similar lines: a business can lose a good deal of money as the result of a bad hire, much like trusting a bad client, a bad hire spells nothing but trouble. Be sure the people you hire understand your business. Someone with an impressive track record from another sector may not be able to apply those skills to your business. For example, a sales manager with a great deal of experience selling tangible products for a large company may falter when asked to sell a business service to smaller companies.

Another crucial mistake to avoid is in the area of product development. Is your new product ready to go? Are you sure? If you have doubts its more than worth it to re-examine your position. jumping the gun by putting your underdeveloped product into the marketplace only translates into lost customers and credibility. Once that kind of damage is done it can be difficult if not impossible to recoup those lost sales. Wait. Redesign, retool, re-engineer, whatever it takes to assure that your product is the absolute best it can be at the point of entry into the marketplace will pay off. Quite simply, customers will always notice the difference.

Performance Management Assists Lean Manufacturing

2007-05-18T02:44:00.002-07:00

This is a short introduction to how performance management can support the implementation and succes with lean manufacturing.

The 5th principle of the 5 lean principles, is the concept of continuous improvements. But how do we handle this in a structured and controlled manner?

One of the most important tools to drive continous improvements is performance management. In many organizations, working with performance management is natural, while this can be very difficult, and even scary for others.

When working with goals in a lean organization it is essential to involve the employees in the proces.

Also visualization of goals should be given attention together with a process for frequent meetings and follow up on goals.

But how do you define goals, that are effective and drive improvements?

First of all we need to define what we want to measure, but more importantly take into consideration on what level in the organization the goal shall be implemented.

On the executive level, goals should be related to the strategy of the company, but when we move down in the organization we need to diversify the goals to achieve ownership. For example net operating margin, can be a relevant goal on executive level, while it doesn't make much sense on the shop floor. So we need to define goals that will support the top-level goals, but can be influenced and are relevant by teams elsewhere in the organization.

When implementing performance management in a lean organization we often need to define goals that are very close to the primary core processes of the company.

In general we can use the SMART model when defining goals. So what makes a goal SMART?

S = Specific

M = Measurable

A = Accepted

R = Realistic

T = Time

Specific, means that the goal must be defined accurately and simple enough to make sure that everyone understands what we measure. Measurable, means that we need to define goals that can be quantified and expressed in a simple number Accepted, means that you need to build acceptance of the relevancy of the goal in the team Realistic, means that the target should be set at a reasonable level, while still stretched to drive improvement Time, means that it must be clear, and part of the definition of the goal, when we expect the target to be reached.

If you use the SMART check-list when defining goals you should be in pretty good shape.

When you start the process of using goals in the daily management process on the shop floor, management must be prepared to work closely with the team to ensure that goals are measured and that corrective and preventive actions are defined and implemented. This process is best driven by stand up meetings, preferably every day. When implemented correctly, performance management can be an extremely effective way to get ahead of your competition.

You'll Never Get Stuck In Email Traffic Again

2007-05-18T02:44:00.001-07:00

Over the past 10 years email has become one of the most utilised means of communication, in the office and the private. It is a fantastic way of corresponding, because you do not have to wait for the post to be collected and delivered and in many cases it's even better than the telephone, because you do not have to wait for the other person to be at their phone at the very same time.
Therefore it is quiet logical that the amount of emails in the past few years has increased dramatically. According to statistics by the Radicati Group from the first quarter of 2006 the number of emails sent per day to be around 170 billion - thereof 70% are spam or viruses!
This relentless bombardment of one email after another on a day-to-day basis results in distraction, stress, addiction and over all in reduced productivity at the workplace. Each new email brings you off focus and away from your important projects and tasks. This problem does not only effect large organisations where the normal workforce gets between 100 and 250 emails a day. All the professional people, business owner and self employed with 50 emails per day are facing the same problems. The cost for the whole Australian economy in lost productivity is far beyond 10 billion dollar.
If you want to work proactively on your business and on your projects you must change your habits. Otherwise you end up doing the real work after hours and spending the day only to respond to seemingly urgent but not really important messages.
One of the main reasons for this email addiction is the lack of training. When emails started to sneak into our lives about ten years ago it was so easy to send and receive an email. So literally nobody took the time to learn the basics of those programs. During the years this hasn't changed, but the environment has changed dramatically (see above) and the software tools are much more powerful and sophisticated today.
Three important tips to save you time
Here are three tips you can apply today to detach yourself from your inbox and give the control over your messages back to you
1. Use rules and folders. .
First you create a folder with the person or projects name on it. Then you simply make a right click on the actual message, and chose "create rule". Here you decide which folder you want this and all following emails to go into. You see, a Rule is really just the direction you want your incoming message to go. It by-passes the Inbox and arrives straight into the folder. The bold title and the number in brackets shows you how many unread items you have in each folder.

2. Turn on manually send and receive
Instead of automatically download every message that's waiting for you and distracting you, from now on you are in control when to look for new emails. And besides getting back into control of your inbox there is a secondary gain: now you can review an email before it's really leaving your computer. That might save you some important relationships.
To turn on the manual send and receive you simply go to the Tool-Options-Menu and look for Mail Setup.
3. Sort out SPAM before it reaches your inbox
You can either use the Junk-Mail-Folder in Outlook® 2003 or buy yourself a useful program like Mailwasher. The principle is the same in both programs: every incoming email is black-listed by default and you learn the system by white-listing your contacts and friends. An additional tip concerning SPAM: do not leave your email address visible on your website - hide it behind a form or link.
Master Your Inbox
If you want your system running with German precision you might consider to learn more about Outlook® or Outlook Express®. We are not only delivering enjoyable courses, workshops and presentation we have also developed an unique email-course "Master Your Inbox".

Excel: Creating Dynamic Graphs and Charts

2007-05-18T02:43:00.000-07:00

I am going to throw this out there right now, I do not have a college education and I graduated from a small town high school. When I made a decision to take a corporate position, I really thought my options were limited to how high I could go on the corporate ladder. Never would I have thought a small, green icon on my desktop could have proved me so wrong.

In order to improve my position, I taught myself programs other individuals in my field didn't even want to look at and I increased my skill set in the programs that our upper management needed. Most importantly, Excel. I learned to create dynamic charts and discovered ways to tell the financial stories everyone needed to see. Not only were my graphs unique, I also added my own personal flair to them. Anyone looking at a chart would immediately know it was create by Suzanne. Not only that, once they saw it they felt confident that the information was correct.

The graphs in question were wonderfully colored, simply told, and were completely ME! In two months time, I doubled my salary, I was given a promotion, and my sole purpose in life was to create metrics for our executive staff and to present them to our customers.

As simple as it sounds, becoming an expert in a specific program that is NEEDED at your place of business can set you apart not only where you are right now, but it can also increase your value to where you want to go. For me, it was Excel and its graphs. I didn't stay with the default charts and colors and I didn't settle for the status quo. What I did was set myself visually apart from everyone else and kept a smile on my face and helped where I was needed!

Determine where your company is lacking, identify what is needed, and then make yourself indispensable!

Mentoring: A Key Strategy For Organizational and Professional Success

2007-05-18T02:42:00.000-07:00

In this fast paced, high stress, highly competitive marketplace, individuals and organizations are looking for avenues to increase productivity and decrease stress. As technology and information overwhelms us, we often need to go back to basic answers to solve our most complex issues. Mentoring is one of the basic foundations that can address both the individual and organizational needs of our time.

Since the beginning of time, mentoring has been a key to passing on knowledge and developing talent for the future. Mentoring is beneficial to the individual and the organization. It can also be a relatively simple process to implement given a few guidelines to launch the process.

Three reasons why organizations support mentoring programs:
1. Mentoring programs help attract and retain Superstars.
2. Mentoring programs help develop future leaders.
3. Mentoring programs set organizations apart from their competitors.

Three reasons why individuals choose to be a mentor:
1. Create a Legacy – The knowledge and values a mentor imparts to a protégé can inspire new ideas, growth and value-based decision-making for many years to follow.
2. Improve Coaching and Leadership Skills - A necessary ingredient for successful organizations of the 21st century is the increase of leadership and coaching skills in the organization. Mentoring can provide experience in working with a variety of personalities, skills, work styles, aspirations and assist in enhancing coaching and leadership skills.
3. Enhance Performance – To teach something, you must know something. Mentors repeatedly report the mentoring relationship brings them to a new level of awareness about their own performance. Often, this leads to their own professional increase of knowledge.

Three reasons why individuals chose to be protégés:
1. Heightened Self-Awareness – Obtaining accurate information about how one is perceived by others on a professional and personal level can move an individual to a more successful career.
2. Improving Operations Skills – The knowledge and wisdom from others can bring theoretical learning to practical applications without the pitfalls of learning through trial and error. Professional effectiveness can be streamlined through the mentoring process.
3. Career Insights – Each career is unique. Issues such as work/life balance, career management and organizational effectiveness can be clarified and developed through the mentoring process.

The reluctance to enter mentoring relationships often revolves around the uncertainty of how to get started. “What will we talk about? Will I have anything to share?” are common questions that prevent the process from beginning. The shift needs to be from worrying about the “what” to knowing about the “how”. In other words, “how do we establish the relationship?” Once the relationship is established, the “what will we talk about” often takes care of itself. Here are the key ingredients in establishing the mentoring relationship.

