Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 29 March 2006
| Thought for the week: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it." W. C. Fields |
In this week's issue:
Small business answers
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Weekly stir 
Business acronyms you should (but might not) know the meaning of
Business acronyms are a part of daily business life, whether they are forced down your throat by the quangos and Government agencies that purport to support you with indecipherable scheme names, are terms your accountant uses that grip you with fear, or are the names of suppliers who provide you with useful everyday products and services.
Whether you're starting a business for the first time or are running an existing enterprise, this is a particular phenomenon that will often baffle, bemuse or simply amuse even the most seasoned small business owner.
So this week, to make life more complicated than it is already, here's a quick quiz to test your all-round acronym awareness, and perhaps provide a gauge of your general business know-how.
How many of the following business acronyms do you recognise, and more importantly, do you know what they stand for? You should, at least, get eight out of ten of these correct.
1) CRM
2) UPS
3) VAR
4) ROI
5) SEO
6) EPOS
7) WIIFM
8) SWOT
9) OEM
10) PDF
You can find the answers at the end of this bulletin.
Personal effectiveness tip
Improving your time management skills
To be more productive and effective in your business, you have to stay focused on your key daily objectives and priorities. This means developing your ability to manage your time effectively, work to and achieve deadlines, and organise your task list so that everything that MUST get done DOES get done.
A common way of tackling multiple tasks and demands is by dividing them into the following classification system:
-
Urgent, and important (need to be placed above everything else).
-
Urgent, but not important (a task that someone is urging you to do quickly, but which isn't important compared with other stuff on your to-do list).
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Important, but not urgent (these tasks often get forgotten because there's no immediate pressure to complete them).
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Not urgent, and not important (easy tasks that you'll be tempted to spend your time on).
There are many free online tools and resources to help you with issues such as task planning, time management and organising your to-do list. Try some of the following as starting points:
- Tips and learning resources for improving time management, tackling stress and achieving goals are listed at the Mind Tools training and coaching portal.
- Finally, project management tips, strategies and techniques are available from the Coaching Life portal.
Legal
tip
Understanding privacy policies
If you have a business website, carry out e-mail marketing or otherwise store details about your customers, you'll probably need to write and display a privacy policy.
A privacy policy explains what information you gather, how you use it and for how long you store it.
It's likely to be a legal requirement if your business:
All these activities are certainly not illegal, but they are subject to the 1998 Data Protection Act. So you will need to be aware of the Information Commissioner's guidelines if you carry them out, and particularly the eight data protection principles.
You can find out more about your data protection obligations at the Information Commissioner's Office website, or by reading our comprehensive factsheet explaining how to comply with the provisions of the 1998 Act.
IT
tip
Wi-Fi security for small businesses
If you're a frequent user of wireless Internet connections (Wi-Fi), you may never have given a thought to the security risks of using a potentially open network.
Of course, no connection is ever perfectly secure. But here are three easy steps you can take to reduce the risks:
- Ensure your firewall is activated. Windows XP offers its own built-in firewall, which you can access from the 'Advanced' tab in your network connection settings. If you use Norton or McAfee's firewalls, open the 'Internet security properties' option and check your firewall settings.
- Make sure you have the latest operating system updates and patches. In Windows XP, this is Service Pack 2, or "SP2". You can automatically check for updates at the Microsoft support and security sites.
New business idea
Each week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business ideas in the UK.
Here is this week's idea:
Just one word
Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.
Do you know what 'metier' means?
a) a term used to describe the size of your target market by volume
b) a type of long-term financial forecast used for speculation only
c) an activity, occupation or profession at which you excel or are very well-suited
d) a legal document that provides a solution to a contractual dispute
Answer at the end of the Bulletin.
Website review
Supplying Government (www.supplyinggovernment.gov.uk)
This web portal provides information about lower-value public sector contracts, and supports small businesses bidding for Government work.
- Navigation and presentation - clear and well-designed, the homepage gives a succinct explanation of what the site offers, and provides easy to follow signposting to different sections and tools. There are no distracting adverts - related Government sites are discreetly linked - and recent news about Government procurement is easy to find immediately.
- Accessibility - despite a promisingly presented homepage, a trawl of the site turned up very little in the way of accessibility options. The images on the site do have ALT tag descriptions, but there isn't any option to change text size, get help with different browsers, or access info in foreign languages.
- Relevance - the news on the site is topical and up to date, with most recent press releases highlighted on the homepage for instant availability. A hot topics section contains fresh and current technical information, but there's a lack of detail in the section that claims to feature related events.
