Business Intelligence 101

The goal of every business is to be successful by gaining new customers and retaining old customers. A crucial way of achieving this end is through Business Intelligence. Business intelligence is also known as simply BI. Business intelligence can be defined as a process of collecting information in the area of business. An essential idea of business is that data is enhanced into information and then into knowledge. Business use BI to gain an advantage in the marketplace by understanding their customer s needs, customer s decision-making processes, and economic, cultural, and technological trends. Business intelligence involves analyzing not only the customer but the entire industry as a whole. Finally, business intelligence is driven by a goal set by the company. The goal can be short term or long term.

Read full article by Robert Flanglin

Increase Your Business Growth and Cash Flow Through Equipment Leasing

"If it can be manufactured, it can be leased." For the past decade or so, this statement has become more and more true to fact. From computer software to commercial aircraft, equipment leases are utilized day in and day out in a constantly changing and highly aggressive business environment worldwide. To gain or to keep the edge over their competitors, companies of every type and size are constantly looking for creative ways to conserve working capital while expanding operations. Many have turned to leasing their equipment to help in the effort. For this reason, the leasing industry is being defined as a major player in equipment financing today.

So, why should you join these businesses in choosing to lease? Well, one key factor is that the commencement of a lease can be done with very little out of pocket expense. Two advanced payments or an equal security deposit is usually all that's required. Couple this with the fact that for many leases, particularly those under $75,000, a simple one page credit application is all that is needed to be considered for approval. Compare this against an equipment loan, with it's more extensive paperwork and the resulting 10 to 50 percent down payment required to begin the transaction.

Read full article by Mark Uptain

Purchasing Health Insurance

eHealthInsurance.com released today an interesting report entitled "The Most Affordable Cities for Individuals to Buy Health Insurance". This report outlines the affordability of health insurance in the 50 largest cities across the country for single Americans and for men and women respectively. The report can help small business owners and self-employed individuals research potential savings on their health insurance premiums and to consider health insurance plan premiums as an important financial data point when making relocation decisions. It looks at the affordability of health insurance in 50 cities in the United States.

Some key findings in this report include:

• 7 of the top 10 cities are in California
• 66% of cities can purchase individual insurance for under $100 a month
• There is some disparaty between the cost of individual health insurance plans based on gender
• Health insurance plans are more affordable when individuals choose higher annual deductible plans

The top 10 cities for individuals to buy health insurance are as follows (city, state, average monthly premium):

1. Long Beach, CA = $54.00
2. Sacramento, CA = $56.00
3. Fresno, CA = $56.00
4. San Diego, CA = $57.00
5. Columbus, OH = $57.91
6. San Jose, CA = $58.00
7. San Francisco, CA = $58
8. Oakland, CA = $58
9. Mesa, AZ = $58.74
10. Tucson, AZ = $58.77

Management Lesson from Star Wars III

Going to the movies is one of the few inexpensive perks of life that I had to forego when I had my first child almost three years ago. Instead, I had to content myself to watching movies when they are released in DVDs.

But not with Star Wars III. Oh no, definitely not with the final Star Wars movie! I am such a huge fan of this film that it feels like sacrilege to watch it in the small screen months after it was shown in the theaters.

Star Wars, however, is not all about light sabers and galactic wars. In this article from Oaktree-Research.com, the writer finds eight management lessons from the final chapter of this film.

Pay Your Children to Work for You with the Blessing of the IRS

You've heard that you can't have your cake and eat it, too. But hiring your own family is one case when you can. Pay your minor or adult children to work for your business, then write it off as an expense.

Many people are confused about whether it's legal to hire their children and grandchildren. Follow my advice to satisfy both the IRS and employment laws - while saving on your own taxes. Assuming it's a true payment for services performed (and the paperwork is handled properly) it's totally legal and acceptable to pay family members.

