Why Businesses Fail

By Ken Sundheim
To be able to start a business from thin air is quite a hard thing to do. Some can, some cannot. There are a lot variables when it comes to a business succeeding or failing. Below, you will find a list containing the reasons as to why some small businesses fail and what you, the business owner can do to prevent the situations from becoming a problem in the first place.

No Leadership, Employees Get Lazy and Sometimes Insubordinate
As a manager, you should never "manage," unless it comes to a dire situation. Power trips for unintelligent, insecure managers and business owners. Instead, you should be friendly, listen to the ideas the employees have as well as consider them the front line soldiers who know what is going on in the market.

However, some newer, younger employees may see this type lax of attitude and attempt to leverage it in an attempt to firmly establish a "do what I want whenever I want" mentality and atmosphere throughout your company. This can spread like wildfire and it can get out of control very quickly. Upon the first sign that the employees are slacking and not taking their jobs seriously, the manager or business owner must remind them as to why they are paying them the amount that they are being compensated and reiterate as to what kind of productivity and execution is expected.

Good managers and /or business owners lead by example and create a business atmosphere that screams "hard work" and "company dedication." You must create a "produce or don't work here atmosphere" within the organization or your business is being left often to failure.

Not Paying the Employees Enough
To obtain the best employees, one must pay. Your employees are going to be representing your company every time a potential client calls or very time somebody visits the office. These individuals are going to be the face of your creation. Regardless of how impressive you may be, if your employees are not sharp and don't give off an energetic vibe, clients are going to begin shying away and will not take you nor your company seriously.

Additionally, if you are not ready to pay an employee or employees a salary that is very industry competitive, you must do the extra work and continue to put in the 16hour days until you can provide a salary that is conducive to acquiring top notch talent.

Don't misunderstand. This does not mean that you have to save $200,000 for the person, but look at various job boards. What are your competitors paying to bring in new employees? Do you think that they are getting impressive or lackluster talent offering the compensation packages that they are? Always aim higher.

If they are paying them $70,000 a year, budget $85,000. You always want to get employees who are better than the workers whom your opposing firm currently has.

Business owners with big egos don't bring in high returns. Don't just have an employee simply to say you have one. There is no sense in doing this. I know people who have done this and it gets them absolutely nowhere.

Lastly, free employees can quickly bring down a corporate empire. They can bring down the corporate empire that you a very long time to create and bring to life. I've always felt that simply having the thought of obtaining free employees is a little off. Why should somebody work for you for free? Would you work for somebody else for free?

I can see justification that they would do so if you were sharing half of the company revenues with them a.k.a. making them a partner. Otherwise, those employees are going to leave and, upon them going to competitors, they may badmouth you. Therefore a result of you even attempting to obtain free labor, will give your competition free and very useful competitive intelligence on your company. Their obtainment of this information could come from a job posting or your former "gratis" employees potentially bad-mouthing you.
Spacial Thx

5 problems in IT business

Lindsay is an IBM distinguished engineer, having held positions at the software giant for over 20 years. He's worked variously as product manager for VisualAge Generator, co-leader of the Eclipse platform development team and director of WebSphere studio and Rational modelling tools departments. He is also a developer and researcher, contributing 14 patents to IBM's portfolio. He told Builder AU that when it comes to managing responsiveness in IT, there are five key factors you need to examine.

1. Asset Management

The problem is in knowing everything that a business owns, in terms of software resources. Code sitting on a mainframe is not like products sitting in a warehouse. According to Lindsay, many businesses claim to have trouble keeping track of all of their software once it's deployed.

"Most businesses suffer from a lack of inventory of existing code. You've got millions of lines of COBOL code and you don't know anything about it. The same problem is occurring now with Java code, everyone's got legacy Java code that they don't know what to do with," Lindsay said.

