BizSieve Team | BizSieve.com

Database Management for Small Businesses

Database management is defined as the maintenance of various types of records like employee details, vendors’ list, customer database etc. Anne Kerven, had mentioned in Colorado Business Magazine, that it simply entails the transference of the contents of file cabinets into an electronic format. That simplistic statement spawned a multimillion dollar industry dealing with database management and relevant solutions. This is a service that is required by virtually every company that has the need to maintain its records in a professional manner and leverage that database to maximize productivity and profit.

Databases can be of various sizes. They can range from a few hundred entries or lists stored on an individual hard-drive, to thousands of terabytes worth of data that is stored on large mainframe computers maintained by corporate giants. The primary benefit of using database management software is the ability that is afforded to each employee of an organization to locate and access stored data, however old and remote, in a matter of moments. Previously, the data based reports that took days, even weeks to be compiled by specialized technicians. Today, they are compiled by ordinary employees in minutes.

Choosing the Right Database Management System for a Small Business

As a small business owner, if you are thinking about buying database management software, you need to ask yourself two things before you actually make a decision. They are, the kind of reports that you would require from such a system and what you hope to get out of it. These questions being answered would help you in determining the type of database that you would need to maintain. Furthermore, you would also get an idea about the kind of information or data you would gather and what fields you need to create to do that. It is also a prudent decision to start small, for example a mailing list, to acclimatize yourself to the task of database management. Once you master it, it will be easy for you to move on to more complex tasks.

The moment when you have identified what you need out of a database management system, you can move on to selecting the right kind of software to get the job done. If, by any chance, you are proficient with computers and the database that you need to maintain is a simple one, you could easily choose from the software packages available to the market and identify the one that suits your needs the best. Otherwise, it is a good idea to involve professionals to help you to decide.

Types Of Database Management Software

Most databases serve two basic functions- warehousing and transactional. Databases that deal with transactional data are built with relative ease, and perform simple tasks such as keeping tabs on the availability of parts or product. Warehouse database, on the other hand, collect any data related to company matters, like sales history and hiring statistics.

Experts say that the simpler software you end up buying, the better, because by buying a ready-made and non customized software, you will be spending a lot less money. But that approach has its tradeoffs. Your business might have a unique model and hence unique requirements which can’t be met by ordinary generic database management software. This is where the expertise of a specialized data base service provider, in designing customized database software to meet your needs, can help you.

About the Author: Penny is an expert associated with Emergingpower2, which offers reliable and secure database management services for businesses. Visit the website to know more about how you can use the company’s services.

How Loans for Small Businesses Help Owners Cope with Rising Expenses

People especially the small time business owners are extremely afraid with the latest economical condition in the global market. This article shares a few tips which will help them to cope with the rising prices.

Ever since the global market faced the economical slowdown few years back, the market is yet to recover from the shock completely. A number of brands and organizations are still suffering from the effect of the recession and trying to get back to the track by cost cutting, and handing over pink slips to a number of employees. But the worst sufferers are those who run small business. They are facing lots of difficulties to survive. As the price of foods, gasoline, other raw materials which are quite important items for manufacturing many products have increased a lot, the small business owners are compelled to raise the price of their products to cover the cost. But they face strong opposition and rejection from the end of their potential customers as they are just not ready to pay more. But we cannot blame them solely as they are also suffering a lot with the sudden blow of recession as they have financially become weaker than the earlier with a little or no savings.

It has become quite tough for the business owners to get easy finance or cash loan easily. Therefore they have to face the situation all by themselves. A number of solutions and effective tips are there which they can follow as small time business owners who want to deal with the recent rising of costs of the materials.

Observe the exchange rate

If not in your home country, you can improve your business abroad. Thanks to the recession the price of US dollar has become quite weak. This has opened the opportunity for the buyers from different countries across the world to buy products from US. Therefore if you cannot get much opportunity in your homeland you can think of expanding your business across the world. It is not always necessary that you have to open branch in each place which are your target markets. You can also boost up your sell through online marketing and online purchasing facility.

