Business Archives - Page 23 of 47

International Etiquette Tips – For Travellers on Business or on Holiday

Long plane rides lend plenty of time for reflection. On an 8-hour flight home from vacation this summer, I started thinking about how handy my business trip to-do list is, even for casual summer holidays like this one. Sometimes international travellers will head to the airport without thinking twice about how their destination might differ from their home country, or how their own customs and manners might fit in with another culture. In my opinion, it’s always best to prepare before travelling abroad: just a little pre-voyage homework can ease your adjustment to a new place and will demonstrate respect for your host’s nation and customs.

My Business Trip To-Do List

Research local customs. Just a bit of background work on your host’s country can give you an advantage with a potential partner or client: it will demonstrate that you are serious about the value of your business relationships and that you are respectful of their culture. Researching local customs and manners is perhaps most important; it can save you from many embarrassing blunders. Look up the procedures and differences in shaking hands, introductions and titles, dress codes, dining and table manners, body language, and appropriate arrival times.

Research current affairs. Before your trip, follow the news regarding your destination country. It is helpful in preparing you for a different political climate or atmosphere, as well as for keeping up with dinner conversations with your hosts. A note of caution: avoid discussing anything too controversial – you don’t want to jeopardize your business relationship with polemic small talk or dinner debates.

Learn a few new words. Though you are most likely doing business in English, don’t assume that you can get by everywhere with it. Learning a few key words or phrases in your destination’s native tongue can help you out of a sticky situation – and again can show your hosts that you have invested time and effort into learning about their culture.

Prepare a host gift. It is a kind gesture to offer your appreciation for your hosts by way of a gift. But first of all, make sure that it is acceptable – culturally and with company policy – for a business guest to give a gift. Once you have determined this, a small gift that represents your hometown or province is a nice way to share your culture as well. Make sure you investigate what is not appropriate: for example, in India the cow is considered sacred, so you would not want to give anything made from or with leather to an Indian host.

Just a few preparations before a business trip not only will make a good impression on your hosts, but also will make you feel more confident in yourself as you plan to navigate a wholly unfamiliar place. And this confidence could make all the difference in establishing that business partnership or sealing a successful deal!

What Role Do Business Directories Play in Indian Export Business?

There are many things going on in the backdrop of the Indian economy that are favoring the growth of India as a key player in the global economic setup. The small and medium enterprises are getting stronger, the value of Indian export goods is rising steadily and the Indian exporters are finding news ways to take their businesses to the international level.

If you analyze carefully, all these things are interrelated to one another. The growth of small and medium enterprises is contributing toward the increase in Indian exports and the exporters from the country are utilizing the concepts like online business directory promotion. And all these things are boosting the demand of Indian goods in the foreign market. As a result, the export industry is increasing its share in the total GDP of the country.

Business directories and Indian liberalization policy came into virtue within the same period. The liberalization policy adopted by the Indian government in the early 1990s allowed the exporters from India to go beyond geographical boundaries and sell their products in the international markets. The internet grew in popularity in the 1990s and the concept of online business directory promotion came into being.

The Indian traders, especially those with small exporting power, required a platform that could help them in extending their reach to different countries. The online business directories seemed to serve the purpose and that too, in a cost-effective manner. Rather than posting at trading directories of different countries, a business directory allows the traders from different countries to join the same place. The exporters India has today are using these directories to post their sell leads that become visible to the interested buyers in different parts of the world.

Here are some benefits that online business directories offer to the Indian exporters to achieve success in their business:

Building long term relationship with retailers and wholesalers is possible by selling trade lead at online b2b business directories. These buyers may be located nationally as well as internationally.
It has become easy for the exporters from India to stay in the competition. Going a step further, their presence at online directories helps them to attract customers of their rivals.
These directories help the exporters to maintain their product catalogs and update them with new products launched by the manufacturers. Traditionally, it would take time to inform the global buyers about the new products that these exporters have to sell.
Receiving queries from interested buyers is fast and easy with an online directory. You don’t have to rely upon traditional methods that would delay the inquiries and orders of buyers. Online forms can be filled by the buyers to contact the exporters.
With the help of online directories, the exporters can easily refer to the demand of the buyers from different countries. This is because an online business directory allows the buyers to post their buy leads and the exporters who have the required products can immediately contact the buyers.

