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Don’t Wait For The Opportunity, Create It

Most of us wait for the right opportunity to come. We wait for an opportunity to be offered a better position or a better job. We wait for an opportunity to make more money. Does the opportunity ever come? Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn’t.

You wait passively for something to happen. Why just daydream and not go beyond the dream? Why become disappointed and unhappy because nothing happens? You can create opportunities!

Opportunities are missed by most people because they don’t realize they’ve encountered such. There will always be opportunities for those who recognize and pursue them. The lucky people are simply those who have taken more chances than average

Often, it is not a matter of creating them, but becoming aware of them. Often, they are there all the time, in front of us, but we do not recognize them. Seeing them and recognizing them requires a change of your mindset.

When you want something very strongly, and focus on it, things start happening. There is no magic here, just plain mental and emotional laws at work. Successful people use these laws, albeit unknowingly. Most people use the same laws, but in a negative manner, creating things they don’t want.

You need to define what you want. If you don’t know what exactly you want, how can you get it? When you know what you want, you will recognize the opportunities. Know your limits. You can’t be perfect. You can’t do everything yourself.

You can’t create a business or live the life of your dreams or make a lot of money if you don’t know your weaknesses, strengths, and passions. If you know your limits and what you are capable of, you will know exactly what you need. Once you begin to know yourself, you will realize your weakness and you can fill these weaknesses with other people’s strengths.

Visualize your goal as already accomplished. Feel it, and enjoy it. This will motivate and energize you to make it real. When you have the motivation, energy, and enthusiasm, you see opportunities, which you haven’t seen before. People you meet would sense your enthusiasm and would open new doors for you.

For example, if you want a new job very much, believe you will find one, and expect to find it, certain opportunities will become available. You might see an advertisement in a newspaper, or a friend might tell you about it. The job was there, and because of your expectant attitude, you became aware of the opportunity. Without this mindset, you would have probably missed it.

Another example is if you want to travel abroad, but believing the trip would cost you a lot of money, you don’t even check the prices. You regard this dream as not an achievable dream. This attitude would block any chance of traveling. This is different if you can awaken a strong ambition, not just a mild wish.

Visualize and see yourself traveling, without having any doubts about it. Sooner or later, you will find a deal, a discount, or some other way to enable you to travel, which you can afford. You might also find an opportunity to make more money, so you can travel.

You should visit different places for at least one time a year. This way you will sure as well meet new people and also might be presented with an opportunity that simply doesn’t exist in your hometown.

If you want to find friends, you create the opportunity by mixing with people, not by staying at home. You create the opportunity, by rehearsing in your mind how to talk and behave, so that they are attracted to you.

If you want to be presented with more opportunities, simply meet new people. The more people you know, the higher chances you will be presented with new experiences. Go to meetings with people having similar interests as you.

You just never know, life is unpredictable, and that’s why you should always keep your eyes wide open. You might miss an opportunity simply because you were too busy listening to your iPod. Always be on the lookout even when doing simple activities as drinking coffee, riding the bus, or walking back home.

Don’t be afraid to ask. – Just DON’T! There is no shame in not knowing something, and there is no shame in questioning things. Most people would gladly help you if you asked them nicely for some help. People are not monsters, most of us are good and kind. You just have to ask the right way.

Don’t be afraid to try a different approach. Build your self-confidence. You can’t make people follow you if you don’t look confident. If you could make people follow you, you will surely be able to create a lot of opportunities for yourself/ your company/ your workplace.

Keep learning. Learning is a process that never ends. You can always learn something new. Always maintain the attitude of a student. If you think you are done learning, bitterness set in, but if you have more to achieve every day, in any arena, that makes each morning’s awakening full of potential and cheery portent.

In the end, it all comes to doing. You will never get presented with opportunities by sitting and watching TV all day. Go out, feel, see, be, and take part in life. If you are active and always on the lookout, you will always end up in the right place at the right moment.

