Career Assessment Test

Posts Tagged ‘business’

1.  Conclude that selling your business is the right step to take.

Selling a business is one of the greatest challenges and potentially, one of the greatest rewards any business owner will ever realize. Like marriage, career changes, and other major endeavors, it is not something that should be taken lightly. Serious contemplation of the risk vs. reward must be well thought out.

If there are business partners, their concurrence and support are, no doubt, essential. If you have family members directly involved in the business, their welfare and ongoing contributions must also be evaluated and taken into account. Selling your agency is certainly a decision that requires careful deliberation and potentially, collaboration among close associates, family members, and partners.

One of the biggest questions that you will face is whether the time to do so is right. Many dynamics dictate whether the timing is appropriate. Generally, the goal is to sell when the business is peaking on its trend of revenues and earnings. The old adage of selling high certainly applies here. Another adage to remember is that pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered. The trick, more often than not, is staying ahead of the market curve, timing everything just right so that you can sell out just at the peak of the trend. Selling a business usually takes between four and twelve months, assuming everything falls into place. The risk to the agency owner, quite frankly, is that the acquiring entities are so tuned into industry trends that by the time the market begins signaling price compression, the acquirers are packing their bags, or at the very least, lowering their multiples. The valuation methodologies run concurrently with demand. If product demand or rate of return on revenue declines through market softening, the value of the distribution channel certainly will decline by relative proportions.

Sometimes the sale of a business is used as a succession-planning vehicle where the owner can easily liquidate his ownership interests in the business without disrupting the ongoing viability of the operations. This requires a careful fit between the buyer and the existing business. Most often, timing and market conditions are not as important; rather, it is up to the owner’s discretion as to whether it is right.

Often, agency owners face limited growth opportunities for their business due to the lack of capital. The desire to grow bigger is there but the capital is tied up in the business. By selling the agency interests to a larger, national company, this can release the liquidity from the company and allow the business owner to continue to manage it as a platform. Often times this represents a new opportunity for entrepreneurs to flourish. Being part of a larger organization brings new challenges; a change of business objective, and handsome rewards should the entrepreneur make a marked change in his new employer’s company.

All this being said, market conditions, personal and financial objectives all have to be carefully evaluated prior to making the commitment to sell.

2.  Consult with a business advisor and M & A lawyer.

This can be an important, often overlooked, consideration. Once you are determined to sell your business, it may be worthwhile to should seek the guidance of a business advisor and an attorney who is specializes in mergers and acquisitions. Many times, business owners depend on their local CPA and corporate attorneys. While these people are highly important and may have created value for the organization in the past, it may be better to have experienced specialists who can navigate through the acquisition process. The acquisition process encompasses many components and requires the understanding of the sequential events that generally occur during the process. These events consist of the business valuation, assessment of seller’s market opportunities, preparation of offering memorandums, review of the tax implications of a potentially complex transaction, and legal and financial due diligence. Additionally, there is much drafting, review and negotiation required for the definitive, employment, non-compete and option agreements. Arming yourself with these professionals will most likely provide you greater consideration, which will outweigh their costs by reasonable proportions.

3.  Clearly recognize the value of your business.

A business advisor can guide you here. Although this is not rocket science, it is important to be well armed with a clear understanding of the value parameters of your business. Acquirers will sometimes reduce their valuations to an “art form” and will not specifically disclose how they appraise your business. Establish benchmarks for an acceptable selling price that you are willing to tolerate. It is not an expensive to obtain a valuation, and well worth the investment when it comes to comparing it with a buyer’s offer.

4.  Avoid reactive selling.

It is highly recommended that you take the initiative and go to market under your own volition. Typically, this will provide a much greater chance of optimizing your sales proceeds. Being reactive and allowing the buyer to initially approach often puts the buyer on the defensive where you are subject to buyer timelines and pricing methodologies. They have you right where they want you; you are in their pipeline and they maintain control over the process. Do not hesitate to take the offensive and find the buyers before they find you. There is an overwhelming abundance of buyers in the marketplace; therefore, consider shopping among multiple suitors. A business advisor will prove to be extremely helpful here. Depend on your advisor to maintain control of the selling process while diligently and vigorously representing your interests.

5.  Present your company properly.

Typically, a business advisor will recommend putting an offering memorandum together after you conclude that selling your business is the right direction for you. An offering memorandum includes historical financial performance; business and market trends, ownership interests and pertinent tax information; forward projections; a narrative overview; and other historical information on the business. Additionally, it includes certain key metric information that is key to the business. The biggest mistake made by entrepreneurs is that they open their books and immediately provide an internally generated, cash basis, financial statement to a prospective buyer. The primary goal of any small to mid-sized business owner always should be to minimize their tax liability while maximizing their personal cash flow out of the business. Often, this skews the presentation of the business from a GAAP accounting basis, which really should be the means in which an agency is valued on. A business owner should carefully evaluate and quantify all personal expenses charged to the business and treat these as “add backs”, which ultimately increases the book income of the agency. Add backs are adjustments that a purchaser usually makes in “normalizing” the income of a business. More often than not, many add backs are over looked. If a buyer pays a multiple of earnings, the seller faces the prospect of leaving significant sales proceeds on the table.

Did you ever think about how other financial dynamics may misrepresent the performance of your agency? Remember taking Accounting 101 and learning about the matching principle? This states that in order to fairly present your financial statements, costs should be proportionately matched with revenue as it is earned. Insurance agencies are inherently put at odds with this principal when they present cash-basis financials. Think in terms of where the preponderance of expense is generated in an agency…creating a sale or placing business. Yet, when an insured elects to defer payments to monthly, quarterly, or even semi-annual mode, the agency commission income will follow the same payment cycle. The agency has expended a large amount of resource placing the business, yet they may have received only as little as 1/12th of the actual annual commission due. In order to clearly “match” costs with revenues, numerous adjustments such as accounting for deferred commission revenues, or alternatively, deferred acquisition costs, need to be taken into account to properly present the true earnings of the business. Remember, every buyer will value your business based on earnings. It is extremely important that you include all details that will assist in optimizing your agency’s earnings. One final and equally critical component of the offering memorandum is its ability to accentuate value creation for the buyer. In other words, to bring to the surface certain intangibles or revenue components that can and may create exceptional value for a prospective buyer. Recurring revenue is something that makes all buyers salivate. If the selling agency has a seasoned book of business with a robust renewal stream, this is a primary example of economic value creation. This may help to significantly increase the profit margins of the buyer. Examples of intangibles that may create value are the professional credentials or industry presence of the agency owner(s). If a buyer is looking to create a platform or to have the buyers business play a key role in their operating scheme, the intangible value of a mature, well respected, management team is an intangible that will receive higher consideration.

6.  Evaluate all aspects of the offer in detail.

If you elect to subscribe to the recommendations set forth thus far, the next step is to send the offering memorandum out to prospective buyers. Generally, buyers will need to perform preliminary due diligence prior to formally presenting an offer. This will occur after receipt of the offering memorandum and prior to the offer. Offers generally are presented in a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) and are generally time sensitive requiring the agency owner’s acknowledgement and acceptance of the offer in writing. The best way to characterize this stage is to compare it to getting engaged. There is intent for the two businesses to formally proceed, but either party can terminate it at any time prior to closing. A LOI is always contingent upon the buyer’s satisfactory completion of legal and financial due diligence. Is the LOI negotiable? Absolutely. Again, the value of a business advisor can be enormous during this phase. They can draw upon their experiences and recommend items which should be negotiated. There are numerous components included in a LOI that go well beyond the price offered for the sale of your agency. All of these components are critical and need to be carefully evaluated. Some examples are the long-term value of stock options, employment agreements, non-compete covenants, deferred purchase consideration, hold-back provisions, base compensation and benefits, contingent bonuses or performance incentives, and the tax treatment of the transaction. Examine how deep the acquiring entity goes in your business to make offers of incentives, employment agreements, stock options, etc. It is important that you evaluate these matters carefully. Remember the importance of your key people in the day-to-day operations of the business and be mindful of how their continued contributions are key to your ongoing success.

A business advisor can guide you through the technical aspects of the proposed offer(s). Often, a key-determining factor behind selecting to sell to a specific buyer is the reputation of the organization in the market. Take not only the economic elements of the offer into consideration, but give considerable weight to the reputation of the buyer.

7.  Negotiate!

If you have made your decision and are about to sign the LOI, do so without any material concessions. An advisor can help you negotiate for higher consideration such as splitting synergy, which is the revenue or expense benefit gained by the buyer through the combination of the two businesses. Do not be afraid to counter-propose. It is extremely important to remove any obstacles from an impending transaction before the commencement of legal and financial due diligence. If there are any issues that make you uncomfortable, raise them now. This will save you time and money in the long run. Whether the concern is your compensation, consideration, or transaction structure, these issues really must be addressed and presented in a revised LOI. Don’t be afraid of the buyer closing down the deal. Rarely will a buyer walk if you are within a 10 percent tolerance on offering price. They have opportunity cost tied up in you and do not want to lose the deal.

