Written on October 19th, 2009 by Joe Schuelerno shouts
by Tim Bishop for Weber Shandwick Worldwide Contact: + 44 7776 187123
Today where ever you look, you see people with smartphones. These devises are becoming more and more like computer and are more useful for business each day. As a small business owner you need to make sure that take advantage of the opportunities given through technological advances. Technology is not cheap and I am not advocating buying every new technology that come out, but some technologies are becoming inevitable to buy, to compete in the market.
Smartphones are not a necessity to buy for small businesses yet, but I have a feeling that they will be soon. The benefits that a smart phone can offer will help many aspects of your business.
If you are contemplating on whether to buy a smartphone for you business, consider these benefits:
- Mobility–You have the power of a computer in your pocket. You can search the web, give a PowerPoint at a coffee shop, or make an online bid in a taxi.
- Email–You can send and receive and email from anywhere you have reception.
- Productivity–there are now so many application on smartphones that will give you the opportunity to be more productive.
If you are not familiar with using a smartphone, don’t use that as and excuse to ignore this opportunity. I especially recommend small business owners that travel a lot, do a lot of networking with clients, and these that require information immediately.
If you have any comment to add about smartphone use feel free to comment on the post. Also if you have any questions on smartphone feature feel free to ask.
I hope the help you survive the business jungle
Written on October 15th, 2009 by Joe Schuelerno shouts
For small businesses, databases can be a great tool to track and communicate important information for their business. The problem is that most people do not know the most effective ways to use them. The database is only as good as the people using it, so much effort is needed in planning choose the right data input into the computer. Here are some foundational tips how to obtain good information when starting a database:
- Useful data
- Accessible data
- Prevent ambiguous database objects
- Uniform database object names.
Useful Data
Do not store junk on the database, make sure you will actually use the data in the future, for example, if you owned a small pizza shop you could store customers data that could give you information to see the frequency of visits, to track how many new customers showed up that week, and to track which pizza toppings that are the most popular. You would not care about your customers hair color, it is not useful so don’t store it. This may be a simple example but it is important to understand because many people will just put what ever information they can think of. There are two reasons why this is bad:
- Hard drive space is expensive–the more you want to track, the more you need to store, so don’t waste the valuable resources of your hard drive.
- A great amount of data can be harder to manage, why make things more complicated if they don’t need to be
Just make sure that the information you decide to keep track of is useful and you will have a good start for your database.
Accessible Data
Next, make sure that the data is easily accessible because you may find that although the data could be useful, it will take too much time if your data is hard to find. Again, you are just starting out if it is not necessary and will take too much time to obtain, then maybe you should consider not using it. If the data is necessary, then you will need to find a way to get it that are not too expensive because most data is accessible for a certain price. Hopefully this will not be a problem for you because taking away data can be easy than finding hard to access data.
No Ambiguity with names
I you are making you own database in Microsoft Access or FileMaker Pro, then you will be making the database yourself. Although this blog is not how to make a database, I will cover some tips on how to ensure proper data. Make sure all your table, queries, forms,reports, field, and boxes have proper names; it may be easier at first to use the default name, but as your database gets bigger, it will be a hard to find and information and even worst it will be a nightmare to edit the database later (trust me, i made the mistake once and i was ready to pull my hair out).
Database Object Uniformity
Naming your tables with a prefix table, for example “tableEmployee”s, makes it much easier to build a database, especially when lists of tables and queries are combine. here are some standard prefixes:
- txt for Text Box (txtStartDate)
- cmb for Combo Box (cmbEmployee)
- lst for List Box (lstGender)
you can make your own if you like but make sure that they are easy to remember and follow to stay consistent throughout the database.
These are just some tips when you are starting your database and if you follow them, you database will be much easier to access and maintain.
May these tips help you survive the business jungle
Written on October 14th, 2009 by Joe Schuelerno shouts
Many small business owners are afraid to invest in new technology because they think they are wasting their money. That is not usually the case however, most people realize that spending money to purchase technology can save you more money , but not many people are sure how to do it, so they are not willing to take the risk. Here are some general guidelines in purchasing technology.
- Make sure you research on the type of equipment you will buy–I will be writing reviews on some technology that is important for most businesses so keep up with my posts
- More expensive is not always better–Some technology is just over price, especially technology represented by big names. Some lesser known brand can work just as good as a well-known brand.
- You do not always need the best–although a $5000.00 computer is the best, a small business probably does not need that good of a computer. Buy a computer that fits your needs not the maximum package you can buy. and I will help you with that in future postings.
Technology is cheaper than you may think if you know how to buy it and I will give you advice on how to do it especially on Software, Hardware, Computers, and Mobile Devices.
Remember, Don’t let the Business Jungle overwhelm you.
