Your Business Partner

Maintaining Your Old Car

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:50:39 +0000

If you think that the performance of your old car is getting weaker and weaker, then you should do something to at least slowing down the performance decreasing. As we all know that the engine of the car will not last forever and at one point it will be broken and cannot be used anymore. Now, if people still don’t have enough time to replace the car with the new one, they can do some parts changing to extend the lifetime of the car.

Besides that fast moving car parts like the sparkplug, oil filter and fuel filter, the slow moving parts of the car like the clutch, pistons or even the gearbox should also be replaced to with the new one. Of course it will cost a lot of money in doing these processes, but you can replace one oat at a time to save more cost.

You can replace the most important part of the car first which has direct relationship with the performance of the engine like the air intake system. Because the old car`s engine combustion process is no longer done perfectly, you can change the car air intake system with the free flow type so that the air will flow to the combustion chamber smoothly.

Trade show display, solution for your exhibition

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:04:29 +0000

Today, when you want to promote and sell products at an exhibition, you should prepare many things. Actually, you do not need to make all what you need by yourself. All you have to do is just come into the shop that provides trade show displays. There are many online stores that are ready to help you preparing the stuffs. When you want to have better product show, you should have some equipment that will change your exhibition. First, choose the right trade show displays, this is very important, maybe you can consider Truss: a great exhibition tool that will help you managing this business.

Improve your exhibit booth with many extras stuffs, floor trade show will help you have better protection and also better view from far distance, banner stand, exhibit booths will be very important when you want to divide your trade show with another one, director chair, exhibit counters & cabinets, literature Holders, trade show furniture, tablecloths, booth pipe & drapes, exhibit graphics and more.

To get more value of your logo, you can use logo floor mats that will add more style and also professional view for your logo and overall trade show. This stuff is also available in a wide range of types, sizes and also style. You can adjust to your needs.

Actually, there is another stuff that you need when you want to have better trade show, but with those four equipment you will have better product trade show. At least, I am sure you will have better view than other sellers. However, if you decide to buy those equipment online, you should ensure you have chosen the right online store where you will order the stuffs. This is important as now you will find many scam sites with interesting offer and cheaper price.

What you can find at Texas City

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 03:00:27 +0000

Have you ever visited Texas City before? If you have not, I guess you should visit this city to find so many interesting places and attractions. At this city you will be able to find many business centers that will fulfill your daily necessity or you want to have a deal with the business owner, you can find all here. But, sometimes we cannot find what we need if we do not have any information of the address, phone number and another details of the business brand. So, the only one step you have to do is to find the information as much as possible so that you will not face any trouble in finding the business brand and company.

For example, you want to find School or medical doctor for some purposes, if you have no friends and family at this city I am sure you will find so many troubles in finding the places or even the phone number. In Dallas, TX there are many medical doctors and schools that you can find, but when you need one name you will find no information about it on the news paper that easily, or the information is not complete of course. That’s why, now you should try new method to find information when you want to visit Texas city. This method is not complicated, even so fun, all you need is a cellular phone or laptop that is connected into the internet. With this device you will be able to find everything in Texas, whether you want to find business name in Austin, TX or maybe you want to find medical doctors and schools at Houston, TX. All the information is available online, and of course you have to find the right site that is providing this information.

You can find everything on the internet, but for this case you need specific site that really dedicate their service to help people around United State, whether they want to find business center or public services.

King Of Google | Search Engine Optimisation Services | Search Engine Optimisation Company | Seo Consultant | Seo Company

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:38:45 +0000

Looking for an SEO company in the UK? Follow this url to reach the company which is known as the King of Google – http://www.KingOfGoogle.com. We are a team of veteran seo consultants, who provide search engine optimisation services and website optimisation for you business, to ensure your website is well aligned with your business. This search engine optimisation company also educates the customers on how to launch various SEO campaigns successfully. To discover more, follow this url: http://www.KingOfGoogle.com.

King of Google is a young, dynamic SEO marketing company that specialises in Google seo and website promotion through Organic or Natural Search. With our wide range of web optimisation services available, our team of search engine consultants work closely with our clients, to build a strong, credible internet presence, and increase website traffic to produces long term revenue streams to their company.

King of Google is a London based SEO consultancy, providing bespoke Search Engine Optimisation services for small and medium sized businesses across the UK and worldwide.

Whether yours is a new website looking to quickly build traffic or an established website that is not attracting enough web traffic – King of Google’s SEO Professionals can help you reach your goals.

Focusing on helping our clients increase their online visibility and improve page rank on the Google Search Engine, we have helped our clients’ increase web traffic, online business leads as well as sales and profits.

Working both agency and client side, we are able to help businesses establish or strengthen their online presence, and give them the edge to beat the competition.

We have undertaken projects of all sizes, ranging from product launch campaigns to complete site management.

How Yahoo! Walked Away From $44.6 Billion

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:38:52 +0000

When we last left Yahoo!, Jerry Yang (CEO) and the rest of the board had just spurned Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid for the supposedly greener pastures of potential deals with AOL, News Corporation, and/or Google. The rejection of Microsoft’s bid also put the current board on a collision course with Carl Icahn in what looked to be a battle for control of Yahoo!’s board of directors.