8.  Get your house in order.

Be prepared for a convergence on your internal business operations. While the next steps of a transaction are usually smooth and relatively painless, it requires probably the greatest amount of hands-on effort. Once you sign the LOI, the buyer will schedule a formal legal and financial due diligence visit to your operation. The primary goal of the buyer is to completely validate everything that has been represented about your company. This almost always requires a several day site visit for the buyer’s team to review systems, contracts, accounting records, articles of incorporation, employment files, payroll records, bank statements, etc. Not only do they want to validate the financial statement representations, but also to do risk assessments such as production concentration, personal production levels, any threatening or pending litigation, etc. Another drill that the buyer will perform is an overall assessment of personnel and their related skill sets. This is primarily directed toward the management of the business, but is seen as a critical element of the review. The buyers team must come away with an affirmative view of the management’s depth of knowledge; experience level; technical skills; work ethic; stability, and commitment to the business. The due diligence review lists are generally pretty exhaustive and can range from having you prepare information on as few as 40, up to 150 individual categories. The best tactic to adopt here is to be proactive and to solicit due diligence check lists a few weeks prior to the scheduled visit. This gives your staff appropriate time to pull all of the materials together. Once you sign the LOI, the first call you should make is either to the legal counsel or senior finance representative of the acquiring entity to ask them to provide you with the list. If you don’t call them, more than likely, they will be the ones calling you to schedule the due diligence visit. A few things to remember are to provide ample time to compile all the requested materials for due diligence; communicate with key office staff of the impending events to allow them to get prepared; and to coordinate the due diligence activities with the schedules your lawyer, business advisor and accountant. While it may not be critical to have them on site for the entire visit, they must be accessible in the event that they are needed. In general, the formal legal and financial site visits last two to three days. The salient matter is to be prepared and have all permanent file information readily available. Most buyers are sensitive enough to conduct most of the activities at a neutral location if you are uncomfortable with announcing the visit to general employee population.

9.  Perform your own due diligence on the acquiring entity.

If you are going to be directly involved in the acquiring entity, post-transaction, this is a must. While they are kicking your tires, you should be reciprocating. Do not allow the transaction process to go by without satisfying yourself that the buyer’s operating model is conducive to you and your business’ culture. You should visit the buyer’s headquarters, meet their key people, and ask about their plans for integration. Be certain to ask about any employee casualties that may be a result of any integration activities and be absolutely sure that the buyer has a track record of handling these situations with class and dignity. (Be certain that there will be a grand fathering of tenure for severance purposes) Additionally, look at their benefit plans, evaluate their communication methods, and review their complete operating cycle. Ask to talk to other former business owner’s whom they have acquired. It is recommended that you obtain the buyer’s permission to speak to these people before hunting them down. Speak to at least two former business owners in a one on one format and you will learn more about your prospective employer’s culture than any brochure could ever convey.

10.  Take it slow.

It is the best and only way to conduct a serious transaction. Haste never benefited anyone. Carefully evaluate every aspect of the deal along the way. Generally, companies who acquire on a frequent basis will put the offer out for a few days, or weeks or threaten to walk if there isn’t a quick decision. Put this into perspective, they are asking you to make one of the biggest commitments of your life in the matter of days? This is typically a tactic used to keep the deal momentum going in hopes that there is no seller remorse or slow down for further contemplation. They own the momentum and you, the seller, really should be the one synchronized with the schedules, not being drug along without an understanding of what is next in the sequence of events. This puts sellers in an unfair disadvantage. The secondary reason why things are generally rushed is because of the fear of other parties coming into the mix with offers, which could potentially raise the stakes. Take it slow, rely on experienced advisors who can bring intermediary experience to your side, and evaluate every single aspect of the transaction, at your own pace.

Selling your agency can and should be a very rewarding experience. Trust your instincts and stand firm on your convictions. This is a life-changing endeavor and should be dealt with very cautiously. If you are uncertain of which direction to take, stand still and seek the guidance of a professional to make recommendations to you.

Introduction

Neoliberalism is bad for business because it creates situations in which the very issues it was supposed to eradicate are instituted back into the economy or the enterprise under consideration. The essay shall examine the validity of this statement with regard to some specific examples in the market today.

How neoliberal polices destroy favourable conditions for business investment

Neoliberalism is a recent form of economic liberalism. It advocates for free markets and free trade with less control by less centralisation of economic institutions. However, one must not confuse the definition of Neoliberalism with free market economies or with free trade. Neoliberalism is a philosophy in itself. It is driven by the need to expand and intensify market transactions in all possible ways. The overall target for Neoliberalism is to reach a level where every single interaction between people is a market transaction. This means that neo-liberalism aims at increasing the frequency with which market transactions occur, the extent of formalisation of those transactions and their repeatability. It should be noted at this point that neo – liberalists’ ultimate goals can never be attained. (Barr, 2000)

Numerous countries have instituted neo – liberalist policies such as Ireland, Japan and Chile. Many economists argue that the reason behind these countries’ economic booms is neoliberal policies. One cannot deny that certain aspects of Neoliberalism have caused short term benefits to those countries. However, there are certain issues that make neo-liberalism a failed concept. (Foried, 2001)

Neo liberalism impedes business because it is driven by the need to constantly expand markets. This means that neo-liberalists attempt to utilise all the resources at their disposal to further market sizes. One of the resources at their disposal is time. Neo – liberalists believe that enterprises should be open for twenty four hours a day and anything less than that would be unsatisfactory. Such a point of view can bring about problems because it does not reflect the human nature of business. This goal is over-ambitious and cannot attain optimal productivity. In twenty four hour economies, it is common to find that workers operate below their optimal levels because they are stretched beyond the limit. This goal does not consider the humanistic aspect of labour and is thus unrealistic. (Thomas, 2000)

Neoliberalists’ policies make a radical shift from classical liberalism owing to the fact that property is not an important aspect in the former as it was in the latter. Entrepreneurs in neoliberal economies can engage in transactions without any fixed assets as long as they posses a contract and other means of production. This can be detrimental to a country as it can be seen in the Unite states. While the US may not be fully neo-liberal, a large section of their industries embrace this philosophy and one such example is in the real estate sector. This sector has caused a crisis in the US economy owing to neoliberal decisions made within the mortgage sector. Many mortgage companies agreed to lend to borrowers without having their own fixed assets and this eventually led to the credit crunch plaguing the country today. If mortgage lenders had not adhered to neo-liberal principles by lending more than they had in the form of fixed assets, then the US’s economy might not be in the current situation. (Van Parijs, 2002)

Neoliberalist ideas advocate for frequency of contract. Consequently, any employer must always look for ways of maximising their existing contracts. This means that that contracts need to be shortened even in cases where the parties involved are few. For instance, when one enters into an agreement with a construction company to work for him/her for one year, this would mean that the contract initiator would not be able to maximise on his contract as he would be susceptible to complacency by the constructing company. However, if the contract was shortened to say a period of three months, then the constructor would be prompted to work harder in order to receive another contract in the next three months. Again, this approach to business is quite unrealistic because it advocates for a scenario in which a worker would have to apply for the same job over and over again. Consequently, that worker would always be aware of the fact that he/she could loose his/her job at any moment. Neoliberalism ignores some basic human resource fundamentals such as best practice strategies. In this human resource strategy, job security is a key aspect to maximising employee potential. In this regard, Neoliberalism can interrupt business professes because it ignores some of these basic rules of human resources administration. (Derber, 1999)

Neoliberalism requires that contracts be continually assessed in order to ensure that the highest yield is obtained from them. In other words, even the employees seeking to maximise these contract must also be analysed in order to ensure that they are performing to their fullest. Operating in such a manner only creates deep mistrust between employees and their employers. Certain examples reflect the extremism of this notion; in tele-care centres, employees who have to go to the toilet are noted and the amount of time spent at those toilets is also measured. Even in courier services, individuals responsible for transporting various packages are usually tracked by a GPS system in order to ascertain that the package is delivered on time. Such extreme assessment can wear out employees thus causing some of them to look for dishonest ways of surpassing the system. As the old saying goes; where there is a will, there is a way. (Lindblom, 2001)

Neo-liberalists are always looking for ways of maximising their prevailing conditions. Consequently, they favour the creation of artificial transactions so as to promote real transactions. One such example is the use of financial derivatives. It should be noted that financial derivates have been around for centuries but they have been exercised in moderation. Countries that operate under neo-liberal polices are likely to have large scale financial derivatives in place. In this regard, people have the possibility of trading financial derivative such as a ‘futures’ in the stock exchange. As if that is not enough, it is now possible to create a financial derivative on another. On such example is trading on electricity futures. The problem with such mechanisms is that they distort the true market by creating situations where investors are misled by the large amounts of alternatives available to them thus causing them to make wrong decisions. Financial derivative critics have asserted that the latter form of trade can be very detrimental to the economy because it is based on quasi opportunities. This definitely impedes business progress. (Gray, 2002)

Neo liberalism can also bring problems to resulting countries in instances where large numbers of contract have to be used to maximise any transaction. Taking the example of the British railways-the corporation was privatised some decades ago. This privatisation process resulted in the creation of thirty thousand different contracts. In order to draft those resulting drafts, there was a need to examine the legal aspects of the contracts. Consequently, lawyers had to be hired and other stakeholders involve in the process of verifying the validity and efficiency of the transaction. The problem, with such an approach is that the cost of maximising a transaction becomes so intense that it sometimes exceeds the benefits that emanate from instituting the contract. In this case the benefits of privatising the British Railway were undermined by all the expenses that went into the transactional costs. Consequently, the benefits of technology can be undermined by such expenses in any business.

