Advantages of E-Invoicing

To make your business sense and to have a business wealth, E-Invoicing is one of the convenient ways to deliver the invoice and other related information regarding the company to its customers through online mode. E-Invoicing is no longer paper based which tends to achieve the low cost accounts payable transactions and grows your business faster by setting up the automation of an organization’s billing process.

E-Invoicing provides an effective solution in small and medium-sized business sectors by removing the manual calculation process with the paper-based system. Highly securable documents including the real time reports and other related statements can be transferred and accessed easily through this E-Invoicing system. It’s not necessary to replace the existing system and technology on working with this invoicing system.



This real time processing system has various benefits:

- Managing the accurate information which can be used for the cash-flow strategies.

- Highly securable, as it uses digital signature to guarantee that the file remains unchanged

- Multiple data format invoices can be processed.

- Quicker response in delivering the real time data that enables the suppliers to pay on time.

- Eliminating the errors and increasing the visibility of the data.

- Highly improved service levels with internal controls.

The disadvantage is that the user can download an invoice only after receiving an invoice through e-mail and can manually proceed by entering the data in bookkeeping system. An E-Invoicing system helps in addressing the entire requirements and benefits to automate the accounting and finance process. The issues regarding the integration of new technologies can be overcome with the existing invoicing network. Invoicing solution provides greater benefits in the business process.

How to measure productivity of a business

When dealing with business scenario, irrespective of its success measuring the productivity is a major factor. Strangely some business people are left with no answer when they are asked about the methodology to measure the productivity of a business. In few cases, business might yield unexpectedly a high profit that might satisfy the organization. But the businessmen will not be aware of the fact that the same business would do three times better while measuring the productivity.

Earlier there was a myth that business can either be improved or cannot be improved, but now it is not so. Productivity can be measured with certain business aspects in such a way that the business operations get reviewed at all the stages with the evaluation of their improvements. Under the pricing options see what could be measured to enable tracking of costs. Are the customers satisfied with the business pricing of the company.

In the conventional business, quality for the products was not given importance as it was considered to be an expensive one. Now the steps have to be taken to track the two critical indicators of quality, say the defects and variance. Next is the performance of the company’s employees . This plays a very important role in determining the productivity. So their performance should be tracked in order to predict the future productivity and if any improvements needed should be indicated.

Desired business outcomes are determined along with any other outcome that would leverage the further business activities. Risks are not anticipated in a business but it is obvious for it to occur. Try to measure the risks at an early stage that your customer cares about. Evaluate the feedback system from the employees and customers too. To improve the business henceforth, the above factors are to be followed and measured accordingly.

Online Accounting Revolution

The online technology has revolutionized over past ten years in which each and every business sectors are gaining their potential benefits of internet certainly where accountancy has no exception. Accounting profession is going through a revolution to make the business to track in a faster and hassle free manner. Technology has laid its impact on accounting with the advent of certain features to keep over your business track to run in a smooth way. Online accounting would highly be a preferable way of managing the finances of your business either for a freelance or work on short term contracts.

The online accounting is known for its simplicity, as the complexity in financial management can be overcome. With the online accounting program, the business owners can track their financial position in easier and quicker way. Computerized accounting systems have now replaced manual accounting systems in most of the organizations. Many online accounting services allow the users to record their transactions, view their current assets and also renders in creating their own invoice and pay slips.

Accounting application has in fact allowed maintaining the proper tracking of the information, based on regular interval basis resulting in the better efficiency and accountability. Users are able to access their financial information wherever they are without waiting for the accountant’s report looking into the current cash flow. Also it would be highly securable as the data are encrypted and stored online. Both the time and expense are saved with the accountancy programs leading to the significant tax reductions.

Online accounting would be ideal for the business owners in managing the finance on daily basis in an easily accessible way with more accuracy and security rather than moving with the services of an accountant. A new era of forensic accounting helps to keep in track on frauds during the sabotage of the electronic information which engaged in the accounting improvement as well as it allows in maintaining a track on their personal money. Now it would be much easier for the business owners to stay connected with their financial information in an easy way with the help of this online accounting technology.

