Is your business drowning in information?
Are you buried under tons of paperwork and just
don't know where to start? Are you spending more time doing the paperwork than
running the business?
Does you current business data management system
provide ready access to your business data and perform the analysis necessary
to make informed business decisions?
These may seem like simple, basic questions but
in many small and medium-sized businesses they go unasked. What does this mean
to the bottom line of your business?
Business data management is paramount to making
your business profitable and successful. Making your information and data work
as hard as you do, and turning it in to an asset rather than a liability, will
give you the edge over your competitors. Effective business data management
could be the key to the business success that you have been looking for.
The HOW TO of Business Data Management
All businesses today generate and need access to
significant amounts of information and data, much of which is critical to the
efficient and profitable operation of the business. Information like customer
contact details and sales data, appointment scheduling, stock control or
managing production flow and financial records is the life-blood of any
business. It needs to be managed effectively to get the most out of it.
Just the process of collecting and recording
business information can take a great deal of your staff's time, and therefore
your money. Just as important as collecting business data is HOW it is managed
and used. Many hours can go into recording business data, and just as many of
those hours can be wasted if the information is not stored in a way that provides
ready access or analysis of the information it contains. Obviously, recording
business information on random notes or even in structured text documents such
as Word is better than nothing. But information stored this way is difficult to
track and even more difficult to search. Performing any meaningful analysis on
large amounts of data stored in this fashion is virtually impossible.
Using spreadsheets, such as Microsoft's Excel
program, will provide access to structured information as well as the ability
to perform some effective business analysis over small subsets of data. However
filling out spreadsheets and keeping them up-to-date can be a time consuming
task. And what do you do when you have voluminous amounts of data that you want
to analyse for trends, or business opportunities. Unlike databases,
spreadsheets are limited in the number of records they can manipulate and
rarely provided the correlation between disparate data holdings that is
required to perform meaningful analysis.
Making the Most of your Business
Information
I think we all can agree that proper business
information management is an important aspect of effective business management
and should be a core consideration in ensuring the success of your business.
As you have probably realised by now, using hand
written notes, document files and even spreadsheets may not be the most
efficient way for you to manage and make the most of your business information.
In fact, when you take in to account the time and effort necessary to collect and
store the information, collate it, and then try to make sense of what it all
means, you have likely come to the conclusion that unstructured business data
is costing your business not only tens of thousands of dollars in time and
resources handling the information, but also many thousands of dollars in
missed opportunities that proper analysis of that data could have identified.
For the efficient and effective management of
business information you really need a database. Databases provide significant
advantages over other forms of information capture, storage, retrieval and
analysis. More importantly a database enables rapid access to any data held
within the database through sophisticated, and yet in most cases easy to use,
search functionality. Most database systems today handle virtually any size
data-set, be it large or small, and have the ability to perform tasks as simple
as 'Customer Relationship', 'Inventory Management' or 'Asset Management', right
through to the more complex sales and/or trend analysis, across ten or even
hundreds of thousands of individual records.
Perhaps equally as important is the ability of
relational databases, such as the Microsoft Access database, to vastly decrease
the time and effort required to collect the data. With functionality such as
data import, default field values, lookup tables, drop-down lists and the
ability to enter common data (which may be used often across 1000s of records)
only once, they can significantly reduce the time and effort required to
collect and store information.
Over time there have been many database
applications available. Whilst all these database systems have provided the
basic data storage and retrieve capability, more modern-day database
applications such as Microsoft Access Database provide a graphical user
interface, simplified querying and comprehensive internal reporting
functionality which is capable of analysing and charting vast amounts of data
in very short periods of time, often only seconds. Microsoft has gone to great
lengths to incorporate all the modern features required by any business to
effectively handle their information management and analysis needs. Microsoft
Access Database comes packaged with the 'Office' (professional) suite of
software tools, and its integration with those tools makes passing information
and data between documents, spreadsheets and databases a simply process which
greatly enhances and simplifies its data collection, analysis and reporting
capabilities. Existing users of MS Access Database will also be aware that
several of the sample databases that ship with the Access Database, whilst
basic in design, already provide some good business information management
tools.
Whilst Microsoft's Access database is easy to
use, allowing basic databases to be easily built by the novice, it also
contains advanced functionality and features that can be used to build more
powerful, integrated business information management systems. Consequently, a
number of 'business to business' companies specialising in the development of
custom, business specific, Access Database applications have emerged. Where you
have a need to build a database to meet a specific requirement within your
business, but just don't have the time or someone with the advanced training
and knowledge required to build the database in-house, then using a specialist
Access Database developer may be the answer. As there are many such companies
offering this service the development rates are usually very affordable, and
you will find that the time required to have a functioning, customized
database, up and running will be significantly reduced.
Hypnotherapy for Business Development - Leading by Example
So you thought hypnotherapy and business
development make a rather odd couple, right? One is all about strange utterings
and exaggerated facial expressions, while the other is about being cool,
calculated and professional. How odd that they could even be considered
compatible. How absolutely bizarre! But truth is always stranger than fiction,
and I would like to break the myth that business and hypnotherapy don't go
together. I would go on to say even as much that Hypnotherapy for business
development is one of the fastest growing fields in this alternative sciences
division.
Numerous corporates and organizations today hire
qualified and experienced trainers to take their personnel through rigorous
training modules to increase their efficiency. From communication skills, to
sales & marketing; from EQ, to leadership and time management, there are a
host of training requirements which are needed by corporates around the clock.
The end result of all these trainings is that each and every employee should be
more efficient and present timely results, they should have good communication
skills to maintain harmony in the working environment; they should be able to
eliminate stress and have the ability to work as a team. What if there was one
single method of training which could teach the employees to do all this and
more, at a continuous basis and provide excellent results, be cost effective
and easily accessible. Well there it is...the answer is hypnotherapy for business
development.
You would be surprised to know that more and more
managers are signing up for hypnotherapy for business development classes every
year. The benefits of such a class are manifold and people are beginning to
realize that. The corporate world is rife with high tension jobs, immense
stress and competition. Many people suffer from lifestyle disorders because of
their hectic schedules, and some even suffer from a burnout. Such a situation
would take a toll on anyone's performance, and this is exactly where
hypnotherapy helps. First of all, it helps a person relax and calm down...and
that is one of the most important things that managers at work need today.
While you relax during a hypnotherapy session, your subconscious mind is being
sent subliminal messages to repeat this calmness in a situation of stress. By
auto suggestion, your mind is taught to handle stressful situations with
calmness, it also helps a person to maintain clarity of thought and focus when
under pressure.
Hypnotherapy for business development is also a
method to increase motivation in people, as it works on the subconscious mind
to look at the positives and build self-confidence. A person with confidence is
motivated, and a motivated person can perform better, be it while making presentations,
pitching for new business or when performing the role of a team player.
Managers like hypnotherapy for business development, because it helps them
manage their work relationships better, even while keeping their emotional
wellbeing intact. It helps in increasing their basic communication skills and
works on personal development. These personality changes can positively affect
a manager's negotiating and leadership skills, while making them effective
communicators.