Trials and Tribulations

After spending millions to buy 68.7 million shares of Yahoo!, Icahn was set to nominate his own slate of directors for Yahoo’s board at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. Icahn would use Yahoo! shareholders’ fury over the botched Microsoft deal to win votes for his board nominees and take over Yahoo!’s board. Yahoo! made a preemptive strike however and managed to appease Icahn by granting him three seats on Yahoo!’s board of directors in July. But what of the purported deals with AOL, News Corp, and Google?

Well, to date, the AOL and News Corp deals never materialized, at least publicly. However, Google and Yahoo! agreed to a partnership whereby Google would deliver ads on Yahoo!’s network. The kicker in the deal was that Google would pay Yahoo! more than Yahoo! could make with its own ads, meaning Google was essentially buying market share from Yahoo!.

This deal would be investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and opposed by Microsoft and online advertisers, who were arguing that the deal would be anticompetitive and result in higher ad prices. In the end, Google and Yahoo! were unable to appease Justice Department investigators by offering to cap the number of ads that would be displayed on Yahoo!’s network and Google walked away from the deal rather than fight a lengthy legal battle.

Just before Google walked away from the deal, Yahoo! reported 3rd quarter earnings. Operating income decreased 53% and revenues were virtually flat compared to the same quarter in 2007. In addition, Yahoo! announced it was laying off 1,500 employees as part of its efforts to cut costs. All told, the Microsoft bid, Icahn ordeal, and proposed Google partnership cost Yahoo! $73 million in fees for outside advisors according to a filing with the SEC.

In the wake of this double-whammy, Yahoo’s stock tumbled to around $10 per share from its 52-week high of $30.25, which it reached when Microsoft was attempting to acquire the company. Yahoo’s share of the search market also continued to decline, falling to 20% in September compared to 22.9% a year ago, according to comScore. What is Yahoo! to do? In a word, grovel.

“To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo,” Yang said at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, the Associated Press reports.

Still?!

To which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer replied, “We made an offer, we made another offer, and it was clear that Yahoo didn’t want to sell the business to us and we moved on. We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share.”

Could Ballmer be using his public comments to further drive down the value of Yahoo!’s stock before making another bid? Or is he stating his actual beliefs on the matter and only interested in “some kind of partnership around search?” Only time will tell, but it certainly seems like Microsoft is moving forward with new strategies for challenging Google.

Microsoft Moves On

Several of these strategies include new or extended partnerships. One such extended partnership is with long-standing Microsoft partner Hewlett-Packard, where Microsoft will install its Live Search toolbar on all HP computers in North America starting in January 2009.

Microsoft is also negotiating with Verizon to become the default search provider on the company’s cell phones, according to the Wall Street Journal. Though the terms of the deal are still being discussed, early indications are that the two companies would share ad revenue generated from web searches made on Verizon cell phones.

Yahoo!’s Future

What does Yahoo! do to secure its future as a viable Internet property going forward? Well, it’s changing leaders for one. In mid-November, Yahoo! announced Yang would be returning to his post as Chief Yahoo! as soon as the company found a new CEO. In addition, over the last few months, Yahoo! has rolled out a number of initiatives, releasing its own analytics package (similar to Google Analytics), updating the design of Yahoo! News, launching the APT (formerly AMP!) digital advertising platform, and announcing the Yahoo! Open Strategy, which aims to make Yahoo! programs open source.

While the change in leadership and these initiatives seem like steps in the right direction, we believe Yahoo! will need to pick a new CEO that brings fresh strategic ideas to the table and the company will need to develop significant proprietary innovations in search technology that convince users to switch back to Yahoo! for web searches. Yahoo! will probably need partners in this turnaround effort too. Microsoft is open to a partnership and combining search algorithm, mail, and instant messenger research efforts would save both companies substantial amounts of money. Such a partnership could also make Yahoo! the default search provider in Internet Explorer, Office, and other Microsoft software products and web properties. Whatever course Yahoo! chooses, hopefully it won’t be too little, too late.

(C) Medium Blue 2008

Top 10 Excuses Why Marketing Is Not For You

admin — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:41:41 +0000

As a marketing coach, I’ve probably heard every excuse in the book why people can’t market their businesses. You wouldn’t believe some of the whoppers people tell when they’re trying to justify their failure to attract clients.

Now don’t get me wrong; it’s not that failing to attract clients makes one a bad person. Not at all. It’s just that when I hear the following excuses I feel compelled to call ‘em as I see ‘em: Baloney!

If you have the mistaken notion that any of these lame excuses are the reason that your business isn’t successful, get a clue. These are just EXCUSES for people who fail, not reasons not to succeed (a subtle, yet important, difference).

1. “I’m too honest to market.” OK, this little gem is at the top of my list because it is both a lie AND an insult! I am a marketer by trade, and I am honest, so I know for a fact that marketing is not a dishonest process or practice, nor does it have to be dishonest to be effective. What’s dishonest is when you overstate your results, or if you truly don’t believe that your product or service is worth what you charge, or if you deliberately intend to defraud people. In that case, the problem is with you, not marketing, so stop insulting the rest of us.

