Business Administrator's Blog and News

Business plans can only be designed when there is tangible evidence to base them on. Whilst basing business plans on dreams is better than not writing them at all, some path to the future is a must for feasible plans.

But declining business offers lousy evidence as a route to the future. The decline of the free ad papers is demonstration enough that there is no confidence in mainstream advertising, and that it provides little value. If you have no one specific to market to, then you can only market to a mass audience. But no one is listening.

Shopkeepers standing outside shops watching passers by, offers little inspiration. Consumers carrying little more than their handbags are becoming an increasingly normal sight.

But if no one else is advertising, does that not mean you have the world to market to? You, alone, pressing on? And with the media so desperate for cash, great deals are there to be done. We know that they’ll do deals for virtually nothing, just to keep the game alive.

Marketing Week in London was particularly busy this year. Was that because everyone has nothing better to do? Or were they desperate for ideas?

With the right communications, a recessionary summer is an excellent time for promotion to people who have little else to listen to.

Contact Chalestra to start developing your sales pitches.

23 July 2009: Employing computers are vital route to keeping costs down.

Todays economy shows that the survivors of downturns are those that were willing to drive down costs. Driving down costs involves some of the toughest decisions a business person can make. But in the absence of sales, it is a very necessary function.

Customers are hard to find. Getting them to part with their money is even harder. Shopkeepers are watching people browsing, and leaving empty handed.

The best way to indulge in cost management is by increasing sales. But what if you can’t increase sales?

Business Administrator is a wall-to-wall business management system. Because it provides services to all areas of your business, it will offer business functionality at virtually no cost. Unlike other management software, it will offer a wide platform of help at no extra cost.

Whether it’s helping you make fast sales, run your marketing programmes, keep in contact with your customers, ensure your stock is at optimal levels, it is a system that will help you set up a well balanced business.

Business Administrator will show you where you can save money. And it can show you where you can add value.

Download Business Administrator and how it can help your business survive.

21 July 2009: Chalestra notices a change in the way small businesses employ skills

Employment law now makes it incredibly dangerous for small businesses to employ people, and many businesses are simply shying away from it. The costs and liabilities of employing staff have risen to beyond acceptable levels. So, it's not unreasonable that existing small businesses are seeking alternatives to traditional methods of employing skills.

One method of maintaining staff that is becoming popular is short staffing, where workers are employed on reduced hours and income, effectively being reduced to part-time workers. Another is by reducing staff income.

But it is in businesses looking to employ skills where the change is most dramatic.

It is no longer the case that the capability of employing people is a measure of business 'power', so there is no loss of credibility or integrity in any methods used to employ skills.

With so many people now out of work, failing to find employment, and trying to do 'the best they can', it doesn't sound unreasonable for ex-employees to try to start small businesses and, thus, make some cash. The result is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of new businesses starting up. And their services are on offer to other businesses that are looking to fill a skills gap or effort shortage.

And business looking to employ skills and effort are simply employing these new local contractors.

As this happens, it means that there is a change in climate from large employers supporting communities to myriads of small businesses working together. The notion of 'big employers' is a government model to swallow swathes of the unemployed: it is a model that no longer works, largely because the state is considered to be too big and expensive, employment for private businesses has become too risky, and large corporations are becoming a major risk to the economy.

The real benefit to hiring small contracting firms is that they can be hired and fired at will, which is no longer the case with employment. Employing someone can take a month and their dismissal can take more than two months.

Temporary staff used to fill the skills gap admirably, but since temporary staff, largely against their wishes, now have the same rights as employees, their utilisation is falling to decline. There were also tax advantages to employing temporary staff, but they have now largely gone.

But has the state finds it increasingly difficult to maintain the unemployed, the unemployed will have to go it alone: they will have to develop some type of business to earn any degree of income, and they will have to learn to compete with others. But as the recession draws to a close in 2010, it is likely to get easier, and the whole structure of UK businesses, and the way they work together, will have changed.

Volumes of low-trading customers will become king for most businesses, instead of large budget accounts.

17 July 2009: Identifying your customers correctly

As Chalestra offers it's communication and strategic business consulting services to it's customers, it's quite shocking how many people don't understand what a customer is. But understanding what customers are and what they do is vital to trade, and even more vital to successfully pitching for business.