The mentor’s roles and responsibilities:
 Develop clear expectations and specific goals, using these as a foundation for the conversation and relationship.
 Be available and responsive. You may not have all the answers but probably have access or connections to others who might.
 Listen effectively to ask pertinent questions and provide sound advice.
 Create a positive learning environment by providing encouragement and constructive feedback.
 Maintain confidentiality.
 Share relevant experiences, including successes and failures.

The protégé’s roles and responsibilities:
 Establish a meeting timetable with specific agendas.
 Share specific goals, hopes and expectations for the mentoring relationship.
 Be open and receptive to constructive feedback.
 Listen effectively to learn from the mentor’s experience, background and perspectives.

Mentoring relationships can be tremendously rewarding and beneficial to the individual and the organization. Mentoring can be a key foundation to help navigate the changes of a challenging business world.

Cheryl Leitschuh, Ed.D. is a coach and consultant creating environments of success for individuals, teams and organizatons.

Practice services include:
*Career Development assessment, retreats and coaching.
*Professional Practice Development coaching and assessment.
*Key leader development and assessment.
*Executive Coaching.
*Team Coaching.
*Performance Improvement Coaching and Assessment
*Speaking and training on key aspects of workplace development.
*Succession Planning.

The Role of Organizational Design in 21st Century Organizations

2007-05-16T05:24:00.000-07:00

How we understand organizational design is in the midst of radical change. Just as the industrial revolution in England and the Unites States changed predominantly agricultural societies to urban societies forever, so is the availability of knowledge markets changing the industrial landscape. Defined, design blends plan with a proposal for a look or function. Design is also the art or action resulting in conception of a plan or idea. Design, in light of this definition, presumes structure in a physical sense. However, design is not a word that means specifically structure. One origin of design comes from Latin that means designate. A designation includes such meanings as an appointment to a position, an assignment of status, or an ascribed meaning. If we ascribe meaning using ascribe as a transitive verb, we enter the realm of cause and effect.

History supports the lure of industry pulling large population groups away from farming. Industry made the growth of cities possible. Industry provided job security over the long term that farming did not. Industry relied on physical structure, command and control over generally uneducated workers. Industry supported the wealth of nations. These multiple causes had their multiple effects on what we know as organizational design. Industrial age organizational design employed strict hierarchy, workers delivered only product and the boss ruled supreme.

To search for the spark that caused the radical shift away from industry, one may find it with a small group of professors and students at Stanford University who sent the first binary message from one computer to another over a wire. Now we know that they created not only a spark but a firestorm that has not subsided and continues to burn on a global level. As a consequence, not only do we now have virtually instantaneous connections to people everywhere, but work no longer dependents on structural design. Therefore, this paper looks at organizational design in 21st century business operations with a focus on design function and its role in the changing structure.

This discussion, while acknowledging that physical infrastructure is important, suggests that traditional brick and mortar structure does not necessarily provide the best environment for accomplishing work. In addition, this discussion accepts an operational design including leadership and management hierarchies but in roles that do not stifle innovation or idea generation.

7 Ways to Avoid the Most Deadly Business Mistakes

2007-05-16T05:23:00.001-07:00

1. Create a plan. This may sound like a statement of the obvious but far too many people go into business without one. You must have a plan or you will fail. That is a guarantee. If you fail to plan you plan to fail.

2. Set goals and write them down. This is essential. In addition to this you must also read your goals daily. Make your goals specific, clear and achievable. An unwritten goal is just a wish. If you need help figuring out what goals are realistic and achievable try asking someone who is already in the same business or one similar to yours.

3. Be realistic. Realize that it will take to be successful and be willing to do it at any and all costs. Have the mentality that quitting is not an option.

4. Set and keep a budget. It is imperative that you know how much money you can afford to spend on a monthly basis and that you do not spend more than this no matter what. It can be tempting to get carried away spending too much on advertising or other unnecessary items. In the beginning as long as you have business cards and a basic website that is really all you absolutely must have.

5. Get and stay organized. Disorganization makes running a business difficult for anyone. It is much easier to take the time in the beginning to do this and to make a commitment to stay that way. Everything is easier when you are well organized. Be willing to take the time to do this in the beginning and you will be glad you did.

6. Pick a few aspects of the business to focus on and concentrate on for the long-term. It is fine to experiment with many different ideas but trying to do everything or to be the best at everything is a recipe for disaster. It is much better to become great at two things than to be mediocre at five things.

7. Realize when you need to take a break or get help. Running a business is difficult and everyone needs a break or some assistance from time to time and that is ok.

Grow Your Summer Delight With Care

2007-05-16T05:22:00.000-07:00

It is a sizzling summer day; the mercury is rising. You are hot, tired and hungry and looking for a healthy snack to eat. You want to keep active but unsure how. How does a refreshing slice of watermelon sound to you? A crisp, juicy slice of watermelon is undoubtedly what you are looking for. Watermelons are truly one of summertime's sweetest treats. It is fun to eat, and good for your health too. An all-American favorite, watermelon is highly nutritious and packed full of essential ingredients. Although available throughout the year with all its benefits, producing a good watermelon is a bit tricky in many parts of the nation.

Today there are more than 100 different varieties of watermelons. The sweetest ones usually grow during long hot summers. Harvesting is particularly critical because watermelons do not continue to ripen after they have been removed from the vine. Watermelons prefer a sunny location and fertile, well-drained soils. Incorporate plenty of organic matter and a complete fertilizer into the area before planting. Plant 4-6 seeds, 1-2 inches deep, in mounds 4 feet apart when soils are warm. Transplant watermelon 2 feet apart through black plastic for early maturity. Do not forget to use row covers to protect the plants when planting before the frost-free period. After the vines develop runners, side dress with additional nitrogen fertilizer. Irrigation should be deep and infrequent. Harvest watermelons when the tendril is dry, the ground spot is yellow, and the skin is dull colored.

Watermelons can be grown from seed or transplants. Watermelon fruits take 35-45 days to mature from flowering. To determine the maturity of the fruit, look for the curly tendril opposite the fruit which should be brown and withered; the ground spot under the fruit changes from white to yellow; and the skin color changes from shiny to dull. The rind color should be right for the variety with a waxy bloom. Probably the most important indicator of ripeness is the underside, which sets on the ground. Pick watermelons as they ripen. Watermelon will store for 1-2 weeks if held at 45-50ºF. Uncut watermelons have a shorter refrigerator life, so store at room temperature until ready to chill and eat. Tightly cover cut pieces in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 days.

Watermelons are generally warm-season crops that achieve prime quality when grown under warm, sunny conditions. Cool, cloudy weather may result in watermelons with inferior quality. Soils with a history of watermelon diseases should be avoided or fumigated to avoid problems. Litter from previous crops should be disked and deep turned with a plow two to four weeks prior to planting to ensure its decomposition. Diseases are important in determining the success or failure of watermelon production. Certain diseases have destroyed entire watermelon crops in some areas even when the weather conditions favored their development. If disease control practices are not followed, some loss can be expected every year from foliage and stem diseases. There even lies the risk of attack by a variety of insect pests. Certain insect management practices can be used to ensure cost-effective control decisions.

Watermelons require great attention and care to develop into the best variety. The methods adapted for their cultivation depends on the growth and amount of production. Demand for watermelons is particularly high in the US, where 136,400 acres of watermelons had been harvested in 2005! In fact, demand for watermelons has constantly been on the rise. People are acknowledging its health benefits and are keen to intake all the goodness that it provides.

Flowers Create a Great Environment at Work

2007-05-16T05:21:00.001-07:00

Working in an office can be a great way to keep your bills paid and generate funds for recreational time, but whether you are a corporate CEO, the administrative assistant, or the mail room clerk, it is important to your personal well being and to your level of productivity to have an inspiring work environment.

Decades ago, companies like Hewlett Packard found that the use of color therapy would promote higher production levels as well as fewer health risks and decreased sick days in their employees. Along with removing the "drab" from their workplace, they increased the health of their work force. They had their lounges, foyers, and cubicles painted a soft plum shade and placed soft off-white office furniture throughout the entire building; thereby, increasing employee performance and their edge in the workplace.

Similar tests conducted today show that employees confined to office spaces for eight to twelve hours a day have fewer sick days, increased problem solving skills, and better idea generation when fresh flowers or plants are present. That's right, Mother Nature still knows best. It appears we are at our brightest and best in the presence of nature. Maybe it's the fresh air plants generate stimulating our brains or maybe just the colors. Whatever it is, flowers and plants give workers an edge in productivity.

There has been a lot of research studies done regarding thinking skills. In fact a recent study done by doctors at Texas A&M University shows that problem solving skills and creativity were enhanced by adding flowers or plants to the setting. Regardless of age or gender, skills such as innovative thinking and formulating solutions improved. Better yet, there were signs of increased motivation and achievement satisfaction in the presence of flowers.

A study conducted at the University of New Jersey sited that, "When gifts of equal monetary value were given, people had a more favorable response to the gift of flowers." The folks just felt good all over days after receiving floral gifts. There's another benefit; the affects of receiving flowers lasts for days.