Neoliberalism does not promote business within given countries because when analysed critically, the process of creating benefits through neo liberal principles causes more harm to affected individuals. Taking the example of the financial service sector; many people claim that this sector has grown because of neoliberal policies but one must ask himself/herself whether this is actually a good thing for the economy and hence for affected businesses. In centralised economies, there are no neo-liberal policies, also, there is no need for a financial services sector. In other words, one can assert that the financial services sector is a cost that neo-liberal governments themselves have to meet in order to propagate neo-liberal policies. The financial services sector demands huge amounts of investment because it is a machinery run by neo-liberalists. In the end, the financial services sector then opposes the very rule that was used to create it i.e. to decrease bureaucratic systems. It also minimises the efficiency of the market system. (Gray, 1999)

Neoliberalism causes a creation of derivative professions or professions within professions. One such example is the case of the psychologist assessment coach. (Sunstein, 2000)The work of this individual is to asses whether employees are worth hiring. Neoliberalists believe that only the best candidates must be selected. However, some candidates have found a way of manipulating this system by going for training on how to pass those tests. Consequently, the psychological assessment coach might find that they are qualified for the job yet that is not necessarily the truth. In other words, Neoliberalist policies are so extreme that they create goals which normal persons cannot attain. This means that most people feel so pressured to look for other alternatives of surpassing such systems. In the end, the very principles that were aimed at improving transactional performance end up being the ones that destroy it. (Kuttner, 2000)

Lastly, Neoliberalism advocates for maximising suppliers. Usually, neoliberal economies are such that they encourage bidding for any available contract regardless of one’s original profession. This means that a supplier who was dealing in provision of cosmetics should embrace the opportunity to offer electronics. This is the reason why a company like the Harley Davidson Motorcycle company now offers motorcycles, spare parts, jeans and t-shirts. The problem with such an approach to business is that it ignores the benefits of specialisation because no single individual or enterprise can do everything and do it well. (Perelman, 2003)

Conclusion

Neoliberalism impedes business because its transactional costs may outweigh benefits of the transaction, it overworks employees thus causing them to look for ways of manipulating systems, it creates quasi professions and also encourages contracts without the availability of financial assets. The latter two issues can cause severe market distortions and can even cripple the economy as is the case with the current US mortgage crisis.

References

Barr, N. (2000): The Economics of the Welfare State; Seven Stories Press

Derber, C. (1999): How Corporations Are Taking Over Our Lives, And What We Can Do About It”

St. Martin’s Press

Thomas, F. (2000): Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy”

Doubleday

Fried, B. (2001): The Progressive Assault On Laissez Faire: Robert Hale And The First Law And Economics Movement; Harvard University

Gray, J. (2002): Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common Environment”

Routledge

Gray, J.  (1999): False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism; New Press

Kuttner, R. (2000): Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets; Polity Press

Lindblom, E. (2001): The Market System: What It Is, What To Make of It and How It Works

Yale University Press

Van Parijs, P. (2002): Real Freedom for All – What Can Justify Capitalism?”

Oxford University Press

Perelman, M. (2003): The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation, Harvard University Press

Sunstein, C. (2000): Free Markets and Social Justice; Oxford Univ. Press

I need to see if I’m on the right page with going into social sciences and or business while in school. I’m 25 so I know I can’t waste anymore time.

Searching for a new and unique home business opportunity? There’s plenty of options out there, but it can be pretty easy to get lost in the sea of business after business without really finding the home based business that will set you apart and bring you the excitement and fulfillment of doing something truly different. To that end, we’re going to take a look at some of the most unique business opportunities that tend to operate off the beaten path and although one might think that mainstream business = mainstream profits, think again. Consider that in many small businesses, a good niche market business will often outperform some of the more common small businesses due to their lack of competition and the preponderance of new and repeat business. If you’re ready to find a new and truly unique franchise, take a look at just a few of the Hottest work from home Franchise Business Opportunities You Didn’t Know About.

Click Here To Access My Tried and Tested Methods of Making Cash Online.

Got Mold?
Well, hopefully the answer is no, but mold has quickly become a huge problem in the US with millions of homes being affected and the mold assessment and cleanup industry growing to a multi-billion dollar market. Many Americans affected by the problem don’t even realize that they have mold in their homes, but they are sick more often and symptoms mimic the reaction to severe allergies escalating to a condition similar to pneumonia. 1-800-GOT-MOLD? Is leading the charge to help diagnose America’s mold problem and along the way, making a pretty penny as they are one of the only mold assessment franchises in this multi-billion dollar but largely untapped market. Their combination of high-tech mold detecting tools and specially trained Labrador retrievers make this franchise appealing to pet lovers and technology lovers alike. Customers can trust 1-800-GOT-MOLD? because they are an unbiased authority on detection of mold. Since they don’t do the actual mold cleanup and remediation, the mold assessment report will be fair, unbiased and ultimately very helpful to the homeowner. If you want to clean up financially as well as help clean up people’s homes and give them healthier, longer lives, consider a franchise with 1-800-GOT-MOLD?

Drive Hammered, Get Nailed
Ever been out at a bar with a few friends, enjoying a drink or two and some conversation and then wonder, “Am I OK to drive?” Many times, you can be over the limit legally without necessarily feeling impaired and to make matters worse, the more you drink the more your judgment can be clouded allowing you to make the decision that you’re ok to drive, when you may not be. Breath Testers USA USA is the sole distributer of a great new product that can help a patron to diagnose their BAC (blood/alcohol content) as well as help the bar or restaurant owner by generating more business. Breath Testers’ machine uses the newest, most effective technology to detect BAC and like many other vending or kiosk franchise opportunities, with a Breath Testers franchise you’ll be able to work from home, set your own schedule and decide whether to work part time and generate some additional cash flow, or work full time, setting up dozens of machines and generate some serious revenue. As a Breath Testers USA franchisee, you’ll contact bars and restaurants to arrange for your machine locations and since there’s no restocking or servicing required, just place the machine in the establishment and collect the funds. This is a fairly untapped industry in America, but with the way this type of machine has caught on in European countries and Canada, BAC testing machines are sure to become a huge industry here in the next few years so take the opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

Real Estate At 900mhz
If you’ve ever bought a house, you no doubt know the frustration of driving buy a great looking house with a for sale sign, checking for more information and discovering that they’re out of flyers and you will have to come back another time or call the realtor if you want any real information about the house. PreQuence is out to change this dilemma and their innovative method is helping realtors sell more homes, helping buyers get the information they need and helping their franchisees make some serious income in this uniquely new market. PreQuence’s core service involves sending listing information and color photos of homes directly to the buyer’s cell phone. A small sign is placed in the home’s yard or attached to the for sale sign indicating a number that the buyer can send a SMS text message to in order to obtain instant info. The information and pictures are sent immediately to the buyer’s cell phone providing a green alternative to printed flyers and an instant way to receive photos and info about the home without even having to leave the car.

B-I-N-G-O
Several billion dollars are spent each year in this country on advertising. Ad dollars are what keep radios and televisions broadcasting and can serve to inform you of a new product or event, and while established forms of print and broadcast advertising have been around for years, there are still a few niche markets of advertising that can make a substantial amount of money while allowing you to work at home. One of the most unique and truly innovative advertising franchises: Bingo Lingo. Bingo Lingo publishes bingo programs primarily for charitable organizations and has developed a sterling track record and reputation in this 20-year old industry. They’ve developed a proven method to achieve financial success through bingo program advertising while contributing to the community all from the comfort of your own home. If you’re apprehensive about heading into this fairly unknown field, don’t worry because Bingo Lingo provides an excellent training course designed to teach you all the ins and outs of the field, build management skills and help you get your franchise up and running even if you have no previous experience in advertising (or bingo).