2. “I’m too modest to market myself.” Listen up, princess, every word out of your mouth doesn’t have to be about YOU. Think about what your clients want, need and actually get, and that’ll keep the conversation going for as long as you need it to go. Hey, if you’re not comfortable saying great things about yourself, start saying great things about what your clients get out of working with you. Or better yet, let them say it for you in the form of testimonials. But don’t think that you have to be the subject of every fascinating conversation you have with prospects.

3. “I’m too shy to market myself.” As a highly sensitive person myself, you’d think I’d have more sympathy for this excuse, but I don’t. If you want to be successful, know right now that it may not always be comfortable, and you have to be willing to do what it takes to succeed, even if that means going outside your comfort zone. Shyness is a habit that can be overcome with practice, so join Toastmasters, or see a therapist if that’s what it is going to take, but get over yourself. I promise you will be glad you did.

4. “I’m too creative to market myself.” This excuse is really lame! Marketing is a very creative process, and since you have literally thousands of options when structuring your marketing plans, creativity is an asset, not a liability. Unless you’re one of those I-am-a-self-indulgent-whiner-who-refuses-to-accept-any-responsibility-for-my-actions-and-masks-that-character-flaw-with-claims-of-misunderstood-or-excessive-creativity kinds of people, in which case I say, grow up, and while you’re at it, think up a more creative excuse.

5. “I don’t have enough time to market my business.” OK, this excuse sounds good at first, but in reality it doesn’t wash. Either you are already marketing but not acknowledging your marketing activities as such, or your business is so busy that you don’t need to market at all, which makes this excuse unnecessary. So if you haven’t got all the business you want but you don’t have time to market, you need to reevaluate how you’re spending your time, and make some tough decisions about when you are going to do what you need to do to get those clients.

6. “I don’t have enough money to market my business.” Again, you get points for trying, but this is still just an excuse, because good marketing isn’t about money, it’s about relationships. You can start very modestly with your marketing plans, and spend nothing but your time. And let me tell you, if you can’t get some traction spending 40 hours a week trying to build your business relationships, maybe you should rethink your decision to be an entrepreneur.

7. “I have no personal network to market to.” Oh please, you’ve got to have a better excuse than this! If you truly have no family, no friends, no colleagues, no acquaintances or no former co-workers, then start meeting some. I don’t care if you’ve been on a desert island for the past 20 years, you can always meet people through networking meetings, trade associations, classes, social clubs, or at the gym! Just pick up the phone and call the people you want to know, get out there and mingle, and your personal network will grow quickly.

8. “My product or service is too hard to explain to people.” Fine. Quit explaining what you do, and start talking about what your customers GET from working with you. Do you help your customers get thinner, smarter, married, fitter, their first home, or what? Seriously, nobody cares about what you do, really; people care about what they get. Get it?

9. “My product or service is so good that it should sell itself.” Sure, that’s probably true if your product is a talking monkey, or your clients are all telepaths, but other than that, it’s going to take a little effort on your part, bucko, so start creating some momentum in the marketplace and you’ll find that your product needs less and less of your efforts to sell, until one day it almost seems like it DOES sell itself!

10. “My niche is too narrow and I can’t find my customers.” Hogwash. What this usually means is that you haven’t yet defined your customer, because you can’t find what you haven’t identified (and don’t give me that you’ll-know-them-when-you-see-them line). Start with a matrix of situation and need to identify that client. For example, let’s say you’re a financial planner, and you think your clients are “people who want to get their financial affairs in order.” Think instead about who needs to get their financial affairs in order, and you’ll probably come up with something like “married couples with children who have $X in assets and need to protect those assets with planning.” And you can certainly find those people, can’t you?

So we’ve blasted all these lousy excuses, but we haven’t yet addressed the biggest excuse of all: fear. Most of the time I’ve found that the more excuses my clients offer for not moving forward with their businesses, the more fearful they are.

Hey, I understand, and I’ve been there myself. But what it comes down to is this: Are you more afraid of succeeding (or failing) than you are of going back to work for that idiot boss you always end up working for? If the answer is that you’re more afraid of facing the personal responsibility of entrepreneurship than of any garbage your boss could throw at you, then good-bye entrepreneur, and hello wage-slave.

But if you think that the worst possible scenario is working for some moron again, and that you’ll happily work like a dog if that’s what it takes just so you don’t have to slink back into that stinking office with your tail between your legs, good for you. It’s time to forget about excuses, and start figuring out how to make this whole self-employed thing work for you.

The first thing to understand is that fear is OK. Yes, we’ve all been fearful (and yes, I include myself in that “we” statement). It can be scary picking up the phone. It can be scary going to a sales meeting.

But at the end of the day, isn’t your product or service of value to someone? Aren’t people glad (or going to be glad) that you’ve solved a problem for them? So stop worrying and fearing the marketing process, and remember this: Marketing is really nothing more than the process of developing relationships, and you, my friend, can do that in your sleep.

