Strategic approaches to cost management
The economic crisis is forcing some companies to increase their efforts in reducing costs and driving operational efficiencies. More than ever, organizations need to get the most value from their operations in all departments, look for short-term wins, and plan for the future.

A closer look at the financial crisis
The economic crisis is forcing some companies to increase their efforts in reducing costs and driving operational efficiencies. More than ever, organizations need to get the most value from their operations in all departments, look for short-term wins, and plan for the future.

C-suite perspectives on the downturn
Some executives may be unsure of where to focus their attention during a downturn. If they can drive operational improvements and squeeze greater efficiencies in key functions such as finance and IT, then they can position their companies for short-term survival and long-term success.

Taking control in tough times
To survive or grow in difficult times, corporate leaders need to answer some key questions. What’s our cash position? Should we call the bank? How can we maximize value in a transaction? Acting upon some of those tough questions can help companies cut costs strategically, improve risk management and strengthen their credit position.

Managing in volatile times
The economic downturn is having an impact on businesses from coast to coast. But if companies focus on the basics and make informed decisions, they can manage their way through the volatility to emerge stronger and more competitive. Here are some ideas, strategies and best practices to help you find the path to success.

Destination: IFRS
In 2011, all Canadian publicly accountable enterprises will need to issue IFRS-compliant financial statements. IFRS conversion is a complex and interconnected process that will affect every area of business, and companies should have a conversion plan to guide them on the journey.

Turbulent times
Canadian companies are feeling the impact of the global financial crisis. They must cope with the credit crunch, currency fluctuations and volatile markets, while addressing the need to strengthen their competitive stance and improve their cash position.

Our world of talent
Deloitte continually invests in training and professional development to ensure that our people have the knowledge to deliver quality service to clients. If you’re looking for a career where you’ll be challenged, then you’ve come to the right place.

Succession planning
Creating business value is the path to effective succession planning. The sooner private company owners get on that path, the better they can maximize the value of their assets. Succession planning can also help owners manage unforeseen risks and identify the best exit options.

CFOs taking charge
Today’s finance function faces an expanding and complex set of responsibilities. But with these added responsibilities, CFOs can also explore ways to add value. They can streamline operations, provide financial leadership, and act as change agents for the organization.

Improving business performance
When companies are underperforming — particularly in an uncertain economy — the pressures on management can mount uncontrollably. To overcome strains from all sides, they need to zero in on market strategy, operating fundamentals and working capital.

Best Managed Companies
Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies program shines the spotlight on best-in-class organizations. Over the past 15 years, Best Managed winners have overcome some formidable obstacles, and they offer valuable lessons for companies large and small.

Governments in transition
Today’s public sector is in a unique position — one of tremendous responsibility, but also of unrivalled opportunity. To better respond to the challenges of the 21st century, governments are examining basic service delivery, financial management processes, investments for a sustainable health care system, and human capital issues.

Climate change
As the issue of climate change attracts increased attention, shareholder advocacy groups are demanding improved disclosure on how companies are responding to it. Companies are under scrutiny by institutional investors and rating agencies. But forward-thinking organizations realize that climate change can also present new opportunities.

Crisis management
Critical threats can strike your business at any time — ready or not. Staying ahead of threats, such as intellectual property theft, corporate fraud, money laundering, foreign corruption and corporate restructuring requires preparedness.

Growth for private companies
Private company owners aren't always certain how to attain long-term success. Although they've built their business through hard work, determination and instinct, they still face some tough challenges as they steer their companies toward sustainable growth. To reach their destination, private company owners must take the helm and chart a course to growth.

Corporate responsibility
Climate change. Labour conditions. Offshoring. Community health. In today's global marketplace, the way in which a company addresses environmental, social and governance issues speaks volumes about the corporation itself and its long-term viability. Corporate responsibility actions can enhance a company's reputation, improve supply chain issues, build loyalty and lead to bottom-line benefits.

The art of the deal
The number of mergers and acquisitions has grown. Keeping up with the rapid pace and increasing complexity of M&A transactions is a challenge. Yet speed alone will not ensure a successful deal. With global consolidation, increased liquidity and fierce competition, today’s deal-makers must master speed, complexity and size to succeed.

Creating value
Do you know what your company is worth? If you’re the owner or manager of a privately held business, you probably have a fairly accurate idea of your valuation. But knowing what creates value in your organization is just the beginning. Once you understand what drives your value, then the journey truly begins. Whether your goal is to increase revenues, position the company for expansion or preserve a family business for future generations, knowing your value drivers will help you navigate your company to greater success

Talent management
People are at the heart of every organization. But demographic shifts and a shortage of skilled trades are threatening the growth of certain industries. Effective talent management is not just about recruitment: it’s about retention, HR strategy, organizational design and change management. Talent management — or lack of it — can make or break a company’s growth strategy. But if you manage your talent wisely, your business will flourish.