These niche market businesses can seem a little intimidating since they tend to blaze their own trails, but if one of these unique franchise opportunities catches your eye, consider that with a niche market business you’ll most likely be the only game in town, earning you repeat business and customer loyalty should a similar business pop up a few years down the road. You’ll also receive all the training you need from the franchisor to teach you the overarching ideas and the minute details associated with these unique businesses. Most importantly, you’ll be surrounded by a supportive team who’ll provide answers to any questions you man have and will continue to support you and your new small business as you continue to grow.

Aarkstore announce a new report  “Evolving Enterprise Applications 2009 – Increasing the Business Value of Investments in ERP and CRM” through its vast collection of market research report.

Enterprise applications like ERP and CRM systems provide the DNA for successful organisations but their scope and impact is so extensive, and the cost and risk of change can be so high, that they are often viewed as static transactional engines that are altered only when absolutely necessary. Although understandable, this approach has negative repercussions for the business and prevents the full value of these expensive, strategic and under-utilised assets from being realised. At a time when budgets are frozen or shrinking it pays to have a range of strategies and programmes that can be put in place to maximise the business value of existing investments.

These should cover optimisation of the existing implementation, and evolving and improving it via intelligent additions. We should also bear in mind that the current tough times will come to an end, at which point systems will have to be fit and healthy in order to cope with the upswing, so paying attention to the basics now will pay extra dividends later.

KEY FINDINGS

Enterprise applications are an easy target for cost-cutting initiatives but inappropriate cost cutting of the core applications that run the business undermines value and increases risk.

Breaking down organisational silos, particularly between IT and business units, is fundamental to exploiting the innate value of enterprise systems but requires a collaborative culture and enterprise architecture approach.

Applications are in a state of change – restructuring around a series of platforms and tasked with delivering process standardisation.

Application extension is not just about adding new functionality but providing tools for insight, analysis, and collaboration.

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model brings its disruptive influence to bear on the integration, ERP, and application development areas.

Under-utilisation of existing systems is a significant issue – 50% of standard functionality regularly goes unused.

Standardisation is a major contributor to unlocking value and reducing costs.

Strategic maintenance management can improve operational costs and release resources for value-generating initiatives.

The next round of upgrades will be more challenging than normal technical or functional upgrades but is necessary in order to support the quest for business agility.

Stability and flexibility appear to be mutually exclusive, but architectural change is starting to provide a solution, thereby providing a business case for additional investment.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM) are edging systems towards the much sought after alignment between applications and business objectives and application agility.

This Report reveals:

How to make the most of existing financial and intellectual property investments in enterprise applications.

What steps organisations can take to control the cost of maintenance and assess its real value to the business.

The impact of Software-as-a-Service on delivery and payment models, and key technology and integration considerations.

Where to direct investment in application extensions in order to secure the most effective returns.

How technology change around SOA and BPM is impacting the way applications are constructed, accessed, and managed.

The role of portfolio management and application consolidation in managing for business value and cost effectiveness.

Why increased utilisation of standard components reduces cost and risk to the business.

Why enterprise application upgrades are still so challenging and what can be done to ease the pain.

Additional Information

CATALYST

Enterprise applications are functionally mature at the core but remain immature in the value generation area. Technology changes are opening up more opportunities for value maximisation at the business level but are also increasing complexity so that, more than ever, enterprise applications need to be viewed and managed from the multiple perspectives of architecture, process ability, and delivery, under the banner of cost and value to the business.

ANALYSIS

Introduction

Enterprise applications – integrated suites of applications used to run a large part of an organisation’s core business – are highly mature in terms of functionality, with some aspects qualifying as commodity operations because there is little differentiation between the various offerings. They are far from being commodity items in their entirety however because of their role in automating, standardising, and executing the critical operations needed to run a business. Investment in enterprise applications is a consistently high priority for organisations but the unfortunate aspects of their cost and complexity make them a prime target for cost cutting during recessionary times.

While constant evolution could be interpreted as a sign of weakness, it is more an indication of their strategic value and a reflection of the cost and intellectual capital tied up in them. Indiscriminate cutting will undermine value and increase risk to the business; strategic investments to improve efficiency or better manage interactions can release the value from existing investments, and generate new opportunities.

Business Issues

Business has a dynamic and momentum that sometimes defies logic but cannot be ignored and IT plays a critical role in enabling organisations to function effectively. While applications contribute through their transaction, data management, and automated process execution abilities, the key to unlocking their value lies in aligning them with business goals and being able to rapidly and cost-effectively change them in line with business change.

While technology plays a vital part in enabling this, an integrated mindset is also an important consideration, whereby applications, processes, infrastructure, management, people, and business objectives are viewed as inter-related components not siloed projects. A collaborative approach supported by formal methodologies and frameworks such as Enterprise Architecture, Business Management Modelling, Value Management, and benchmarking for health and fitness for purpose are routes towards a better understanding of both costs and value-generation opportunities, and towards enabling more proactive use of IT and enterprise applications to improve the business.

With the world economy scaling down, 2009 may not be the time for wholesale new investment, but strategic spending is advisable to maintain the value of existing enterprise application investments, streamline and improve business operations, and enable organisations to take advantage of fresh opportunities. This can be achieved through application extension; not by loading up on transactional-type functions, but by focusing on “intelligent” extensions – those geared towards providing insight and analysis; enabling group, enterprise, and partner-wide collaboration; improving customer interactions; or driving more efficient processes which can directly affect the amount of business that can be done, or the margins achieved.

Small, focused investments that leverage existing implementations can deliver substantial benefits. Improvements in production planning that reduce waste by a few percentage points can deliver significant financial returns for example; abandoned online shopping carts could be indicative of a poor process – reducing the number of clicks needed to complete an online purchase may increase the number of sales and any improvement can be readily measured. At a deeper level, providing analytics as a shared service across the enterprise and feeding insight into operational activities is a prime example of a value-generation strategy.

Every system has a limit in terms of modification and top-down extension, and when the cost and complexity of change starts to hold the business back a more radical approach is needed that may involve an upgrade. Always more difficult than they should be, the next round of upgrades will be even more taxing because they will include an architectural change to a SOA and need to be committed to on a “spend now, benefit later” basis. Once there, organisations are being offered the prize of applications with modularity, application flexibility to support business agility, and better business management plus shorter and easier upgrades, but to achieve these benefits a major upgrade initiative is required. While vendors are providing tools to make upgrading easier, they generally only apply to the modern versions of their applications.

Spending in strategic areas can be offset by savings in others. The cost of maintenance is a drain on budgets but there are strategies for managing costs. While the cost of maintenance fees paid to vendors is rightly an area of concern and there are ways to reduce the cost, internal maintenance costs tend to be higher and provide more scope for reduction from increased use of standard components to application consolidation.

Opting for an alternative application model such as SaaS can be an effective way of managing the cost of applications and improving business operational efficiency. The online delivery and subscription payment aspects are important because they describe a low-cost, rapid-deployment scenario, which can be all important for organisations looking for a rapid return on investment and the ability to alter business operations to enable them to quickly act on a business opportunity. However, the key to uncovering its full value is to understand its capacity for flexibility and how that flexibility complements each organisation’s need for an adaptable, agile, business.

Technology Issues

Change is always a difficult time and the degree of current change at both the application and underlying architecture levels is compounding the issue. All architecture roads seem to lead to SOA: vendors are rearchitecting their applications around SOA, the framework is altering the way applications are constructed, SaaS providers are building to a SOA model, and organisations are under pressure to make the transition. Yet that transition is no minor matter and the implications stretch beyond the technology sphere.

SOA is a response to the lack of agility in previous generations of applications that locked business into a rigid way of working because process knowledge and business rules were hardcoded within the applications. By delivering functionality as a series of services aligned with identifiable business operations and able to be loosely coupled together to create processes and applications, it is changing the way applications are constructed and provides an architectural approach to enabling the application agility needed to adapt to changes in the business environment.

Understanding where SOA fits with existing architectures and implementations, and how it can add value, is one of the major challenges facing organisations. It can be retrofitted into existing environments, playing a role in integration, extending their capability and providing access to new types of technology and functionality that existing systems are unable to support. As such it can extend the life and value of existing systems while providing a bridge to a new generation. However, it is an inherently more complex environment so it demands strict governance. As with anything new, it resolves some existing problems but presents a different set of challenges.