So, the online business directories are acting as the right platform for the Indian exporters to grow like never before. It is indeed a great advantage that internet technology is contributing towards economical growth of the countries like India.

Understanding What a Well-Balanced SharePoint Intranet Solution Can Offer Your Business

Business organizations all over the globe choose to use SharePoint as their major collaboration tool hosting employees’ workplaces and corporate teams. Since great collaboration is the main source of successful business, it is also very important that startup companies use good collaborative tools. A good collaboration tool helps to maintain document management, records management or the web management very easily.

In simple language every intranet should offer two major groups that should help the employees to complete their daily tasks easily and enable to carry out the departments and team specific activities smoothly thereby contributing better performance of staffs.
Secondly, SharePoint development and intranet solutions often help to support the employee’s social life and make them feel a part of the company and to foster corporate values.

Some benefits from a well-balanced intranet solution and SharePoint development:

As a business organization, if you can manage to get the perfect balance between intranet solution and SharePoint, then you will be able to reach the 4 important goals.

Both formal and informal collaboration on a single platform:

It is true that SharePoint intranets often host work that are related to the content, while the users turn to any third party solutions in order to discuss any upcoming event of the organization. A well balanced intranet helps employees to find a place where both formal and informal collaborates, bringing in at least two major advantages.

Saves the time of the employees and prevents them from moving between various solutions and getting distracted.
Reduces the risk that employees will manage their working activities in some non-corporate messengers and share sensitive business data in an insecure environment.

Attract some rare visitors:

At times it becomes very difficult for an organization to provide all its users with job specific features of SharePoint. Let us take for example, if your procurement executives work on an ERP system, then they might not need task specific features of SharePoint. But in case they travel a lot, then it is likely that they become a frequent intranet visitor. Such balance often helps your people or team to remain updated with latest business news, updates and conversations.

Benefits from SharePoint capabilities:

Often it is seen that SharePoint is used by companies in a very limited manner like just as a document storage, support only a few collaborative sites or as a project management system for a specific team. But let’s be very clear of the fact that SharePoint is not a cheap solution. So any underuse mean wasting initial investments. Balancing various features will let you open up SharePoint’s full potential, thereby benefiting from your solution at the best.

Develop corporate identity:

Large organizations often struggle with developing the sense of belonging from their people. When the organization becomes too big, the teams often stop feeling a strong sense of place in the company. They often tend to jump for any better opportunity elsewhere and have reduced hunger to improve the business. SharePoint intranet solutions offer the ability to share company news and communications and help to develop a stronger corporate industry.

Managed workflows:

Workflows are the basis of most daily activities of employees. While they may have certain tasks to do without any dependency on others, but there are also activities that needs completion of task before it is passed to the next person. But in most corporations, the workflow often breaks. SharePoint helps here with some added third party tools.

Ways to Get an Online Presence for Your Business

Technology is getting bigger and better and this means that the world is gradually becoming a global village. Today, anyone can sit in their homes in the Nigeria or Ghana and be able to know the latest news in India, United States of America or even Venezuela. Yes, this is the power of technology that we are gradually learning to deal with and also acknowledge in our lives. Today, businesses are looking like the best beneficiaries of technology especially due to the internet. Yes, today every business is gaining and trying to gain online presence to ensure that they are always on top of their rivals. The internet has helped to make small businesses very huge and also known in the parts of the country they never thought was possible.

Also, many people are having great fun sitting in the comfort of their homes to shop from the internet. The truth is that, the influence of technology in the world is growing and will be much bigger than it is now; this is why businesses are advised to catch up and make good use of these new ways of business marketing and promotion. Today, there are so many small businesses that have so many clients all over the world that they have never met before but do business with all the same. This is great because; you offer better services to people you do not even know. There are so many ways however; to get the right online presence you need to get your business on the road.