Advantages of E-Learning & How To Create An App For It

Education is no more confined to the walls of schools and educational institutions. With the prevalence of smartphones and tablets, it has now become possible to facilitate learning experiences online and beyond the boundaries of schools and institutions.

eLearning has been gradually grabbing up space in the apps market and the reason is the widespread education industry. There’s literally no limit to the number of categories, learning fields, languages, or cultural peculiarities involved in it. Besides, students or young learners are striving hard too to do better than others. The idea of eLearning apps is to help them compete in the rat race by letting them read, learn, and absorb knowledge beyond their textbooks. However, getting an app developed is not that easy and instant. You need to decide first who will be the audience. Kids, young students, and grown-up are the user groups that can benefit from an eLearning app. Second, you need the conceive the idea or purpose of learning the app will serve. It can be about providing reading experiences (of any course materials, books, etc.) video-based learning, online aptitudes, tricky riddles and question-solving, language learning and many more.

If you’re thinking about making your entry to the education industry with one purposeful learning app, here is a guideline.

Decide the type of leaners to target

Among the three defined users groups, decide whom do you want to help out with your app. The kind of app you want to develop depends on that. For instance, if it targets kids, consider focussing on puzzle solving, numbers and alphabets learning through games, or elementary topics learning with fun interactions. On the other hand, engaging young scholars and adult students mean getting the app featured with any online tutorials, practice sets, eBooks and study materials, online conference or discussion form, or learning videos by teachers.

Consider the features of your eLearning app

To make your app fun as well as engaging to the users, make sure you incorporate the most interactive features.

Gamification: It avoids making the learning experience dull. Gamifying the learning process with rewards, badges, or power points will make the experience fun-filled for the learners.
Cloud storage for the database: There should be a secure database in the form of cloud storage from where learners could quickly access all whatever information they need.
Virtual classroom: In whichever category your app belongs, make sure it offers a virtual space where learners could come together and interact with each other. Besides, the classroom must be having writing tools, whiteboard, video recording, and share features.
User account and dashboard functionality: Make sure your app should enable students to maintain an independent user account, where they could keep track of their learning courses, tests attained, videos downloaded, etc. in a dashboard.
Other features: Try implementing other interactive features speech-recognition, social media sharing, push-notifications, and multi-language support.

Consider monetisation approaches to earn from your app

After settling with your eLearning app idea, it’s time for you to decide how to make money with it. Effective monetisation approaches that will let you earn some good returns are in-app purchases, freemium policy, paid subscription packs, and partnership with schools and big educational organisations. Taking with app marketers will further help you in monetising your app and can even help to optimise your app store submissions.

Hire a mobile app development firm

Lastly, to assure the success of your eLearning app and make it really big as your contribution to the education industry, partner with a competent adept mobile app development company. Surely, you need a team having technology expertise in both iOS and Android and experience in widespread app categories to kickstart your app idea.

Create Your Own MBA Program

Many small business owners are typically self-taught in the ways that make them successful. Most small business owners do not have an MBA, which actually is a good thing. Formal business education, specifically the typical MBA program, is geared more toward the large corporate environment and not the small business environment that agency owners operate in.

So, how would one design a two year MBA program for the small business agency owner? The program is based on a trimester system and the students are required to read a book a month for two years. There will be six areas of study, with a bonus session to allow a concentration for the insurance industry. By the end of these two years, students will have the right information to operate a small business and be successful.

The key purpose of this program is to accelerate through the learning curve. Much of the information the students will learn has been around for a while and it works. Successful business owners do not re-invent the wheel. They take a proven idea and adapt it. This cuts out the time and expense of having to learn it on their own.

1. The first trimester focuses on understanding one self and others. What skills and knowledge are needed to be successful? All of these books are classics and three of them have been around for over 75 years. In order to be a great business owner, one needs to understand themself, as well as understand how best to relate to other people.