From Deloitte

The micro, small and medium enterprises face problems at every stage of their operation, whether it is buying of raw materials, manufacture of products, marketing of goods or raising of finance. These industries are therefore not in a position to secure the internal and external economies of scale.

The major problems confronting the sector have been identified as:

• Technology obsolescence
• Managerial inadequacies
• Delayed Payments
• Poor Quality
• Incidence of Sickness
• Lack of Appropriate Infrastructure
• Lack of Marketing Network

From Wiki Answers

A study by IBM of 2,598 CIOs to determine who is experiencing high growth vs low growth came out with the following stats.

Do you integrate business and technology to innovate? High Growth 64% Low Growth 33%

Do you focus your time on providing core technology services? High Growth 23% Low Growth 40%

Do you aggressively turn data into actionable information? High Growth 58% Low Growth 36%

Do you manage change successfully? High Growth 61% Low Growth 43%

Do you and your team create IT centers of excellences? High Growth 44% Low Growth 26%

It is no surprise that those companies that are experiencing high growth are embracing software and web technology to give their business the edge.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, we have all heard this before. However, past performance can help us to better predict the future. As computers get faster and faster they are able to process larger amounts of customer data in near real time. For a while now, you have been able to drill down through your data to see for example where your sales are coming from. The problem was it took a while and by the time you got your answer something else had come up to side track you. But now with faster processors, I can mine my data to find interesting trends quickly, and that can lead me to other questions that I can quickly find out the answers.

There are infinite amount of things you could search on, but say you sold product online to businesses in North America. So maybe you want to know which state you sold the most product too. Now in near real time you can get that answer. So say you find out you sell a lot of product in Florida, my next question that's interesting, why? So the next thing I do is dig a bit deeper and I find out that there is one product in particular that business are buying in Florida. So you dig a little more, where in Florida? You find that is mostly on the Atlantic coast. Interesting, why? So you find a few customers in Florida on the coast and you ask them, why? Turns out they have a use for your product during a hurricane. You had no idea that the product would be useful in a hurricane but after thinking it over you realize of course it would be great in that situation.

So now, armed with this new information you start marketing your product to area's that are affected by hurricanes, and low and behold your sales goes up 300%.

While this example is fictitious, it is based on reality. If you can mine your data to find out information about who/what/when or why you can take the right steps.

Remember when you are mining, you don't know what you might find. It might be problem that you need to rectify or it could be an opportunity that you can take advantage about. Either way, if you don't know, you can't take action.

From June 2009 BusinessWeek

Coca-Cola use to operate like ants in a colony when it came to stocking product in their 12,000 merchant stores. Each morning the drivers would come to the warehouse to receive their instructions and would then do their rounds to the store and at the end of the day return to the warehouse to check in with the boss. The drivers were on their own for the day and one of the problems associated with this model is that they could not adjust during the day to changing needs.

Solution

They now use smart phones and cloud computing to stay in constant contact with the boss and the warehouse. At the end of each stop they complete and online survey that gives the company a complete picture of sales trends and relationships with the store manager in real time. This allows Coca-Cola to react in real time to changeing condition.

Coca-Cola may be large but you will see small business jumping on this trend in the near future as small business is more open to change, are more flexible, and last but not least, are looking for a way to be competitive with the big companies.

This is just a teaser, there will be more on this topic in the future. Prospects type in words or phrases into search engines like Google hoping to find information on that topic and perhaps buy something. I am going to lay out a few steps you need to follow in order for your website to be the site that the prospect finds.

1. Think of the words or phrases that searchers will search on to find your product or service

2. Make sure that your website has information about those words or phrases so that when you are found on those searches, what the searcher finds gets them interested in your business

3. Optimize your website on those key words and phrases

4. Check your ranking on the search engines. You want to be on the first page and preferably in the top 10 websites

5. Re-Optimize until you get your website to the first page and preferably with in the top 10

6. Check daily that your website is optimized (still on first page of a search), adjust accordingly

When I lay it out, it sounds so simple. Remember if it were easy to do, everyone would be doing it!

