The Minimum Wage
The Minimum Wage In January of 2007, the federal government raised the national minimum wage. This was old news in some states where the minimum wage had been raised months before congress took action. No matter how you look at the increase in the cost of labor, it is going to have an impact on the business climate and on how businesses will make key decisions in 2007 and going forward. In theory a raise in the minimum wage should be a nonevent economically. It should be a simple adjustment for inflation which the business has already adapted to. In [...]
Cyberspace on Aisle Five
Cyberspace on Aisle Five It doesn’t take a lot of research to find out that in this day and age, virtually every business of any real size has developed some form of internet presence. Now, for many businesses, that may mean little more than an online business card that can be used to get the phone number and store location of the business into the mind of the prospective customer. But in this new century, the idea of having a business without a corresponding web page to support it is pretty much out of the question. But if you look [...]
Decentralizing IT
Decentralizing IT For decades, the classic model of how a business organizes its computer services department was to establish a separate IT department with an independent management structure which may extend all the way to the executive suite. Over the years, the autonomy of that centralized IT function took on almost mythic proportions and in some cases resulted in abusive attitudes and ways of doing business that almost gave the impression that the business existed to serve the IT department rather than the other way around. This was a particularly prevalent model when all business computer processing was done by [...]
Will DRM Save the Record Industry?
Will DRM Save the Record Industry? Without a doubt the single most influential agent of change in business trends in the last ten to twenty years has been the internet. There is virtually no business segment or market that has gone unchanged by this powerful force. But of all of the various businesses impacted by cyberspace, the music industry has to the one that has seen the most dramatic change and the greatest challenge to keep up, adapt and survive an onslaught of change unprecedented in its history. The first major challenge that cyberspace brought to the music business was [...]
Project Management of a Global Team
Project Management of a Global Team The world is getting smaller. Well, it isn’t physically getting smaller but that is one way of saying that global communications have become so fast paced that the world is really one community in a lot of ways. With the advent of the internet, email, instant messaging and VOIP, it is entirely possible to do business with trading partners around the globe without ever leaving your office. For many businesses who are on the cutting edge of new business paradigms, the concept of a geographically isolated business is becoming obsolete. It is entirely possible [...]
The Quiet Explosion of Cell Phone Limitation Technologies
The Quiet Explosion of Cell Phone Limitation Technologies It is no secret that the explosion of functionality the world of cellular communications is nothing short of phenomenal. Scarcely a month goes by when something new is added what people can do with their cell phones. Now cell phones can take pictures, keep your calendar, let you send text messages or emails, surf the internet and do virtually everything except make the toast and burp the baby. But along with the technological revolution in what cell phones can do, there is another quieter revolution that has as its objective the opposite [...]
The Roller Coaster Oil Market
The Roller Coaster Oil Market There is a public mythology concerning the oil markets that has been fueled by a sharp rise in oil prices in the last few years. That perception is that the oil companies whose job it is to acquire the raw materials to make petroleum products, including gasoline for transportation, are the source of the rising prices. It is easy for the public to pin the blame on big business. The truth is that those on the inside of the oil business know full well that the oil business is tremendously cyclical. That means that the [...]
Squeezing Blood from an Onion
Squeezing Blood from an Onion There is a new to the business paradigm that can be easily noticed if you pay attention to trends in the business climate that we see in the business news sections of our local newspapers. It’s odd when we notice that even in good economic times, there will often be sudden waves of lay offs in businesses that we know are doing well. Anybody who has been the victim of a lay off can empathize with the disruption and emotional trauma such a change can cause. Studies in business trends have documented that the phenomena [...]
The Steps to Finding the Perfect AD Agency
The Steps to Finding the Perfect AD Agency A good Ad agency can take a business and propel its success forward in ways that few other business partners can do. If the business is one that will benefit from promotion or advertising, the right AD agency bring to the table the talent, the creativity and the resources to put together just the right advertising campaign and then to deploy it in a way that is a perfect fit for the business’s marketing objectives and for the market that the business serves. But for every success story of how an AD [...]
Creating Traffic
Creating Traffic Perhaps you have followed the trend in business to create an internet web site for your business that can be used to supplement your marketing efforts. If so, you have joined the momentum to create a corresponding “place” in cyberspace that can be used to reach customers online. The need for such an internet presence is entirely market driven. Internet sales have soared, particularly in certain market segments and more and more, the first place people go to in order to learn about your business is the internet. If they find a well designed web site that is [...]