Biz Talk - Project :: Technology :: Business

If you have experienced the following scenario, you are not alone.With only a few minutes to present to senior management, you must communicate a proposed project on behalf of your team.You labor until you perfect the delivery, only to see that the executives were unmoved by your proposal.What caused the unenthusiastic response? 

In my work with change leaders over the past decade, I’ve seen some great examples of what works when it comes to gaining executive support.I have also seen more than one attempt flop.I went straight to the source and asked leaders in both public and private industry what they wanted to see from their mid level managers when hearing presentations. 

The executives agreed that when mid-level leaders attempt to make a case for funding or other support, they often provide far too much information.A lot of proposals they hear fail because the executives don’t have time or interest to digest every nuance of the proposed project.  Most executives don’t want or need to know each and every task your team is working on.  They don’t want to have to weigh in on every decision. 

The following are three best practices for making a case to the senior leadership team.

1.Use visual aids such as PowerPoint to give a summary of your main goals and objectives.

A PowerPoint deck is a great briefing tool because it requires you to summarize your points into brief bullets.  Keep your points at a high level and mentally prepare stories, anecdotes, and illustrations to bring depth to the words on the page.The goal will be to stay on any one Power Point screen no more than three minutes during your presentation.Yes, have the information to back up your main points, but use it only if you are asked a specific question about that issue.  

2.Organize your main objectives and goals into relevant groups.

I recently saw one team leader list every activity his team planned to work on in 2009 in his pitch to executives.While he had hoped to strengthen his case with a lot of details, it really just irritated the executives instead.One senior manager even spoke up and told the presenter that they had no interested in hearing what activities the team intended to undertake.  They just wanted to know the priorities. 

I find it helpful to group goals or activities into categories.  For example, you might say that in 2009, your team will focus on cutting costs, streamlining processes, and developing bench strength.  You could then list examples of goals in each of the three categories.Using this approach will help senior management to focus on how the proposals you suggest for your team will impact the entire company, and allow them to decide if these are the areas that they want to stress in the coming year.   

3.Briefly describe what you need from senior management to press forward. 

Too many presentations to executive teams are informational in tone.  The team or project leader provides an update and asks for any questions.Their hope with this approach is that the executive team will be so impressed that they offer funding and support to the project without being asked, which is rarely the case. 

Instead, conclude your pitch with a slide that summarizes specifically what you need.Maybe it is a specific amount of money earmarked in the budget, or a critical decision by senior management, or even more company resources dedicated to your project.True, there is always the possibility that what you ask for will be denied, it is a much better situation to understand right away if what you need to be successful is a possibility.

In the 1990’s a team of external consultants worked with General Electric to develop a change acceleration process.  The team came up with a four-step formula for effective elevator speeches:

*    Our project or initiative is about  . . .

* It is very important to the company because . . . . .

* What this means for senior management is . . . . . . .

* Here is what we need from you. . . . .

Use this approach both in one-on-one conversations with stakeholders and in your formal pitches and presentations.And, as you become more proficient at answering those four key questions, your ability to get your proposals approve will increase.

By keeping your pitches to senior management short and crisp you will be able to focus on strategy, not tasks.. Being very specific and clear about what you need will help senior management to know right away what you are proposing, what you would like from them to help you succeed, and, most important, how it will positively impact the entire organization. 

Wendy Mack is a professional advisor, trainer, and author with a focus in leading

and communicating change. Contact Wendy at, or Download her free e-book, Transforming Anxiety into Energy at http://www.WendyMack.com

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You may have heard of SAP software. It’s a software system used by a major percentage of medium sized and very large corporations all over the world. The purpose of the platform is to ‘wire’ the entire business together and allow hundreds and often thousands of employees to store, share and view knowledge about the physical and financial activities of the firm. Large organisations are managed by smart individuals who understand the strategic value of this type of software, such as how it can give them an appreciation of why issues are happening inside their enterprise or where there might be opportunity for improvements.

This type of software application is commonly known as ERP. It is very complicated, very costly and can take months and often years to deploy. A deployment of ERP software is a major capital expenditure but this doesn’t prevent substantial organisations purchasing these packages.

Until this year software like this was not available or affordable for tiny firms. As a result tiny organisations have not been aware of the immense benefits that ERP systems can deliver. Small organisations have been wrongly convinced by aggressive software suppliers like Sage Software and Intuit that small business accounting software is the answer. These packages most often have no functionality to permit their users to join together the entire firm or perform common tasks such as customer relationship management.

The rise of Web based CRM software from software manufacturers like Salesforce.com is a good example of the small business accounting software companies misleading or misunderstanding the small business community.

