POST CATEGORY : Entrepreneurs

The Hiring Trend Every Business Owner Should Know About

virtual hiring trendYes, it’s officially holiday season. And yes, festivities are all around.   But let’s face it — as business owners, we work on our own calendar. While some parts of the business world are winding down for the year, many of us still have a hectic few weeks ahead of us.

We know what you’re thinking – – I can sure use an extra hand! Couldn’t we all? But for many business owners the thought of bringing on help is fraught with concerns. Where will I find someone? My office is too small, I have no room for anyone else. Will it be more hassle than it’s worth?…

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Control Expenses – Automate Process Through Workflow Software

Do you find yourself spending time trying to figure out what happened to a customer’s order? Interested in keeping staffing counts stable while growing revenue? Do your auditors want to see the details of how transactions were processed, including approval signatures? We all want to increase efficiency, and are often becoming more customer-driven. Many of us have compliance requirements as well.

Organizations typically rely on a combination of major systems and manual transactions that are done off system. Few have a reliable, quick way of accessing the history of transactions, approval processes and communication between departments that span the various systems.…

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Analyzing The Business Boom To Save Money

saving money in your businessSmall businesses know that there is a number of ins and outs of getting started. The first rule, get to know the C.P.A., and perhaps have a attorney who will look over contracts as needed, but the next rule, generating business, needs to be continuously developed.

The economic downturn has been burdensome and congested for small businesses to thrive. The sturdy foundation of creativity and ingenuity for the United States comes from the birth of small businesses; however, the future for small businesses comes down to money. That brings us to how, and what small businesses can do to survive and thrive; thus, continuing to be able to hire and expand.…

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Do More With Less: Examine Your Business Processes To Stay Competitive

examine business processesStaff reductions are typical targets for controlling costs in tough economic times. This can be particularly challenging as you attempt to balance responsible fiscal management with fluctuating sales while maintaining customer expectations for quality, support, and customer service. The answer to this dilemma involves embracing a return to basics, i.e., examining your business processes and understanding the role they play in getting your product or service out the door.

Business processes are the means by which work gets done. Many businesses however, view business processes as a “this is how we do it” mentality, rather than a systematic way to understand how work gets done.…

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How to Buy a Small Business Using Creative Financing as the U.S. Economy Recovers

using creative financing to buy a businessThe U.S. economy’s worst recession in the post-war era has begun to turn for the better. Yet, despite the fact that the doom and gloom of the past 20-plus months may be behind us, entrepreneurs seeking to buy businesses still find it difficult to get banks to finance their purchases.

Fortunately, there are a multitude of other options available to business buyers and they center on an entrepreneur’s ability to use creative financing for his or her purchase.

Using Other People’s Money

The vast majority of small business entrepreneurs do not have enough capital to buy a business outright, and banks can present insurmountable barriers.…

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Tips for Managing Remote Worker Programs

managing remote workersSpeed. It is one of the core changes about working. This speed has been written about and studied in many places, but what do we do about the “always on, always connected” and never disconnected situation we now live in? Four tips can help us navigate this remote work environment.

Rob Eleveld at Shiftboard, an online scheduling platform, recently made a comparison between the new workers with the person who volunteers (busy, but able to donate their time) and Carl Lewis, famous Olympian athlete. The point: People are moving faster and need the tools and technologies that let them manage their work lives better.…

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Five Tips For Small Businesses Hit By Natural Disaster

tips for businesses surviving a natural disasterBack in late June 2006, after a lifetime of erroneously thinking that living in the Northeast meant I was immune from natural disaster, I learned that I was wrong when the Susquehanna River flooded its banks and chased me and my family to a mat in the middle school gym.

Looking back, I could nod and agree with all the standard advice about natural disasters but I think it might be more helpful for me to tell you a few things that can help your small business in similar circumstances but that nobody is likely to tell you.

Be prepared. Most of the time, major weather events (such as storms and floods) and certain other natural events (like wildfires) will let you know they’re coming.…

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Growing Pains – Positioning Your Business Now for the Upturn

recovering from the recessionWhat do you see your business doing 12 months from now, when we’re out of the recession and making the upturn?

If you’re like many U.S. businesses, you will be playing catch up to where you were before you cut staff and put projects on hold to reduce costs.

You don’t want to be behind when the economy begins strengthening and coming out of recession. Many companies are going through tough times right now, but the smart ones are positioning themselves for growth so they are ready when the economy recovers.

Four Problems You Don’t Want to Have to Deal With

What happens when companies grow before they have the processes and technology in place to support the growth?…

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Creating Organizational and Individual Accountability In 5 Easy Steps

Creating Organizational and Individual AccountabilityHere’s a five-step process for creating organizational and individual accountability, which will help to achieve extraordinary results in any organization:

1. Establish the organization’s top three objectives. This means the significant few, not the important many. (This is what we at Six Disciplines refer to as Vital Few Objectives- VFOs). Once identified, these vital few objectives must be clear, concise, measurable, obtainable – and assigned to one individual to be responsible for achieving.

2. Assign each of the objectives to a specific team member.

3. Ask each team member what resources he or she needs to win. To help people win, team leaders must remove the barriers or roadblocks that stand in the way.…

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Improve Performance Through Time Tracking

time trackingIf you want to improve performance, or likewise increase capacity or capability, you need to track the one thing that you’ll never get back: time.

In order to improve effectiveness and efficiency, you must understand how your time is being used. With all of the technological advances over the past two decades, we’re continually forced to do things “better, faster, cheaper.” In other words, all of these advances have taught us how to be more efficient.

But – have any of these advances (spreadsheets, email, cell phones, IM, etc.) made us more effective?

The difference between the two?…

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