In order to keep this simple, I'll take the case of estate agents, which inherently have got it wrong. The reason estate agents do so much trade is because people desperately want to own their own properties. Which is great, most of the time.

But estate agents fail to identity their real customers. Traditionally, estate agents are paid by the seller of property: nothing wrong with that. But those sellers are not the customers, for the simple reason that they don’t enable the trade.

Those sellers do nothing but hand money over, good money, no doubt. But handing that money over does not action a trade.

The real customers are the buyers when they buy a property. The reason being that it is they who have enabled the trade. Until the buyer buys, the estate agent will get nothing.

Many business people seek people or businesses that have money to be their customers. It's an understandable process, but completely wrong. To get people to be willing to part with their money they need a clear reason to do so. This rarely comes from the people with money: that's why they have money.

Business people ought to be seeking trade enablers to be their customers. True, potential customers must have financial backing to complete the process of becoming a customer, but most people will find the money if they have enough of a reason. More people, you will find, are trade enablers, and it is they who must be identified and found. Estate agents, for this example, would fair much better if they identified their customers more accurately.

One new customer of ours trebled their pitch success rate and turnover just for changing their view of what a customer is. Call Chalestra if you are having difficulty in finding trade.

13 July 2009: Be careful of price management

In times of economic depression, when few customers are around, it’s easy to turn to price management to encourage customers to come back. But price management has little track record on managing customer buy-in, or in developing sales volume.

In reality, customers always buy into attractiveness. iPhones, Jaguars, Disneyland, are all expensive, but attractive and highly popular: it doesn’t matter that there are cheaper, and perhaps better, alternatives that could do just as well. It’s the attractiveness that counts.

But how did they become attractive? Undoubtedly, huge marketing budgets come to play. But, if so, where did they huge marketing budgets come from?

The reality is that these items are all sold on communication. It always comes down to the way a product or service is presented to the community, and to the correct community. And presentation and communication don’t have to be expensive. In fact, there are plenty of examples of hugely budgeted presentations that have flopped: money isn’t everything.

It’s well recognised that if you have a 30% gross profit, then a 10% price reduction means you have got to sell 50% more units to maintain revenue income. Conversely, a 10% price increase means you can allow sales to fall to 25% to maintain your income. So what do you do? It’s clearly fraught with potential errors.

We propose you consider the way you sell. Economic downturns mean that presentations and pitches need to be well polished, and there is less room for clumsy effort.

Contact Chalestra for help in bringing your pitches to the frontline.

30 June 2009: How to get your staff to work for nothing

You couldn’t make it up. How many businesses could even dream of getting 16% of the workforce to work for free, let alone pull it off. Yet this is what British Airways have achieved.

Whilst we don’t have any details on the deals that were made to achieve this incredible scenario, we wait with baited breath to find out.

British Airways is a world-class airline and a leader in its field. The very thought of having to ask staff to work for free is incomprehensible, let alone doable. But, it’s obviously possible.

But there is something more worrying. If this is the example that a world-class institution and industry leader offers to the remainder of the business community, it makes you wonder if SMEs should be following the examples of supposed masters. To us, this is not business. The ability of 99% of businesses to get a sixth of their workforce to work for free, even for a month, is simply not a credible route to the future.

Even more worrying is that if such a world-class institution can achieve the scenario, what could they dream up next?

25 June 2009: Chalestras thoughts on SEO

As promised, and for a few months now, Chalestra has indulged in web marketing. It's been important for us for several reasons: our clients have asked about it, we really ought to be promoting the business in every way possible, and we would be able to add the experience to our repertoire of skills. And, like most businesses will, the monetary budget was set at zero.

Our thoughts on SEO
Through the help our friends and a lot of research, we applied every known SEO (search engine optimisation) technique to our promotional efforts. And we have mixed conclusions about it.

The key solution, for us, is to just write. Write to promote to customers and nothing else. Good content is made up of good writing, for which we read essays. It should be interesting to as many people as possible. And it is this concept that keeps readers on the website. And it's very sensitive. I think of magazine editors choosing writers for the content of their magazines.