Minor Children Save the Most Taxes

Child labor restrictions don't apply to a parent (unless it's in manufacturing, mining, or any hazardous occupation defined by the Department of Labor) - even under 16. I hired my own daughters from the ages of 7 and 9 without a hitch.

You need not pay withholding income taxes, payroll taxes (including Social Security) and Workmen's Compensation (in most states) until the child turns 18. Just remember to complete quarterly payroll tax returns, as you must for any employee. Forget about paying federal unemployment taxes until the child turns 21.

However, if your business is an S or C Corporation, you must pay Social Security and Medicare taxes regardless of their ages.

Read full article

10 Opportunities for Retail Innovation

A new study by Retail Forward entitled "Retail Innovation: Ten Opportunities for 2010" is an interesting read covering the trends and potential opportunities for the retail sector. The report focuses on the 10 retail innovations that go beyond technology and operating strategies, and instead looks at new ways for providing consumer benefits. The report does a very good job in explaining the concepts especially its use of real-life illustrations of the concepts presented.

According to the report, here are the 10 retain innovation opportunities to watch out for:

• Catch a Wave - the need to respond to demographic, societal, economic and technological trends (e.g. responding to the retail needs of the older people and ethnic customer)
• Solve My Problem - if you understand why a customer is buying your product, then you can effectively do cross-selling, allowing to better provide a more complete solution to the buyer
• Do It for Me - instead of the do-it-yourself consumers, you now see a growing segment of customers who want retailers to do it for them (e.g. home improvement assembly by Lowe's)
• Help Me Choose - given the vast information available and the surge of new products and brands, customers are looking to retailers to help them choose the right products for them
• Come to Me - before, customers would drive to go to a retailer; now they want retailers to come to them bringing with it new opportunities for retailers to reach out to the customers (e.g. mobile retailing)
• Enhance the Experience - growing focus on customer experience shifts the retailer's thinking from what moves a product to what moves a customer
• Make it Easy - focus on ease of use to save consumers time and effort
• Do It My Way - increased focus on individualism along with personalization and customization
• Help Me Connect - retailers can look at customer's heightened need for social networking as an opportunity for their businesses
• Speed it Up - time is scarce and retailers would do well to respond to customers' need for the product fast.

You can read the full report here

Selling on the Internet: Metrics to Guide You

If you are running an e-commerce business, do you wonder how you are doing relative to other businesses on the Web? Do you ask how your conversion rates are compared to others? Or how your marketing costs stack with the rest? If you are selling on the Web, I highly recommend checking out e-tailing.com's report "The Merchant Speaks," which is the result of The E-tailing Group's annual survey of e-commerce executives conducted during the first quarter of 2005.

Below are some interesting findings from the study:

What is your conversion rates?
When asked what is their conversion rates, majority of survey respondents (42%) say that their conversion rate (defined as the number of orders/number of visitors) is about 1-3.9%.

• Under 1% conversion rate = 9% of survey respondents
• 1-1.9% = 21%
• 2-2.9 = 21%
• 3-3.9 = 15%
• 4-4.9 = 7%
• 5-7.9% = 11%
• 8-9.9% = 3%
• 10-14.9% = 3%
• 15-20% = 2%
• Don't know = 8%

What is your shopping cart abandonment rates?
Shopping cart abandonment is said to be an "increasing problem" with 33% of respondents reporting abandonment rates of over 50%

• Between 0-10% abandonment rate = 10% of survey respondents
• 11-20% = 9%
• 21-30% = 15%
• 31-40% = 13%
• 41-50% = 20%
• 51-60% = 14%
• 61-70% = 10%
• 71-80% = 3%
• >80% = 6%

What is your marketing cost per order?

• <$1 marketing cost per order = 19% of respondents
• Between $1-$5 = 39%
• >$5 = 42%

The study also looks at personalization, email strategies, and customer segmentation of the e-commerce respondents.