The application environment is also being redefined through the use of BPM, which plays an important part in opening up locked-away functionality and carrying out integration across disparate applications. Another of its value dimensions is its ability to focus on the external, providing an architecture for inter-company operation. BPM can also contribute to Master Data Management (MDM) initiatives, which provide another approach to management and integration across and outside the enterprise and play to the business need for an integrated mindset and architectural base.

The other dominant technology change is around SaaS of course. SaaS has expanded beyond CRM. Platform-as-a-Service has delivered highly accessible development, customisation, and integration capabilities within the context, and with the cost and usability benefits, of a service-based model. SaaS no longer means having to take what you are given.

Different SaaS architecture models have emerged and this impacts issues such as security, performance, and interoperability. The ability to integrate SaaS applications with each other and with on-premise applications has been key in raising the value proposition of the model and making it attractive to larger enterprises as well as small and medium-sized businesses. The SaaS model encourages organisations to subscribe to multiple services from multiple vendors, and even to become a provider of whole or component services. While this can pay dividends in enabling flexibility and business innovation it opens up new areas of risk to the business, both technically and legally, necessitating the need for management policies, strict governance, and stringent security.

Market Issues

The enterprise applications market has passed through its phase of febrile acquisition activity and settled into a consolidation and development mode. That has done nothing to lessen the dynamism within the sector as the vendors work on updating architectures and application structures, and integrating their acquisitions. Although acquisitions will never cease, it looks like most of the major ones have been completed. The next round will revolve around the Web 2.0 vendors and the specialist SaaS providers.

The economic situation has changed the balance of power in the vendor-customer relationship with customers in a stronger position than during the boom years. Vendors’ heavy investments in acquisitions and developments mean they are under pressure to recoup their costs via increased sales, but with budgets being cut or remaining static they are struggling. As a result customers are being offered rather more in the way of carrots than sticks as indicated by vendors’ willingness to offer substantial licence discounts, defer increased maintenance charges, and engage with user groups to start tying maintenance to value and deliverables.

There is also an increased focus on providing highly focused productivity and application modules that can be implemented rapidly for a quick ROI, something that fell by the wayside in recent years as vendors concentrated on architectural developments. Some of the new modules are actually components stripped out of larger existing modules that have been repackaged and tweaked to address a specific operation. While there is an element of buyer beware – check that you don’t already have the function – it is an indication of the potential value that can be delivered through fine-grained modules.

Economics, customer power, new architectural models, and disruptive delivery models, have opened up the market and shown that there are alternatives to the traditional enterprise application format. However, there is a risk of vendor lock-in (in a strategic more than a technical sense), as a result of each of the major providers offering both applications and middleware, and in some cases the data infrastructure and hardware too. Taking advantage of end-to-end stacks can be beneficial for harmonisation across global operations but it has to be a conscious and strategic decision.

For more information, please visit :
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Setelah tahap ini selesai kami akan menyerahkan ke Anda sebagai klien untuk mendiskusikan tahap berikut divisi mana yang harus dibenahi.

Tahap Kedua adalah Proses Konsultasi.

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Untuk Manajemen Sistem ISO Service Kami Meliputi Konsultan / Consultant ISO:

Konsultan ISO 9001 ( System Manajemen Mutu )

Konsultan ISO 14001 ( System Manajemen Lingkungan )

Konsultan ISO 17025 ( System Manajemen Mutu Laboratorium )

Konsultan ISO/TS 16949 ( System Manajemen untuk Otomotive )

Konsultan ISO 22000 ( System Manajemen Keamanan Pangan )

Konsultan ISO 26000 ( Sistem Manajemen Corporate Social Responsibility)

Konsultan ISO 27001 (Sistem Manajemen Keamanan IT)

Konsultan ISO 28000 ( Sistem Manajemen Supply Chain)

Konsultan ISO 31000 ( Sistem Manajemen Risk Management)

Konsultan SA 8000 ( Sistem Manajemen Ketenagakerjaan )

Konsultan OHSAS 18001 ( System Manajemen K3)

Konsultan ISO 13485 ( Manufacturer ALat Bedah )

Konsultan ISO 13488 ( Distribusi Alat Bedah )

Konsultan HACCP & GMP ( Analisa Keamanan Pangan Industri Pangan )

Konsultan FAMI QS ( Makanan ternak supaya tidak berbahaya )

Konsultan Human Resources Management

Konsultan 5 S ( Seiri Seiton Seiso Seiketsu Shitsuke)

Konsultan GKM

Konsultan Balance Scorecard

Konsultan Six Sigma

Konsultan Performance Management

Konsultan WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production)

Konsultan Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

Konsultan Kaizen (Gemba Kaizen)

Bagaimana JIka Anda ingin Konsultasi ISO?

Ada beberapa tahap yang harus dilalui sebelum sebuah perusahaan dinyatakan layak mendapatkan sertifikat ISO. Ini adalah tahap-tahapnya:

Gap Analysis atau Business Check Up.

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Training

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Penyusunan Dokumen

Tahap dimana dokumen yang diperlukan untuk penerapan suatu system iso dilakukan.

Pengesahan dan distribusi dokumen

Tahap dimana dokumen ISO yang sudah dibuat disahkan dan didistribusikan

Implementasi

Tahap dimana Anda mengimplementasikan system ISO

Review implementasi

Tahap dimana dilakukan pembenahan kembali jika terdapat kesalahan dalam pembentukan dokumen atau proses implementasi

Management Review

Tahap dimana proses penyusunan dokumen dan implementasi dilaporkan ke manajemen

Pre Assesment

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Audit Internal

Tahap dimana Anda melakukan audit internal di dalam perusahaan

Assessment Stage 1

Tahap dimana Badan sertifikasi ISO melakukan audit ke perusahaan Anda.

Assessment Stage 2

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Training Leadership

Training Leadership Skills,

Training Presentation Skill,

Training Motivation Training,

Training Public Speaking

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Training Key Performance Indicator(KPI)/Balance Score Card Training,

Training Secretary/ Filling Management Training,

Mental Development Training,

Salesmanship Training,

Human Resources Management Training,

Training Service Excellence,

ReceptionTraining,

Personality Development,

JENIS TRAINING ISO DAN MANAJEMEN SISTEM ADALAH:

Training ISO 9001 ( System Manajemen Mutu )

Training ISO 14001 ( System Manajemen Lingkungan )

Training ISO 17025 ( System Manajemen Mutu Laboratorium )

Training ISO/TS 16949 ( System Manajemen untuk Otomotive )

Training ISO 22000 ( System Manajemen Keamanan Pangan )

Training SA 8000 ( Sistem Manajemen Ketenagakerjaan )

Training OHSAS 18001 ( System Manajemen K3)

Training ISO 13485 ( Manufacturer ALat Bedah )

Training ISO 13488 ( Distribusi Alat Bedah )

Training HACCP & GMP ( Analisa Keamanan Pangan Industri Pangan )

Training FAMI QS ( Makanan ternak supaya tidak berbahaya )

Training Human Resources Management

Training 5 S ( Seiri Seiton Seiso Seiketsu Shitsuke)

Training GKM

Training Balance Scorecard

Training Six Sigma

Training Performance Management

Training WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production)

Training Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

Supply Chain Management Training,

Production Training,

Warehousing Management Training,

Distribution Management Training,

Quality Management System Training,

Food Safety Management Training,

Health and Safety Management Training,

Automotive Management Training,

Total Quality Control Management Training,

BRC Training,

Training Kaizen

Training 5 S

TRAINING DAN PELATIHAN ISO LAINNYA

Konsep dan Persyaratan Sistem ManajemenISO 9001/14001/OHSAS 18001,

Dokumentasi Sistem Manajemen ISO 9001/14001/OHSAS18001,

Internal Auditor ISO 9001/14001/18001,

Konsep dan Persyaratan SistemManajemen Mutu ISO/TS 16949,

Internal Auditor ISO/TS 16949,

Konsep danPersyaratan Sistem Manajemen Mutu ISO 13485,

Dokumentasi Sistem Manajemen Mutu ISO13485,

Internal Auditor ISO 13485,

Internal Quality and/or Environmental baseon ISO 19011,

Statistical Process Control (SPC), Measurement System Analysis(MSA), Potential Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA), Production PartApproval Process (PAPP), Advance Product Quality Planning (APQP), QualityFunction Deployment (QFD),

Toyota Production System (TPS),

Business ProcessReengineering (BPR),

Analisis Data, Quality Control Circle (QCC),

QCCFasilitator, Suggestions System (SS),

Gemba Kaizen,

Sikap Kerja 5S (Seiri,Seiton, Seiso, Shitsuke, Seiketsu),

Quality Control 7 Tools, InternalCalibration, Industrial Engineering (IE),

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM),

QC Problem Solving,

Acceptance and Standard Sampling Plan,

StatisticalSoftware,

Pengelolaan Limbah B3,

Pengelolaan IPAL,

Pengukuran Limbah Cair,

Manajemen Resiko.

