Business Instrument

Archive for December, 2010

How To Attract And Keep Better Customers

Maintaining a solid customer base is a never ending job for a small business owner. The following points are aimed at keeping you on the right track.

Focus On The Long Term

Designate well defined periods of time on a given day to concentrate on long term strategy. Instead of worrying about where your business needs to be next week envision instead where you need to be next year. Create an ideal “dream” scenario for your business everything from what kind of clients you want to have to how much money you want to make. During this exercise do not worry about what your competitors are doing and focus on your own business goals. Only concern yourself on how to give as much value to your clients as possible. This exercise is not a joke. Dreaming is not just dreaming. It is visualizing your success. This type of visualization exercise will serve as an important guide post and will not just start increasing the size of your business but also the adaptability of your business as well.

Market Your Company As Well As Your Products

This is an important factor that many companies overlook. Selling a great product is one thing but you should also very carefully consider that good PR and marketing can help to spread positive awareness about your company. This in turn will create the fertile soil needed for new business leads. Perhaps you might want to invest in putting a few ads in some related and appropriate trade publications. A great public relations tactic can be to participate in charities such as Habitat for Humanity or cancer research fundraisers. This type of charity PR also has personal and spiritual fringe benefits that do not need to be elaborated on.

Keep Pace with Changes in Your Industry

It’s critical to recognize that no industry stays the same and neither should your business. Advances in technology and changing economic conditions are all powerful drivers for change in every industry. Keep your finger on the pulse of your clients by reading business journals going to trade shows and subscribing to subject relevant RSS feeds that report on the latest developments. Keep in mind that keeping pace with your industry involves doing your homework on not just your own industry but on your client’s industry as well.

Remember Your Customers at Holiday Time

This folksy bit of advice relates back to the previous marketing PR point. Do not underestimate the power of having personalized Christmas cards and or Christmas party invitations. Do not be afraid to get creative and be unique. A colleague of mine once sent out personalized self inking rubber stamps to his clients. Each rubber stamp featured the name of the business it was addressed to. My colleague even went through the trouble of having each company’s logo put on each stamp. So in this case the client did not just receive a Christmas card but a highly functional and fun “stocking stuffer” in the form of a personalized self inking business stamp. The stamps ended up being so popular that after running some analytics I am convinced it boosted the businesses bottom line by almost ten percent.

About the writer:  Custom Toll Free helps companies and individuals navigate the confusing world of premium toll free vanity numbers. Our service allows you to search the available pool and look up premium vanity numbers and then negotiates on your behalf to get dramatically better return on your investments in marketing and advertising through the use of toll free 800 866 and 877 numbers.

How The Packaging Industry Is Benefiting From Lean Six Sigma

However associating Lean with just the big boys is certainly not the right thing to do because the reality is that Lean is quite versatile and can be implemented by any business organization irrespective of its size.

For proof you just need to have a look at some of the relatively smaller businesses such as a packaging firm that might have implemented Lean Six Sigma.

For better understanding we’ll focus specifically on this particular industry and find out exactly how it is benefiting from Lean Six Sigma.

Packaging Materials: A Major Contributor to Overall Costs

In the packaging industry packaging materials are like raw materials and as such contribute significantly to the overall packaging costs. However that should not be a cause for concern because if a packaging firm were able to make even a small percentage change it would result in a significant reduction in overall costs.

Additionally since the packaging company will only be required to concentrate on a single cost component the probability of achieving the desired results will increase dramatically. These are the very reasons why the packaging industry is nowadays becoming increasingly dependent on Lean Six Sigma. Lean helps because it streamlines the existing packaging processes allowing businesses to make the best possible use of existing manpower.

As processes become more and more streamlined over time businesses will no longer be required to hire additional manpower something that automatically results in huge cost savings.

Depending on existing market demand businesses can also launch retrenchment schemes once the desired level of efficiency has been achieved using Lean Six Sigma.

Maintaining Quality: The Primary Client Requirement

Clients of packaging firms expect and demand the best possible quality in the least possible costs and this is why most packaging firms have implemented Lean inside their organization. Lean helps because it is designed for the very same purpose i.e. reducing costs without affecting the quality of the final outcome.

This becomes a possibility because Lean stresses conducting detailed analysis of all the components or say raw materials that might contribute towards the making of the final product. The analysis is done to find which components affect the quality the most and others that only play a minor role. This helps because it allows packaging firms to allocate the available funds mostly to the major quality determinants and spend relatively less on peripheral components and inputs that may not be contributing much to the overall quality of the final outcome.

This eventually results in significant cost savings especially when a packaging firm takes adequate care to ensure that the Lean analysis is done in the prescribed manner. Inability to do so can adversely affect quality and undermine the very significance of Lean principles.

Lean is a complex system obviously because it aims to achieve that perfect balance of quality and lowcost operations. To get the best results and to avoid Lean disasters it is recommended that only the experienced Black Belts be given the responsibility of implementing Lean projects especially in the highly competitive packaging industry.

About the writer:  Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution’s Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for six sigma professionals such as lean six sigma black belts green belts and yellow belts.

How Political Influence Affects Financial Management And Budgetary Control In Local Governments In Uganda

Despite the recognized importance of budgeting and its suggested links to organizational structure there has been little empirical exploration of how public sector budgeting has developed within increasingly decentralized frameworks of governance.

This is particularly the case for developing countries like Uganda adopting decentralized structures despite recognition that appropriate budgeting practices are consistent with all societies legitimate expectations that public resources be employed efficiently and effectively Henley et al.1998.