2. Architecture

If you don't design your software with the goal of being maintainable and reusable then it cannot be any surprise when it becomes difficult to maintain and reuse it, he said. The solution is in designing your systems and interfaces with an eye to the future. "You don't have the flexibility of repurposing code if it's very brittle, or it's poorly architected, with ill defined or even not defined interfaces and the like," he said.

3. Skills Modernization

Lindsay says that IBM has worked with thousands of COBOL developers to help them develop for more modern platforms, such as J2EE with Java. The dream for Rational and IBM is to remove the barriers of platform and middleware as to where developers can work.

"We want to move to a position where if you have 500 developers, instead of having 200 COBOL, 100 PL/1 and 200 Java, you end up with 500 general purpose business developers that can be applied to projects independent of deployment platform," he said. "You need to focus on better design and architecture of your systems, but at the end of the day people are the ones who are doing that, you need to focus on your staff."

The solution, according to Lindsay, is in retraining developers to higher level languages, which are agnostic to the issues of architecture. IBM Rational's answer to this is the Enterprise Generation Language, which can be compiled to run on CICS in COBOL, J2EE in Java, or as a native Linux, Windows or Solaris application. It also targets IBM platforms such as Websphere and Weblogic.

This is not a new phenomenon. IBM themselves have been working at the problem for two decades, and other languages also support multiple platform targets. Other languages also support this pattern: high level language Python can deploy on .NET with IronPython, or Java with Jython. In fact, this one language, many platforms approach is the other side of the coin to the many languages, one platform approach favoured by .NET.

The approach best for the business depends on what is easier to retrain: language syntax and semantics or the specifics of your middleware platform. IBM Rational is well and truly a proponent of the first. "There are a lot of people who have tried to retrain COBOL developers to Java. The failure rate is huge, it's in general not a winning proposition to try to do it. EGL is a higher level language and so you have less to know about. Learning the Java syntax would be rather straight forward for a COBOL developer, that's not the issue. The issue is learning about the concepts of OO, learning about the various J2EE extensions. I'm not telling you it's impossible, I'm just telling you what customers have told me: that they've tried it and in general it's not a path that most of them choose to go down again."

4. Team Infrastructure

Too long has a divide existed between mainframe and distributed infrastructure, Lindsay says. "I'm sure if you talk to many enterprise customers a lot of them have duplicate infrastructures. They have something for the mainframe or the enterprise system, and something totally different and disconnected for the distributed side. This came about because of the digital pilot projects they did in the early client/server days, it grew up and grew even more with Web investments."

The problem this causes is that it creates barriers that prevent a business from efficiently using their personnel and tools, he said. "You have this duplicate infrastructure and this limits your ability to move people around, because they're using totally different sets of tools, totally different processes. Of course it's more costly, our assertion here is that you need to move back to a consolidated team environment. You need to take advantage of all the tools that have come about in the distributed areas and apply them to mainframe development as well."

5. Budgetary Inflexibility

Lastly, it all comes down to money. Lindsay explains that "This is really simply the phenomenon that 70 to 80 percent of most companies IT budget is spent on maintenance, and you need to figure out ways to freeing up some of that money, so you have more than 20 to 25 percent to spend on the backlog. This is something to help mitigate the fact that there isn't this vast number of people you can bring into IT, at least get a better use out of the ones that you have."

Spacial Thx

Make way for E-Business

Online spending is growing rapidly in the UK. E-commerce in 2009 will be worth over £20bn and, experts say, by 2013, online spending will make up for 10% of total retail sales. If you have a product to sell, you’re in a good position, but how to attract customers to buy? Emma Jones offers five recommendations.
1. Make offers

Offer to write content and guest posts for blogs and sites where you know your customers are hanging out. Offer discounts to member groups and communities and offer links to other important sites, in exchange for them linking back to you. The more inbound and outbound links, the higher you’ll appear in the search results.
2. Make some noise