Veronika (Ronnie) Noize, the Marketing Coach, is a successful Vancouver, WA-based entrepreneur, author, speaker, and Certified Professional Coach. Through coaching, classes and workshops, Ronnie helps small businesses attract more clients. For free marketing resources including articles and valuable marketing tools, visit her web site at http://www.sohomarketingguru.com/

New Employee Acculturation: Measure, Engage, and Immerse

admin — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:40:55 +0000

Onboarding a new employee is often myopically defined as quickening a new employee to effectiveness. While this achieves a particular objective of a strategic onboarding process for many companies, it falls short of a complete definition and leaves managers of human capital with a goal so vague as to nearly render it useless (how fast is quick, and what is effective?) Furthermore, quickening effectiveness for many employers in blue collar industries is such a trivial endeavor that instituting an initiative to quicken new employee effectiveness might not make sense (a furniture mover’s path to effectiveness might be measured in minutes). On the other hand, all employers share the compliance, paperwork, and logistics burdens associated with new employees, regardless of the blue-shading of their industry.

In Employee Onboarding; An HR Technology Seeking a Definition we define two approaches to onboarding. Transactional Onboarding utilizes the automation of the onboarding business process to transition a new employee into their new role; automating the federal W-4, I-9, and state tax forms are examples of business rules and forms best automated through transactional onboarding. Return on investment is realized through making the process more efficient, eliminating costs in handling forms and data, eliminating latency and errors in data, and minimizing risk in the compliance-sensitive area of hiring. Transactional onboarding’s value is objectively measurable and is of value to any employer; particularly so for employers with compounding factors such as high turnover or regulated industries; one can think of transactional onboarding as the science of onboarding.

We defined Acculturation Onboarding, or simply Acculturation, as quickening the new employee to effectiveness. Acculturation is sometimes also known as socialization, and is touted by many vendors as the singular approach to onboarding, despite the fact that acculturation is appropriate to a subset of employers who might be interested in a strategic onboarding initiative. Return on investment for acculturation is realized through earlier and more rapid productivity of the new employee and improved long term employee satisfaction and retention. Acculturation’s value is subjectively measurable and is valuable to employers with high costs associated with recruiting and retaining employees, typically those in more professional roles in the organization; it is this subjectivity that is the Achilles Heel of acculturation onboarding. If transactional onboarding is the science of onboarding, acculturation is the art of onboarding.

While it’s obvious that value from transactional onboarding can be achieved through investing in a system that is flexible enough to meet the organization’s unique process and compliance requirements, it may be less obvious whether the same system, or any single system, can accomplish the value objectives of an acculturation approach. So how could an organization in need of acculturation take a systems approach to automation? Let’s take a simple A to B viewpoint to the acculturation system question:

Point A is the candidate who has just accepted the offer, and point B is the fully productive and contented employee. Transactional onboarding resides as a sliver of a process just as the candidate begins following the path to point B, albeit an intensive process that is laden with risk. The objective of an acculturation system is to shorten the path—the length of time to get—from A to B for all new employees, encompassing the transactional onboarding event at the onset, while maximizing the level of satisfaction of the new employee (contentedness) once they reach point B. It’s easy to see why the return on investment in an acculturation system is a subjective measurement, as the objective is peppered with challenges to measurement. What is meant by fully productive? How do you determine when someone achieves full productivity? How do you account for differing times to productivity due to varying complexity of roles? What is considered a good time to productivity, and how do you help employees who are not meeting expectations? How does the organization know (objectively) it is making improvements to the time to productivity? What is employee contentedness and how do you measure it?

Our recommended approach to implementing an acculturation system that meets the stated objective and answers these questions is based on three tenets: measure, engage, and immerse. All three should be considered when implementing a strategic acculturation process, and if executed properly, the subjectivity Achilles Heel of acculturation onboarding can be minimized.

Measure

Determining the resulting value, and therefore the return on investment, of any technology initiative requires the ability to establish incremental objectives and measure their achievement. Few onboarding systems that take an acculturation or socialization stance provide the means to measure their own effectiveness, yet practically all of them cite Aberdeen Group’s estimates on the potential cost savings of automating onboarding . This is akin to a car salesman assuring a buyer their new car will save fuel costs but not citing what kind of gas mileage the car gets or even whether the mileage can be measured. Hence our first recommendation to implementing an acculturation system is to establish how the system will set objectives and how those objectives are measured.

An acculturation system should allow the organization to establish specific objectives that collectively measure productivity, or should be able to recognize those objectives established in complimentary systems such as learning and competency management systems. The objectives could be events that are either incomplete or completed, or they may be tasks that can be completed in degrees or stages. Objectives might be achievable in any order, but some objectives may be dependent on the prior completion of others. Individual objectives should be scored and weighted with respect to an overall Acculturation Index (AI), which we recommend be calculated on a percentage scale (the weighting and calculation of an acculturation index will be the topic of a future article). Examining the AI for a specific individual would indicate how far along the A to B path the new employee is, and analysis of composites of the AI’s of multiple employees from one period of time against another will provide insight into how the company is influencing—positively or negatively—the effectiveness of acculturation onboarding.

Another interesting analysis of the acculturation index would illustrate the constantly increasing index over time for either a single employee or a composite of employees. For example an AI analysis as such:

indicates that the majority of acculturation objectives are achieved within the first 3 days, while an analysis as shown below:

indicates a more gradual achievement of acculturation objectives. Neither outcome may be more correct than the other, but correlated with less than desirable outcomes, the method of engaging the employee, which will be discussed shortly, should be reconsidered.