Except that one should also write properly coded websites. But we do that anyway - it's part of our professionalism.

Web marketing
And to compliment our SEO efforts, we also employed web marketing, in which we've spent an enormous amount of effort. You'll find comments from Chalestra in all the big business networking sites, and, again, we've got mixed reactions.

Sales didn't do well. We suspect the reason for that was related to a golden rule we tell our own clients: we clearly didn't promote to the people we should have promoted to - we didn't put the web links in front of the right people. But time and budget constraints, and all that.

Does it work?
To do the job properly, we've tried to be as comprehensive and wide-ranging as possible. We've increased the number of visitors to the site by three times, which isn't too bad. We've noticed that we should expect natural growth: we did expect to get hard hits and big increases. But that was naive: we're wiser now.

As for more sales: we're not impressed. We found a lot more people had heard of Chalestra, so the marketing angle did work. As a sales channel, it left a lot to be desired. For us. Though we will spend more time researching the right people and casting web links to them. But with more people having heard of us, selling has become easier.

Conclusion
In hindsight, we now believe that SEO and web marketing should be parts of a marketing and sales mix. It is for everyone, but in varying degrees. And it should be pursued.

We maintain that there is no alternative to meeting people face-to-face, and getting to know viable potential customers. Word of mouth is second to that. But if people have already heard of you, then that's a benefit, and it's the key benefit of SEO and we marketing.

SEO and web marketing add new layers in the customer to supplier route, and those that don't pursue these disciplines are likely to get left behind. With nearly everyone in the world resorting to the web for research, it's vital for every business to have a presence on the web, and that they promote that presence. How they go about it is dependent on the key objectives, and finding an objective and targeting towards that objective.

23 June 2009: Summer is here - get ready for autumn business

Autumn is often the beginning of a new business year. For the services industry, and particularly for large companies, it is often the period that earns the most money, and when most new contacts are made.

Autumn is also the pre-Christmas season, a period vital for retailers. Retailers will be jostling for position on the start line, positioning themselves to be attractive to buyers. And a long lead in is going to be vital to cope with this recession.

And businesses will have be willing to move very quickly to respond to new opportunities.

It follows, then, that summer has to be the time for all businesses to prepare for full-on business opportunities. Whether it is preparing to recruit staff, develop computer systems, put business plans together, or requisition finance, the quality of the preparation can often be the make or break for a successful Autumn season.

The recession, of course, is going to make things very unpredictable, but those businesses that rise to the challenges will almost certainly break the recession and set themselves up for a productive 2010. Those that don't are likely to become even more disheartened.

With a government dithering about whether and when they should cut their own costs, and thus taxes, it is likely that businesses will have to prepare for the coming season paying heavy attention to costs and savings. Costs will be a necessity, of course, but given how unpredictable the coming season will be for flourishing revenue, every care must be applied. The end of summer is also the time for most businesses when corporation tax is due, which is still rising despite the state of the economy.

Banks, too, will be looking for business, and deals this year should be far better than last year for businesses that can show they will make use of the coming season.

And making use of the season is going to be vital factor. For many, it will be the last. A few will have much to brag about. For most, it will be a case of doing well and getting to the next season, which will be no mean feat.

Creativity will also be on the menu. Businesses will have to be very creative on how they will persuade customers to hand over cash that the customers themselves need.

As with all things business, the competition will have to have a close eye on it. No business, these days, can afford to miss a sale, let alone give it to another business.

Staff will have to rise to the challenges faced by their employers, and rise to the opportunities open to them. Not much room for promotions, this year, but staying in a job, for many, will be the opportunity.

Suppliers will have to forge an all-out effort to help their customers. Ensuring products and services are the best in the marketplace, supply chains are oiled and greased, and useful agreements being in place, are only some of the issues for suppliers to prepare.

Summer is about preparing to reap the autumn harvest. Good luck, and best wishes from us.

contact Chalestra if you want to take advantage of our business consulting services.

19 June 2009: Trade something else besides money

The "credit crunch", as it has become known, would suggest that there's no money around, given that no one can get credit to supply it. Businesses, and people, have become heavily reliant on debt, and, because debt was so easy to acquire, have not learned to manage it well. Even the best of companies have failed to manage debt well.