Design most affordable products possible

If the products which are produced by your company are expensive or hi-end you should think twice and reconsider the price of the products to boost up the sell. You can start new set of products and promote them so that both your existing and the potential customers start showing interest towards the products. You may find a number of customers who are eager to use your products but unable to do so because of the high price. Once you reduce the price this section of customers will also show their interests.

Take a small step if increasing prices

As the owner of a small business it may happen that you will decide to increase the price of the products to cover the costs and make profit. But take time before doing this. It is suggested that you should take small steps while revising the prices of the products instead of taking a big step at a time. If you increase price in small doses it will not affect your customers much.

You should not get afraid of this situation instead you need to prepare yourself to face it. Once you take some of these cleaver steps you will be able to run your business successfully.

About the Author: Parker is an experienced finance officer who specializes in the loans sector. She advices everyone to opt for cash bill pay as it is the most convenient way to deal with financial problems.

Holiday Ruckus: Five Things to Watch out for in the Workplace During the Holiday Season

The holiday season is full of endless cheer and celebration. So many individuals wait in eager anticipation and excitement for Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve to roll around. With all the seasonal joy, delicious food, and countless parties, the holiday season may seem like it’s all fun and games, but for many small-business owners this season can cause quite a few complications in the workplace.

Small-business owners don’t intend to come off like Mr. Scrooge during the holiday season; if anything, they are trying their best to remain upbeat and positive throughout the fall and winter months. After watching my parents run their small landscaping business through the years, I know firsthand how difficult it can be to run a company around Thanksgiving and Christmas. In case you haven’t realized, the holidays are peeking their heads around the corner; for those of you who are running a small business, there are five things in particular you need to start preparing for now.

holiday ruckus

Employee Vacations

Inevitably, many of your employees are going to want to take a few vacation days during the holidays. Therefore, it’s wise to tell everybody to submit their time-off requests as soon as possible. The main thing you want to avoid is having everyone from a specific department like accounting and human resources all gone at the same time. The best way to avoid something like this is to have members from each team or department meet with each other and designate which days they intend to take off. By doing this, you’ll avoid having too many people gone from the workplace at the same time.

Bonuses

Holiday bonuses are a tricky thing to handle. People often expect them during the holidays, and unfortunately, not all small businesses are able to hand them out. If you are not going to be handing out holiday bonuses, go ahead and make it known well in advance. Although some employees may be let down, the last thing you want to do is have them getting angry or upset right before the holidays. If you do intend to hand out bonuses, then it’s wise for you to contemplate when you’re going to hand them out. If you want to incorporate an element of surprise, you can wait until just before Christmas to hand them out, but if you want people to use them for holiday shopping, perhaps you could hand them out just before Thanksgiving.

Different Religious Views

Many of us make the assumption that anyone and everyone celebrates Thanksgiving and Christmas. In case you’ve forgotten, we live in a diverse country where not everybody celebrates these traditional holidays. In order to avoid any sort of unintended conflict in the office, it’s a good idea to ask everyone to submit anonymous comments on how they would like to handle celebrating holidays in the office. To handle something this, you could hand out an anonymous questionnaire asking people things like if they would like to have holiday parties; which holidays they would like celebrate; if there are certain foods they can’t eat; if there are certain holiday rituals they are uncomfortable with; etc. By making the holiday season comfortable for everyone, you’ll avoid most unintentional animosity and tension in the office.

Holiday Food

The holidays are packed full of delicious, fattening foods. Although our taste buds can’t get enough of them, our waistlines can. It is fun to bring in caloric sweets to the office every once in a while, but going overboard isn’t good for anyone. Make sure to talk to your office staff and emphasize that although it is a kind gesture to bring in sweet and salty treats, it’s important to know where to draw the line. You don’t want people feeling as if they have to indulge in unhealthy food simply because somebody brought it into the office “for everybody.” The last thing you want is rundown or exhausted simply because they are divulging too much in seasonal sweets.