There are three types of acculturation objectives: competency objectives, social objectives, and satisfaction objectives. Competency objectives, such as completion of assessments that demonstrate proficiency in skills associated with the employee’s position, are excellent candidates to extract from learning or competency management systems. Social objectives—such as completion of a profile on the company’s social network, connecting to contacts or “friends” in the network, and participating in the company’s collaboration tools and wikis—may pose a greater challenge in collecting due to the diversity of data sources. Satisfaction objectives, or measurements regarding the employee’s contentedness with their new job, are most likely to be collected from directly querying employees, coworkers, and supervisors using a survey or data collection tool.

Acculturation objectives should also be defined according to the organization’s structure. Company wide objectives include those that apply to all employees, such as passing the company’s network security policy exam, creating a company social network profile, and indicating satisfaction regarding the company’s group health benefits. Departmental or business unit objectives provide greater specialization, such as passing the IT department’s help desk usage test, or publishing a technical post on the engineering wiki. Specific skills associated with the position, inherited from the job description, represent the most specific objectives, and if measured through the use of a competency assessment system represent the most objective measurements of productivity in the AI and should be weighted accordingly. Finally, objectives might be established for the specific individual assuming the role, particularly if the individual needs remediation in certain skills. A good implementation of an acculturation system would allow for the assumption of the majority of acculturation objectives for individuals based on the position, job, and organization structure (location, business unit, department, division, etc.), including company wide objectives, and allowing for the dynamic specification of objectives specific to the individual; otherwise, the burden of establishing objectives for each new hire would hinder the consistent application of acculturation objectives.

It should be obvious that an integration strategy is critical to an acculturation system, as the sources of acculturation objectives are myriad. Furthermore, to facilitate the reporting, analysis, and data mining critical for measurement and continual process refinement, the destination data storage should be dimensional in nature versus transactional. Considered together, these observations strongly imply that a true business intelligence approach, specifically the regular construction of an acculturation data mart, should be a component of the acculturation system. Incorporated with the company’s business activity monitoring (BAM) and business rules engine (BRE) strategies would serve not only the purpose of reporting and analysis of acculturation onboarding, but might also provide a data source for certain acculturation objectives that might be detected through the BAM or BRE systems.

Defining the acculturation objectives and establishing how they are to be evaluated defines a clear A-to-B path to productivity for new employees; engaging the employee is how the organization aids the new employee in achieving their acculturation objectives and optimizes the acculturation process.

Engage

While most new employees, excited by their new jobs, may proactively proceed from point A to B, we recommend the organization assume a more active approach to encouraging the new employee’s progress toward productivity rather than a passive approach. The goal of an active approach to acculturation is engagement. Using an actively engaging acculturation onboarding process, the organization can more easily make adjustments to the process, and (assuming a good implementation of measurement of objectives) rapidly evaluate the effectiveness of the changes. Furthermore, those employees who aren’t proactive in their own acculturation may respond better to active engagement (proactive employees will respond well in the acculturation process regardless of whether it is active or passive).

The best implementation of an actively engaging acculturation onboarding system can take inspiration from suggestive selling techniques. The content for engagement—that is, what is being sold—are the acculturation objectives that the system has established for the employee. In other words, the employee should be actively encouraged by the system to achieve their objectives. The typical venues for active engagement include tasks assigned and emails sent, both of which are readily implemented by business process management (BPM) systems.

The engagement process must be intelligent enough to suggest acculturation objectives in a logical order. For example, the objective of connecting with fellow employees on the corporate social network should be encouraged and promoted to the employee by the system only after the employee has completed their own profile on the social network. Likewise, the system should be intelligent enough to alter the priority of promoting objectives during the employee’s path from A to B as conditions affecting the objectives change; for example, if the employee demonstrates significant interest in participating in the company’s social network and less interest in creating a blog, then the system should promote objectives associated with the social network more aggressively than the objective to create a blog.

A system that implements active engagement does not preclude interpersonal engagement, and in fact should promote it. While interpersonal engagement objectives could obviously be promoted to the new employee through promotion of objectives such as connecting to employees with similar interests and backgrounds (similar to the “people you may know” feature of Facebook), suggestions and tasks generated by an active engagement system could be targeted at others in the organization; sending an email to the new employee’s coworkers on their first day of work suggesting that they introduce themselves, or posting a “spotlight” feature of the employee’s newly created profile page on the company intranet are examples. Interacting with a mentoring system to select and assign a mentor is another example, and could also strengthen the interaction of a formal mentor program to acculturation objectives and measurements.

Engaging the new employee through the A-to-B acculturation process through an active approach optimizes the acculturation process, and should result in the employee not only achieving their acculturation objectives, but should also result in the employee being fully immersed in the company’s culture.