It seems simple really, but as in all things, the simplest things are sometimes the hardest to grasp. Put a vase of flowers on your assistant's desk and reap the benefits of new attitudes, ideas, and productivity. It isn't just a way to get more work out of your employees, it is a way to say, "Thanks for a job well done." It is a way to say, "Welcome to all who enter your doors." Or, maybe it just says, "We are connected to our environment." What ever the message, it will be a positive one.

So, the old adage," Say it with flowers" really is true. It works, and you can't argue with what works. We all need inspiration in our work environments, and flowers and plants are naturally endowed to inspire.

Five Random New Ideas

2007-05-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

Generating new ideas is easy if you know the right techniques. Here are five I came up with while watching the snow fall outside the window. Those are followed by a few suggestions for creating new ideas.

1. A new kind of answering machine. Answering machines have our own messages, prerecorded messages, and funny messages. How about an answering machine that has different messages depending on who is calling? The idea here is to have the machine connected to the caller ID. If no data is available a generic message plays. But if it is one of the numbers you programmed to hear a certain message, the caller gets a personalized response. "Hi mom, I'm not here right now, but don't worry..."

2. Could mosquito blood solve a crime? This idea may be more suited to a fiction story than real police work, but the idea is logical. If a suspect says he wasn't in an area and the police need to prove he was, they could test the blood collected by mosquitoes for the suspect's DNA. Since mosquitoes don't travel far, determining that he was there by finding his DNA in this way would be fairly conclusive.

3. Power naps have been shown to reduce stress and increase productivity. The problem if you work in a busy office or busy city is finding a quiet place to take one, and being able to fall asleep quickly. A storefront operation that has something like tanning booths may be the answer. With proven brainwave entrainment CDs to listen too, sleep would come easily and quickly.

4. Withdrawn children were found to permanently change their behavior and join in activities with others, after watching a video of similarly withdrawn children joining the group. Why not apply that idea to a series of videos. Make motivational "story videos" in which someone like you learns to do whatever you want to do (learn to dance, speak in front of a crowd, or whatever). Done with many types of people, so you could choose one with a character most like yourself, to make it more realistic and motivating.

5. Multiple plot-line novels. The new idea here is to use the internet to publish a novel that is really a dozen or more stories in one. The reader chooses which way the story should go, and so clicks through to the pages that complete that version of the story. This has been proposed for books before, but with paper books it becomes too cumbersome.

Learn a few good techniques, and you can come up with a hundred new ideas in an evening of brainstorming. Some of the best are the simplest as well. Getting the new answering machine idea, for example, involved nothing more than looking at my answering machine and asking what could be changed.

Another simple technique is to simply find a new application for an existing idea, which is how I arrived at the idea for the motivational videos. There are dozens of these techniques. Of course some of the ideas above may already be put into use by others by the time you read this, which points up another important fact about new ideas: It is a lot easier to have them than to do something with them.

Google As A Powerful Internet Marketing Tool

2007-05-10T04:50:00.001-07:00

I use Google endlessly, all day, every day. I use Google to make money with my Internet home business in so many ways, and this article is not about Adsense or Adwords. Both of which are very lucrative and have many e-books,blogs,articles, e-courses and successful Internet businesses built around them. But no, this is about Google's customizable Home Page, it's Tool Bar and yes, it's Search Engine.

I am an Internet businessman, so a large part of my life is focused on my computer. I love my computer. It stores my music, pictures, addresses, e-books, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, home budget, articles, bookmarks, ezines and feeds while I run my business, websites, blogs, myspace and a dozen other social networking sites, five e-mail accounts, articles, opt-in list, ezine, and newsletter. And I am finding help in organizing my computer into a more efficient money making tool with Google.

I start my work day by turning on my computer, and my Home page opens. This is the front line of my Internet marketing world. The Google customized home page displays my bookmarks and in the order I need to open them. All my RSS feeds are there, my blog feeds and the feeds that I read and respect to have lucrative information. And in and around the news, weather and special interest feeds, I have my PGATOUR and WineAdviser. My world and interests, in my eclectic and happy life presented for my manipulation. But as I begin to work, to make money online it's the Google Tool bar that efficiently lends a hand.

In the beginning of my Internet marketing career, and most likely yours and every other persons, it was a big undertaking to wade into the world of Internet home businesses. Some of you have a brick-n-mortar business that you want to market online, I was looking to be an affiliate marketer, and make commission on other peoples products, but both models and others take signing up to several different services. There are information sites, newsletters, traffic exchanges, chat rooms and forums, social networking, autoresponders, blogs and so much more. Well all that to say the Google tool bar has Autofill, it fills in forms and will save you a lot of time and effort. Than there is Spellcheck, it keeps you looking professional as you express your self in the written word in e-mail, blog posts and comments, chat room and forum entries and articles etc. Also on this bar is an amazing marketing tool, the Pagerank.

The importance of a good Google Pagerank can not be underrated. Keeping an eye on your sites as well as your colleges and competitors the way Google sees us, allows us to plan and tweak our search engine optimization strategies. Getting ranked #1 in your keyword on Google is tricky but so much fun to do. This feature of the tool bar also will find your ( and your competitors) back links, witch is important for pagerank.

Are You Ready for a Paperless Office?

2007-05-10T04:49:00.001-07:00

Many business owners think the epitome of a smooth operating office is a paperless one. They want to throw away their file cabinets and storage facilities in favor of keeping everything on computer disks. While this sounds like a wonderful way to run a business, you have to decide if going paperless is right for your company?

Going paperless is a big step for any company and requires a lot of planning before you start. One of the most important things to remember is when you go paperless you must backup your files regularly. Daily backups should be done, without fail, to insure your records are safe. Not only should you have a backup on-site, but you should also keep a copy off-site. You do not want a fire or other disaster that destroys your building to ruin your records as well.

Before you make the decision to go paperless, you will need to consider some things first.

A paperless office will not happen overnight. Unlike changing the type of copier you use; changing your office dynamics to a paperless one is not as easy. You have to plan carefully. You will need to purchase the proper equipment, such as scanners and backup systems, to facilitate your change. You will need to train your employees in using this equipment. In the beginning you will have more work until your new system is running smooth.

Decide how much past information you want in your computer backups. Depending on the type of business you have, you might be able to go back to the beginning and scan in all your old invoices, payment records, etc into the computer. Small businesses are better able to do this since their records are not as abundant as a larger corporation. It is really up to you how far back you go, but make the decision prior to starting the transition, so the change easier to manage. Also, take state and federal record keeping rules into consideration when you make this decision.

All of your employees must be willing to make the change. It will only make your decision to go paperless more difficult if only a percentage of your employees are willing to make the changes required. Everyone must do their part to make this change happen. You probably will have some employees who are change-resistant. Those are the employees you will have to work the hardest to convert. You must be firm that this is the company's new policy and you expect all employees to follow it.

Your office will not be totally paperless. You are going to have customers and vendors who will not deal with electronic transactions. Do not throw out your old forms. You can use them for those few hard-copies you will have to print out. Also, some government offices, both state and federal, require keeping a paper hard-copy of certain records. Double check your local, state and federal requirements for proof of your business records. But even if you have to keep some hard copies of your records, the amount of paper stored will be minimal in comparison to what you were keeping.

Rearrange your office. Once you have the system in place, you will find you need less storage space. As you scan documents into your computer, you can start disposing of the paper versions, thus freeing up not only file cabinet space but floor space. Getting rid of those space stealers will make your office appear less messy and more professional to your customers and employees.

In the end, going paperless does more than help the environment. It can help your business environment by having your paperwork at the push of a button instead of the opening of a file cabinet. It will give you this access anywhere you have internet access. You will spend less time shuffling paper, less time trying to find something important and more time building your business

Consumer Goods Firms Benefit From Business Performance Management

2007-05-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

Many consumer good (CG) firms are currently playing on a very rocky rugby field. With multiple business lines, diverse product families, a dizzying number of brands and highly decentralized operations, the planning and financial reporting process can easily become fragmented. It’s not surprising then that each business unit, whether it be marketing, manufacturing, finance or purchasing, simply tries to keep a handle on its respective area. But, short-term vision and developing a comprehensive game strategy are very different goals.

Unifying Applications for Greater Insight

To avoid departmental myopia, a sophisticated, yet simple-to-use application is needed to link bottom-up and top-down planning processes. The right business performance management (BPM) software solution can help consumer goods and retail companies to gain a much broader and more accurate view of their overall business performance as well as target specific areas where greater profitability can be achieved.

In addition to classic budget and financial planning issues in other industries, such as long cycle times, limited workflow and version control, there are also industry-specific challenges in consumer goods companies which can be addressed by investing in a leading-edge business performance management system.

Modeling on the Fly

With a business performance management software application that provides one version of the truth, with data which is continuously updated, users can gain insight into projected and actual performance in multiple dimensions – by product, cost center, customer, country etc. By linking actuals, forecasts and other non-financial metrics, management can easily identify which products, brands or business units are the most profitable. They can then model on the fly to assess projected performance when assumptions for drivers such as promotional spending, product pricing or orders in the pipeline are altered with various scenarios.

Mastering Price Optimization and Trade Spending

In consumer goods companies, price optimization is an integral aspect of profitability. In fact, even the smallest changes in a company’s pricing policy can have an enormous impact on margins and bottom line performance. BPM software can help understand which segments of the market are most sensitive to changes in prices, whether pricing tactics are in line with a company’s goals and how specific product categories are performing at the retail or distribution outlet level.