Traditional Retailing Techniques in the Ecommerce World

In a recent survey done by The E-Tailing Group and some results published by the Internet Retailer magazine, they found that retailers are finding success in using traditional retailing tactics to their web operations:

Traditional Retail Tactics What Works on the Web (features rated as very/somewhat valuable):

• Seasonal promotions (94%)
• Email as a merchandising vehicle (91%)
• Site search (81%)
• Sales or specials (90%)
• Cross sells (84%)

Traditional retail tactics seen as having growing importance on the Web:

• Gift centers/suggestions (68%)
• Coupons/rebates (67%)
• Retail locators (50%)
• Frequent buyer programs (47%)

Researching Your Market Using Online Surveys

Market research is a critical activity that many home-based entrepreneurs fail to do for their businesses. Some simply do not know how to do it; others feel that they already have a good sense of their market; while some do not have the time or resources to do it.

One misconception is that market research is a time-consuming activity that requires a tremendous amount of resources. My standard response is that the cost will depend on how you want to go about it. You can hire a market research company and pay them $20,000 for a survey including analysis, or you can do it yourself and spend only $19.95 using an online survey company.

I recently helped a company conduct a survey among their newsletter subscribers. They wanted to know their subscriber's level of satisfaction with their product and the newsletter itself, get to know more about their subscribers (profiles and demographics), as well as receive user feedback on their product. As the company runs on a tight budget, I used the online survey company SurveyMonkey.com to run the survey (PowerHomeBiz.com is not affiliated with this company in any way).

I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to do an online market survey using SurveyMonkey.com. For only $19.95 per month, the whole process was a breeze with no headaches at all. The process of creating the survey questions and testing them as to their length and level of complication for the respondent was easy. They also provide the option of sending the survey question through email, as a text link on your website, or as a pop up on your site. Best of all, results were in real time: you can immediately see the responses in chart format immediately! If you want fast turnaround and speedy delivery of data results, online surveys are the way to go.

The only downside (if you can call it that) is that the price of $19.95 per month is only good for 1,000 respondents. If you get 1000+ respondents, then the price increases to an additional 5 cents per respondents. Still a great deal, overall. One other thing: it only automatically calculates the results of closed-ended queries. You still have to do the grouping and tabulation for open-ended queries (e.g. questions such as "Any additional comments about the site?").

Below are some of my learnings in conducting an online market research using tools like SurveyMonkey.com:

1. Prepare all your survey questions before you sign up. Once you sign up, your meter is already ticking and you'd want to use that to send out the survey and wait for the responses.
2. Start the survey at the first of the month. Afterall, the monthly fees are defined by the month. So if you signup, for example, on June 20 -- your account is active only from June 20-30 (the month of June) and not June 20-July 19.
3. Majority of responses will come within the first 3 days of sending the survey. They say that if the recipient has not responded within 15 days, there is very little chance of getting a response from the person.
4. Response rate can vary depending on the target audience. It can be as low as 1.5% or as high as 25%. With my client, we got 12% response rate because our target audience was their loyal customers (newsletter subscribers) and we sweetened the deal with an Amazon gift certificate!

Of course, it's one thing to send a survey and another to analyze it!

How Americans Are Using Their Time

Not totally related to small and home business, but I thought it may be interesting to share the results of the recently released the American Time Use Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the first survey conducted by the Government on how Americans are using a very critical resource -- time. The survey collected data on the activities people do during the day and how much time theyspend doing them.

Below are some of the interesting findings:

• On an "average day" in 2003, persons in the U.S. age 15 and over sleptabout 8.6 hours, spent 5.1 hours doing leisure and sports activities,worked for 3.7 hours, and spent 1.8 hours doing household activities. Theremaining 4.8 hours were spent in a variety of other activities, includingeating and drinking, attending school, and shopping.
• On days that they worked, about 1 in 5 employed persons did some or all of their work at home.
• On the days they worked, employed men worked about an hour more than employed women. This difference partly reflects women's greater likelihood of working part time.
• Self-employed persons were far more likely than wage and salary workers to have done some work at home--51 versus 16 percent.