You can start first by designing or having a business website designed for you. Yes, this can be done by professionals or software’s you can download from the internet. Your website is what speaks to clients or markets your products on the internet for you. This is why you need to ensure it is in the best of condition at all times with the right information. Make sure all information with regards to your services; charges, etc are not left out.

Another way you can boost your online presence is by using online social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the many others available. Doing this can give you an opportunity to see some of the international customers you have and also get more people knowing about your business and the services you offer. Online presence can be got through so many processes however; it will be best to ensure that you do exactly what you is needed and the best for your business.

Advertising With Traditional Media Is Dead – SMS Marketing Can Revive Your Business

Times are changing and no longer can small businesses place an ad in their local newspaper and see any kind of noticeable results. Our population is changing and with it, so is the way that we need to be marketing our businesses.

Technology has killed traditional media and has made advertising with it as good as dead. The biggest killer is of course the internet. The World Wide Web has led to the drastic decline of most print media such as, but not limited to; newspapers, magazines and even the phone book. People want their information differently these days. They want their news short and up to the minute. The old forms of media cannot provide the people what they want, exactly when they want it and wherever they want it. Radio has been replaced with MP3 players and Television programs are now watched on DVRs so that people can fast forward commercials and watch their shows when they want. News is relayed primarily through Google searches, RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook to name a few. So with the new technology comes new opportunity for your business’s marketing. The companies that will be successful in their marketing attempts are those that market with the mediums that their consumers are using.

The great news for businesses is that changing our marketing strategies from the traditional media is easy, more effective and more economical. A business should never just rely on one source to market itself, but integrate many different outlets. Social media allows for companies to communicate with their current and future customers with little or no financial investment. Of course every business also needs to have a presence on the internet and a website would be the main source, but these days a lot of companies are using platforms such as Facebook or MySpace as their main presence on the web. Every situation is different, but a company website is still preferred by most and then is supplemented by driving traffic to it through the social media outlets. What all of these methods offer is recognition as well as interaction with customers that was previously unavailable using print media or television and radio.

To truly engage customers and offer instant information that is guaranteed to be read, look no further than SMS marketing. Since 86% of Americans have mobile phones and 95% of mobile phones are SMS capable, text messaging is one of, if not the most effective form of marketing that a business could use. Text messages have an open rate of around 97% and over 80% of texts are opened within 4 minutes of being received. Text message marketing is the way of the future. It is easy to use, very effective, measurable and has a very high R.O.I. Implementing a SMS marketing program is quick and affordable. Businesses will see almost instant results when they begin to utilize SMS marketing.

The limited length and design of the SMS text message is beneficial to both the advertiser and the consumer. A text is limited to 160 characters. Proper grammar is not expected and words are abbreviated in order to say as much as possible within the limits of the 160 characters. This ensures that a business will not “waste” the customer’s time because it can only be short. The business does not waste time by trying to find the right words and make everything look great. Just get to the point and that is it.

A text message is instant. Businesses know that when they send out a text message alert it will be read almost instantly by over 80% of the recipients. This technology allows for businesses to schedule the text message at the most opportunistic time. A restaurant sending a text alert about their lunch special at 8:00 pm would not accomplish too much, but sending the specials at 10:30 am when people are starting to get hungry and thinking about lunch will make for a very successful campaign. With text message marketing you can schedule texts to be sent at the perfect time even months in advance.

There are so many ways to utilize SMS text messages for your marketing. As long as you are mindful of your audience and deliver quality content, then you build better relationships with your current and future customers.

Magazines on Business and Administration

Business journalism is a dedicated segment of journalism that tracks, records and analyzes and then interprets the economic changes that take place within the business society. Dedicated magazines on Business and Administration include everything on personal finance and business within the local and international markets and at the malls, performance analysis of well-known and not-so-well-known companies and overall business reviews.