Outsource Bookkeeping Needs

Being a small business owner, it’s highly important to maintain the record of your financial transaction and the data. This would highly be a time consuming task and makes the business owners to spend most of the time in doing bookkeeping. A lot of time has been spent on preparing the financial reports and book of accounts which makes the accounting and bookkeeping task to be greatly annoying and a difficult task for most of the business companies.

As this process acquires a lot of patience, most of the companies prefer outsourcing to save their time and to be more efficient in working on their own business. Outsourcing has now turned into a new trend in this business world. The bookkeeper records the business transactions and updates regularly from time to time. The business owners would come to know the real status of their enterprise with the summarized financial report with the accurate description of the financial condition of the company.

Apart from tax planning strategies, with outsourcing the tax payment of many small business companies are done on time. The skillful professional in bookkeeping recommends the business plans, enabling the business owners to succeed in their business. The reports provided by the bookkeepers are on the basis of income and profitability, sales and invoices, assets and liabilities in the business. It’s been quite easier to develop a valuable customer relationship with the excellent handling of bookkeeper.

The financial data can be accessed from anywhere and at anytime by the business owners. Nowadays every process which is required throughout the business is outsourced. The outsourcing of bookkeeping service helps to overcome the competition in your business fields and helps to benefit the clients with quality bookkeeping accounting. The operational cost to do bookkeeping is reduced along with the employee issues.

If you outsource bookkeeping for your online business, the management would be free from tiring in handling the most complex job and in saving a large amount from getting new employees to do the task. These would make the bookkeeping jobs to be simpler for large business corporations, small business companies in an efficient manner to expand their business with more revenue and production.

Small Business Marketing Forecast in 2011

Marketing the small business can certainly raise the revenue and establish the company worldwide. Of course Small businesses must be flexible in order to be successful. When economic times change, business firms must change their sales forecast. The marketing and finance departments can work together to provide a meaningful sales forecast.

As a new year begins small business should keep track on all these for sales accurate prediction and promotion.

• Study the economic data and find out how much are sales in your particular line of business (retail, manufacturing, etc.) expected to drop or rise?
• Confer with your marketing department and sales force. What are they experiencing out in the field?
• Based on your particular line of business, adjust your sales forecast up or down? For example, some businesses are recession-proof and actually do well in a recession. Other businesses, such as those offering luxury items, will not do well in a recession.

When discussing about Small Business Marketing Forecast in 2011, the results tend to show there will be remarkable improvement in online marketing tactics. The reason behind it is online marketing is cheaper. Small business firms may not have the resources of big businesses, but things like online and social media help level the playing field.

With social media only growing stronger, we're starting to see more companies using email to drive a conversation within social media. Companies always link to their social media properties, such as their Face book, You Tube, and Twitter pages, as well as blogs and email marketing campaigns.

Simultaneously, there seems to be some relatively untapped, cost-effective digital options like online videos, as well as increased mobile advertising, as viable marketing options this year.

Small companies are putting energy into their websites and e-mails also.

Researches say

• 45 percent of businesses plan to use online video in their marketing in 2011, vs. 28.4 percent in 2010.
• 35.9 percent of small businesses surveyed plan to use mobile advertising in 2011, vs. 21.3 percent in 2010.
• Approximately 15 percent say group deals and social couponing sites like Groupon and LivingSocial are beneficial to business.

Other key results say

• Nearly half of SMB owners plan increased ad spending for 2011; just 29 percent said that for 2010.
• Twenty two percent say trying to understand online advertising frustrates them.
• Sixty four percent report having a website, up nearly 20 percent from the surprisingly low 53 percent last year.
• Fifty percent say they plan to devote more resources to trade shows in 2011.
• Traditional media types such as direct mail (24.9%) and newspapers (19.2%) also should see increased resources in 2011.

Budget Planning for Small Business

Every successful business relies on comprehensive budget planning. Planning a budget is an essential process in order to ensure the proper flow of a business.