Allocating funds for trade promotional spending is another key area where consumer goods companies must make essential decisions with important consequences. Using a BPM software solution allows companies to explore different “what-if” scenarios with ease to predict profitability based on different mixes of trade spending. This information in turn can be shared with sales and marketing to follow changes in consumer trends and competitors’ strategies to make the best choices.

Improving Supply Chain Efficiency

At most consumer goods companies, inventory levels are still too high. Unless a company uses rolling forecasts, it is likely that their forecasts will be inaccurate, resulting in inventory levels which are unnecessarily high, or worse still, too low. BPM software integrates plans with rolling forecasts in a single application to bridge the gap between sales and operations, thereby enabling more accurate sales forecasts, which lead to more precise purchasing and inventory decisions.

All Adds Up

Beyond these consumer goods industry-specific needs, a BPM solution addresses more generalized planning and budgeting issues found in other industries as well. It should include a central data repository, version control, approval routing, workflow capabilities, real-time linkage to strategic plans, non-financial key performance indicators (KPIs), actuals and forecasts. By attaching supporting narratives to budgets and plans, users can draw direct comparisons between strategic plans and budgets or between budgets and KPIs, which gives a much clearer picture of specific areas that need improvement or adjustment.

The stakes are high. Companies that do not implement a business performance management software solution are giving their competitors a significant edge by default. It’s time to level the playing field with the right analytical tools or risk being left behind.

Discover the Cartesis Finance and Performance Management Suite

* Provides best-of-breed performance management functionality built around a single Integrated Data Model
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Meet with a Cartesis specialist to discuss how your company can benefit from the many advantages of our BPM software solutions.

Project Management - Tips For Helping You Adopt A Process

2007-05-10T04:46:00.000-07:00

The Rational Unified Process, Enterprise Unified Process, Agile Development Methodologies, Unified Modeling Languages. They come in many names, complexities and sizes but following one will help ensure success on your next project.

This article is not a detailed overview of a formal process. Instead it provides an overview of the most critical components common to each, as well as some tips on successfully deploying them. Although many process descriptions do an excellent job of breaking down the various components of the process they rarely cover areas like how this affects your team, how much process to use or offer practical advice on issues encountered in the real world when trying to deploy one.

It can be very helpful as a beginner’s introduction to process and can help you more easily grasp some of the concepts you will be introduced to. For the more experienced process guru it should have some helpful tips on smoothing over some of the rough edges we all deal with from time to time.

The information here is based on experiences and lessons learned in over 15 years of developing and managing over 100 complex project releases.

Following these fundamentals will improve your chances of success in any process you adopt and provide a solid foundation for maturing it.

What’s a Process and why do I need one?
Regardless of what business we are in, software, web site design or retail clothing, we all have a process we follow to complete a given project. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not, often with costly results. When we talk about adopting a process we are talking about a more formal process. A process is essentially an integrated set of roles, methods and techniques to in part, help achieve the following:

* Minimize risk.
* More accurately estimate your project schedule and budget.
* Detect problems early (upstream) instead of later (downstream) when they are much more expensive to fix, if they can be fixed at all.
* Better communication among team members regarding project scope, requirements and status.
* More accurately track the progress of the project and detect slippage early.
* Accomplish the project’s goals as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.

Formal processes are often created and refined over years of trial and error to attempt to create an ideal “recipe” for having an optimal chance at successfully completing any project. While they were developed for and commonly used in Software Development, Aerospace and engineering, most of the core concepts are not specific to these or any industry and anyone can benefit from using them.

How much Process is enough? It is critical to the success of any process to understand how much you initially need to bite off. The risk of trying to do too much too soon with a process can be as risky as not doing anything at all, especially if you are a more agile company trying to make the transition to being more process oriented. Overloading your team with a new set of responsibilities and methods they are not accustomed to or ready for can easily derail you. However if you don’t start changing you will continue to have the same problems. Here are some tips of finding the right balance.

* Risk Factor. What is the project’s risk factor? Obviously making software for an artificial heart is much more risky than deploying the third generation of a web site and the process, initially anyway, should match the risk. The former would need extensive, redundant and exhaustive QA checks and balances where the latter can be easily adjusted on the fly after deployment with no loss of life. Be realistic about what your risks are, how expensive they will be to address downstream, and use this as a basis for deciding how much is required. No one knows your environment, project and team better than you, so use some common sense in deciding what feels right.

* How much can your team handle and what does it need most? The impact on the team is often overlooked. Any process is only as good as what your team can manage and regardless of the ultimate benefits, initially it will cause additional effort in training and new tasks your team is not accustomed to managing. To be successful you must achieve buy in and commitment to the process from everyone. If you don’t your team will simply go through the motions and roll their collective eyes in project meetings. To overcome this find their pain points in how they work now and start with the areas of the process that directly address these.

* Start Small. Start with a few areas that you feel are critical, again including pain points so your team sees immediate benefits. It will be easier to add more process layers later when they see it as a benefit and not simply extra layers of bureaucracy. Gaining buy in is critical and if you start small your team will have a chance to get their collective heads around this as well as see the benefits, making more maturation downstream easier.

Team and Environment
One of the most commonly overlooked elements of employing or maturing a process is the team itself. Each team has a different dynamic and will respond very differently to various aspects of what you are trying to do. Too often, out of frustration with problems new process is forced on a team. This does not mean your team should dictate your process, but as mentioned above your team’s buy in to what you are doing is essential for your success. I have never seen a process successfully steamrolled over a team. So tread carefully, get your team involved in discussions about what you are doing and why, it will pay dividends.

* Roles and Responsibilities. Any process will have roles defined for each individual and it is critical that each person clearly understands the role they will be playing and feel they are comfortable in that role. Spend some time here and ask people if they are comfortable in their role, ask questions and listen! Once your team is set, make sure they are empowered to do what they need to do and make sure everyone on the team is aware of who has a gun and a badge. If your developers refuse to tell your project manager the information they need you will have a problem. If the project manager reacts by dropping soft milestones into your project plan you have a problem you won’t even know about until it is too late. So make sure roles are clearly defined for everyone and that everyone knows who has power on the team.

* Full Disclosure. Enough cannot be said about this. The purpose of any process is to address problems as early (cheaply) as possible and this can only be done with visibility at every stage to accurately assess the status of the project. Developer egos, team infighting, and defensive posturing all create an environment where no process can be effective. It is critical that team members are willing to admit mistakes, call out problems and do so in a way that does not create a hostile environment. To do this you must bring the parties together and openly discuss this issue. Address the fact that issues are brought up for the overall good of the project and organization. Reward those who find fault in themselves and point out mistakes. Often the tension can be cleared by starting with admitting your own mistakes first, others will follow, so lead by example and you will see that you can create an open environment were people feel free to view mistakes and even criticism constructively.

* Visibility. Similar to the above, visibility is all about people feeling comfortable disclosing information to the group. Developers will want to sit on code until the last minute because they know it is not ready, designers hate people seeing unfinished work. So understand why your developer or designer may be twitching as their early work is paraded in front of a group and tread lightly at first with criticism until they become more comfortable with this. Phrases like; “This is really great but how about…” are invaluable, use them! The fundamental goal of any good process is catching issues as early in the process as possible. So you must discuss this with your team and make sure everyone understands that this can only be done with full visibility on all aspects of the project.

The Proper Tools
You can’t control what you can’t measure. So make sure you have the proper tools in place for both managing the process and being able to track and communicate about your project.

* Managing the Process. There are many excellent tools available for managing requirements, QA, and Development. As with the process itself make a call on how much you need before you dive in and start buying. Shore up critical parts of the process. Requirements management often gets the most attention but requirements can be easily managed in a word document while QA is often overlooked. A solid database that allows QA to track features from implementation to completion and any bugs that result will be invaluable for QA and development and the project as a whole.

* Tracking the Project. It is essential that your project manager is armed with a tool that can be used to show the progress of the project and its various comments. Look for tools that allow the right level of detail (high level for management) and more detailed for individual departments and the project manager themselves. For example Microsoft Project for example is an excellent tool for managing very strict rules driven projects. However many projects are exception driven, making strict project management tools difficult to use in a fluid changing environment. A great alternative is scheduling calendar software like The Calendar Planner which provides the ability to manage various levels of detail in an easy to use calendar format. Allowing project status to be easily communicated among the team.

Scope
Next to the Team environment this is probably the most critical aspect of any project. You absolutely must focus on clearly defining scope at the earliest stages of development. The biggest mistake is usually trying to do too much on too short a schedule or budget or defining the scope and then not adhering to it. This frustrates developers and ultimately throws the project into chaos.

* Be realistic. Everyone wants everything right now, especially Sales and Marketing. Ask tough questions early of these departments about what features your customers MUST have versus what they WANT to have. Sometimes you will find marketers have made promises to a single client and are trying to save face when in the grand scheme the feature is not as important to the company’s goals. Focus on what you truly must do, let them know they can’t have everything and force them to choose. Make sure the company’s goals are represented at all times in requirements. This is where the Vision document below comes in.