But money, whilst it is the forestay of our economy, is not the only item that can be traded. Time, for instance, is frequently traded in our social lives.

In business, time can be traded too. Asset swapping and lending are other routes to balancing trade. It's also true of stock swapping - one man's muck is another man's gold.

I must remember, though, that a story like this must come with a risk warning: don't forget to pay the tax. What! I heard that! Tax is not payable on exchange of money - it's payable on exchange of value. So, even, if you trade time, you must pay the tax on it. Unfortunately, Inland Revenue, rightly or wrongly, only understands currency.

But I can picture a local shopkeeper talking to someone who's hard up (which is normal now), asking his customer what they have got to trade, if they have no cash. Well, the picture is possible, and you never know what opportunities might arise.

And with the government bickering about whether costs should be cut in two years time, instead of doing it now, the situation is likely to become infinitely worse, and alternative means of trade could become vital resources for everybody.

Many people often wonder why the world is all about cash, even if the answer is obvious, but it goes to show that the world doesn't have to be about cash. Trading co-operation, then, could become the currency for some people in relentless recessions. And businesses.

16 June 2009: Software can help position websites

Because Chalestra develops bespoke software, the question frequently arises as to whether software can really help position websites on the Internet in terms of popularity. We maintain, that it can if it's used wisely, but it forms part of an army of functions that are used to promote websites.

Computers are being used frequently to management website content - a facility known as content management. It's about providing accurate and relevant content to website visitors, whether those visitors be human or electronic. Content can only properly targeted if the information within it is properly managed, and if you know what the visitor wants. This is where Chalestra comes in: we are information management specialists.

If content isn't managed by a dedicated information system, then you are reduced to pitching stories at the Internet, hoping it finds the places that you do want to target, and that it’s relevant to the audience: it's like firing shots everywhere hoping one hits home.

Content management also needs a partner: a properly managed SEO management system that helps search engines understand the relevance of the content. But that comes back to information management.

Content management backed by an information management system reduces the effort in managing websites.

But there's a side effect. That is because the efforts of a software engine are relentless. Compare the efforts of humans where activity is once in a while, or a few times a day with full-blown effort.

And an information management system can do even more. It's all very nice pitching to search engines, but what about pitching to the remainder of the Internet. SEO, as it says, only focuses on pitching to search engines, which means that SEO-focused business are missing out on more than 90% of their Internet marketing potential.

It is true that websites work 24/7. But most of them, unlike the likes of Amazon.com or the BBC, are static. Imagine what could be done with a dedicated management system that is actively managing and distributing information from your business.

Then there's the question of popularity. With whom should the website be popular? Search engines? Humans? Businesses? News agencies? Accurate pitching of information should be a clear business strategy.

Information management systems are not cheap. This is true. But the benefit of a bespoke information management system is that it is tailored to your business, your objectives, and the way you want to work. And can become one of your most prized assets.

contact us for more information on building information management systems.

12 June 2009: Software games

Software games offer businesses a vital role in developing their strategic systems. It offers them the chance to toy with ideas and assess the strategic direction before spending large sums on full-scale projects.

The UK and US navies spend billions developing games with the single objective of keeping projects on track. The games are designed to estimate how facilities will work in the field, and to find out at the early stages how they can be improved. The results saves them fortunes more, and gives them the ultimate systems.

Chalestra, too, indulges in games. We play them both with business and with software projects. By playing games with business allows us to hone our business skills. Playing with software allows to ensure our products and services are among the best around. That's one of the reasons why Business Administrator is so successful, why it's so attractive, and why we could afford to build it. Business Administrator is the case study for everything we do.

And we allow our customers to play games. It allows us to understand clearly what our customers want, and it allows them to discover exactly what they need and how they should fine-tune the software. It also allows our customers to see how we perform and what they're getting for their money. And, of course, it allows them to lower the risks of their projects, save their spending money, and get an exact idea of what they need.

A software game is essentially the bare bones of a project. It looks lousy, it works to an extent, and it could be described as unprofessional. This is true. But the objective is to get a toy to play with to see how it will work. In manufacturing, you might call these prototypes. The benefit of the games is that they work, they're cheap and they give you an idea of how your project is going.