A good starting point for any small business that would like to sell more to Government departments and agencies, but is baffled as to where to start. The practical guidance on this site, as well as the tools for keeping track of emerging public sector procurement opportunities, provide an excellent introduction to this complicated area.
Our rating - 15/20
Did you know?
Skills, red tape and business crime matter most to UK entrepreneurs
Skills, red tape and business crime are the chief concerns of the UK's business owners, according to the findings of a major Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) survey of small business opinions. 'Lifting the Barriers to Growth in UK Small Businesses' provides details about the typical business owner, looks at how businesses find finance, examines views on current issues such as smoking in the workplace and the use of e-commerce, and asks what entrepreneurs think of business support and advisers.
Small firms should stick to what they know
Cranfield School of Management has published research indicating that small firms which 'stick to the knitting', or work on selling more of their existing products and services to their existing customers, are more successful than enterprises that try to focus on radical innovation. Cranfield reckons its findings could be important to help the Government develop support schemes to assist small firms; the report makes worthwhile reading for any entrepreneur working on developments to their business plan.
Worth
a visit
New smoking law guidance for firms
With the recent news that smoking in public places will be banned from 2007 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) has published guidelines for business owners to help them prepare their staff for the change. The ban will also affect firms that welcome customers and visitors onto their premises.
New version of Google's AdWords tool
Google has released a new version of its AdWords keyword tool - an essential resource for marketers and website owners looking to optimise their AdWords campaigns by choosing relevant keywords without having to fork out too much cash. The updated version offers a few additional goodies: the 'site-related keywords' tool analyses your site and provides a list of relevant keywords, and serious optimisation enthusiasts can download information for analysis in a spreadsheet.
Yahoo! answers
'Answers' is Yahoo!'s recently launched foil to the Google Answers service that we've featured in previous bulletins. Users post their questions, which stay open for seven days, while other people (in theory) help by providing answers. Unlike Google's service, this one seems to be free of charge at the moment, and participation is rewarded by a 'kudos' system by which you can earn points for helping.
Worth
a read
Freshly updated for 2006-7, this bestselling practical manual explains everything you need to know about trading on eBay, covering how to buy, how to sell and how to make money out of the site. The book is equally useful for novices and eBay experts, and is written by eBay UK's Community Manager, and tutor at the eBay University, Dan Wilson. Check out:
Business acronym quiz - the answers
1) CRM - Customer Relationship Management - a term used to describe all aspects of the way a business interacts with its customers. Sometimes it specifically refers to software designed to help achieve this.
2) UPS - United Parcel Service - the largest express carrier and parcel delivery service in the world.
3) VAR - Value Added Reseller - a business that takes an existing product and then adds its own value and resells it as its own product. This is very common in the software and computer industry.
4) ROI - Return On Investment - a calculation used to determine how well any form of investment ultimately repays an investor. This is often expressed as the amount gained or lost relative to the initial investment.
5) SEO - Search Engine Optimisation - the process of attempting to increase the amount and quality of visitors to your website, and gaining higher rankings in the search results of the major search engines, especially Yahoo!, Google and MSN.
6) EPOS - Electronic Point Of Sale - a term used to abbreviate the 'point of sale' in a shop or other retail outlet where a transaction occurs, and generally referring to the electronic till system used for sales data and stock control.
7) WIIFM - What's In It For Me? - a practical 'guerrilla marketing' term used by marketers who put themselves in their customers' shoes and then walk that extra mile to solve their problems or satisfy their needs. The key is to recognise that 'me' means the customer, and not the marketer or business owner.
8) SWOT - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats - a SWOT analysis is a method of identifying where your business is doing well and has potential it can exploit, and also where you aren't doing so well and are being threatened by your competitors.
9) OEM - Original Equipment Manufacturer - a term used to describe a business that uses someone else's product or product component, and then incorporates it or builds it into its own product that it manufactures under its own brand.
10) PDF - Portable Document Format - a widely used open file format developed by Adobe Systems, which is designed for ease of document sharing, printing and publishing.
How well did you do? |
Just one word answer
The answer is c).
A metier is an occupation, activity or profession at which you really excel or are particularly well-suited.
Entrepreneurs who run businesses based on their personal metiers tend to be more successful than those without any skill or experience in their area of business. |
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The EnterQuest Team
This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable
efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the
information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible
for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences
of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought
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