* Vision document. These may have various names for different methodologies but a vision document is essentially a high level overview of your project. Think of it as a mission statement for the project itself. This is where the company can clearly define what the goals are for the project. Who the stakeholders are and what the high level requirements are. This will be your primary document for setting the scope of the project. Keep it HIGH level, details can come elsewhere. Make sure the requirements map to the goals and that as you move forward the work being done remains true to these goals and requirements. That can change but only when the stakeholders agree and sign off on the changes.

* Don’t increase scope without adjusting your schedule and budget! Seems simple enough but probably the single most common mistake. People always try to add “small” things that involve “minimal effort”. These add up and the impact is often not addressed, which ultimately leads to a failure in schedule and budget. The change board is your main defense against this, see change board below.

Requirements
Requirements in any project are tricky and many excellent books are dedicated to this subject alone. It is true that of the projects that fail most issues can be traced back to requirements. Strange how this continues to be the case when requirements are the easiest and cheapest way to find and fix problems.

* A problem will never be cheaper than it is right now. When you review your requirements, you need to really review them, don’t just scan them. Think about and try to visualize what they are saying. You will often find problems are apparent at the surface. Take the time to do thoughtful reviews and continue to refine the requirements until everyone feels they are correct. Compare the expense of re-writing a sentence in a word processor to re-writing hundreds of lines of code, re-testing and re-deploying and you’ll see these are the last chances you have at a cheap fix.

* Get your customers involved, early! Make sure customers are involved in the earliest stages of requirements and keep them involved. Often a customer requests something and then developers disappear to figure it out. Big mistake! Come back to your clients with explanations of how you envision the feature and use mockups whenever possible so they can visualize it. You will find that making even a simple drawing of something will not only allow the customer to grasp it more easily but you will quickly spot problems you haven’t considered.

* QA starts at requirements. QA should be involved at the beginning not just the end of the project as is so often the case. Let them freely review Vision documents and requirements. They will often view potential issues that other departments may miss.

Change Boards
When done properly Change Boards can almost single-handedly manage even the most challenging projects. However if you don’t have the correct team environment in place as mentioned above, they will be ineffective at best and at worst will create more animosity.

* What it is. Very simply the change board is a meeting where each of the key departments and sometimes clients are represented and have a chance to discuss the project from every angle. The idea is to make sure everyone is aware of the status and is able to speak to the impact any change in requirements or schedule will have on their respective department.

* Who is there? Generally the list consists of the following: Marketing, Sales, QA, Operations, Development, IT, Project management, Clients. Essentially everyone who has a stake in or is affected by the project. Depending on the nature of the project Marketing or Sales will often represent the client. The most important rule here is, if someone is identified as a stakeholder in the project, do not have a meeting without them. If they can’t be there, reschedule.

* Where to start? A great way to start is usually to have everyone provide a brief update on what they are doing regarding the project. This helps remove the dark corners, often points out areas of disconnect and helps ease the tension of these sometimes contentious meetings by giving everyone an easy topic to cover and maybe brag a bit to start.

* Where to focus? The key issue in early change board meetings is scope. What is in and what is out? This will be a push and pull between what Sales and Marketing want and what those responsible for delivering can handle. After the scope settles down it is about status. Are the Requirements still correct? Have priorities adjusted? Are we on target? Most importantly each group is represented so if Marketing says: “I must have this”, Development is there to speak to the impact of this on the schedule, in real time. Again it promotes visibility and keeps things from being changed without everyone being able to speak to the ramifications. It simultaneously controls and informs.

* How often? They are very useful so have them as often as you need. This will depend on the nature of the project but every 1-2 weeks is best. Longer and you start to have too little communication and too many potential areas for slippage, any more frequent and you eat into too much work time.

* What not to do. Do not allow the meeting to descend into arguments and finger pointing. The change board is a tool that serves all departments. It is essential it remains a place where people can talk openly about issues. It is a place for reality, not spin. This will be harder than it sounds at times but resist the temptation to avoid them. There is no meeting more important to the success of a project than these.

Post Mortem
The Post Mortem is a meeting to get together after the project has completed. This is not a post release party although depending on the success it may have that atmosphere. It is a chance for some straight talk on what went wrong and more importantly how to address that in the future. Everyone lines up for Post Mortems when things went well but you can learn more from you failures than your successes. So if you had a lot of problems don’t miss this opportunity to address them when they are still fresh in everyone’s mind! Also, Teams need a sense of closure and this helps them do that as well as vent so you can clear the air before you next project starts.

* Leave your ego at the door. No where are straight talk and the ability to provide and accept constructive criticism more critical. This meeting cannot be about egos, or CYA, it has to a frank discussion about the mistakes made by everyone (we all make them) or areas in the process that need to be improved. Again to set the tone try leading off the meeting by the most senior person in the room discussing mistakes they made or things they learned. It really helps set the right tone and ease the tension.

* Take Notes, Then Action. This is the time to learn and too often people discuss the issues then go off and do nothing. This is the chance to take corrective action to save you time and money on the next project. So take copious notes and put them into action while the iron is hot.

Follow these steps in any process you adopt or any project you manage and you should find it really will improve your chances at success.

Take Pride In Your Wastebasket

2007-05-10T04:35:00.000-07:00

Have you got your wastebasket hidden away under the dark depths of your desk? Are you ashamed to display it prominently in your office room? Why? Is it because it is ugly, dirty, and not very artistic? Or, all of these factors?

You have probably relegated the purchase of the wastebasket to your lower functionaries and have not paid too much attention to its importance in the general schema of furnishing in your office. What you now have is a cheap looking plastic contraption that does not gel well with the décor and looks out of place in luxurious ambiance you are striving to create! You were so caught up with the macro details that you forgot that the micro-elements could destroy the macro effects by their very presence! However, it is never too late. We can set it all to rights by now focusing our attention on the micro details and acquiring wastebaskets and office accessories that match up with the décor and add to the beauty and grace of the environment in which you work.

Well, let us start by putting the wastebasket center stage and re-engineering our attitude towards it as a concept.

Is a wastebasket something one must be ashamed of? After all, everyone needs a wastebasket! Wastebaskets are a testimony to the fact that you are a person who believes in cleanliness. You are a person who likes to weed out the inessential papers and waste from your office so that you can organize your work better. You should be proud to display this trait of yours. The wastebasket therefore, should not be hidden under the depths of your desk but can be displayed at a convenient corner of the room aesthetically.

Having said that, it may not be entirely acceptable if we have only plastic multi-colored wastebaskets that clash with the decoration and ambiance of your office. You could consider purchasing Oak, Mahogany and Walnut wastebaskets These wastebaskets are exquisite hand rubbed and finished pieces that come in suitable sizes and shapes.

The round wastebasket style will hold 24 quarts and is finished with a steel liner in black enamel. The rectangular wastebaskets are available in 13 quart, 28 quart and 41 quart sizes. These wastebaskets are fitted with linear low-density polyethylene liners. Many standard paper shredders also snugly fit on to these baskets and provide quieter operation and stability. The slatted tambour wastebasket design is inspired by the 'roll-top' desk design and comes in Natural Oak, Mahogany stained Walnut, Genuine Walnut, Natural Cherry and Dark Cherry. The wood is taken from the slow growth forests of Upper Midwest and is known for the distinctive colors and exquisite patterns with wearable grain densities.

The hardwood wastebaskets will accent your office surroundings and provide the functionality required without appearing out of place. You will be proud to display these perfect wastebaskets in a prominent place in your office room!

The Vital Few Give Success to You

2007-05-08T04:22:00.003-07:00

Richard Koch, in his book. The 80/20 Principle, he describes the Principle as comprising of radar and autopilot. The radar for insight and the autopilot for control. In other words to easily think 80/20 and act 80/20 in all that we do.

Vital Few

Even if we accept the idea, it is hard to take the next step and take action. Continually think about the vital few and spend more time and effort with them and avoid the majority.

A few people add most of the value

The best people who are matched to the right job are the most productive and generate enormous surpluses, far more than what they make personally. These are usually only a very few with the majority generating little more than they make personally. This problem is greater in larger and more diversified companies.

There are many reasons for this:

hard to measure performance

political skill

tendencies to favor

remaining equal

The entrepreneur with four employees knows who is making the organization money and how much without a P&L department. Where a large company depends on misleading accounting data and filter provided by the head of human resources.

Misallocation of resources

We continue to give resources to activities with low margins and few resources to activities with high margins. We should redirect the majority of resources to the activities with the highest profit margins.

Success is undervalued

Success is too often thought of as a lucky break. There is always something behind that lucky break even if we fail to recognize it. Look for small causes, small products, small firms, small markets, small systems, as all of these are often the start of something big. Our attention is usually on what already exists not on the trend shown in small things.

Stop thinking 50/50

Think skewness.

Expect 20 percent to equal 80 percent.

Expect the unexpected.

Expect your 20 percent to lead to 80 percent.

Expect everything. Time, your company, your market, everything to a powerful 20 percent waiting to do more.

Expect tomorrow's 20 percent to be different.

Block from your view the existing 80 percent and free up your vision for the elusive 20 percent. This is where the fortunes are made.

The best way to start thinking 80/20 is to start acting 80/20 and the best way to start acting 80/20 is to start thinking 80/20.

Jesus spoke in parables to the masses and showed them miracles, but he spent time with the few and taught them the meaning of the parables and the power to work miracles. Jesus knew the value of the 80/20 principle and the results it would produce.