Low Productivity

Along with all the holiday cheer comes one tough malady: low productivity. Many employees are so filled with excitement and anticipation during the weeks leading up to Christmas that their productivity goes down tremendously. Though it might be difficult to motivate people during the last few days before Christmas vacation, make sure to host a few employee meetings and have everyone go over what their working on during the low-productivity days. If you see a problem with certain departments or employees, pull them aside and kindly remind them that even though it’s the holiday season, they are still at work and they must live up to what is expected of them. As long as you remind everyone that they are not yet on Christmas break, you should be able to get everyone back on track quickly.

The holidays are supposed to be a fun, cheerful time of year, yet small-business owners must consider a number of conflicts that are likely to come up during the holidays. If you haven’t done so already, start thinking about how you’ll handle low productivity, employee vacations, holiday foods, different religious views, and bonuses during the upcoming holiday season.

About the Author: Alvina Lopez has freelanced about education throughout her career. As technology and education converge, Alvina hopes to guide her readers as they search for online college programs that have the potential to jumpstart their careers and change their lives. She welcomes feedback at alvina.lopez@gmail.com.

Maximizing Your Marketing Potential by Using a Mail House

If you have a business you would naturally want to maximize your marketing potential. In order to achieve this, you must utilize sources such as a mail house to push your marketing strategy over the top.

However some businesses are discouraged to utilize the direct mail approach to marketing because they think that it is expensive. Instead, these businesses put their marketing funds into advertising on television, print and radio. Then there are some companies who would go with the online approach because they believe that it serves the same purpose as direct mail, and thus offer the same benefits without the cost. What not many businesses realize is that online direct mail marketing often goes directly to mail users’ spam folders where they are not likely to be opened, let alone be read. Direct mail approach remains the most effective tool in promoting a brand or product.

With direct mail marketing, you promote your brand directly to your target market. Many companies take a wider approach to marketing by utilizing broad marketing strategies which make use of media such as print, radio, and television. A broader approach is all very well, but it offers businesses little control over whether who receives their message and leaves them wondering if their target market has seen, read or heard their pitch. Direct mail marketing eliminates any uncertainty that your message is received by targeting your clients where they live.

Enlisting the help of a mail house has been proven time and gain to boost a marketing campaign. As such, it is a smart idea to make something that has been proven effective a part of your marketing plan. A mail house can help you in each aspect of your marketing campaign. A reliable mail house can provide you with client listings that are appropriate for your brand or product, or help you search for your target market. They also have the resources to help you penetrate a bigger client base.

Employing the services of a mail house can make it easier for companies to launch their marketing campaign. Aside from providing client listings, businesses will also have the benefit of working with a team of experts who know the market and who can help him in terms of planning and strategizing their marketing campaigns. Reliable mail house has a wealth of experience in dealing with marketing campaigns and will be able to provide expert advice on how to properly market a brand or product. What is more, a mail house can also help a business create worthwhile content or copy, as well as help you come up with interesting graphics.

A direct mail marketing campaign requires creating and properly arranging various mailing components into one neat package. A mail house would be able to offer these services and more. A reliable mail house has the personnel and equipment to print, sort, address, insert, seal, package, fold, tab, apply postage to your mail, and so much more including assembling binders and laminating. If you are considering assembling the various components of your mailing in-house to save some money, think again. Doing it in-house will eat up a lot of your time and resources, and could cost you a lot of money in the long run. With a mail house, your mailing components will be assembled neatly and properly.

Because they work closely with the post office, many mail house service providers can get postage discounts and save you a considerable amount of money in the long run. Couple that with the effectiveness of direct mail marketing, and enlisting the services of a mail house makes it really worth investing in.

About the Author: I’m Kaycee Mabborang, I write for Print & Mail 4U, a company specializes in various printing and direct mail services. I have been producing top quality content at a very quick pace since 2007.