Magazines on Business and Administration and related content offer investors, both big and small, the opportunity to deliberate and carefully invest, instead of blindly plunging into the finicky and fluctuating business world. This form of journalism covers news and reviews and special feature articles about people, places and issues related to the every field of business. The publishers of these magazines publish content on the who’s who of the business world and the various set ups within the industry causing a revolution in manufacture.

There are a number of online and offline resources for magazines on Business and Administration and related content that can be identified today. There are general newspapers and magazines, ezines and the radio and television news channels that carry news dedicated to a particular business segment. These magazines offer investors the opportunity to scrutinize the industry they are interested in and weigh the pros and cons of the investment, which could involve all that they have at hand.

By reading these magazines, you can review the content of each segment carefully and avoid an unnecessary bankruptcy by taking the right steps at the right time. These magazines provide detailed and in-depth information on different types of businesses and financial publications.

Business coverage within the magazines on Business and Administration and related content gained prominence in the 1990s. This was subsequent to, and arose out of the world wide investment in the stock market and genuine investments in various business undertakings. A popular business magazine is the much and rightly hyped Wall Street Journal. The content of the magazine is appreciated all over the world and their journalists are widely respected for the accuracy of predictions made and the sneak peak reviews they make possible to the Bulls, Bears and Sharks of the business world.

Today, it is possible to access the content of these magazines both online as well as offline. There are a number of dedicated resources all over the world that make this access possible. You can thus analyze and segregate information within the business world to add to the percentage of guaranteed profitability. The online Magazines on Business and Administration and related content make it very convenient to access and assess the information from the comfort of your living room or bedroom, and in the privacy that is to take important investment decisions.

How Joomla Is Beneficial For Developing Business Websites

Why Joomla is gaining popularity in Web Development Industry?

It’s been more than a decade when Joomla was introduced as an open source CMS framework in the IT industry to compete with several other CMS frameworks. Hopefully, this technology has captured the IT market with its features. Joomla has become the first choice of businesses for a web content management system. Gradually, e-commerce businesses also started showing their interest in the CMS platform, due to its highly cost-effective and enticing features that can benefit an online business with boosting performance.

As you know, it is a content management system – so, you can update, edit, add, delete, and publish content on the website, developed in this technology easily and quickly. Whether you run a blog, news portal, or have e-commerce business, there are lots of benefits if you opt for a Joomla website for your business. Let’s take an overview of all these benefits below:

Simple to understand and Use: Joomla performs well for every type of business. From educational site to business website, news website to e-commerce website – Joomla can effectively manage the web content. Developers create a very interactive user interface; one can understand easily and access it more conveniently. Therefore, a non-technical person can also access the functionality efficiently in a Joomla website.

Cost-effective: Joomla is an open source framework which makes it free to use. You can add customization at a very low-cost as some custom features are available in the form of template for free while some have a very affordable price. The only money, you will have to pay to the IT company would be the development cost.

Time-Effective: As mentioned above, there are several ready-made themes and templates are available that not only cuts the cost on the development, but also cuts the time of the development phase. Joomla has a huge count of plugins and templates available which can be set in any type of website, as per requirement very easily. You don’t need to write the code from scratch. Just add the right plugin and template to add the desired functionality and theme. Later, you can ask the developer to modify it as per your requirement.

Quality Solution: This framework has the good reputation in the market for its security and stability. There is hardly a consequence when a Joomla website found crashed or trapped. The security is always on the top for a Joomla website. A sign up for the security alert is enough to make you inform that you are using the secured and latest version. Thanks to the Joomla community which has thousands of members to debug and tweak the Joomla core for betterment and quality.

If you are thinking to install the third-party application, then make sure about the security. It could harm the database, if the application is directly accessing the database of your web application.

The Four Stages of ‘Change Curve’ Small Business Owners Should Know

The ‘Change Curve’ is a helpful tool for small businesses to understand the stages of personal transition each employee undergoes. Kubler Ross developed this model to explain the grieving process (Shock and Denial, Anger and Fear, Acceptance and Commitment).