TRAINING ACCOUNTING:

Bookkeeping Services;

Information System Services;

Internal Audit;BudgetingStock/ Inventory Services;

Fixed Asset Services;

Reconciled Bookkeping Services;

Payroll Administration Services.

Financial Accounting Analysis and Reporting,

Effective Budgeting and Cost Control :

Planning & Controlling, Effective Inventory Accounting :

Fixed Asset Management :

SOP Finance :

Set up, Design & Implementation,

Client kita mulai dari berbagai macam industri

Mulai dari Oil & Gas, Pertamina, Garuda Maintenance Fasilities (GMF), Plastic Packaging, Automotive, Garment, Textile, Water Treatment, Desipack, Farmasi, Metal Stamping, Courier, Warehousing, Security Printing, Network dan IT System,  Securities, Dot Com, Construction, Food & Beverage, Services, Construction, Architect, Automotive Component, Plastic Injection, Chemical, Printing, Electronic, Telecommunication Services, Medical Devices, Inspection Services, Pharmaceutical, Courier Service,  Plating, Pump, Electrical Component, Power Plant, Man Power Supply Service,  Die Casting,  Air Minum Dalam Kemasan (AMDK), dll masih banyak jenis industri lainnya.

Untuk mendapatkan informasi yang lengkap dan benar silahkan hubungi client-client SIEN Consultants sehingga bisa mengetahui Kualitas dan Standard Konsultasi SIEN Consultants di mata client.

DAPATKAN INFORMASI LENGKAP HANYA TELP KE:

REKO HANDOYO, S.IP

Business Consultant

SIEN CONSULTANTS

If you simply focus upon using the same old marketing techniques, how can you make any changes to improve your marketing? To look at overall trends, the cell phone has changed how many people interact with others and live their lives. This article will go through some of the important changes within people’s lives as result of the explosion of the cell phone along with how this trend bears weight on you running your business.

To start with, at least fifteen percent of people in a 2006 survey on cell phones used their cell phones for business and said that they could not do their jobs or it would be hard to do their jobs if not for a cell phone. Texting has replaced talking on the phone as the preferred method of communication for many people. The number of people who have smart phones or PDAs has increased dramatically as well.

These few facts just presented can have potential impacts on your business. Think about what plumbers or home improvement contractors would do without their cell phone. The productivity of these businesses would erode very quickly and adjustments during the day could not be made as readily. Mobile marketing companies can work with you to create a platform on which you can create real-time communications with your employees. This can keep everyone in contact and offers a more organized way to manage business communications as well. This can increase productivity at your company.

Let’s switch gears to customer audiences now. Think through the facts about texting and the increase of smart phones. People use their cell phones and many do not have landlines. The same survey previously mentioned discovered that many people found their phones more important than the television. To reach the young adult audience, it is necessary to focus on mobile marketing. This is going to be the most cost-effective way to reach this audience. This audience consumes media in a different way and you have to put your message where they are going to be able to see it.

There are companies with mobile marketing expertise that you can work with. Remember that it may cost money to do this but think about the opportunity cost of your time if you have to learn about this field. The quality will not be as high if you are conducting a marketing campaign since you do not have mobile marketing expertise. A do-it-yourself campaign may be disappointing and lead to a negative perception of your business. You have to focus on those activities which can produce the highest revenues and outsource those that cannot have as strong of an impact on the operations of the business.

Mobile marketing is a new arena. The facts cannot be disputed that it is an important arena to enter. Using a company already involved in the area can only increase your success rate when starting new marketing campaigns. Marketing is about changing your strategy to fit your audience to increase your response rates and subsequent revenues.

Soon you will find yourself deeply involved in reaching your marketplace, analyzing customer needs and imagining attention-getting promotional ideas. But first there are a number of basic organizational steps you should complete.

 There are just enough stories in newspapers and magazines about successful new business that were started on a “shoestring” to make you believe you do it also. In fact, several monthly magazines are devoted to presenting low-cost home business ideas that are “guaranteed winners”.

 In our experience, very few viable new businesses ran be started with less than $1000.00. A recent survey by Home Office Computing magazine revealed that the average reader spent around $5,000 to start his business. It should be apparent that shoestring businesses run out of cash fast – often just when the sales start to come in.

 Assessing Your Financial Readiness

 The first step in examining your financial preparedness is to sit down with your family and analyze where the money goes each month. Start with the major expenses first, such as mortgage or rent, car payments, utilities, insurance, food and school expenses. These categories probably represent over 60% of your total family spending each month.

 Next add in important but postponeable expenses, such as new clothing or furniture, a vacation or going to the movies or out to eat. By the time you are done you will probably have 15 to 20 key expenses in the family budget. Put the total by category on one piece of paper and add them for a grand total. Make sure every family member understands where the money has been going each month.

 Lastly, see what you can cut out of the budget. But beware, quitting a job (or losing one) and then starting a business will put your family under tremendous mental stress. Don’t expect them to endure too much further pain in order to cut the family budget.

 Most of us would be lucky to cut 5% out of the budget. Once you have some agreement on a monthly budget, it is time to review what sources of income the family has. The most common are: spouse’s salary and bonus, investment interest and dividends and rental income if you own property. Ask yourself a tough question: How reliable are these streams of income? Has your spouse’s employer announced layoffs? Is the return on your investments likely to go up or down over the next twelve months?

 Subtracting all the family income other than your income (you’ll he quitting remember) from the monthly expenses results in what I call the “business burden”. This is the dollar amount that vour economic activity must eventually create if the family budget is to continue at its agreed-upon level. Every month that your sales are not enough to cover this burden you must borrow – from yourself, your credit cards, your home equity loan or from your relatives. This gets old fast.

 The second area of personal finance you must carefully evaluate is your debt. Who do you owe? How much? What percentage of debt could be paid off in on more than one year? Remember, you won’t be working a regular job. Be realistic; if you credit card debt is $400 per month minimum payment, you will have a very hard time paying your business phone bill and buying gas for your car.

 Examine also what you own that you might turn into cash or use as collateral for a loan. The house is the most commonly used personal collateral, but remember what you are risking when you use a home equity loan.

 Estimating Startup Costs

 Startup costs are one-time expenses for equipment, furniture, computers, rent deposits, stationery; telephone hookup, insurance premiums, office supplies, and initial advertising. Be cautious here, it is very easy to spend a couple of thousand dollars before you realize it. Before you buy anything ask yourself: Can I get it used? Do I already have something that will work? Can I trade something for it? If you are starting with a home office you of course save on rent deposits and moving expenses.

 If you will be opening a retail store, it is critical that you research what inventory you will need, who supplies it and what is the lowest price you can get. You may also be facing a serious investment in renovation construction, fixtures and carpeting and painting. The average startup costs for a retail store, including inventory, run around $75,000.

 If you plan to make a product for sale you will need to buy raw materials. Do the same kind of investigation as the retail business owner does. Calculate the minimum material investment to produce the desired sales for the first few months. In addition, examine what additional tools, equipment or vehicles our business may require. A typical manufacturing startup can cost over $100,000.

 Exploring Business Expenses

 For most small businesses, the owners personal compensation is far and away the largest operating expense for the business. This is your contribution toward the “business burden”. But there are potentially many other business expenses you will face. Among the most common are: Rent, utilities, telephone and telefax charges, supplies, computer software and repair, insurance, bookkeeping fees, auto expenses, dues and subscriptions, travel and entertainment and sales promotion expenses. Some new business need an employee right from the beginning, so you would have to add in wages and withholding taxes.

 You find out what expenses your business will have to pay by talking with owners of similar businesses, through magazine and newspaper articles and from trade associations, just to mention a few. Also apply some common sense: ask yourself what expenses seem normal for my type of business? I suggest that you add 20% to your estimate of monthly business expenses.

 To discover what magnitude of starting capital your business will need, take your “business burden” and multiply by three. Add in the one-time startup costs. Multiply the monthly business expenses by three and add to the other two groups of costs. The total is known as “initial capitalization” — the money you had better have access to before you open the door of your new business, Don’t kid yourself; new businesses are very hungry — for money. Try to starve them and they perish!

 Picking A Business Name

 Up to this point, you have probably only spoken about your new business to your family and yourself. But now it is time to prepare to talk to the outside world. The first step in communicating all the wonderful things your business can provide is to create an identity for it by carefully selecting a business name and address.

 I have long believed that there is no such thing as the perfect name for a new business. After all your customers are largely buying you in the beginning. But a cleverly selected business name goes a long way toward making your new company more memorable. Here are some tips for selecting a business name:

 Keep it Short – no more than four words
Make sure It can be easily pronounced
Use either your own name or one that says what your business does
Look in the Yellow Pages to avoid a name that is confusingly similar to an existing business
Make sure that is looks as good on a business card as it does on a piece of letterhead. A way to do this is to use a graphic artist to sketch the name business card size.  

