Management Articles

Are you a starting entrepreneur? Is it your first month of operation? I can hear your knees knocking. Do you wonder whether you can hold your own against the giants that dominate your chosen industry. The entrenched enemy tend to have vast resources, a strong marketing machinery and of course, a powerful brand presence. How can one compete against that? It's easy: with a little bit of entrepreural guerrilla skirmishing. Microsoft did it. Gateway did it. IBM did it. D...

Jerry Pounds, writing on the Management-Issues web site recently put out an interesting piece called: "Litigation awaits for insensitive employers." Here's a key passage. "Judges and juries are linking musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular disease, psychological disorders, suicide, cancer, ulcers, impaired immune function and workplace injuries to a wide spectrum of emotional workplace stressors." Ultimately, in our litigious society, there's no way to assure that y...

Sales slumps, quiet periods, business lulls, call them what you will, but they can still be a serious threat to your business, and in some cases will even bring the business down completely. There are ways to overcome these sales slumps, but they may mean taking some time during your busier periods to prepare for them. We have compiled our 5 quick tips to help you beat sales slumps and profit all year round with your business. 1) Build a mailing list. Online or offline, al...

Deciphering the Maze of Information for Experienced Business Owners A Checklist and Answers for Experienced Entrepreneurs Regarding Where to Go Next to Grow Your Business Entrepreneurs who have made it through the first year and are well into the toddler phase of their business venture are, in this Entrepreneurs topic anyway, experienced veterans. What is important to an entrepreneur who has things up and running already is very different from those who are just startin...

Determining fees is a difficult law practice management task for most attorneys when thinking through their law firm marketing plans. In determining fees for certain services, attorneys often fall short of what they should charge. Too many attorneys are afraid of even charging the competitive price for their services when making their law firm marketing plans. Further, they make the pricing decisions often with no data or conceptual framework. Additionally, instead of focusin...

Time clocks have long been a key factor for businesses in keeping track of the hours their employees work. Way back, when time clocks first came into existence, it was the old fashion punch clock. Believe it or not people still use these trusty old things. This was a time when all record keeping was performed by hand. Unimaginable isn’t it? In this day in age, everything is simply done magically by electronics and smart computers. This includes keeping track of time and atten...

Microsoft has a new service designed with the needs of small businesses in mind—businesses with 10 or less employees. If you’ve thought about taking your business online, Office Live makes it easy for you. There are three different versions of this software to meet the particular needs of your small business: Option One—Basic This first solution is Microsoft’s core product and comes with several free services: • a domain name • web hosting • email in your company n...

Stick with me here for minute – its not hard math. There are five retail KPI’s worth tracking at the individual Salesperson level: Sales per hour; items per sale; average sale; conversion rate; wage to sales ratio. If you add them all up (individually) and divide by the number of staff you get the ‘store average’ of each KPI. You can now compare each Salesperson’s five KPI’s to the ‘store average KPI’ instantly revealing the MOST deficient statistic or undersupplied ...

The concept of conventional logistics covers all activities relating to the procurement, transport, transhipment and storage of goods. Logistics as generally understood is concerned particularly with material flow (raw materials, interim and final products), but also involves providing companies with services and information. Nowadays the development of electronic information and communication technologies affects all spheres of life. Naturally, it influences significantly...

Retail Dashboards are pictures of spreadsheets used by executive managers to visually identify around five key performance indicators. Dashboards have gauges, like the speedometer in a car, and graphs and colour, to draw attention to areas of strong and weak performance of each retail store and the organisation as a whole. They may display: sales per hour, items per sale, average sale, conversion rate, and wage to sales ratio – at the store, regional, and national level. T...