This model helps small business owners predict how employees will react to a change, and advises how to help and support the employees through their personal transitions.

An organization does not change just because of new systems or processes. It changes because people within the organization adapt and change. Only when people within the organization make their own personal transitions can the organization benefit from the change.

The Change Curve model

The ‘Change Curve’ model helps small business owners understand the stages of personal transition and organization change. This model comprises four stages that employees go through as they adjust to a change.

Stage – 1: Shock and denial

Stage – 2: Anger and fear

Stage – 3: Acceptance

Stage – 4: Commitment

Stage – 1: Shock and denial

This is the first reaction that small business owners notice in their employees – they react to the challenges to the status quo. This reaction is seen more in experienced and established employees because these employees are indifferent to new systems and procedures. They feel uncomfortable because of the fear of the unknown, fear of doing something wrong and lack of information. They feel threatened and fear failure. Under these circumstances, they normally take it as a friction rather than an opportunity.

What do the employees need here?

Employees may experience this stage multiple times. To get over it, employees need information, need to understand what is happening in the organization and need to know how to get help from the organization.

Note: This stage affects particularly those employees who have not experienced any major change before.

What should the organization do?

At this stage, it is the responsibility of the owners to communicate with their employees and educate them about the benefits that they will gain by adapting to new systems – personally and professionally. Remember not to overwhelm your employees by flooding them with loads of information at a time, or they may even be more confused.

Stage – 2: Anger and fear

This is the second stage that is seen in the employees. As employees react to a change, they start expressing their anger, concern, resentment or fear. They may resist the change actively or passively. This stage could be dangerous and if the organization does not manage it carefully, it might result in chaos.

What should the organization do?

At this stage, the small business owner should handle employees’ objections carefully. Since reaction to change is personal and emotional, it’s impossible to prevent it from happening. Therefore, the organization should try to address the employees’ experience and iron out the issues as early as possible.

Note: As long as employees remain at Stage – 2 of the Change Curve by escaping progress, the change will be unsuccessful.

Stage – 3: Acceptance

This is a turning point for employees as well as the organization because the employees have stopped focusing on what they have lost and have started accepting changes. They begin exploring changes, and get a real idea of what’s good and what’s not and how to adjust themselves accordingly.

What should the organization do?

This stage is critical – it takes time for employees to learn and accept things. Therefore, don’t expect your employees to be 100% productive during this stage. Give them time so that they learn and explore without much pressure.

Stage – 4: Commitment

At this stage, there will be a commitment from the employees in analyzing and embracing the change. They start rebuilding the way they work and this is the stage at which the organization starts to see the benefits of the change.

Benefits of the change

At this stage the organization will see the benefits of putting in effort for the welfare of their employees when they were in a grieving stage. The positive effects of the Change Curve are now more evident through its productivity and profit.

The Change Curve is an effective model for small business owners while managing employees. Locating an employee on the change curve will help the business owner decide on how to effectively communicate information to employees and to know what kind of support they require. This helps them take necessary measures and protect both the business and the employees.

The Other 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) – More Business Tips For Tough Times

With the economy still undergoing a lot of uncertainty, rather than throwing in the towel at your small business, especially if you are in services, you can instead extend the same principles the environmentalists recommend – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – to what you offer clients and keep the dollars rolling in.

The strategy of reducing doesn’t just apply to the office products you use or how much space you occupy; you need to also look at how to reduce what you offer without taking away from your value proposition. That means never reducing your price, but instead looking at ways to chop up what you do, so that clients can still buy from you while leaving your value proposition untouched.

For example, depending on the work you do, instead of covering the whole project from soup to nuts, you might do the front-end planning while they supply the labor and premises to execute the tasks. Or, they gather the information and then you come in at the back-end to do the analysis and provide the recommendations. The beauty of reducing is that it still leaves you performing the higher-perceived-value tasks out of your overall offering. It doesn’t mean you can’t do entire projects if clients still have the budgets; of course you can! But for those customers who are cutting back, you can tailor to the funds available. As they say, no-one is ever remembered for their prices but they are for their value.