Usually, the game is the basis of the finished project. We'll adjust the toy until it's perfect, and then we'll start on creating a world-class product. If that's what you want.

If you would like to get to know more about Chalestra's services, please contact us.

10 June 2009: Your customers know your future customers

It's a fact of life that as friendships develop, they develop between people who have things in common. It's fair to say that you customers know people who could be your customers too.

It's also fair to say that your customers know more of your potential customers than you ever will.

The trick is to find out how you can persuade your customers friends to bring you their business. How can you persuade your customers to give you access to their friends?

But not many businesses do anything to drill into their social networks to explore new businesses opportunities.

Some do network in the social sense. But there aren't many networks that encourage face-to-face networking - most of the few businesses that do network do it online. Worse, there aren't many business people that indulge in any kind of networking at all.

For someone to give personal information on their friends takes a lot of trust. This can only be gained through social networking. Not just in networking meetings, but, particularly, networking among customers. Networking with customers could give virtually unfettered access to new business.

And it can multiply. For every customer you have, they may have three or four friends who could bring business to you. For each of those, they may have a further three of four friends each that could bring business your way. And so it goes on.

There is no doubt that gaining new customers is an expensive business, in terms of time, money and effort. But social networking is comparatively cheap, and everybody loves networking.

But they ought to do more with networking with customers.

02 June 2009: Chalestra ramps up marketing efforts

Frankly, it's about time we did. It's not that we're in any kind of trouble, it's that we haven't been putting in as much effort as we should be. And, of course, it's better to be on the safe side of sorry!

And we're naturally keen to promote our software development, media and communications consulting streams.

The reluctance to market our services stems from our marketing efforts from years ago, which were absolutely futile and a waste of time and money. These efforts were largely through traditional media. It culminated in our offering £25,000 worth of kit for free – nothing happened. Which proves it – don't waste your time and precious money on traditional marketing. Traditional marketing is fine if you are alone in your target market.

Now, we're focused on web marketing. Most of our business comes through word of mouth and the excellent reputation we've built. And a bit comes through our websites.

So, now, all clued up on fancy things like SEO, blogs, and all sorts of lovely things like that, we're now ramping up efforts to present both Chalestra and BA to the web community. It will be relentless. And we'll understand if everyone thinks we're demented, but there is a case to rise above all the flack on the web.

Don't get us wrong: we're not about to turn into another SEO company. Whilst marketing is very relevant to some of Chalestras services, Chalestra is not a marketing company. Or, at least, not yet.

It's good that we've got the time and space to grow it, but we have to get on. With these economic times, it's impossible to say what will happen next, and every business should seek a diverse range of sources for business. The days you can rely wholly on your friends and word of mouth are gone.

04 April 2009: Why Business Administrator works
Normal business…

Take sales >> Do administration >> Account for it >> Go to the pub

Business Administrator business…

Take sales >> Go to the pub

Business Administrator wipes out the middle two!

28 March 2009: Chalestra introduces Peer Benchmarking to Business Administrator

Imagine that you could compare you business performance to other businesses. It’s a phenomenon that is rife among PLCs: it’s easy for them since the bulk of their information is public information. But for small business, financial activity is largely secret, which means that one business cannot compare itself against others, particularly on efficiency terms. Efficiency is vital these days, particularly with spiralling taxes and increasing competition.

Peer Benchmarking is a free, but opt in service. It’s available to those with Business Administrator who are willing to share their own information in an unidentifiable way: your data is given a code and there is no way to trace the information back to you. You must also share six months worth of useful data about your own business. You would never know who you are benchmarking against, but you will know they are real.

If you are eligible and interested, then you will find Peer Benchmarking as a new mode in Finance Manager.

03 March 2009: Recent updates

Chalestra has made a number of small edits to Business Administrators systems.

An issue in Cash Book Reconciliation has been updated, where the ability to include or Exclude Todays Reconciliations was not performing as well as it should. Also, the movement from Finance Manager to another manager and back again was causing Peer Benchmarking to be shown. This problem was biggest for businesses that don’t subscribe to Peer Benchmarking: it’s mended.