Managing Energy In The Workplace

2007-05-08T04:22:00.001-07:00

Managing energy is not just about food. It's about managing working conditions that affect how your body releases energy. This includes managing stress, oxygen levels, exercise levels and food breaks. Work demands can zap energy very quickly so you need to have a few tricks up your sleeve to boost your energy supply to help you both physically and mentally.

The Brain Protein Continuum

The neurons in your brain are largely made of fat. The brain cells communicate with each other using neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are made up from amino acids; protein building blocks. Another important amino acid is tyrosine.

Eating protein increase levels of tyrosine in the brain, helping the brain generate nor-epinephrine and dopamine. These chemicals promote alertness. The absorption of protein is assisted by carbohydrates. So eating a balanced supply of carbs and protein throughout the day will keep that brain network humming and avoid that 3pm black hole.

Top 10 Work Day Energy Guidelines

1. Start the day well rested - Treat your bed as an important energy re-supply station and ensure you book in long enough for the process to be completed. That means 7 to 9 hours a night.
2. Try a workout first thing - even 20 minutes will boost your bodies oxygen supply and keep your head thinking straight longer during the day. It's often much harder to feel inspired at the end of the day. If morning isn't your thing - the evening can still work. Try tricking yourself. Change into workout gear as soon as you get home. Switch on the television or put on a DVD, and instead of heading for the couch, sit on a workout bike or yoga mat with some weights. A few seconds later the brain starts connecting the visual messages and before you know it an hour has gone by.
3. Keep the body supplied with fuel - Eat a small, healthy snack every few hour of lean protein and whole grain carbs. The carbs provide a rapid energy release, while the protein provides longer-lasting energy.
4. Keep the body well hydrated - air conditioning is extremely drying on your system, and that includes the brain.
5. Take an oxygen break - if you don't have time for a full lunch break, take at least a 10 minute walk around the block or anywhere where there is more oxygen than car fumes. I use walking catch-ups. If a staff member wants to chat about something briefly I get us both out for a walk.
6. Try boosting energy during the day - some deep breathing [preferably not whilst on the phone to the CEO]; taking the stairs instead of the elevator or just standing up doing some leg raises all help to move oxygen around the body and boost the cells energy producing processes. I keep a small hand weight on my desk and it's amazing what you can do during a phone call!
7. Keep good energy nutrition snacks at work - protein balls are my favourite. I make them on Sunday and they last the whole week in the refrigerator. [that is if I don't eat them all by Thursday]. I use them for my 3pm low zone snack and as a mental pick-me-up before entering a long meeting.
8. Reduce the alcohol during the week - try getting it down to one glass a night - you will be amazed how much easier it is to get out of bed in the morning and you will be more likely to feel like doing that early morning workout. And your skin will look fantastic!
9. Go easy on the coffee - caffeine is not a good long term solution for energy throughout the day. It's addictive and better left to one cup first thing in the morning. You will sleep better also.
10. Reduce the size of your evening meal and avoid carbs after 6pm - you will find you will sleep better and that translates into more energy during the day.

And if you want to contribute to the worlds renewable energy supply - take a leaf from enterprising gym enthusiasts like Doug Woodwring who are harnessing energy created from everyday workouts and converting it into usable power.

Productivity and The Career CatWalk

2007-05-08T04:21:00.002-07:00

This career catwalk is different than the traditional catwalk. You will not find an overview of the latest fashion but rather a series of careers and -- this is very important -- what it is that makes these career so special.

We all have to chose a career or we catch-up with one without having really determined one in advance. For example the business manager hardly starts as a career. First you are either an engineer, a lawyer an information technology professional, an architect a entrepreneur, teacher or coach or perhaps a surgeon who will run a hospital after having been in active duty for many years and looking for a change.

As a business manager you execute different roles in different moment. Sometimes you operate as a coach supporting a team, and than you are like an architect designing a new organization, or a lawyer in the role of the devils’ advocate and the next moment you are in front of a group of pupils...

But at the end of the day you want to know whether you have been productive. Therefore it is important to understand the different elements that contribute to personal productivity. To evaluate the productivity of a professor or teacher you need quite some different indicator than the programmer, the architect or the surgeon.

An important step in measuring productivity is to understand the (four) main productivity roles that you need in business.

All the professionals on the career catwalk share only four main productivity roles. But each with a different profile and balance (and of course on a complete different subject). Understanding your preferred productivity role will help you manage and increase your personal productivity.

How a Freelance Copywriter Can Help Your Business Succeed

2007-05-08T04:21:00.001-07:00

Today, marketing messages have to hit the mark quickly, attention spans are short,budgets are tight, and deadlines are constantly looming. Who can help met these deadlines while infusing new energy into a marketing project? If you find yourself in the above situation a freelance copywriter may be the person to call.

Of course, by definition a freelancer is not on staff. The company isn't paying them salary and benefits. Instead, the freelancer is an outsider coming in to do task specific work. As such, they are only paid for the work they complete. Do the math. Think how much that could save the bottom line if your company only had to pay for task specific work. By utilizing the services of a freelance copywriter you can do just that. And as an outsider the freelancer brings in a fresh and new perspective to the project.

A freelance copywriter will usually offer to meet with you for a no obligation, no charge question and answer period. There you can nail down your needs and expectations as well as what fees the copywriter will charge. A good copywriter will most likely throw in two rounds of revisions. If both parties are satisfied then a contact is signed.

For most freelancers their work is their life. So underneath the details you will mostly likely be purchasing a measure of passion for the project as well. Not bad, in fact that can be a lot of bang for the buck. Once the ball is rolling the copywriter digs in and begins the research phase. They may ask you to fill out a questionnaire about the product or service that is being marketed. They will seek to inquire information such as: Who's the target audience? What worked last time? They may ask to speak with your sales people and they will also want samples of past marketing efforts. If feasible, a good copywriter will even use the product or service themselves. All these factors go into the freelancer's melting pot where ideas are churned into your finalized project. At the end of the day a successful experience with a freelance copywriter should easily save your business both time and money. And since they say time is money that means you'll be saving both money and money!

Presenteeism - An Under-the-Radar Challenge to Your Productivity

2007-05-08T04:20:00.000-07:00

Management has long been aware of loss in productivity due to absenteeism. When workers are absent from work, performance of their tasks is either delayed or temporarily transferred to someone else who, in turn, delays or transfers their regularly scheduled tasks to pick up the slack.

As if absenteeism wasn't enough of a productivity issue, along come the folks from the American Productivity Audit who provide us with some eye opening research in introducing the concept of Presenteeism.

Presenteeism refers to the loss in productivity for those workers who are present. As shown in the graphic, the study divided workers into four categories and determined the percentage of workers that fit into each.

Is this why so many companies are seeking to limit the Internet browsing activities of their workers? 73% are not motivated to do the work that they were hired to do! As if personal phone calls weren't enough of an issue, now these 73% can look productive while slacking off. At least when they're absent, we know what's not getting done. We can police Internet activity and personal phone calls. But are we just treating the symptoms: while ignoring the disease? And, how often do we attempt to solve an intrinsic problem (attitudes, motivation, commitment) with a systemic solution (rules and procedures)? With what success?

To validate the previous study, we have research from The Gallup Organization showing the typical level of engagement in today's workplace.

The Gallup Study creates a category called Situationally Engaged. They define these people as putting in the time and doing minimally enough to get by.

While your programs for combating absenteeism may be working successfully, is there a larger, less visible issue that remains un-addressed in most organizations? According to the Gallup Employee Engagement Study, 81% of workers are either actively disengaged or only engaged when the spirit moves them.

What is your productivity loss from presenteeism? If only 26% of your workforce is actively engaged and 19% is competent and motivated, are there some opportunities for significant improvement? How much better or worse than the national average is your workforce? According to the business book, Play To Your Strengths, human capital is the biggest investment about which management knows the least. The data on lack of motivation and engagement are further evidence.

If you have been attempting to systemically treat the symptoms with limited results, might it be time to address an intrinsic disease with intrinsic solutions? The undiscovered issue with absenteeism is the absence of workplace motivation and engagement. Now we have a name for it: Presenteeism. Health care professionals will tell you that mindset and determination for recovery can be as critical as medication and treatment for overcoming a critical illness. What is your management mindset for getting healthy again?

Traditional Wholesale Trading Vs Drop Shipping

2007-05-04T03:03:00.001-07:00

Drop shipping differs from traditional wholesale trading in that it is a form of ‘just in time’ shipping. Basically, drop shipping means that the online seller will order the product from the wholesaler as and when customer orders are received. The seller simply receives the order and passes on delivery information to the wholesaler for delivery. The customer pays the seller, the seller pays the wholesaler and the seller earns the profit from the difference between the sale price and the cost price. So, the product does not pass through the hands of the seller at any time, and goes directly from the wholesaler to the customer in the drop shipping model.

The traditional wholesale trading method implies that the seller orders a stock of the product from the wholesaler and maintains this stock to service customer demand. The physical possession of the product is the differentiating element. This clearly has a cost associated with it. Firstly, there are storage costs, which can be daunting if the product occupies a large amount of space. Secondly, there will be shipping costs from the wholesaler to the seller. Additionally, there is the cost of carrying unsold stock for a long period of time that eats into profits from sold goods.