Before planning for a budget, take into consideration the type of your business, what are all the expected expenses, how frequent they are, how the company will pay for it. These are all the vital measures that you have to look into.

It would always be good enough to use previous budget records as a guideline. In case, if you are a starter of a new business look for the similar business budget models.

You can make use of a spreadsheet program or any computer accounting software for planning your budget. This is not only time consuming but also assist you with the realistic in line business financial plans.

Proper recording and monitoring of budget planned with major financial transactions that occurs inside a company is mandatory for every business. A budget that is not regularly monitored cannot do any good at future financial crisis.

Plan your budget in a right way with the help of an trusted accounting professional and act accordingly.

Business networking commandments

Networking is a major prospecting tool for most of the business people. It establishes the relationship with other business people and the customers. With the business networking you can use to grow your business and the revenue. Business networking is all about building relationships, finding the people having common ideology.
Business networking helps you to meet the people and get to know about them in determining whether they are good referral partners or clients. You spend most of your time and effort on people who can help each other in your business. When the process is done properly it can truly make a difference in building a wealth of resources and the amount of business your company generates in a successful manner. If it is done incorrectly, it would actually harm your business.
In order to gain the most out of business networking, use the following commandments:
1. Always have the business networking tools with you all times, like business cards, brochures, pamphlets that tell about your business, an informative name badge and a pocket-sized business card file containing cards of other professionals whom you can refer.
2. Identify your goal to meet the number of people, as people have to trust you before they will do business with you and make sure you get all their cards. It’s an important aspect to get the business card of everyone whom you meet. This sets the stage for networking to happen. Write notes on the backs of business cards that you collect, it might be useful in remembering a person more clearly. Don’t give your business card to everyone you meet. Rather, give it to anyone who asks you for it.
3. Be a host to do things for others and help to greet people, since a guest sits back and relaxes. If you see visitors sitting, introduce yourself and ask if they would like to meet others.
4. Pay attention to the events and conversations, so that you’ll be able to learn a lot about the people in your network. Be specific and brief, before you are to say something in your discussion and make sure how you want others to know you.
5. Always try not to close a deal as networking is about developing relationships with other professionals. Meeting people at events should be the beginning of that process, not the end of it.
6. Be prepared to give the list of referrals whenever possible. If you are unable to give someone a bona fide referral, try to offer some other information that might be of interest to them (about the incoming event). Have a specific list of referral needs. The more specific you are about, then you would be able to receive more referrals.

7. Time management is an essential factor to be considered. When you delay in sending a message to your fellow groups, indirectly you specify them that you only care about yourself and you don’t take the time to learn about their needs. Be careful in spending too much of time with any one person, as your goal is to meet a given number of people. Always try to have direct contact with that person, so that he would gain confidence on your small business.
Follow the above commandments effectively to develop relationships with people who we can help and who can help us. Also be sure to fulfill any promises which you have made. Make most of your time to spend on business networking.

Corporate Social Reponsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility is operating a business in a manner that meets the ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of business. To be more precise it is a continuing commitment by business towards economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large. CSR is most significant in large companies and small business organizations too.

Instilling and maintaining values of CSR in the employees is very important in an organization. This can certainly be done through few activities like:

Corporate governance: Ensuring sound corporate governance and compliance practices. Effective governance system includes good internal control System, management System, and auditing System.

Compliance policies are to create awareness around white-collar crimes such as bribery, dishonesty, corruption and fraud. Campaigns include

• War on Corruption: Raising the profile of white collar crime
• Identity Theft: Reminding staff to verify client identities and to keep information confidential
• Know Your Customer: A training programme for staff as required by the Financial Intelligence Centre Act.

Reporting: CSR Reports now not only include the environmental performance of the organization but also the most organizational social issues and non-financial key performance indicators. Increased transparency on reporting should be adopted.