From the Ugandan perspective information provided by the Inspector General of Government relating to tenders and contracts mismanagement and misappropriation of funds and embezzlement of funds from cases reported to the inspectorate of government of Uganda clearly shows that there is a problem with financial management and budgetary control in both central and local governments in Uganda. www.igg.go.ug.

A review of related literature regarding the study area has a broader spectrum.

According to Michael Powers description auditing of different sorts is now so pervasive in the United Kingdoms administrative culture as to create an impression that there is always somebody looking over ones shoulder. At first glance this might seem to contradict the postbureaucratic premises of administrative reform in the UK. Auditing which in its traditional form focuses on verifying compliance with administrative and financial procedural norms is clearly part of the bureaucratic model. Yet in the eyes of some observers the devolution and decentralisation aspects of post bureaucratic reforms creates increased need for auditing. Hood1991: 8

Methodology:

election of respondents in the sampled geographical areas was based on factors such as length of service of Employees in the firms or Government services as well as the length of time taken by specific Service Beneficiaries in the sampled geographical areas.

This is to say that those chosen respondents were the ones whose length of service/stay is longest in the sampled geographical area.

The total population was therefore 1300 people of which 650 were Beneficiaries and 650 Government Employees hence only 900 sampled Respondents in both categories in all 5 Regions were interviewed. This represented 62 of the population sampled in all the five Regions of Uganda for this Research.

Questionnaires and survey guide were designed used to collect information on Financial Management and Control Services under the decentralised system The questions as much as possible tried to tap all the dimensions of the constructs.
Results

The major findings of the study were highlighted based on the answers to the research questions and testing of the variables of interest with the statistics within the specified limits of significance.

A relative number agreed to the fact that corruption in local governments is a hindrance to good financial management practices. Also to a great extent it was observed that decentralized government structures control funds.

Table 4.6 Cross tabulation of various factors against Budgetary Control

mean =3.7734 and financial decentralised structure is good for the development if proper accounting systems are put in place.
Coefficientsa

Unstandardized

Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t

Sig.

Dependent Variable: Budgetary Control

Model

B

Std. Error

Beta

Constant

.582

.073

7.988

.000

R Square

.882

Political Influence

1.852E02

.011

.029

1.636

.103

Sig.

F Change

.000

Auditing

.211

.012

.356

18.268

.000

Accounting

.145

.009

.337

15.786

.000

Taking the significance levels at ?/2=0.05 to be the standard 0.00 as the significance value which is less than 0.005 indicates a high level of compliance indicating that there is a positive relationship between financial management and decentralised government structures. Budgetary control was measured against decentralised government structures the level of significance was 0.00 still which implied that the level of correlation between the two is positively high.

The relationship between political influence and financial management and budgetary control

Results from table 4.5 have a pvalue of 0.123 which is by far greater than 0.05 indicating that political influence affects financial management negatively. Likewise table 4.6 shows that as political influence increases budgetary control is affected and vice versa.

Discussions

Political influence was made to be a major problem to proper financial management. Also corruption was found to be a major hindrance to proper financial management. This confirms the fact that most of the cases cited on corruption in local governments have been aligned along politically driven motives

If it wasnt because of the fact that corruption levels are really high in these local governments there was a general agreement that really decentralised government structures lead to better financial management as the seemingly obstruct task is broken down to smaller task which increases efficiency as the number of people handling the task at hand is made smaller. This can be seen from the reasons as to the objectives why world bank supported in developing economies. The same is true for budgetary control in other words better budgetary control is made manifest under decentralised systems as compared to the centralised ones.

It was brought to the researchers attention that that the degree of financial management isnt affected by ones degree of expertise. This has been confirmed on a number of occasions where highly qualified staff are involved in financial scandals that are manipulated by them. For example recently in Uganda global fund money that was supposed to care for HIV/AIDS patients was diverted for some officers interests and yet these officers were highly qualified.

On the other hand human expertise greatly affects budgetary control because a budget is made professionally and once but the implementation of these projects is what fails the personnel. Budgets are made by highly skilled people both at the central government and the local governments.

Conclusions and Recommendations

There should be effective administration in the act of recentralizing Chief Administrative officers CAOs. The CAOs were recentralized but they have not had independence in making decisions especially where their standards are compromised by politicians. so a great arm in administration should legalise a policy framework of operation which will minimize interruptions from parties that have interest.

Most government services are offered under decentralisation. However issues like lack of transparency improper accounting systems and corruption are still a hindrance to the growth of proper financial management strategies and budgetary control under the decentralisation process in local governments.

To be able to effectively achieve the objective of reducing poor financial management and budgetary control to a considerable low level efforts or strategies formulated and directed towards decentralisation need to be holistic in nature. Financial Management issues cannot effectively be addressed in isolation but have to be taught to all stakeholders i.e. the beneficiaries the service providers the national and local policy implementers.

Government should also through its parliamentary wing enact tough anticorruption laws for professionals in various key financial positions in government. The agencies that are in charge of anticorruption like the Inspector General of Government IGG Auditor and Accountant general should be well remunerated to effectively carry out their duties in the struggle against poor financial management and budgetary control so that the funds utilization to specific targets without diversion through mainly political interference.

As another measure strict government regulations should be instituted on financial management and control to the decentralised governments and budgetary reports should be followed to promote accountability and feasibility. In order for effective implementation there is need for government to regularly hire professionally qualified financial experts to review the applicability of existing accounting and financial controls.

The agencies under this operation should be well renumerated have high cooperation with donors on their funds utilisation to specifically allocated areas to reduce diversion and politically motivated ideas.

About the writer:   Opio Stanley