Relocating in Northern Ireland

If Northern Ireland was once seen as the dead end of the universe, the region is now turning itself into a sought-after location for investors keen to tap into a skilled workforce without the high costs associated with mainland UK locations

Business Market Research and Planning: What Size and Composition is your Market?

Many businesses have difficulty defining their market by size and composition and so their marketing and sales planning is ineffective. By analysing what you know about your customers, finding what industry bodies know about your market and making intelligent guesses, you can plan how to target your marketing and sales effort to get the best return and satisfy the most customers.

Translation Service Companies: Why Poor Listening Skills Is Costing You Profits

Have you ever sat at a bar with a friend or client to discuss a topic, but the other person seemingly disregards it and changes the subject without acknowledging what you said? Not exactly the best feeling in the world right? And yet, chances are, this is exactly what your online presence is doing to some of your potential customers.

Self-Serve Checkouts Force Retailers To Rethink Merchandising

The use of self-serve checkouts continues to grow at an astronomical rate. Last year consumer spending at self-serve checkouts was up 35% over 2004. However this widely accepted process is having a major negative impact on impulse sales.

Dead Fish - A Strategic Lesson

Malcolm Muggeridge is quoted as saying that only dead fish swim with the stream. I was reminded of this truth yesterday as we enjoy the beautiful summer day by taking a walk for the neighborhood.

Be Sure To Use Industry Metrics in Your Business Plan

If you are a writing a strategic marketing plan for your new business, you have to make some assumptions. For those assumptions to have some credibility, you should be aware of industry metrics. Unless the business you are starting is truly the first of its kind on the planet, you should be able to find some metrics.

Reengineering: 40 U$eful Hints

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) principles have been around for a long time. This presentation will contribute by stating and helping to clarify a number of important principles, plus some useful insights, techniques and hints - 40 in all!

Business Financial Planning

Finance in relation to business is concerned with the task of providing funds needed by the enterprise in terms that are most favorable in the light of its objectives. The finance function of a business is concerned with procurement of funds and its effective utilization in business. It covers financial planning, forecasting of cash receipts and disbursements, realizing of funds, using and allocation of funds and financial control. Financial planning helps in defining financial goals, setting objectives and developing a plan to achieve them. Planning is not master-minding the future, and any attempt to do so is foolishness. Human beings can neither predict nor control the future. For this reason, management has to clarify their objectives and determine what actions must be taken, when, by whom, and at what cost to achieve the cherished goals. Financial planning is the process of evaluating different investing and financing opportunities available to a firm and selecting the best one from the available options.

Inventory Reduction - A How To Guide

Inventory is the largest single asset on the balance sheet of many manufacturers and distributors. It is usually the most expensive asset to own and maintain. This paper addresses how to manage Inventory investment to optimum levels, which means a reduction or major redistribution of it in most companies.

Aggregate Inventory Management

Aggregate inventory management is an often neglected Best Practice area. This article explains, and serves as a mini-Best Practice checklist for proven methods and techniques that, when done correctly, bring substantial improvement into the inventory performance for almost any company. Most of these techniques are not dependent on any enterprise software system in particular, and so are relatively universal.

How to Easily Make at Least 300% More Money With Your Business Without Finding a New Customer

Without question, the most overlooked, under-valued and under-utilized asset in practically every business is.

A Conversation with Helen Johnson-Leipold, Chairman of Johnson Outdoors and Johnson Financial Group

Helen Johnson-Leipold is Chairman & CEO, Johnson Outdoors; Chairman, Johnson Financial Group; and the first woman in five generations to lead a Johnson Family Enterprise. She will deliver the Keynote Address at our Best Bosses Conference & Celebration on September 27, 2006. In Part 1 of this interview, she discusses how her family members use passed-down values to arrive at majority decisions on important business matters.

Building A Great Construction Business Plan

Find details about writing a construction business plan, making sure it is polished and complete, addressing issues specific to the construction industry, understanding the type of construction business you will start and detailing cost saving strategies.

Your Business Should Be More Than A Reflection Of You

If your business isn't more than a reflection of you then it will have all of your failing points as well. It's easy to become personally entwined in a business. But if you can't take a step back and view things from a truly independent standpoint, you'll never grow a predictable, systematic sellable commodity.