This leads to the second part of the formula, Re-use. In this case, while you can go on making good use of your paper clips over and over, it also means looking outside your four walls for ways that can help your clients. One form of “re-use” is putting people to work that your clients might otherwise have to lay off. Perhaps a client has always wanted to undertake a major nationwide survey, but has never had the budget? Or, they want to do some business development work but didn’t have the feet on the street? Rather than paying the much higher costs, which include markups, to an outside firm such as yours, they instead have you act as manager of an in-house team and put their surplus people plus your expertise to work. This way, your client will see you as even more indispensable to their business while the customer teams you manage will get the job done.

Even if you’re already recycling waste paper and other items at the office, you need to also look at how to recycle past work you have done for clients. While any such initiatives must avoid betraying client confidentiality, especially if you have signed agreements to this effect, by taking the generic parts of existing client work, perhaps even from past work for several clients, and finding ways to recycle these as products you can sell, you will meet two goals. One is, you will generate some revenue and two, you will have found another way to introduce prospective customers to your services. You might want to bring out a series of reports or your First Annual Survey of X about a market in which you do a lot of work; if you have done such work over the last 12 to 24 months for large corporate clients, finding ways to recycle this information to small businesses will introduce you to a market segment that you might normally not serve.

While no one likes a shaky economy, by using the 3 Rs to your advantage, you will be better able to weather the storms and position yourself for the fourth R – Recovery – when that happens!
Copyright Deborah C. Sawyer

How Can a Content Writing Agency Help To Grow Your Business?

In the digital world, content is the king. This term is entirely correct as the whole internet is striving on the content posted on the website. The primary thing necessary for a website to rank higher in the search engine result pages is top-notch content. After considering this thing, you must be thriving to add content on your site. However, mere adding a large number of articles or blog is not sufficient for a better website. Though quantity plays a significant role, you should never ignore the quality of the content.

Most of the beginner websites don’t know the things that should be included in the online content and end up inserting the wrong things which can do more damage than good to their website. To avoid any content damage to the site, it is best to hire a content writing agency. Without a doubt, they will charge a specific amount for their work, but the results you get will surely help your business is growing. If you are still not convinced about hiring these agencies, then here we present you with some of the reasons how a content writing company can help your business.

Generate Engaging and Informative Content

Creating the right type of content for a website is the key to get the most out of a site. Content marketing agencies know what kind of content will drive more traffic towards your website. In addition to that, they have a fair idea of your niche and will only provide you with the content revolving around that specific niche.

Save Time

Undoubtedly, generating content requires time and effort investment which doesn’t even guarantee success. When you opt for a content writing service, you are taking their time and efforts and using it for your website which will ultimately save your business time. You can use that time to curate new idea for your business or its future plans. Moreover, most of these agencies come with 100% result guarantee, so it is sure that your business will be benefitted.

SEO Friendly Content

Search engine optimisation or SEO is the technique to make necessary changes on the website so that it can rank higher is the result pages. The writers at these agencies know the latest online trends and search engine algorithms which they will implement in your content that will assist your website in reaching the top spot. Every content marketing company ensures that they integrate the right set of keywords in the content which looks natural and avoid any penalty on your website.

Lower Cost

Having in-house writers is surely a good thing for every company. However, you have to bear the additional costs of these writers including their salaries, the working space, their management costs and other miscellaneous expenses. When you hire content marketing services, all you have to do is pay the desired amount to the company as per the work you are getting. This eliminates the additional costs that you have to bear, and you can invest that money for the growth of your business.

On Time Content

Sometimes companies hire freelancers rather than going for content writing company, mainly because freelancers are cheaper to hire. However, they can get the job done, but there is no guarantee to it. Apart from that, freelancers may delay in providing the content. On the other hand, these companies are highly professional and will provide the work on time without making you wait for your content.

A content writing agency will help you in meeting your daily content requirements easily. Now you know how a content writing company can assist your business growth. Go ahead and contact some of the best agencies and expand your business.