Common Mistakes In Business Practices That You Will Need To Avoid

Many new business owners consider that the financial management of their enterprise is an over complicated task that is best left in the hands of their accountant. However, nothing could be further from the truth, because the task of the accountant resides exclusively in recording the cash flow from and to your enterprise, not interpreting it. He is not qualified to keep track of your company’s profit loss ratio and take business decisions according to it. You are!

While I’m not saying that financial management is a walk in the park, you can definitely make things easier if you steer clear of the mistakes that I’m going to present in the following article.

Failing to establish business strategies that are easy to follow

You should start your enterprise by organizing a list of tasks that are mandatory for its well being and profitability, such as:

Constant verifications of the company’s revenues
Checking out the value of the expenses on a regular basis
Examining the cash flow
Requesting a forecast of the company’s budget in the long and short term

Photo credits: stefan.erschwendner

There are of course other tasks, related to your particular business niche that you need to account for. However, the point is that you need to plan these actions on a regular basis and always make time for them, irrespective of how busy your schedule is. Without them, financial chaos are bound to unleash and that’s never good for business.

Combining personal income with the company’s income

Right off the bat, that is probably the worst thing you could possibly do because it’s a surefire way of embezzlement. Disconnect the two accounts – business and personal – is the first action you should engage providing you recognize yourself in this situation. At the same time, it is critical to refrain from paying your company’s expenses from your own pocket or vice versa, purchasing personal use goods/services from your business account. It is also necessary to point out that these erroneous approaches will make it difficult to keep track of profit and loss statements, income statements and cash flow statements.

Avoid paying your taxes as much as possible

Many financial experts state that the taxes themselves are not the actual reason why businesses become crippled. To put it simply, the taxes that you have neglected to acquit will start piling up to the point when you will not be able to get out of debt. Other common errors you can make is to utilize the money that should be dedicated for taxes in order to account for other operating purposes or to forget about setting aside the cash that goes on taxes for each of your employees. In order to avoid these costly mistakes, my suggestion is to open a dedicated tax bank account which will be utilized for no other purpose and that will also help you provide the quarterly estimates requested by the IRS authority.

Improvising instead of planning

Remember how I mentioned the fact that you need to have the financial statements on your desk to analyze at least on a monthly basis? Well, that will not serve any purpose if you have not set an actual goal for your business. In other words, you have the data at your disposal but you have no idea what it signifies. Is it good? Is it bad? In the absence of a pre-established financial goal – for example a certain monthly/yearly net profit – you have no clue regarding whether or not your current business strategy needs tweaking. On the other hand, by creating at least a basic estimate of your expectations will permit you to find out how close you are to the goal and adapt accordingly.

Forgetting to put a part of the revenues aside for a rainy day

The volatility of the financial environment nowadays makes creating a revenue savings fund more necessary than ever. Almost every field of business can experience sudden shifts in supply and demand, so without a lifeline your company may be assuming more risks than it can handle. However, there is an alternative reason why a certain percentage of your revenues should go into a savings account: unexpected opportunities. What I mean here is that there is no way to predict when you could be granted to possibility to make an investment that would allow your business to expand or reinvent itself. Therefore, if you want to be certain that you are not the one left on the shore while that ship sails, be sure to take this advice into consideration.

Not outsourcing some of your workload

As a rule of thumb, in the business world you cannot make money without spending some cash first. Here I’m not referring to the budget for marketing and advertisement, but rather to that associated with distribution and fulfillment services.

If you have been in business for a while now, then it is likely you already have these details sorted out. However, if you do the math, you will soon realize just how much this actually costs. All I’m saying is that fulfillment centers have managed to help some industry veterans reduce company expenses. Isn’t it worth checking out if this is applicable for you as well?

New companies that consider they can’t possible afford such an investment, should think of their competition. Can you say that you can live up to the standards in your niche operating from an adjacent area or a stock room? Think about it, folks!

About the Author: Chad is a writer for fulfilmentcenters.com, a leading fulfillment service in the US.