So suddenly, drop shipping seems like a great idea. But drop shipping has its drawbacks too. In most cases, especially if you are a small business, you will pay the full MSRP, which will squeeze your profit margins. Additionally, you may have little or no information on the status of your order from the wholesaler, affecting customer service levels. Since you are essentially passing on the cost of carrying inventory on to the wholesaler, you will be charged for it. But, on the upside, you will only need to pay when you receive customer orders.

Reliability is an issue when drop shipping – as a seller, you will be able to control and track your product’s delivery much better if you hold inventory. In case of drop shipping orders, the seller relies on the wholesaler’s delivery system, which may be surprisingly lax. Finding a reliable wholesaler is a critical task on its own.

If you are worried about the label on the box that is shipped to the customer, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that many wholesalers will include your packing slips and labels when they ship to your customers.

A couple of hybrids exist that are useful to know about: Buying from local wholesalers and hiring fulfillment houses. An alternative to carrying inventory and drop shipping is to buy from nearby wholesalers when you receive an order and ship it out immediately. Amazon started this way, but it works best for small start up businesses. The other option is to make a deal with a fulfillment house. This is an intermediary service that offers to maintain small amounts of inventory, assemble, order fresh stock, pick, pull, pack and ship out your product in accordance with your instructions and using your packing materials. A fulfillment house may provide a shopping cart online and customer call center, depending on the scale of operations. They will charge a fee based on various factors – amount of storage capacity etc, and may charge a small percentage of commission on sales. This model may work best if you are a seller of high margin items.

Tips For Working More Efficiency In Office!

2007-05-04T03:02:00.002-07:00

When you are working in a consultancy office like me in Malaysia, it is quite common that you will be an all round worker. i.e. you have to handle a lot of project from design level until construction level. It also includes the management level works. Below are some tips for working more efficiency:

1. Every day, all corresponding letters or faxes must be attended immediately. Avoid any delay on these. Else you will receive a number of complaints from client. Unless the request needs a lot of attention, then you have to arrange a time to attend it.

2. Any return calls must proper manage. Select a best time for you to return call.

3. It is recommended that to do any brain thinking works in early morning; because it is the best time for thinking. Try not to do any brain thinking works after any site visits; especially in the hot afternoon. It also not recommended that when your emotion is bad such as angry.

4. If you feel tired than push the entire difficult tasks to another time, else what you do now will have a lot of mistakes. When human is tired, performance is low.

5. During meeting, try to answer any questions arise and resolve in meeting. But if you are not sure about something, remember not to commit it.

6. Try not to do long overtime work such as every day work until 1am or 12am morning. Next day start working in 7am. Overtime works for short period only. If you continue for a few weeks, you will find that you will be tired in day works. As a result, your performance will drop. This is not to ask you to lazy.

7. After a long working period, a tea break is a good time for you to relax. You will be more effective when you return to work.

8. When you assign any duty for your workers, bear in mind that you have to follow up with them through out the process. Do not last minute, call up them and ask for results! If your workers not doing your works, then how?

9. Project files management is important. Every completed project must be proper filed. No doubt that you may feel that this is waste of time but it will be helpful when you are looking for this project file after say 3months. If you put else where, you will be required a search for project file. Sometime, it consumes half a day or more. In a way, you are wasting your valuable time.

10. Project files management also important in computer filing system. Do not simply save you file any where in hard disk. Put into a proper folder and with good naming to folder. If some file had a lot of amendment, one of the ways is to save in date format. After some time, you can trace it more effectively. Remember to backup your files more frequently, you will not know when your hard disk is going to damage, your computer attacked by virus and etc.

11. Try to manage necessary thing to be brought to site! Do not left any things in office when you go for site visits. Otherwise you have to pay another journey to there. You will not feel it when is near by. How about to trip that need a day journey?

How to Think 80-20 Principle

2007-05-04T03:02:00.001-07:00

Definition of the 80/20 Principle

The 80/20 Principle is based on the fact that in most cases 80% of the results come about due to 20% of the effort. The same is true in reverse 80% of failure is due to 20% lack of effort or effort in the wrong direction. The relationship between effort and results are unbalanced. When actually measured it may turn out that only 15% of the effort resulted in 80% of the result or 25% of the effort resulted in 73% of the result, but it will hardly ever be 50% of the effort resulting in 50% of the result. In other words it will never be balanced.

If you are looking at products, you will find the about 20% of any given number of products in a company account for about 80% of the profits. The flip side of this would be that 80% of the products make only 20% of the profits. Nearly always, a small proportion of the total products produce a large proportion of the profits.

How to use the 80/20 Principle

There are two applications of the 80/20 Principle, 80/20 Analysis and 80/20 Thinking.

80/20 Analysis

Precise

Quantitative

Requires investigation

Provides facts

Highly valuable

80/20 Thinking

Fuzzy

Qualitative

Requires thought

Provides insight

Highly valuable

80/20 Analysis looks at the relationship between two sets of data. One set is always people or objects, usually a large number of 100 or more, that can be turned into a percentage. The second set of data relates to some interesting characteristic of the people or objects that can be measured and turned into a percentage.

80/20 Thinking is a hypothesis about a possible imbalance between inputs and outputs. Instead of collecting data and analyzing them, we estimate them. 80/20 Thinking requires us to spot the few really important things that are happening and ignore the large number of unimportant things. When we are using the 80/20 Principle, we do not assume that its results are good or bad or that the powerful forces we observe are good. We decide if they are good and if so encourage the minority forces in the right direction.

The 80/20 Principle turns conventional wisdom upside down

Application of the 80/20 Principle implies that we should do the following:

1. Celebrate exceptional productivity, rather than raise the average efforts.

2. Look for the short cut, rather than run the full course.

3. Exercise control over our lives with the least possible effort.

4. Be selective, not exhaustive.

5. Strive for excellence in a few things, rather than good performance in many.

6. Delegate or out source as much as possible in our daily lives to specialists, instead of doing the work ourselves.

7. Choose our careers and employers with extraordinary care, and if possible employ others rather than being employed ourselves.

8. Only do the thing we are best at doing and enjoy most.

9. Look beneath the normal texture of life to uncover ironies and oddities.

10. In every important sphere, work out where 20 percent of effort can lead to 80 percent of returns.

11. Calm down, work less and target a limited number of very valuable goals where the 80/20 Principle will work for you, rather than pursuing every available opportunity. 1 2. Make the best of the few times in our life when we are at our creative peak and things are working really well.

No boundaries

No activity is immune from the influence of the 80/20 Principle. If you want the benefit from 80/20 Thinking, you have to do it!

When I was attending tech school and had taken all the courses offered in electronics, I unknowingly used the 80/20 Principle by applying for a teaching job at the same school. That small step was the tipping point in my career and eventually landed me a job with Eastman Kodak Co.

When Jesus called Simon Peter to follow him and become fishers of men, he was using the 80/20 Principle by choosing a few to touch millions. Jesus concentrated on the twelve, teaching them so that the world might be reached.

Suggested reading: The 80/20 Principle, By Richard Koch, ISBN 0-385-49174-3

Think of an example in you life where the 80/20 Principle worked for you.

WEBconference Applications For Production

2007-05-04T03:01:00.000-07:00

Problems Within companies, coordination of information, whether technological or professional (related to architecture, engineering, or other kinds of practices) is of utmost importance. Project coordination always calls for sharing of schemes, plans, and timetables. Sometimes, the coordination of meetings takes up more time than the actual meetings. Undoubtedly, the satisfaction of the clientele and the relationship with them are of capital importance. That said, building that relationship requires time.

Solution

Virtual meetings conducted through web conferencing have all the functionalities needed to share documents on the screen as well as to transmit them. The same applies to a Powerpoint presentation, a project diagram done with Microsoft Project, or an image. By opening an interactive white board, the participants can work together on a scheme, with a virtual pen. Moreover, the availability of the colleagues can be known from the indication given by the IP software, Skype. This way, meetings can be held on demand and in time, thus eliminating the need for having to wait for the right time for everybody to get together for that purpose.

Results

A better coordination of the resources required for the development of products or the realization of projects reflects directly on their quality as well as on the time needed for their completion. The better coordination of the working teams is generally translated into a lower rejection rate. In all chapters, the potential economies are evident. The time saved can be devoted to optimizing the relationship with the client, as this is an imperative condition to deserve the client’s loyalty and to renew the experience.

About Tele-efficiency Tele-efficiency helps its clients to save time, improve their synergy and lower their travel expenses. Offers WEBconference services at a fixed rate, under the trademark Conferenceware, integrated with CRM applications and with Skype. The greeting is customizable for each client's company image with their logo. Also offers a free 30-day trial period followed by a quarterly or yearly service contract for 25.£, 40.€, 45.$US, 50.$CAN/month or less.

Swing Into Spring

2007-05-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for a new season in your business? It’s that time of year when a confluence of events occur. We have the fever of March Madness combined with the eternal hope of Spring Training. I know, where you live, it might not seem like Spring just yet.

We grew up in New England, where Spring is very fickle. Sometimes it’s early, often it is, well,….not-so-early. I have observed that those who have the greatest success don’t let the seasons determine their future. They set their goals and make plans to reach them. As the song goes “Don’t’ stop thinkin’ about tomorrow.” I’m all for that. We need dreams. We thrive on seeking, on pursuing.