Why not carry out a poll on your site using www.surveymonkey.com and use the results as the basis for a press release. Another tactic that will have you mentioned in the media is celebrity endorsement. This is what Lyndsey Young has done with her product, Count On It, www.count-on-it.co.uk which has received glowing testimonials from the likes of Amanda Holden and Janey Lee Grace, to profitable effect.
3. Make the most of social media

Have as many sites driving traffic to yours as possible. And this is possible by making the most of social media and creating communities on Facebook and Twitter. These applications can now be integrated so you only need to update once and your news/product offers can be communicated to your entire network, with links back to your site. A number of online businesses we profile have their own site as well as a presence on a trading platform such as eBay, BT Tradespace or, for the arts and crafts sector sites such at Etsy, Folksy and MyEhive. Review sites such as www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk are also useful for bringing attention to your online store.
4. Make friends with your customers so they keep coming back

Have your existing customers return by keeping in touch with them and connecting customers to each other. Again, this is where cost-effective technology tools play their part; why not introduce an e-newsletter to your site using a service such as www.mailchimp.com or add a community feature such as that available from www.webjam.com - you can go as far as inviting customers to meet each other ‘virtually’ face-to-face by adopting www.tinychat.com
5. Make yourself known to this site

Contact the site you are reading this on and ask if they’ll profile your story! It’s great to have your company featured in the printed press but if your site is promoted online (with a link) then potential customers are only one click away.
Thx for www.buyassociation.co.uk/money/text/home-business/enterprise-nation/make-way-for-e-business.html

Increase Your Business

The forum link building is one of the effective ways to get more traffic to your websites. There are many forum link building services that a person may opt for top get the maximum business and increase number of hits on his or her websites. There are also many forum services that you can use for your benefits. Some service providers specialize in providing cheap forum posting service. With the services of forum postings, your content is posted on websites and forums that get a high number of hits. Many a times, your URL is also posted along with the content in these forums so that you are directly linked to the people who are looking for more information about you and your company.

There are some forum service providers who ensure Guaranteed Forum Link Building services that in turn increase the chances of giving a boost to your business. The forum link building services also allow you to create threads in these forums so that more and more people can participate in your forums. With the help of forum services, you can also get some permanent links with the people you wish to. The money that you send to get the services of forums from any of the cheap forum posting service providers is sure to be recovered within a very short time.


The cheap forum posting service providers post content rich in information to various forums. This helps in locating your information through various search engines in a very easily. In fact, even the search engines look for links that are rich in information and therefore the services of forum link service providers come in handy. There are professional service providers in this field also who charge as per the quality of their service and number of clients that they handle.
Source: www.articlealley.com/article_1673989_15.html

10 Great Business Plan Ideas!

<!-google_ad_section_start->


<!-google_ad_section_end->
The first of our great business plan ideas is:

1. Use Color, But Use It Sparingly.

For decades business plan were excruciating boring documents in black and white, mostly because color printing was expensive. Even back then we recommended buying one ream of paper with a color line down the left side and using that for the business plan. It was just enough to add a touch of zing to the presentation.

And it is that "touch of zing" that makes the difference. Bankers are quiet people. Don't shout at them with blasts of color on every page.

2. Incorporate Charts

Yes, you may need some long columns of numbers. But turn the important numbers into charts. A visual impact hits a lot stronger with a picture.

3. Picture Yourself

Speaking of pictures, do include one of yourself, perhaps in a group with others. Yes, it creates a personal approach. It also makes you "real". Including pictures of some of your top clients is a good idea too. Most business plan ideas incorporating work you have done previously is good.


4. Double Duty Advertising

Advertising isn't cheap. But it is probably pretty good. So include some of your ads in the business plan. The ads certainly show what your business does, and how you approach your clients, two very important considerations.

5. Beam Me Up, Scotty

Your entry into the world of the internet can indeed impress, and is one of our top business plan ideas. There is nothing else that will demonstrate your creativity and business acumen at such a low price. Take your site as far as you can. Turn it into a retail site, or a lead generation site, or an informational site. Structured properly, it will even begin to generate income for you.

