November, 2015

Moving Material: What's Slowing Down Your Shipping Process?

Your company's shipping process is vital, impacting everything from the total customer experience, to overhead, and more. Bottlenecks and other shipping challenges can increase costs, complicate experiences with vendors, and have other negative impacts on your business, and because of this, you may be focused on improving your process. Identifying common issues and finding a way to overcome these challenges are critical to your business shipping. 

Give Your Employees Something to Shout About

As a business owner, what are you doing to make sure your employees feel wanted and rewarded over time?

In many cases, a good salary is first and foremost the top item of importance of when it comes to many employees. Others, however, are more than happy to get some good amenities along the way, even if it means their salary is not the highest possible.

Coupon Creativity: How to Stretch that Monthly Paycheck

While nearly everyone has seen television shows or documentaries about people who go a bit too far with couponing, you don't need to spend hours a week chasing deals to enjoy some major savings. Andrea Woroch of the Promotion Marketing Association states in US News & World Report that an average coupon user can save up to a thousand dollars per year. Here are some strategies to save money without a huge time commitment to couponing.

When is it time to hire a PR firm?

Just about any C-suite executive would like to get a favorable feature story about the company from a major news outlet, and it wouldn’t hurt for said executive to be highlighted as a “game changer” or “innovator.” But are you ready for a PR agency to take up your cause?

Here are five tips to consider if the time is right for a public relations firm.

Increase Profitability and Customer Retention with Timesheet Software

The costs of time management, payroll and accounting are among the largest expenses facing any business. Whether your company employs ten or ten thousand, the expense of handling time sheets, payroll, workflow and job outlays significantly impacts your revenue stream. Most importantly, those costs have a direct effect on your bottom line.

Losing Customers Hurts More Than Your Feelings

Seven Ways You Can Make Your Outsourcing Smarter

Outsourcing may seem like a great way for your business to save money. However, if not deployed strategically, outsourcing can actually be counter-productive and have a negative effect on your competitiveness and bottom line. With that in mind, you can use these seven tips to make your outsourcing better managed.

Outsource for the Right Things
You should never outsource your core business functions. It would be like a director of a movie subcontracting another person to direct in his place. You would be giving up control of what you do best, since any core function you actually advertise or produce needs to be a part of the overall process. Instead, only outsource things that are supplemental to the creation of your product or service.

How Can You Become a Lender for Businesses?

The trend of business loans has become very popular, as most of the organizations spanning from small and medium to large ones have developed their business by availing fund from banks and other capital investment firms.

However, if you want to establish yourself as a lender for any business, you need to know that banks are the major players in this sector and many organizations always prefer banks as their first choice. Along with this, several investment companies are doing business in the market by offering fund to needy business owners.

Zero-in on Application Monitoring Best Practices

Running a successful business means using the right tools and applications, a main reason why application monitoring is such an important part of any business.

With that said, there are a number of best practices to keep in mind when monitoring and managing your business applications.

Five Investments Entrepreneurs Shouldn't be Afraid to Make

The Kauffman Index reported that startup business activity rose in 2015, signaling a positive indicator of job creation, innovation, and economic advancement. 
While the economic prospects for new entrepreneurs increase the attractiveness of being your own boss, many entrepreneurs are drawn in by the prospects of setting your own hours, and the potential for higher financial returns than are possible from a 9 to 5 job. Making the right investments is a good way to ensure your business has the highest chances for success. In this article we discuss different investments entrepreneurs shouldn't be afraid to make.

16th Grant Winner's Update - Preparing for the Busy Holiday Season

Well not a whole lot has happened with Living the Dream Alpaca Farm in the last two weeks.  We have our web-site up live and have started to receive on-line E-commerce orders.  I have fine tuned the site and the on line store.  Most of the Alpaca Clothing that we bring to shows is featured on the web-site.  We invite you to view the site at www.livingthedreamalpacafarm.com.  With the help from Idea Café grant monies it has made it possible for us to host an e-commerce site.  We believe this is going to be a huge part of the business revenue, with Christmas right around the corner and more people doing on-line shopping than ever.