Immerse

Active engagement of the employee along the A to B path to productivity should ideally be conducted in an environment that concludes (point B) with the employee fully immersed in the company’s employee communications strategy. In other words, engaging an employee to achieve acculturation objectives is best conducted within the company’s employee communications portal, as it is achieving the universal objective of acculturation which is to introduce and immerse the employee into that strategy. The communications strategy might be a dedicated product specifically designed for fostering employee communications, or has been pointed out, it can be the company’s intranet, which today is increasingly Microsoft SharePoint

Many onboarding systems purporting a socialization technique attempt to accomplish acculturation objectives through the introduction of a dedicated onboarding portal. While this approach might be effective in the delivery of content of interest to a new employee, it is akin to introducing an outward facing point C on the A to B path, and does not serve to immerse the employee in the strategic employee communications platform. Furthermore, delivery of content of interest to a new employee can easily be accomplished in strategic communications and portal platforms, such as SharePoint, so any potential benefit is negated. The final nail in the coffin of a dedicated onboarding portal might come from the objections (of both HR and IT) to maintaining yet another portal in addition to the employee communications platform, the company’s intranet, employee and benefits self service, and potentially others.

Inspiration for the concept of immersion might be drawn from the field of education. A student on their first day at a new school is quickly ushered through the necessary paperwork in the principle’s office (transactional onboarding), then taken directly to their classroom where they are introduced to their teacher and classmates. Over the ensuing days, the student is socialized in situ through engagement of the teacher and fellow students, while at the same time the teacher observes (measures) the students acculturation progress and makes any necessary adjustments to the process to optimize time to productivity (such as suggesting friends or activities for the new student). Failure to immerse a new employee in the A to B path to productivity is as undesirable as putting the new student in a separate classroom surrounded only by material and information describing how great a school they are attending.

Summary & Recommendations

Too many socializing onboarding systems today fall short of their ability to provide a system that measurably and predictably achieves their purported goals and allows organizations to continually improve their acculturation process through cycles of adjustments and evaluating results. While these failures may be due in part to the complex nature of collecting data to calculate an acculturation index, we believe it is also because acculturation systems don’t properly balance the aspects of measuring individual and aggregated progress against acculturation objectives, actively engaging new employees through the acculturation process, and immersing the new employee in the organization’s strategic communications platform. Organizations seeking to reap the benefits of quickening employees to effectiveness while maximizing the new employee’s satisfaction (and longevity as a result) would be well advised to construct an acculturation system that measures, engages, and immerses.

Recommendations:
1. Determine if an acculturation onboarding approach is needed; all companies benefit from transactional onboarding, not all companies benefit from acculturation.
2. Approach acculturation as an A-to-B path to productivity, with the principle business goal being to minimize this path (quicken time to productivity) while maximizing employee satisfaction.
3. Work to eliminate subjectivity in the system’s value through an acculturation approach that includes measuring, engaging, and immersing candidates in the acculturation process.
4. Establish acculturation objectives that can be measured and scored, regardless of their source systems, and that contribute to an overall acculturation index that indicates progress along the A to B path.
5. Use an appropriate mix of competency objectives, social objectives, and satisfaction objectives that make sense for your particular organization’s acculturation goals.
6. Collect and analyze Acculturation Index (AI) data to determine how to make improvements to the acculturation process, creating a closed-loop system to improving the process.
7. Define objectives at all organizational levels of the business to ensure consistency, but retain the flexibility to establish objectives specific to individuals if necessary.
8. Acquire or build a system that is highly flexible in regards to integration.
9. Actively engage employees in the acculturation process using methods similar to suggestive selling.
10. Active engagement should be intelligent enough to adapt to an individual’s unique path to productivity.
11. Active engagement should encourage and promote interpersonal activity, not only with the new employee but also with coworkers.
12. The acculturation platform should immerse the new employees in the organization’s strategic communications platform, not in an outward facing dedicated onboarding portal.

References:
1 – Ros, C and Torrence, J: “Employee Onboarding: an HR Technology Seeking a Definition”, http://www.articlesbase.com/human-resources-articles/employee-onboarding-an-hr-technology-seeking-a-definition-501760.html, 2008
2 – Aberdeen Group: “All Aboard: Effective Onboarding Techniques and Strategies”, January 2008
3 – Hayden, Jeff, “Using Microsoft SharePoint for Acculturation Onboarding”, http://www.articlesbase.com/human-resources-articles/using-microsoft-sharepoint-for-acculturation-onboarding-504088.html, 2008

Guide to Getting Small Business Grants

admin — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:39:35 +0000

Do You Know that Small Business Grants Can be Waiting for You Almost ‘Round the Corner’?

We are living in the times when governments understand the value of small businesses for the global economy. Small businesses are the pushers and testing grounds for new trends, they provide lots of jobs for the masses, they make any society more stable and happy. So governments have created special funds, programs, associations to provide government grants for small business.

You can be surprised to find out that there are so many types of grants that you can be missing and that can help you out almost instantly – minority small business grants, small business grants for woman, federal grants for small business, business start up grants and even free small business grants. All these types of grants act as a real proof that they really help many small businesses to succeed.

There are two typical issues about getting small business grants.

(1) WHERE to Get Small Business Grants.

Start with doing local search for ’small business grants’, ’small business bank loans’, ‘venture funds’ and ‘angel investors’. This will give you a pretty big list of places to apply for help.

If you are in the USA – there are some majors that provide this type of financial assistance – for example, Small Business Administration (SBA) that has many departments that fit all possible types of businesses or help. It can also be wise to check the catalogue of Federal Domestic Assistance – there you can find many good places to apply for the grants.