It is for this reason that small business ERP vendors similar to Salesorder.com have begun to make great progress in the market. They provide saas which includes all of the key functionality a small company needs at an affordable price. What is even more fascinating is these platforms are a cinch to operate and can be rolled out in a short amount of time.

At last ERP applications are no longer the privilege of large vendors.

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While businesses are struggling to survive in a turbulent economy, it is very easy to avoid communicating with employees. This avoidance can affect overall company performance for a number of reasons. If not addressed, employee anxiety reduces productivity and may ultimately impact the bottom line via stress-related illness, absenteeism, and decreased employee engagement and loyalty.

Here are five tips for communicating effectively in turbulent times.

#1: The C-Level Needs to be Seen

As a general rule, senior leader visibility and accessibility need to increase in proportion to the number of “unknowns” in an organization. Instead of waiting to hold town hall meetings until all of the details have been worked out, communicate frequently when options are being weighed and decisions are being made.

#2: Eliminate the Strain of Silence

Unfortunately, many presidents and CEOs are reluctant to hold town hall meetings or webinars in times of uncertainty.They know they will have little solid to say because even they aren’t certain what the impact of a situation will have on the company or what the right response should be? The temptation may be to hold off on communicating until you know more.

Unfortunately, silence only leads to rumors. When their worries and the office gossip is not addressed, the rumor mills work even faster and employees begin to doubt the sincerity of their company. It is critical for senior management to talk openly and honestly about the state of affairs in order to curb unfounded rumors and to keep their employee’s trust.

#3: Acknowledge the Anxiety

When you don’t have the answers, communicate possibilities and probabilities. TJ and Sandar Larkin, communication experts, indicate that employees lost trust in senior management not because they are hearing about difficult situations from them, but because they are hearing little or nothing at all.

Organizational transitions expert William Bridges agrees. Bridges has discovered that staff members typically prefer to hear that there is no news at all, but they will be the first to be told when there is. 

#4: Convey Realistic Optimism

When Lehman Brothers announced bankruptcy last fall, employees throughout the financial industry started to panic. The Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, Va., responded with a letter from its president. The letter reminded employees that the credit union operated very conservatively, and had never participated in the types of lending practices that got Lehman Brothers in trouble. At the same time, the president explained that the credit union was not immune to the crisis.

This blend of realistic optimism is something that leaders should strive for. Employees don’t want the truth to be sugar-coated. Robert Holland, a communications expert, suggests management to convey a message such as: I understand every employee has been impacted by the financial crisis in a special way. These are anxious and confusing times for everyone, but let me share with you what our company is doing to make it through.

#5: Reach out to Remote Employees

In times like these, it would be easy for employees in remote and field offices to feel out of the loop and fearful.One Denver director of a West Coast company in the midst of a large restructure has implemented a system for delivering information to remote employees which consists of:

1.conduct a short phone meeting first thing each week with all staff in order to communicate any new information that has happened since the prior week.

2.A more formal all-hands call midway through the week in order to share rumors or gossip people may have heard and to set folks straight as to the facts.

3.An end of week email to all staff summarizing what has transpired over the week with respect to the reorganization.

The beauty of such a plan comes from its consistency and openness. Staff members feel comfortable voicing their concerns and trust they are fully in the loop as to what is proceeding.There is a lot of laughter over some of the rumors that surface, which really boosts morale.The final result is a team that feels connected and supported, regardless of their location. 

Whatever the format, it is critical for senior leaders to acknowledge the anxiety and engage employees in two-way communication. Good leaders recognize that when anxiety is running high, employee communication is not optional, it’s imperative.

Wendy Mack is a professional advisor, trainer, and author with a focus in leading and communicating change. Download her free e-book, Transforming Anxiety into Energy at www.WendyMack.com 

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Running a company efficiently is about organisation, focus and process as a massive 55% of businesses fail in their first five years of existence. The commentators offer shallow explanations as to why this happens. I continuosly observe three key reasons why this tragedy happens so often and to so many individuals with different experience, qualifications and skill.

The primary reason is insufficient market understanding.

No foresight. For example People dream up the idea, build the product and then sit back and wait for the market to flock and buy. In this connected age there is no excuse for lack of investigation prior to spending any time and cash on designing a product until you have solid confirmed there is a market.

The number two reason is lack of comprehension of fundamental facts about business.

The majority of people starting a business know their trade, how to offer a service or make a product, but know very little about running a company.  Being able to read and track the numbers in the P&L or the balance sheet is a vital. The basic knowledge of accounting is not very often imparted well by the business books, online resources and experts in the know such as accountants and bookkeepers. Companies such as Sage software and Intuit aggressively fool business managers with their messaging that their systems are the cure for all ills.

