MBA Geek

100 Best Companies to Word For

Owen — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:57:59 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

An interesting page on CNN outlines the top 100 best companies to work for. The top three are SAS, Edward Jones and Wegmans but there are also a number of other well known names in there. It doesn’t matter if you went to the best business school or just followed one of those medical coding training courses, it’s good to have faith in your employer and to know you work somewhere that you can be proud of.

So, are you happy where you work? Is your company in the list?

Focus on niche markets

Owen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:14:23 +0000

One of the great things about the Internet is that it provides a great marketplace where traders and customers can meet. And it’s really effective at providing a steady stream of custom for niche markets that wouldn’t survive otherwise. If you deal with specialised products, like Wordpress themes or gold coins, you wouldn’t survive unless you had a way to tap into a steady stream of customers. And one such market is industrial valves.

Valves Suppliers UK is a company that specialises in industrial values, a pretty specialised market where customers number in the thousands rather than in the millions. They sell products like the Stainless Steel Dual Plate Wafer Check Valve that retails for around £500. You won’t be buying one of those every day, won’t you? Anyway, the Internet lets them get in touch with customers all around the globe, offering their products to any potential customers regardless of where they are in the world. They also have a selection of technical documents on the website and a user forum that helps them prove their authority in the field.

Any other niches you can find online?

Fill the need

Owen — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:25:23 +0000

It’s interesting to see how new products evolve, sometimes out of innovation, sometimes out of a gap in the market. It’s particularly interesting when the gap in the market is artificial, created by legislation that couldn’t even have been conceived a few years earlier. Take for example, the e cigarette market. It’s highly unlikely that unless legislation was created that stopped people from smoking indoors, this market would never have really materialised. Instead today, the market is booming and new products keep getting developed all the time to extend it.

I’ve never really seen one of these, but I’m curious to think what a real smoker thinks of them. Are the adequate in times of need, or are they just a fad?

Collaborate Online

Owen — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:00:39 +0000

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Mavenlink. All opinions are 100% mine.

Have you ever heard how great communication is the pathway to success? Well, one advantage of the online world is that there are a number of tools that can help companies and consultants manage their interactions with each other, with clients and with other third parties. One such platform is Mavenlink, an online cooperative workspace provided as a hosted service which can be accessed just anywhere. Mavenlink is designed to help you through the complete lifecycle of your projects, from lead generation, all the way to providing invoicing capabilities and showing off you completed projects to potential clients.

The website is free to try for 30 days, so you don’t even need a credit card to check it out. After that there are 3 different tiers of service you can opt for. There’s a free service that lets you create 1 project. You can invite unlimited participants, but not have another project. The top tier costs $39 per month lets you have unlimited projects and 5 users on the system. Which package you go for depends on what volume of work you intend to use it for.

If all this sounds like it might interest you, go ahead and check out Mavenlink. It might change the way you work and deal with your clients.

Go for the impulse

Owen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:37:08 +0000

Have you realised how many outlets put so many tempting right next to their check out? Well, the whole purpose besides point of purchase displays is that they work on your base desires. It’s called impulse buying; the urge to buy something you hadn’t originally planned to purchase and a lot of retailers make use of this to boost their sales.

So, whether it’s chocolates, booze or cigarettes down at your convenience store, or pretty knick knacks at the haberdashery, just keep in mind that they’re probably things you hadn’t planned to buy, so why would you buy them at all?

When your market evaporates ..

Owen — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:33:35 +0000

The GPS market is an example of how market leaders cannot sit on their laurels. If you had to ask someone who the leaders in the GPS field were six months ago, they would have mentioned Garmin and TomTom. However, a few months ago, Google entered the market offering free turn-by-turn navigation on their phones, followed by Nokia giving away navigation software for their phones. Have a look at Garmin’s 6 month stock graph and see if you can spot when that happened:

Regardless of which market you operate in, whether you are in the business of selling toasters or searching for the best auto insurance quote around, just because you’re the market leader, there’s no reason to suspend innovation. Everything can change from one day to the next.

Recession Blues

Owen — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:48:56 +0000

This recession has dealt a fatal blow to a number of different companies all around the globe. But it’s interesting to see that some sectors are effected more than others. For example, companies that use lots of gearing are particularly exposed to this climate, as money is in short supply. Companies producing real goods are less exposed, but again; it depends on what they are selling. Companies operating in niche markets, like low cost items like bags, or high value items, like oximeters operate in a market that is still exhibiting demand. Mid range items tend to be a bit more exposed; they don’t have the appeal to retain their value and when consumers are looking to save, they switch to lower cost items.

How is YOUR company doing in this recession?

The profit margins of energy companies

Owen — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:10:03 +0000

: Image by elston via Flickr

There’s a lot in the news today about the profit that energy companies are making. Now, while it’s fine for companies to make profit, the man in the street takes a dim view of companies that make exorbitant profit and his expense. And this is just how this energy profit is seen. Wholesale prices have dropped, while retail prices have stayed pretty much level and consumers are feeling cheated by what has happened.

Perception is a very strong thing, and just like you need to do employee screening before you hire someone new, it’s always worth keeping an eye on public perception. your PR team should know all about this, so I’m surprised these big companies have been caught out like this.

Distribution of resources

Owen — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:28:12 +0000

Was thinking this morning about how a lot of the world’s problems are about the irregular distribution of resources. I’m not talking about how wealth is distributed, I’m a capitalist at heart; but rather how the world’s resources are cause of war, famine and all sorts of other ills. It sort of hit me while watching TV and saw an advert trying to raise funds for a charity that helps starving children, while here I am trying to stick to my weight loss program.

Small organisations are pretty good as distribution resources where they are needed, but how do you apply that principle to an entire planet?

Do you cheat on your taxes?

Owen — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:39:51 +0000

I just came across an interesting article that points out that Americans are cheating more on their tax return than they used to in the past. 13% of those surveyed said cheating is acceptable, according to an annual poll conducted for the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board. That’s up 4% from 2008. 4% percent of Americans said they cheat on their taxes “as much as possible,” up 1% from the year before.

They’re interesting statistics, but worrying ones for tax authorities. The reality is that those taxes drive the economy and without the revenue coming in, well, services have to be cut and customer expectations reset. But people are under pressure also, and paying the taxman is always seen as a burden.

According to the article, the three most common ways in which the tax authorities don’t get their due are inflating the value of charitable donations and claiming personal expenses as business expenses if you’re self-employed as well as people who can’t decipher the complicated tax code. You may think that claiming tax credit on your phentermine might make sense, but there’s really no legal basis to be doing it; it’s not really an “allowable expense”.