For businesses outside US there is also a way to succeed. Government, public or private organizations in your country must be giving some help to new small businesses within the framework of these institutions:

- economic development programs, funds, departments, opportunities, initiatives; – banks (usually they have special small business loans and programs); – venture funds, companies, firms; – credit partnerships; – angel investors (this type of business got very popular recently).

The list is big, but it means that you do not need to trust one business grant opportunity. The more opportunities, the better for you!

(2) HOW to Get Small Business Grants.

There is no magic formula to safe getting of grants.

But you can increase your chances using these simple tips.

Build a good business plan. Surely you are starting your business with some plan, but here you need to be very convincing, well-prepared to any questions. People who read this plan must understand and feel that the only element necessary for your success is the money, the grant.

Keep in good contact with your grant agent (manager, officer, anyone who is in charge of all details). Don’t be a pusher, but make sure that you are in control of the situation. A lot will depend upon this person, maybe not the final decision, but a lot. Make sure he/she can reach you at any moment. And would be great if you have his/her contact details, the more, the better.

Resource Guide For Small Business Start Up Venture Capital

Small Business Resource Guide. The “How to Where to Guide” for all small business on advice, money, financing, public funding, grants, capital seed, venture capital, networking, product development, research, education, management and start up business plans. Get small business loans and start up capital. US Government and local contacts for Cleveland and Akron Ohio.

Consortium of African-American Organizations Minority businesses, research, education. Information about starting or running a restaurant. Industrial Incubator – Management services, capital, seed, incubator, operations. Bio Enterprise – Business Plans, validation, assess, strategy, capital, seed, venture capital, research, incubator, advice. bio tech. Advice, public funding, manufacturing, operations, product development, info, intellectual, tech. network. Information about structuring a business plan sample plans. Services Offered Advice: Help with big picture management decisions such as how to make or price a product. Assess: Assessment or your business Concept. Management Help to develop managers. Plan Help writing a business plan.

Strategy Thinking or rethinking your business concept works. Validation Making Sure your business concept works. Capital Help Finding debt or equity to capitalize your business. Grants Help finding grants (which you don’t have to repay).Micro Loans and help for very small or start-up business. Public Funding Leading programs tat gets some or all of their money from the Government. Seed Early stage money for business being developed. Venture Capital Investor equity that comes later in a company’s development. Biotech – Biotech or bioscience business help. Incubator Buildings that offer, rent, utilities and technical help to small businesses. Marketing for your future. View Guide

7 Gifts to Give your CEO

admin — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 15:40:03 +0000

In this holiday season, people love to receive gifts. Well, what gifts would your company’s CEO love to receive from you?

Here are seven “gifts” you really need to go all out to give your CEO, according to Michael Mercer, Ph.D., a consultant and book author in Barrington, IL.

As the saying goes, “What goes around, comes around.” So, give these gifts and you will earn yourself the right to some magnificent “gifts,” also.

1st Gift = Improve Profits & Productivity

Mercer interviewed 20 CEOs for one of his books. One question he asked each CEO was “What is the most important thing for you to get your employees to focus on?”

Overwhelmingly, CEOs answered, “The most important thing for me to get employees to focus on is this: Improving profits and productivity.” So, Dr. Mercer suggests you remember, “Everyone who is part of the profit-generating team in your company is ultra-important, a true VIP.”

2nd Gift = Hire Employees Who Improve Profits & Productivity

A key way to improve profits and productivity is to hire applicants who turn into productive and profitable employees.

In his seminars on his book entitled, “Hire the Best – & Avoid the Rest,” Mercer teaches, “The fastest and cheapest way to have productive, dependable employees is to hire people who are productive, dependable human beings!”

That means you gift your CEO by only putting employees on your payroll who improve ‘the 2 P’s.” Mercer also recommends, “De-employ employees who do not contribute to, or detract from, your company’s bottom line.”

3rd Gift = Develop & Train Your Employees So They Become More Profitable & Productive

CEOs – including your CEO – craves for you to transform the good employees you hired (see 2nd Gift, above) into magnificent employees. The best way to do this, explains Mercer, is to “test your superstar employees, find out their test scores, and then help your average employees develop talents possessed by your superstars.”

4th Gift = Ooze Enthusiasm for Your CEO’s Vision for Your Company

A good CEO has a big, exciting vision, or key goal, for the company to achieve. In his book entitled, “Absolutely Fabulous Organizational Change,” Mercer revealed the vision of 11 superb companies. For example, Intuit’s vision is this: “Our key goal is to revolutionize the way people

do financial work.”

Mercer points out your job is to find out your CEO’s vision, and help your CEO achieve your company’s vision. Your CEO will cherish such a gift from you.

5th Gift = Ooze Key Benefits of Your Corporate Culture

Each company operates successfully or unsuccessfully, says Dr. Mercer, within its corporate culture. He defines it as follows: “Corporate culture is how every employee knows he or she must act, even when no one is watching.”

Mercer discovered a quick way to uncover a company’s culture: “Find out what stories every employee hears about the company the first week on-the-job, and re-tells to new employees.” Hearing the story implicitly tells a new employee how to act on-the-job. For example, every Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company employee hears a story about how the company’s president’s first job was in a fancy restaurant. From that job, he discovered a luxury establishment is composed of ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. He instilled this insight into The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company where he now is president.