Be aware that some businesses not only legally register their business names but also trademark them. Trademarking is a legal technique made available by states and the federal government to give you the right to a particular name if you can prove you publicly used it before anyone else, To receive national protection you must file for a trademark through the U.S. Trademark Office (part of the Commence Department). This is much more expensive and time consuming. See an attorney before taking this step.

 Selecting a Business Address

 You now need a business address to go along with your legal business name. While you have been researching your startup costs you should have thought about where you will locate your business office. Will it be in your den? In a local office building? A retail store? Or in an industrial building?

 The simplest and least expensive way is to use your home address as your business address also. But before you decide to do this remember the following tips about selecting an address.

 Analyze who you want to sell. Would they think you are less professional if they see a residential address on your business card?
Are there potential zoning problems if your city or town finds out about your home business?
Will your suppliers or customers be corning regularly to your house? is there enough parking space so as to not annoy your neighbors?
Can you easily receive UPS, Federal Express, etc. at your home?  

If you don’t locate at home, what are your other options? There are three basic alternatives:

 #1 Post office box. I don’t like them because they are used by scam artists, Also, you can’t get to your box 24 hours per day and customer service at the Post Office is less than great.

 #2: Private mail box store: A little more expensive than P.O. boxes but offer many more business services such as shipping of all kinds, telefax, photocopying, passport photos, office supplies, to mention a few. The largest number of stores are the Mail Boxes Etc. outlets springing up all over. Costs start at $12-$16 per month for a mailbox.

 #3: Shared service office suites: Many traditional office buildings are setting up areas with small offices which share services, such as the receptionist, mail room, telefax, photocopy and a conference room. Rents start at $400 per month, but some buildings offer an abbreviated version, known as identity programs where you keep your office at home, but rent their address for your mail, have their receptionist answer your business phone line and meet with clients in their conference room. Costs start at $75 per month.

 Picking A Legal Form of Organization

 When you open a business, your life becomes more formalized because you are now subject to more laws and regulations. One of the first legal requirements you will face is deciding how to organize the business from a legal point of view. There are three major ways to do this:

 #1: Sole Proprietorship — Single owner or husband and wife. All business profit goes on your personal tax return. You are personally liable for all business debts and legal disputes. Very little regulation by the government. Over 70% of all small businesses are proprietorships, often because it is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to legally organize.

 #2: Partnership — Two or more owners joining together to invest in and to run a small business. Similar legally to a proprietorship in that each partner is personally liable for business debts and disputes. In addition, each partner is bound by the business actions of the other partners, even if they don’t know about them. In our experience it is hard to hold together a partnership because it is rare that two (or more) people share the same values, grow at the same rate or see risk the same way. We strongly urge that you review a written partnership agreement (sold at office supply stores) before you talk seriously about joining together.

 #3: Corporation – A lot of new entrepreneurs think that they need to be a corporation. But in reality, few new businesses need to be incorporated. The first step is to realize that your life becomes more regulated if you incorporate. We also estimate that it will cost you $700-$1000 more per year in accounting and legal bills to be a corporation. However, there are many potential tax savings for corporations. The second step is to decide with whom you will organize the corporation (incorporators). The third step is to decide if you want to operate as “plain vanilla” corporation (“C” corporation) or as a “S” corporation (requires approval of the IRS). For the next steps see “How to Register” which follows.

 No matter what legal form your new business takes, some branch of government (or several) wants to know about it, But note: before you attempt to legally register, you must have selected a business name and address.

 How to Register Your Company

 Proprietorships and Partnerships Most proprietorships and partnerships use a business name other than the name on the owner’s birth certificate. This business name is known legally as a fictitious name, assumed name or as a DBA (Doing Business As). The county in which you live requires you to register this assumed name. The procedure usually goes as follows:

 Call your County Clerk’s Office and request an Assumed Name Registration form and ask the fee.

Fill in all forms with the legal name of the business, its official address, your real name arid your home address. One of the forms may have to be notarized, so see the accompanying instructions.

Usually you send back one form, the longer one, and keep the shorter form. Include a check made our to the County Clerk for the registration fee.

Take the shorter form to any newspaper in your county (call first to get their rate for an assumed name ad) and place an ad for three consecutive weeks. The newspaper will give you proof that the ad ran.

Send proof of ad placement back to your County Clerk, right away.

In three to four weeks you wilt receive a registration certificate.  

Corporations Registering a corporation is more involved than the assumed name registration. Here is the procedure commonly found. It may vary in your state:

 Call your Secretary of State and ask for Corporate Name Registration.

Have two or three name choices written down by the phone. Ask if the first name is available. If not, go to the next, and the next. Hopefully one of the three is available.

While you have them on the phone, request two copies of the registration paperwork known as the Articles of Incorporation (or similar name).

Use an attorney or one of the Small Business Development Centers for help in filling out the Articles of incorporation. They are pretty easy, but the section on issuing stock can be a little tricky. Check the form for how to calculate the incorporation fee.

Send two copies of the Articles with a certified check or money order for the incorporation fee made out to the Secretary of State at the address in the instructions.

In a few weeks you will receive the official notice of incorporation. After this time whenever you use your business name it must be ended by one of four suffixes: “Inc.”, “Corp.”, “LTD”, or “Co.”. Place the certificate in a safe place. You will need it for a number of purposes but most importantly you must show it in order to open a corporate checking account.

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If you want to avoid bad strategy decisions a KPI model help you find your solution.

The fundamental problem.

There is no universal management theory able to guide a manager’s decision on a critical business issue. All business operators know that many theories can apply to the situation they confront. Their choice of theory will inevitably influence the decision they make. Even a decision that there is no relevant theory will inevitably influence the decision.

The problem gets worse.

Where do you go for advice? Ask an accountant and you can be confident that you will get a financial solution. Ask a lawyer to get a legal solution. Will you ask a friend to get a solution that minimizes the risk to you? You need a way to make your own decision based on your intimate knowledge of your own business, but it has to be a way that you are confident gives you the best answer. Then you can check it with your advisers.

Let us examine a common situation.

A downturn in sales is attributed to a downturn in demand. The revenue loss leads to a cash flow and liquidity problem. Without action, the business faces insolvency in a matter of months.

Financial theory offers two options; reduce fixed costs, variable costs, or reduce stocks by discounting. Redundancy programmes are but one way of reducing costs by matching capacity to demand in order to maintain gross profit %.

Marketing theories offer alternatives to increase sales, but usually require increases in expenditure and risk. Reductions in marketing spend are usually short-term expedients with long term consequences.

Employee relations theories offer alternative ways of cost reduction, with different implications for the long term future of the business. The net benefits are generally finely balanced.

I am sure you can think of many other theories that could apply to one aspect of this scenario.

I hope this illustration has demonstrated that your choice of theory will constrain your options.

If you draw three intersecting circles, labeling one financial, one employee relations and one marketing. It is clear that the optimal decision will be found in the small space where the three theories intersect. No single theory can produce the best answer, so how do you balance up the competing claims from theories that interact, each producing positive and negative outcomes. Your possible range of decisions has been constrained.

The way a strategist approaches complex decisions may point the way.

A strategist will create a set of feasible scenarios. A feasible scenario for our simple illustration is one that optimizes that prospect of business survival, short and long term.

This is only possible if we consider the whole system, the business, its customers, suppliers, employees and competitors. To neglect the reactions of any group will put the business at risk.

Any decision will generate effects from different groups often at a point remote in time and place from the obvious and immediate effect. You do not want to be caught out by unintended consequences.

1. Create a short list of possible decisions.

2. Consider how each option is likely to affect the operational units of the business. For example, how will a price reduction affect

a. Sales volume?

b. Advertising costs?

c. Selling costs?

d. Market position?

e. Market share?

Start by assessing whether the effect is positive or negative. You can estimate the most likely relationship later when you plug it into your KPI model. At this stage you are assessing the interactions between the different theories.

3. Another example assesses the costs and benefits of a redundancy programme.

a. Cost of redundancy payout. Include accrued leave, redundancy pay entitlements, pay in lieu of notice.

b. Lost time during consultation process.

c. Lost productivity due to morale effects.

d. Cost of replacing staff when business picks up again.

e. Costs of contractors and temporary staff if you get the number wrong.

offset by

f. Monthly savings on wages costs.

4. You will usually find that a likely scenario needs you to consider more than one perspective or theory. You cannot simply add up the positives and negatives associated with each theory perspective to get the net result. Complex systems simply do not behave like that.