Sage software and other vendors as usual are underserving small businesses.

Until recently ERP software solutions and packages were only affordable by larger enterprises who had deduced that the back and front office systems need to be wired together to give a comprehensive picture of the business. One technology business NetSuite had the vision to see the gap in the market and began selling its small business ERP software. NetSuite competitors have since emerged.

The final reason businesses fail is because of lack of process and procedures that provide the essential behaviours and consistency a business must have to work efficiently.

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When you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers - as we do - and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

While there are many more aspects to internet marketing than just permission-based email marketing, email has definitely been the cornerstone on which our business is built.

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You might have heard of SAP systems. It’s a software package deployed by the majority of medium sized and large enterprises all over the planet. The objective of the system is to ‘wire’ the entire business together and enable hundreds and often thousands of employees to store, share and recall data about the physical and financial processes of the firm. Large businesses are lead by smart people who know the strategic benefits of this category of software, such as how it can give them a picture of why issues are happening inside their organisation or where there might be opportunity for improvements.

This type of software application is commonly known as ERP. It is very complicated, very expensive and can take along time to deploy. An implementation of ERP software is a significant investment but this doesn’t stand in the way of major firms buying these applications.

Until a few months ago software similar to this was not available or affordable for small businesses. As a result tiny firms have not been aware of the significant benefits that ERP systems can deliver. Tiny firms have been wrongly convinced by aggressive vendors like Sage Software and Intuit that small business accounting software is what they need. These packages most often have no functionality to enable their users to connect the entire company or perform fundamental tasks such as customer relationship management.

The achievements of Web based CRM software from organisations like Salesforce.com is a good example of the small business accounting software enterprises misleading or misunderstanding the market.

It is for this reason that small business ERP vendors like Salesorder.com have started to make great strides in the market. They sell saas which includes all of the specific functionality a small enterprise requires at very low cost. What is even more interesting is these platforms are simple to operate and can be installed rapidly.

Now ERP platforms are no longer the privilege of substantial firms.

No Comments

When you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers - as we do - and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

Even though there are more sides to internet marketing than just email marketing (permission based), email has been the foundation that our business sits on.

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Are there actually any real tangible benefits of change management? Are there any strategies for managing change that can identify and deliver the benefits of change management?

In considering any step change initiative - in any organisation, in any sector and any location, we need to be asking and seeking answers to these simple questions:

- How am I going to manage all this so that it happens and I succeed?
- How’s it going to be different when I’ve made the change?
- Why am I doing this - how’s it going to benefit me?
- How will I know it’s benefited me?
- Who’s it going to affect and how will they react?
- What can I do to get them “on side”?
- What steps do I have to take to make the changes and get the benefit?
- What are the risks and issues that I’ll have to face?

As you create a change initiative, if you don’t know with pristine clarity how’s it going to benefit your organisation - then you are unlikely to realise it.

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? And I really don’t mean to sound so pedantic - but you would be surprised but how many times I have asked the question: “How will it benefit you and how will you know it’s benefited you?” - and got a vague or general answer along the lines of “we’ll be… bigger… better… closer to our customers… reduce our costs… etc”

The management and monitoring of these processes is key to ensuring that you actually do benefit as an organisation from the planned step change and the new capabilities that the change will be delivering.

Benefit management is the activity of identifying, optimising and tracking the expected benefits from a business change initiative to ensure that they are achieved.

Then begin to list the changes issues facing your organization in the far left column. These may include the following, but are not limited to just these issues:

• Accountability
• Can’t do attitudes
• Consensus driven decision making
• Disconnect between training and results
• Duplicate work efforts
• High waste of resources, time or energy
• Inconsistent goal achievement
• Inconsistent quality work
• Limited diversity of thought (no out of the box thinking)
• Missed results consistently
• No alignment of efforts
• No direction
• No focus
• No or limited motivation
• Personality conflicts
• Poor communication
• Poor teamwork
• Power struggles
• Reactive vs Proactive Thinking
• Time management
• Turf wars
• Work ethics

Now review each change issue and place a check mark in the box if it is an issue for that specific group. Quickly, you will see where you need to plan and execute aligned solutions.

The definition of a Benefit must pass four critical tests:

(1) Description - what precisely is it?
(2) Observation - what differences should be noticeable before and after?
(3) Attribution - where in the future business operations does it arise?
(4) Measurement - how will it be measured?