Yet, in order to move toward those dreams, we can’t wait for Spring… We can’t wait for tomorrow. We need to come to play today. Do something now to assure that your Spring will be full of blossoms…fruitful, colorful…and the cornerstone to a prosperous, bountiful, success-filled season of growth. “For everything there is a season.”

Decide that NOW is the season for you to make it happen. Energize your life…energize your business by making THE decision. That, “yes, I’m ready… Ready for the Championship run for me and my team. This will be the best Spring we’ve ever had.”

This is the time to step up to the plate. To get in the game. Make March count. Create March Madness in your business. Use this Spring Training to prepare for a GREAT Season...a Championship Season where YOU WIN… in your business and in your life.

Channel Your Energies To Increase Productivity At Work To Enjoy Life After Office Hours

2007-04-30T02:49:00.003-07:00

In today's working society, which links to our office servers so that we can continue to access data without being physically around in the office. Some are even issued with a phone so that we can be reached at all times.

Even on vacation, we are told to be contactable 24/7. Though our bosses may not call us, the thought of having someone call you while you are on holiday really puts off the enjoyment of having your time off.

At work, meetings frequently stretch till 5 to 6pm, sometimes even till midnight. I have heard horror stories of how executives miss their meals because of a meeting that went overtime. It is not only bad for the gastronomical aspect of health, but also taxing on the mind and spirit.

Work is meant to occupy one's time and to allow one to earn income to support his or her activities. Of course, there are other intangible aspects of work, such as the passion for a particular field, the need to socialise and to feel gratification with some success at work.

It should be realised that workers are not machines. Only with proper relaxation and rest can an engine run at optimum capacity. I truly believe that workers should be rewarded for their efficiency and hard work by being allowed to go home on time, take time off flexibly and not being disturbed while on holiday.

Work is meant to enhance one's life and not meant to prevent anyone from enjoying his or her personal life. It saddens me when I hear of anyone being deprived of a personal life because of work. Employees should channel their energies to increase their productivity at work so that they can have more time for their own personal lives after office hours.

The author is an avid critic of people with an imbalanced work-life composition as it had robbed him of something precious to him. He strongly believes in family values and quality personal and social time, but he too believes in work efficiency, quick thinking and ruthlessness at work.

Work-Life Balance - Working Smart is Working Right

2007-04-30T02:49:00.001-07:00

While it is true that staying late at work has developed into a culture in today's working society, most people tend to work longer hours for another important reason: job security. Regardless of race, age and gender, I believe this applies for workers around the world.

Many think, especially in the last few years, that if they do not work late, their bosses might think them as lazy and replace them. This mindset needs to be changed.

In my previous appointment, my boss expected me to work long hours on weekdays and even during weekends, despite having finished my work on time. My efficiency was exploited as a result.

My new appointment allows me much-needed flexibility. I am allowed to take time off anytime I want as long as my work is done and urgent projects are settled beforehand. I am also not required to work during weekends, unless I volunteer to do so.

My quality of life has improved as I am now able to spend more time with my family and developing other interests, like photography, internet, etc.

People who stay long past office hours should not necessarily be construed as hardworking and driven because they may not be that productive after all. Shouldn't companies evaluate employees' performances based on their creative thinking and efficiency rather than their willingness to slog long hours?

Companies should be educated properly to eradicate this worthless culture that we are following. It should be realised that working smart is working right. To end off, I feel that only by having a work-life balance can the staff produce more during normal working hours.

The author is an avid critic of people with an imbalanced work-life composition as it had robbed him of something precious to him. He strongly believes in family values and quality personal and social time, but he too believes in work efficiency, quick thinking and ruthlessness at work.

How to Have a More Productive Day

2007-04-30T02:48:00.002-07:00

I get a lot of emails asking how I find the time to write an article every day.

2 reasons:

1) I type fast
and
2) I make my day as productive as possible.

Here's how to make your day more productive.

Step 1 - Get up earlier.
And yes, that requires going to sleep earlier. But I'm not talking an hour or two...but only 10 or 20 minutes earlier per day.

The extra 20 minutes are magic time...the time in morning when I, as many people do, get more done than they do in several hour blocks at other points later in the day. So get up sleepyhead, and use the solitude to take care of business.

(And when you get into work, do the same. Get in early, get straight to work, and you'll find yourself ahead of the crowd in no time.)

Step 2 - Water x 2
Water plays an important role in getting my morning off to a fast start. First, I drink 2 cups of cold water to wash down 3 fish oil capsules. Then I start on breakfast (oatmeal, protein, berries, yogurt, and nuts) while sitting down to answer the emails you've sent me overnight.

Getting up 10 minutes earlier to answer these emails has made a huge difference in my productivity. No question. Consider doing the same for yourself.

The second role of water is the shower. People are more creative around running water. And I'm not the first to say this...Matt Furey has brought this up as well, saying that he gets a lot of his ideas when surrounded by water...there must be something about being in water that stimulates the mind.

So powerful are the effects of water on my creativity that I literally have to write the ideas down as soon as I get out of the shower. Once that water stops running, the ideas start to vanish...

Now the only thing that compares in terms of idea stimulation, for me, is exercise. So when you workout, take a note pad - not only to record your workout but to brainstorm and problem solve.

Step 3 - Nutrition
I've started the day with the healthiest supplement possible - fish oil, and I eat protein, fiber, berries, and nuts to start my day - giving me the fiber to control my appetite and blood sugar till the next meal.

Step 4 - Green Tea
Do not pass go. Do not stop at Starbucks. Do not collect your regular caffeine-loaded beverage. Instead, brew your own organic Green Tea to provide you with a lower dose of caffeine (or none at all if you get naturally de-caffeinated Green Tea). Army researchers have found that smaller amounts of caffeine delivered at more frequent intervals lead to better performance. Don't overdose on caffeine every morning.

And if you get a headache without your morning cup of coffee, congratulations! You're addicted to the world's most common drug. And you might want to do something about that...

Step 5 - A Steady Supply of Protein, Healthy Fats, and Fiber Self-explanatory by now, I should hope! Snack on almonds, lean protein sources, fibrous vegetables, an apple, etc. over the morning to keep mentally sharp.

Step 6 - Bodyweight Energizer Bunny

Remember the secret to instant energy when you hit the a mid-morning motivational slump...

10 reps of the Y-Squat - This is a bodyweight squat with your hands held up in a "Y" position.

Step 7 - Don't let lunch rob you of your mental energy Unless you want to go straight from lunch into an hour-long productivity-destroying nap, then lay off the breaded veal sandwiches at lunch.

Stick to the program: lean protein, fibrous green vegetables, Green Tea, healthy fats, etc. Avoid these mental buzz killers: soda, pizza, a lot of bread, french fries, desserts, and so on.

If you want to run an elite mental engine, you have to burn high-performance fuel.

Step 8 - Lose Fat & You Will Make More Money Now that's an unconventional way to increase productivity.

But welcome to the harsh reality of size-ism.

Research shows that overweight men and women make less money than their normal weight colleagues. While the world is not fair, you can even the playing field by eating and exercising properly.

The healthy lifestyle and workouts will help lose fat, while increasing your creativity and productivity. I smell promotion.

So let's leave it there for today...because if you aren't having a massively productive morning by now, then I'm not convinced you even get up before noon.

Scalable Processes

2007-04-30T02:48:00.001-07:00

I talk a lot about the importance of having solid processes in your business operation. Establishing processes that have been tested, refined, and continually examined for improvement is probably, in my humble opinion, the most important thing a business owner can do to insure success in the business enterprise. When you have good working processes in place, your business runs more smoothly and the stress levels associated with the "daily grind" are minimized.

I was working with one of my clients the other day and we began discussing a process that he had put in place to display his product in the show rooms of some of his buyers, on consignment. His plan was simple and seemed like a good one. He would allow the buyer to show off his product in their showroom without invoicing the buyer until after the product was sold to the end customer. There is nothing really unusual about this process except that my client's product was the only one that the buyer was keeping on consignment. Because this was not a normal practice for the buyer, the buyer had no process in place to notify my client when the item was purchased by the end consumer. So I asked my client how he would monitor that.

My client is a small startup company and is currently doing lots of marketing by hitting the streets and knocking on doors. So he said to me, "While I am out cold calling on new prospects, I can just drop by and see if the item is still in the show room. If it isn't, then I'll invoice them and send them another." He added, "This will also be a good way for me to stay in touch with my new buyers."

This sounds like a good idea until you begin to scale this process into a larger version. There are two important concepts one must keep in mind if you are developing a good process. The first is that it must be simple and easy to follow. The second is that it must be scalable. By scalable, I mean it must work when you are small and also work if your business explodes and becomes extremely huge. In this example just given, my client's process would work fine while he is small, but if his business suddenly expanded and instead of two or three businesses displaying his product on consignment, there were hundreds, the process would fall apart because there is not enough time in the day for him to visit all of these businesses. Eventually he would lose track of where his products were and whether or not they had been sold.

Sometimes we will develop a process that appears to be a good one, and over time we discover that it does not work as our business changes. That is ok if you are continually examining the process and improving it as you grow. The important thing is to have the process, make sure it is scalable, and continue to improve it.

To Your Success -