Ethical policies: Maintain ethical policies and provide training to ensure that all employees perform with high standards of integrity and trust. Ethical policies include real concern and respect for employees (training, development, rewards, work-life balance, incentives, perks), for customers (safe, quality, value for money products and good customer service), and for suppliers (fair trade policies etc.)

Products and services: Develop and enhance products and services that provide social and environmental options for clients and prospects.

Well-being programs: Continue to provide talent management and well-being programs on stress management, physical fitness, nutrition and counseling through which employees can thrive and excel As part of employee assistance, these programs may offer health assessments, wellness workshops, counseling sessions and fitness center memberships, among others. Employee wellness programs aim to enhance employee health, leading to more productivity in the workplace.

Relationship: Build relationships with suppliers whose CSR goals and activities are aligned with expectations of the company.

Security programs: Ensure proper risk management, data security and privacy programs are in place.

Though there has been considerable research into the relationship between corporate social responsibility and profitability, the results proposed no relationship between them. Specifically, varying levels of social orientation were not found to correlate with performance differences too.

Why do businesses need to asses Risk management?

The latest recession has reminded us all that what can happen in business and its obvious for all of us to think over about it. Every business faces risks that could present threats to its success. Risk is the probability of an event and its consequences in a business environment. And all the companies have started giving more importance to risk management programs these days.

Under the main factors of risk first comes credit risk. The pain of the credit crunch persists. According to the Small Business Association, guaranteed loans were down 30% in 2008. The second one is legal risk.There are possibilities that for faulty products or hazardous working conditions in an organization. Then there are many possibilities of concentration risks, financial risks and regulatory risks.

So in order to overcome all these, risk management programs should be implemented.

This includes 5 steps First you need to work out how people could be harmed. When you work in a place everyday it is easy to overlook some hazard. Walk around your workplace and look at what could reasonably be expected to cause harm. Ask your employees or their representatives what they think.

For each hazard you need to be clear about who might be harmed; it will help you identify the best way of managing the risk. Having spotted the hazards, you then have to decide what to do about them. Putting the results of your risk assessment into practice will make a difference when looking after people and your business. Review the assessment and update it regularly.

Tips to be a great sales leader

A person is said to be a great sales leader, only when he is capable of building his team in an efficient manner to achieve the sales target and company's goals. A great leader is an inspiration, a motivational tool and give their significant contribution to the success for their sales team.

Following are some of the tips to be a successful sales lead:

* Sales Managers and Sales People required to practice the professional development in order to value their growth and clients/customers.

* A well versed professional with his core skills such as, Planning, Execution, Current Marketing Trends, Industrial Knowledge, Product and Customer Satisfaction, Communication and Differentiation skills.

* Good at major accounting strategies, competitive strategies, presentation and proposal writing skills.

* Must be specific, set deadlines for the targets, capable of tackling the worst marketing situations. Share the facts and vision of the organization with the team mates and motivate them for their utmost contribution.

* Try to understand the difficulties of the sales team and support them with the necessary resources.

* Capable of learning and implementing the advanced sales techniques.

* To be an inspiring leader, you must be a reflective and risk takers.

* Value the skills of the sales person and give high training and focus on attitude.

* Communication plays a vital role to interact with the sales people. Active listening to the team mates is very essential.

The great sales leads know how to get a work done by the people. They set proper goals and encourage their team to meet the necessity. Promote an enjoyable work environment and build a culture were people value themselves, each other, company and the customers.

Top 10 trends In Indian E-commerce in 2010

2010 has been a very remarkable year for the Indian e-commerce sector because this sector has caught the fancy of investors and has generated multiple entrepreneurial avenues, broadband penetration, change in buying patterns and the success of group buying sites globally.

The top categories within e-commerce are travel, classifieds, group buying, auto sales and luxury brands.

Nowadays because of life in fast pace everyone is in dire need of all the facilities online.

Online ticket companies are making huge turnovers in their companies these days. Online bus ticket booking companies and train booking are in fast growth.

Next comes Books. They were a good hook to draw in users but on its own, book retailing online is not a scalable business. It will work online but can never become very big as the average book value in India is very low.