And the definitions should include the following:

- The description
- How it will be measured
- Projected changes from the current business processes and operations
- Inter-dependencies with other benefits
- Key performance indicators in the business operations now and for the future
- Explicit linkages, wherever possible, between projects and deliverables
- Dependencies on risks and other programmes or projects
- Financial valuations
- When it is expected to occur and over what period of time will realisation take place

So, to summarise - you need to know:

- What each benefit is?
- What differences will be noticeable before and after?
- Exactly where in the future organisation it will arise?
- How will it be measured?

If you don’t know - with pristine clarity - the answers to these questions then how on earth is your change initiative going to benefit your organisation

Resource Author Francisco Rodriguez Higueras
Trabajar desde casa es fácil si sabes como
Todo sobre Juegos para gente que le gusta jugar
Encontrar un Trabajo – Empleo es fácil si sabe dónde buscar

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Whether you are a US company, or just a company with links back to the US, you may be required to know about the Sarbanes Oxley act. If you’re an American company and haven’t heard of it previously, you have already learned something about the act. It’s an act in the United States.

The Sarbanes Oxley is an act that was signed into US in 2002. It was designed to put a stop to the things that went on it Enron and Worldcom. Both companies announced before bankrupty that they had been surviving on fraud deals for several years. In that year, it wasn’t required for any companies to present their finance records.

What the act does is it makes sure that companies are run legitinately and if it’s found that they are not, it holds the big guns responsible.

The act requires the Chief Executive Officers and the Chief Financial Officers to sign the records. They have to sign the books to gaurentee they are not misrepresented and they match the earnings of the company.

If it turns out the records are incorrect, there are a number of punishments available for the Chief Officers that signed the records.

Like what I said towards the top of the post, you might not be required to abide by the act. You only need to abide by the act if your company is based in either the US, UK or Europe and they have listings on the US stock exchange. You will also have to abide by the act if your company is based in the UK or Europe and it’s a subsidiary of another US company.

The Sarbanes Oxley act can be annoying for some US companies. Because the company is required to report every single business transaction, even the sale and purchase of company assets. This is where people have the problem because all the company’s fixed assets must before recorded.

The process of fixed asset accounting can be expensive and take time. If you do it yourself within the company it can take several months and can often result in errors. The easiest way to ensure you have recorded all your assets is by outsourcing the process to an asset management company.

Unfortunately, it’s definately not a cheap act to abide by. However, many asset management companies do offer services that they can add to your assets to make it easier and cheaper to audit in the future. Many of the companies also offer Sarbanes Oxley compliance software which will make the job even easier for you.

Hopefully you will have learnt what the Sarbanes Oxley act it, whether you need to abide by it, and how you do it if you are required to. No doubt you won’t like the sound of the act, but you can blame Enron.

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If you own your own business, then “business continuity” and “disaster recovery” are two major things that you should be worried about, especially since your business - like most of the others on the planet - is likely very reliant on technology like computers, networks, and servers. Today’s business world has become reliant on technology to get things going and keep them going, so business owners are becoming more and more aware of the need to keep that technology in good working order. If your technology fails, then your business might also fail, and you definitely don’t want that to happen.

The Need For More Comprehensive Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Planning

The disaster that today’s business owners tend to worry about, is a disaster involving the data that is contained in their computers. For instance, can you imagine what would happen to a business if they lost all of the files that contained all of their customer billing information?

Without proper backups and security measures in place, if any of those above mentioned disasters happen to you or your business, then you may lose all your data and important systems, not to mention potentially losing the business itself! Fortunately, there are things you can do to create a good disaster recovery plan that will ensure your business stays up and running no matter what. The most important part of it is to have backups of your data created. Make copies of all your data manually or by using software designed to do the job, and then save it to an external hard drive or burn it to a stack of clearly labeled and organized DVDs or CDs. Then go another step further and invest in some offsite backup services - that way, even if your office burns down, your data is still safe and sound somewhere else.

You can also invest in some high quality surge protectors that will help minimize the damage a power surge can do to delicate computer equipment, and make sure that you have fire extinguishers and fire alarms handy in case a fire breaks out. Also make sure that your computer equipment has good, functioning cooling mechanisms like fans, as overheating is a major cause of computer crashes and resultant data loss, and get a good anti virus program that you maintain regularly to keep it up to date and constantly protecting your computers and servers.

If you lose your data for good, then your business could be in jeopardy. Since many of us now use computers for most aspects of running a business, it is incredibly important to have precautions put in place to keep that data safe. Put together the disaster recovery plan that makes sense for you and your business’s needs, and then you can rest a lot easier knowing that even if something where to happen, your business would be able to carry on

Resource Author Francisco Rodriguez H.
Trabajar desde casa es fácil si sabes como
Todo sobre Juegos para gente que le gusta jugar
Encontrar un Trabajo – Empleo es fácil si sabe dónde buscar

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