With The Ultimate Marketing and Management Software and Web System You:

Save Time

Save Money

Make More Money

Increased Employee Efficiency

Increased Customer Satisfaction

• Easily view customers past purchase – know what and when they bought for re-order or analysis
• View all customers’ info and transactions from one screen – in one spot find everything to do with that customer
• Job scheduling – who is doing what, when, and where
• Customer Relation Management (CRM)
• Quick access to all project details – stay on top of project and make sure it gets done on time
• Manage estimates and quotes – easily create a quote and quickly find it when a customer phones back
• Instant job creation from estimate – no re-entering data
• Email quotes or invoices – let your customers have instant access
• Easily find customer – search by name, phone number, limit search by filtering on city etc
• Save you time – find things fast, no more searching through boxes of old invoices
• Save you money – by doing things faster and easier you have time to do what matters
• Look professional – by finding information quickly your customers have confidence you know what you are doing
• Help you to make money – know who bought what so you can do a marketing campaign to up sell or value added part or service
• Keep your customers happy – you know everything about every contact you have had with your customers
• Price list so everyone sells at same price – quickly find prices and part info
• Create work orders – able to take a quote and make a work order to give to your technician to complete the job
• Track customer complaints – you can review complaints to determine if you need to make changes in the products or services you sell or the way you do business
• Secure – no unauthorized use of the program
• Multiple user roles – only let those who need to see certain sections see it

Problems Prospects are having That BSOL Would Solve

• No follow up system
• Opportunities get lost in the cracks
• Data is scattered
• No one spot to find what you are looking for
• Not able to see the trends
• Have to do things the hard way because you don’t have any tools to do it the easy way
• Multiple non connected systems running your business
• Re-keying from one system to the next
• Sales people are calling other sales person’s clients since there is no system to manage who is working on what
• Don’t know what or when a customer last bought from you
• Things are changing but your system does not allow change (products have a price change but you system does not allow you to easily update the price). The economy, environment, society, and technology.
• You have outdated methods of doing business
• Can’t take advantage of the new forms of communicating
• No online business presence
• Don’t know where you are making or losing money
• Customers want an answer now or sooner but you don’t have a system to respond quickly
• Can’t up sell or cross sell with your customers as you don’t know what they have bought
• No pre-defined way to work with a customer, every time is different
• Sales person is off so you don’t know how much to charge
• The manual way you are doing things prevents you from growing because you are already working at 110%
• frustrated trying to get information out of your system to make good business decisions
• Don’t know where your prospects are in the sales cycle
• Don’t know where you left off on getting new customer
• Sales people don’t know customer has not paid past invoices sells more product
• Don’t know what your most profitable product is, push products with the least profit
• Communication between departments is a huge problem for many customers, like sales doing one thing and marketing doing another
• Don’t know the 20% of your customers who are doing 80% of the sales
• Can’t see missing opportunities
• Leaving money on the table with a customer because your system misses sales opportunities hurts you and the customer.
• Customers take their business elsewhere if a company has missing/inefficient/unfriendly customer systems.

1. Does your business (or do you want to) actively market to your customers (go after prospects/customers rather than wait behind the counter/desk for them to come to you)?
2. Do you want one centralized spot to look for information? Are you tired of having to look in many non-connected systems and boxes of invoices and the like to find what you are looking for?
3. Do you want to manage your business rather than have it manage you?
4. Do you want to take your business to the next level but need marketing and management tools to make it happen?
5. Do you want to have a software and web system that will save you time, save you money, make you more money, increase employee efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction?

According to Sept 14, 2009 issue of Businessweek, the economy is recovering and it looks like it has staying power to not be a temporary thing. In the US, real Gross domestic product, the most comprehensive gauge of the economy's ups and downs, almost certainly hit bottom in the second quarter.

The debate will not be settled anytime soon, but several underlying forces make a strong case that the upturn is durable.

But even if it doesn't maintain its initial burst, the strengthening supports under demand in all major sectors suggest this recovery has legs.

Personally, I have seen business are not just talking but taking action and buying. 

We may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

You ever notice that if you have a million things to do, but somewhere there are 5 things that are listed to do, it gets done?

Same with sales. If you have a goal for the next twelve months and you monitor it and take action when things don't work out as plan, there is a good posibility you will reach your sales goal. I just left from a meeting with a prospect and he just found out how poorly his sales were for last year. He knew things weren't great but he had no idea how bad. he said had he known all along how he was doing on a monthly bases, he would have made corrective action.

What is it that you don't measure, that could make a huge difference in how your business is doing, if only you kept an eye on it and made adjustments accordingly?

I am often asked if there is an easier way to stay on top of providing a product or service. And the answer is yes. If you been in business for any length in time you come up with ways to manage pieces of the complete work flow. The problem is that there can be many pieces to make up the full work flow and as each piece is not connected to the other pieces in this home grown solution it becomes tedious to manage, error prone, you have to enter the same info into multiple pieces (which leads to entry errors), it is impossible to get a birds eye view of the whole process so you can't plan, you can see the bottle necks, can't see where you are short on resources.

How we handle it at The Business Solution is that we create one software/web system that manages from cradle to grave of the sales life cycle including the work flow of providing the product or service. You only enter things once. You can see the big picture. You can see the bottle necks. But most important it usually greatly increases capacity because you are not wasting time managing the process and you are able to be dynamic and pull resources from one area to another as you can see where resources are needed and other areas where resources are idle.

 Less stress. Better managed business.