Indians are always in love with discounts. May discount be on anything, they are always ready to afford for that. This also has been a great trend in 2010.E Bay acquired Germany’s fashion and lifestyle shopping site brands4friends.com for $200 million for high end luxury portals. In India, sites such as 99labels.com, exclusively in and Fashionandyou.com are competing in this segment.

There is a strategic shift in e-commerce. Many portals are expanding horizontally too.

Jobs, real estate, matrimonial continue to see traction. Linkedin, Naukri and Monster.com have top-recall followed by TimesJobs.com and Shine.com by HT Media. Matrimonial sites such as Consim Info Pvt Ltd’s Bharatmatrimony.com, Shaadi.com and
Jeevansathi.com continue to reign.

Expected Customer Trends In 2011.

Yet another new year has begun and there is new door for plenty of opportunities. In this year there are a list of trend for the consumers which they might feel is significant for them.

Primarily consumers expect few acts of kindness at random from business enterprises. Initially kindness was perceived only as inflexibility but now it is being seen as charismatic and more compassionate towards them.

Today 50 % of the consumers are urban citizens and they are prone to trying with new arrivals though they seem to be distanced from traditional social and familial structures.

Next, in terms of owning, bulky and irregularly used items is both expensive and unsustainable, especially in dense urban environments where space is at a premium. So consumers feel it becomes easier to book items whenever and wherever they are needed.

It is expected to see consumers rushing to sign up to services with planning that allow for endless mingling with friends, family, colleagues or strangers in this year.

Traditional marketing trend has started to diminish because booking items online has become most popular way of buying.

In 2010 companies began to take social media marketing seriously and because of that we saw social media explode as a marketing tool. This year we will begin to see companies integrate social media into their overall marketing plan.

Till now mobile phones provide access to email, messaging, calendars and websites but now location based services help in marketing through phones.

BUSINESS SOCIETY IN FUTURE

Predicting the world business in future will be imperfect but there are chances of all the types of business getting expanded due to current market situations.

All the business activities in an enterprise like accounting and banking applications are being done online through upgraded versions of software. Day-to-day activities like travel bookings, listening music, news ,information on stock, shopping and retailing are already being done in the internet which is in growing space.

Today’s Education system includes entrepreneuship and business tactics at an early stage. So the future business society in world will have young business people as there are plenty of exciting business opportunities in the fields of Internet ventures, outsourcing technology, e-commerce opportunities, software development opportunities.

Ofcourse the future business would turn everyones life into fast pace because of unbelievable technological growth. The globe seems to become small because of the technological improvement in communication sector but there are certain bitter things like global warming and inflation which are believed to affect business in a big way in future.

In the business scenario of last two years, inflation affected world business drastically. The negative impacts of inflation are the distortion prices between different time periods, interest rates rising, uncertainity , redistribution between wealth and income.

There is a led to collapse in social order and throughout their business operations because of global warming. Companies have an important impact on the natural environment .Each and every individual in a business enterprise should take responsible for saving the ecosystem in the future.

Boost your small business traffic

On the internet, search engine optimization and marketing is vital to gain an edge over your competitors.

Listed below the basic seo and internet exposure strategies to be followed inorder to boost your small business sales.

Basic Elements of SEO Strategy:

-Client expectations and objectives
-Keyword research to identify the right keywords
-Website analysis
-Competitor analysis
-Website optimization using the right keywords
-Content strategy development
-Linking strategy – reciprocal and one way link building campaigns
-Submission of website in search engines
-Directory submission
-Social media optimization strategy - news releases, forum postings, article writing and submission
-Use of natural and white hat SEO strategy to promote website
-Evaluation and tracking
-Maintenance

Achieve Better Internet Exposure:

-Establish a more successful website with better usability
-Enhance your reputation as a professional
-Boost your brand visibility, traffic and revenue
-Generate increased referral business
-Establish tremendous client loyalty
-Establish long term client relationship
-Establish your credibility