Using your KPI Model

Now you can use your KPI model to explore the interactions between the decisions and their effects on the different parts of your system.

1. Enter the new numbers into the input cells in your model. Sometimes you will need to add an input box to your model to accommodate a cost or revenue factor that is not a normal part of your working model.

2. Do not change the algorithms (except to accommodate a new input); there is no change in the relationships between the KPIs.

3. Assess the effect on the key financial ratios your model generates. Changes in Return on funds, Gross Profit % and Asset Turns are obvious points of measurement.

4. Assess the changes on other KPIs that may be important. I suggest you look for changes in:

a. Product segment contribution

b. Customer segment contribution

c. Customer numbers

d. Service level KPIs

e. Marketing spend

f. Overhead ratios

g. Stock turns

By now you are starting to get a good picture of the overall effect on your business system and prospects.

If you try one scenario at a time you will soon have a reasonable understanding of the combination of decisions that will work best for you; that is one that maximizes the benefits and minimizes the harm.

Look for a strategy

The optimal strategy will almost certainly require a number of business decisions.

Your business is a complex system, and there is no certainty that a decision about a single variable in the system will produce the expected result.

Let me offer an example.

A business uses an internal call centre to recruit new customers in New Zealand. A cost cutting review has found that a net saving of $250,000 pa. is available by shifting the call centre to a Mumbai based contractor. The proposal is presented to the board as a simple yes/no decision, without any supporting analysis of customer reaction. The contract specifies the success rate, and the contractor has agreed to penalties for failure to meet the performance indicators. The board accepts this one-dimensional proposal as an net addition to the bottom line.

After 4 months of a 12 month contract the new customer recruitment rate has declined by 10%, due to adverse consumer reaction to the change. Gross profit has declined by $500,000, and market share has dropped by 1.5%.

The Mumbai call centre is losing $10,000 per month to penalties, and is unhappy; its staff are dispirited and productivity is declining. The in-house call centre has been disbanded with significant redundancy costs.

What next?

How does this sort of disaster occur? It has happened too often around the world in recent years for it to be an accident.

What theory, or combination of theories, ruled in the board meeting?

Your instincts are right. The combination of a single financial theory about cost cutting, combined with a one dimensional Employment Relations theory about the financial costs of redundancy is the cause.

How can this type of disaster be avoided?

If the business had examined three scenarios, the usual best/most likely/worst case scenarios from a marketing perspective there is a fair chance that the risk would have been exposed.

If the business had invested effort in developing a robust KPI model it would have been able to test the complex set of flow-on decisions needed to assess the proposal. properly.

The analysis could have quantified the level of reduction in customer recruitment performance that would negate the expected savings from the cost reduction programme. The board could then have made a decision in full knowledge of the risk they were taking..

This example has demonstrated that failure to view the business as a complex system in a complex marketplace leads to errors that can be avoided by a business model that treats the whole business as a system involving interactions of theories and processes. A robust KPI model does exactly that.

The theory works; the practice works and strategy options can be rigorously tested.

If you would like to see a video demonstration of the thinking process using a working KPI model check out this link to Use a KPI Model 1. It will open my file at Screencast.com and take around 5 minutes to listen to me exploring the thought process I use to assess alternative scenarios.

You will see that at every stage of the assessment the point of reference is the business’ return on funds. Surely this is where a board of directors or a business owner should keep their focus.

There is no shortage of translators who take the plunge and set up shop as self-employed freelancers, but few have the ambition or the spirit to start up their own all-round translation agency. This is not surprising, of course, as the establishment of a full- scale translation agency is a quantum leap compared with what it takes to launch a viable freelance practice. Nevertheless, the intellectual and financial rewards of business ownership can be substantial. Below I will discuss various aspects you will have to take into account should you consider beginning your own professional and all-round translation business.

All-round translations
First of all, what is meant, in this particular context, by the term ‘all-round’? Basically, it refers to the scope of your product. As a freelancer your output would be confined to your own language combination and degree of specialisation; as an agency owner you will be able to supply your clients with translations across a whole range of source and target languages and disciplines, including commercial, technical, medical and legal documents. In theory, your range would be limited only by the number of staff you would be prepared to contract.

Internal organisation
If you want to establish your own translation company, you would be well advised to find a competent partner first – unless you are willing to hire staff right from the start (which, in most cases, is not a recommendable procedure). Ideally, your business partner should be a person whose qualities are complementary to your own, if only because in such cases the division of tasks is usually quite obvious (and a potential source of conflict is removed). There are good reasons to separate responsibility for product quality (i.e., the quality of the translations) from organisational responsibilities (order processing, account management, etc.). These two roles do not go together very well in practice, and the associated skills are not usually combined within one and the same person anyway.

Find suitable office accommodation that includes at least two rooms: one library-style room where you can work in peace, and one nerve centre where the business is done. Make sure you have at least three computer workstations (one spare station is no luxury) and an office printer, a telephone switchboard with at least two external lines and a fax. Get yourself a straightforward high-quality accounting programme with a CRM module and document your working methods in detailed systematic procedures.

Don’t forget to lay down and formalise a number of essential agreements on tasks and responsibilities with your business partner, so as to prevent any misunderstandings.

Business Plan
Once you have gathered all the information you need, you should draw up a Business Plan. Examples of such plans are available at your local Chamber of Commerce, or can be downloaded (for a fee) from the Internet. These specimen copies are structured in such a way that they will assist you in each step of your own Business Plan. One of the main advantages of having a reliable Business Plan is that it will present you with a realistic estimate of the money you will need to get your agency off the ground. If your capital requirements exceed your private budget (and it is quite likely that they will), you will have to present a thorough Business Plan to the bank in order to persuade them that your plans will pay off.

High-quality freelance translator network
The main asset of any translation agency is obviously its network of reliable translators. Incidentally, you need not be a networking freak to build up such a freelance network. Many freelancers will present themselves to you spontaneously as soon as they get wind of your existence; alternatively, you can actively recruit them and check out CVs on a variety of collective freelance websites, such as Translators Café or GoTranslators. The snag is that you will be hard put to appraise a freelancer’s skills if you do not master the language concerned. CV assessment is important, but by no means sufficient: you will need to be able to judge the quality of a freelancer’s actual output before entrusting him or her to your clients!

To obviate this problem, check your own network of colleagues or friends for highly-educated native speakers of the language concerned, ask several freelancers to submit (free) trial translations, have them assessed and select the two or three most promising freelancers for each language combination you intend to offer. Carefully document the strengths and weaknesses of each selected freelancer and list the specialisations. Note that you won’t get a truly reliable picture of a freelancer’s capacity and skills until he/she has had the opportunity to do several translation jobs for you.

Once you have a pool of reliable freelance translators for each language combination, you can obviously also ask them to check and assess trial translations submitted by other candidates.

Another point to bear in mind is that the freelancers you decide to work with should comply with all the requirements imposed by your country’s Tax & Customs Administration. Each freelancer should be able to produce a formal statement, issued by the tax authorities, attesting to his/her status as an independent translator.

Reliable network of suppliers
Your freelance translators are obviously your most important suppliers, but the supply network comprises other parties as well that will need to be carefully selected as you will need to use their services on an ongoing basis. These include the bank, the accountant, the printer and the graphic designer.

Marketing
Once the internal set-up of your agency is in place, your first priority should be to recruit clients in a systematic manner. For many start-ups in the translation business, this is the most difficult hurdle. Obviously there is a multitude of strategies that can help you attract clients in the business-to-business segment (which accounts for most of the turnover of any self-sufficient translation agency). One very helpful tool, if used correctly, is Direct Marketing. In principle, two different Direct Marketing strategies are available:

1. Internet marketing
One effective and relatively cheap method of generating business in the short term is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), a term that refers to a variety of techniques to help you strengthen your presence on the Internet, and to help prospective clients find you there. A strong position in Internet search engines will increase the number of times you are invited to submit a quote for a translation job, for the simple reason that you will be more likely to be selected if you are easy to find on the Internet.

Some Internet facility agencies have specialised in Search Engine Optimisation and will be able to improve your search engine rating within a couple of months. Most of these companies charge annual subscription fees. If you want immediate results, ask for an adword campaign.

2. Database marketing
This a rather more expensive client acquisition technique. Call large international corporations and government agencies likely to produce texts for translation on a regular basis, and ask for the name of the person who is responsible for translation services (usually an official at the Director’s Office, Communications or the Marketing Department). Gather the information in a database and mail the contact persons four or five times a year. The mailing could comprise your company brochure, a letter of recommendation, flyers, a magazine for business relations or any other item that will help remind the reader of your name and the level of quality that you offer.

An effective database contains at least 1,000 companies or other organisations, and should also contain the names of the contact persons. It goes without saying that you will also have to invest in continually updating your database.