The Good News Blog

Check out this article that was in mondays Dom Post of one of our clients YouDo. YouDo are changing the way in which we use IT applications. Their focus is to make cost effective software that makes our lives eaiser and businesses run more efficient. If you want to get in touch with the YouDo team fire them an email on info@youdo.co.nz or click here for there contact details.

Good tidings arrived on a couple of economic fronts last Friday. First there was news that the proportion of average income needed to service a new mortgage fell slightly between April and May, down from 56.4% to 55.9%, according to the BNZ. That’s pretty impressive when you consider that barely a year earlier the average home loan required 83.4% of the average after-tax income to service. On the wider economic scene, a new business survey conducted by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce reports that business confidence in the country’s most important commercial centre is on a rebound. The survey, based on the responses of 1000 local companies, found that those who believe the economy will improve over the next 6 months have more than doubled from 14% in March to 30% in June. And for the first time in a year, more firms believe the economy will improve in the next 6 months than deteriorate. At the same time, just 7% of businesses are currently experiencing difficulty finding employees with the right skills, compared to 25% a year ago. On profitability, an impressive 61% of respondents expected profits to be the same or better, compared to 53% in March.

Time is one of those things that cannot be expanded, but it can be better managed. Every one of us has 24 hours or 1440 minutes a day. Some business people are better managers of their time then others. Business people need to allocate the number of hours per day that they are prepared to spend at work and then prioritise how they are going to spend that time. Managers need to consider: Technical Issues: - Sales - Client/customer work Management Issues: - Planning - Controlling operations - Administration - Staff leadership - Developing new products and services - Training and development - Conferences So how do you better manage your time? Here are some ideas: - Establish daily and weekly priority goals/to do list. Mark off the task when it is completed and periodically prepare a log sheet of the amount of time you have spent on various tasks - Control the telephone. Do not allow it to control you. Perhaps you should have messages taken during the day and have very specific return telephone time allocations: one in the morning, the other in the afternoon - Have a ‘quiet period’ each day so that you can use the ‘quality time’ to plan your business - Consider and analyse those persons or tasks that cause you to waste time. Can you change your management style to overcome these time wasters? For example, it might be better if you visited someone else’s office or business premises rather than have them come to yours. The visitor can close the interview or meeting and basically leave - All meetings should have an agenda and a time limit and you should start and finish on time - At meetings, make sure someone takes minutes, distributes the minutes and follows these up at the next meeting. If this type of activity continues at all meetings it will speed up the meeting process Management of time is essential if you wish to be successful in business. It involves planning, delegation and elimination of bad time wasting practices. Remember, everyone is allocated the same amount of time each day. How you spend it will have a significant impact on how you perform as a business person!

For those who like their daily tonic to measure 140 characters or fewer, here are the results of a random search for economic news on Twitter. Interesting to see how much of it is reasonably upbeat, too, even without the requisite “good” or “positive” in the search terms. Meanwhile, for those interested in the broader subject of what Twittering can, and can’t, achieve for a company in the current economic situation, here is a useful listing of the new tool’s pros and cons. And here’s a longer report on the economic outlook in the world’s most important economy.

Why bother with a business plan? If you were going to go on a long trip, wouldn’t you need a map? Business plans for business people are like maps for tourists. If you don’t have a plan, and you happen to reach your destination, it will be more luck then good judgement! Business planning is simply identifying where you are now, what your goals are and how you are going to achieve them. The key commitment is writing it down. Planning asks you to look at future developments, consider the services you offer your customers. Get staff and other key people to have their input so that they ‘own the ideas’. Planning encourages clear communication within the business. The whole business should be reviewed on at least an annual basis. Fine-tuning and updates should be made every six months. Undoubtedly one day you will want to sell your business and you will want to get the best possible price for it. A good business plan will promote your business to a third party audience, particularly a potential investor or financier. Business planning forces you to consider the risks involved in the particular business operation that you are involved in. ‘What would happen if…?’ is a very good question to pose to your team on a number of issues so that you can determine appropriate strategies that are then documented to be utilised as that particular event materialises. Various studies have indicated that businesses that develop a written business plan have a greater chance of surviving than those that do not. Business plans will assist the owner/manager in running the business by incorporating performance benchmarks that have been analysed and agreed to in the business planning process. These can be regularly measured and then action taken to determine reasons for variants from the targeted figure. If your measurements vary from your benchmarks, you can analyse the reasons and take action accordingly. Please call us to find out more.

In case you missed it, Openside Chief Executive Stephen Nicholas was recently interviewed on his regular mornign slot at VBC Radio discussing gender equality in the accounting business. “The broader the diversity,” Stephen argued, “the more we can relate to clients.” And the greater the interest you might have in bringing this about, the more appealing we think you’ll find the conversation, which can be heard in its entirety here.

A hat-trick of positive economic reports out of America helps explain the latest Wall Street surge and the increasing incidence of smiling economists. First, a Commerce Department construction report revealed an unexpected upward trend in both private and public construction, with the former uptick (up by 0.7%) being far better than the decline many economists had been predicting. The same department also reported that spending was slightly down, by 0.1%, but personal savings had increased by 5.7%, a rate not seen in more than a decade. Meanwhile, the Institute for Supply Management said the manufacturing sector failed to grow for the 16th consecutive month in May. But the contraction is slowing, the report said. And similar surveys in Asia and Europe found similar improvements. Closer to home, the big news across the ditch this week may be that Australia has emerged, or is emerging, from its “technical recession”. And it’s still only Wednesday!