In fact, Mercer notes every Ritz-Carlton employee carries a card that says, “We Are Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen.”

So, a gift your CEO want from you is for you to uncover your company’s culture, put it into action in your work, and make sure other employees do the same.

6th Gift = Make a Fantastic Impression

CEOs are like parents. Parents feel proud if their children make a good impression. Likewise, “CEOs feel proud when their employees make a good impression,” says Mercer.

So, the author suggests a gift for your CEO is to make a fantastic impression on everyone who can make-or-break your company. This includes customers and other employees.

7th Gift = Impress Your Company’s Top Executives

“It is ultra-important to impress your boss, your boss’ boss, and anyone who has direct contact to the CEO,” says Mercer.

Well, how do you impress your company’s big-shots? The answer is for you to give the six gifts listed above, according to Mercer.

Your Reward = When You Give These 7 Gifts, You Get Gifts

Mercer found that by giving your CEO the seven gifts, you put into action the age-old truism of ‘What goes around comes around.’ “Giving the seven gifts to your CEO opens doors to opportunities you never dreamed of for your company and, importantly, your career,” points out Dr. Mercer.

7 GIFTS TO GIVE YOUR CEO

Michael Mercer, Ph.D.

In this holiday season, people love to receive gifts. Well, what gifts would your company’s CEO love to receive from you?

Here are seven “gifts” you really need to go all out to give your CEO, according to Michael Mercer, Ph.D., a consultant and book author in Barrington, IL.

As the saying goes, “What goes around, comes around.” So, give these gifts and you will earn yourself the right to some magnificent “gifts,” also.

1st Gift = Improve Profits & Productivity

Mercer interviewed 20 CEOs for one of his books. One question he asked each CEO was “What is the most important thing for you to get your employees to focus on?”

2nd Gift = Hire Employees Who Improve Profits & Productivity

A key way to improve profits and productivity is to hire applicants who turn into productive and profitable employees.

3rd Gift = Develop & Train Your Employees So They Become More Profitable & Productive

4th Gift = Ooze Enthusiasm for Your CEO’s Vision for Your Company

do financial work.”

Mercer points out your job is to find out your CEO’s vision, and help your CEO achieve your company’s vision. Your CEO will cherish such a gift from you.

5th Gift = Ooze Key Benefits of Your Corporate Culture

In fact, Mercer notes every Ritz-Carlton employee carries a card that says, “We Are Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen.”

So, a gift your CEO want from you is for you to uncover your company’s culture, put it into action in your work, and make sure other employees do the same.

6th Gift = Make a Fantastic Impression

CEOs are like parents. Parents feel proud if their children make a good impression. Likewise, “CEOs feel proud when their employees make a good impression,” says Mercer.

So, the author suggests a gift for your CEO is to make a fantastic impression on everyone who can make-or-break your company. This includes customers and other employees.

7th Gift = Impress Your Company’s Top Executives

“It is ultra-important to impress your boss, your boss’ boss, and anyone who has direct contact to the CEO,” says Mercer.

Well, how do you impress your company’s big-shots? The answer is for you to give the six gifts listed above, according to Mercer.

Your Reward = When You Give These 7 Gifts, You Get Gifts

The” 21st Century Enterpreneurs”

admin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:39:51 +0000

an enterpreneur is a person who has the thorough knowledge about how to start a business in a meaningful way. An enterpreneur in its true sense is the one who takes takes the responsibility of taking over a new venture or an enterprize on its on ability .its been understood and accepted the fact that en enterprenuer is one who likes to take a lot of risks in startting a new venture but its actually a fake discription because to be true an enterprenuer is a person who is totally risk averse.enterprenuership is often very tricky and difficult to carry on with and which can only be done by a person who has all the quality to be called a true enterprenuer.he the enterprenuer always like to earning more outcome on less input and thats one of the biggest and important quality that an enterprenuer need to possess.he needs to be a true leader and lead its whole unit in the best possible way. he need to coordinate the works of its members or workers in an unit so that they may gain the best possible results.team building is another quality that he as an enterpreneur need to possess. team building as it been said is not an easy job . you need to have a lot of patience to listen to your workers interest and try fulfilling them as you should consider them as the member of the family as the company is said to be the family and all other people who use to work in it is been considered as its member.you need to treat them well and make them happier by making a suitable working conditions for them and always try providing them with rewards like incentives and bonuses for performing better.it will encourage them to perform better and better and help the company reach its top most level.

An enterpreneur needs to be more innovative and creative .he need to build the character of imagining new things that proves to be fruitful and bring out with new ideas that may benefit the venture to atleast to a certain extent . he also needs to be good in adopting itself to the current conditions and adhere to it.and enterpreneurs also need to be a good visualizer he should have the capacity to view things in a manner and make it happen too.he should also be oppurtunity and a goal oriented person .he should hav a strong desires to achieve big targets and he should never get tired in his hunt for the accomplishmant for his ambition.he he should grab the oppurtunity or watever is been given to him with both hands because oppurtunities dont come so often.it will be a tiresome journey but u need to cope up with the conditions and fight all odds if u need to suceed as a true sucessful anterprenueur.