6. e-Plans

Convert your business plan to a pdf. Put it on a disk, and put that disk in an envelope in your business plan. Be sure to add linking and chapter headings for easy searching. The more complex your plan, the more important this becomes. It makes it very easy for investors to find just the section they are looking for.

7. All That Other Stuff

When we asked associates for business plan ideas, several of them suggested that you should include a "supplemental book" with all the backup information in it. We disagree. Such a book is bulky, intimidating and easily misplaced. Rather, put that "other stuff" onto the disk with your pdf. Or, put the "other stuff" onto a protected, password accessed area of your business plan.

8. Cover It Up

Always include a cover letter. You may personally deliver the business plan to your banker, but still put a cover letter on top. You really don't know how many hands that business plan will pass through, so make it as professional as possible.

9. Drop Names

Do you have an Advisory Board? Did you approach industry leaders for advice? Now is the time to use those names and use those connections. The names may look nice in an annual report, but your company may never get an annual report if you don't start using those connections now.

And here is one of the best business plan ideas ever:

10. Promote Yourself

Break every rule in the book if need be. But make sure that the business plan represents you and your business. Mess up the order of the sections. Put in non-standard material. Use an unusual design. It doesn't matter what it is that you do, as long as the plan shows your company in its best light.

Return to top of Business Plan Ideas

Read more: www.businessplanmaster.com/business-plan-ideas.html#ixzz0ufyjzrm3

<!-google_ad_section_start->


<!-google_ad_section_end->

Taking Action When Starting an Online Business

The dream of starting an online business is one that many aspiring entrepreneurs possess and it is a realistic way to earn a respectable income. Considering the typically low costs associated with marketing on the internet this opportunity seemingly offers unlimited potential. Many times however the biggest obstacle online entrepreneurs face is their own inability to even get out of the starting blocks due to confusion. The importance of getting a successful start can not be overemphasized since this creates momentum that is especially critical for a new business. However this successful start can not be realized without first taking some type of action.

Here are 5 steps recommended to all aspiring online marketers who are experiencing difficulty getting started online.

Take Immediate Action

By taking action right away you have already overcome a common nemesis which is procrastination. Your initial action does not have to be significant as long as it goes beyond the 'dreaming' and places you into the game. Establish a website, set up a blog or even decide upon a domain name. Look around and see what your next logical step is and move in that direction…

Education

Obviously you will need to better familiarize or educate yourself with your field of interest. Take courses or purchase any necessary products that will help further your knowledge in the field in which you are looking to start your business. This may concern the field itself or perhaps the focus may be on business operations. Either way the need to further educate yourself exists and will help increase your chances of a successful start.

Seek Advice

This is a great compliment to any educational materials you may be using and also gives you more perspective along with first hand knowledge and working experience. Having a mentor is invaluable for the advice and insight you can gain!

Network

Go forth out into niche you are targeting and pick up what are the hot topics, pet peeves, common problems and any other additional advice you can uncover. Networking in this way gives you a higher profile and also helps create bonds that will be very useful for future business purposes as well.

Remain Realistic

Having a positive mental attitude is an asset you need to succeed however you must learn to control your optimism. Do not walk away from any other source of income you have until your business venture online proves it can supply you with the income you need. Being hopeful will keep you motivated but being Pollyanna (unrealistically optimistic) can put you out on the street, literally!

Starting an online business is a realistic way of earning an income without having to invest a lot of money. However many still experience difficult moving beyond the 'thinking' stages of marketing on the internet. Quite often online entrepreneurs experience difficulty taking the first step towards starting their business due to their confusion and a lack of direction. The 5 steps recommended above serve to help lend direction and establish where aspiring online marketers need to focus in order to give their business a successful start. The key is in simply putting your ideas into action and then further educating yourself to increase your chances of achieving the success you seek online.

Spcial Thx for www.selfgrowth.com/articles/taking-action-when-starting-an-online-business