· 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Steve Covey

· How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

· Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

· The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Classen

2. The second trimester is an introduction to business and the philosophy of business. Most small business owners got into their business because they were good at what they did. Michael Gerber created the mantra of “Work on the business and not in the business,” so his book is a must read. The other books will round out one’s understanding of what it means to be an entrepreneur and small business owner.

· The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

· Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It… and Why the Rest Don’t by Verne Harnish

· Rework by Jason Fried

· The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business By Josh Kaufman

3. Sales and marketing is covered in the third trimester. The books in this session will go from the big picture of sales and marketing to the nitty-gritty details of how to do it. Sales people will like the books by Schley and Holmes and the marketing folks will hone in on the books by Heath and Gladwell.

· Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Don’t by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

· The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

· The Micro-Script Rules: It’s not what people hear. It’s what they repeat… by Bill Schley

· The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

4. Welcome to year two! The fourth trimester is all about management and leadership. Satisfied employees are critical to the success of a business. Some people are natural leaders while others can be great leaders with some training. The material and ideas in these books are practical and easy to learn.

· The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spenser Johnson

· The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams

· The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell

· Drive by Daniel Pink

5. The fifth trimester focuses on an area that business owners easily get or perpetually struggle with – economics and business financials. Even if it is a turn off for some small business owners, it is still important that the basics are understood. Accounting is a subject that does not translate well to books, so that subject will be covered using online videos. There are many free videos that will cover both the basics and the details of accounting.

· Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy and Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell

· Financial Intelligence A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean by Karen Berman and Joe Knight

· Various online videos on accounting

6. Now that the business is running, what is next? A successful business is not static; it undergoes constant change and improvement. The sixth trimester introduces philosophy of change and techniques on how to re-think the business operations.

· Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras

· Who Moved My Cheese by Spenser Johnson

· What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith

· First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt W. Coffman

Congratulations! Reading these 23 books will provide information more valuable to the small business owner than taught in most MBA programs! Graduates of this program now have the skills and knowledge to be even better business owners. Some graduates might want to continue on to a concentration within their industry.

Formal education can be valuable. However, the stereotypical small business owner has neither the time nor patience to attend an MBA program. There is so much good information that all business owners can easily have a customized “MBA Program.” So, crack open a book, turn on a kindle or plug in some ear buds, school is in session!

How To Create A Business Card

A properly prepared business card is one of the business tools many people overlook. For a small investment usually less than $30 for 500 cards you can tell the world that you are and what services you can provide. Your business card is a silent salesperson, so what will it say about you?

When planning a card it’s important to consider your message. Your card will be what people reference or use to remember you. It needs to be professional, legible and contain the necessary information. Some exceptions would be a humorous card if you were a clown or a comedian and a juvenile card if you were involved with children’s services. In any case it would still need to cover the essential points in its creation.

Spend some advance thought to layout and how to capture all the necessary information in such a small space. Draw out a template and try different versions and placement of information. You can also use some of the online websites that have sample business cards templates readily available. (You will probably need to order from them to use it.)

Tip: Fax your card to yourself. This is a good way to see how legible you have made the important details.

In some cases a folded card might be acceptable. It is important to recognize that many people don’t like cards that are a different shapes and size (especially ones that won’t store conventionally in a rolodex or a business card organizer.)

Some questions to consider when preparing your business card

1) Who will receive your card? Hopefully everyone you meet. You should always be prepared to give out your cards. I am amazed at the number of people who attend business functions and come without their cards. Students are notorious for not having a business card. It is an essential part of job hunting.

Tip: When attending a function that the exchange of cards is expected, wear something with pockets. Keep you own cards in your right pocket and the cards of the people you meet in your left.

2) What will they do with the card once they receive it? Store it in a Rolodex, add it to the database, and put it in a stack with a rubber band around it? My personal favorite for services I use around the house, vet, pharmacy, cleaners, etc., is the refrigerator magnet business card. They are all readily accessible. They are a little more expensive, but those are the cards I use most.

3) Under what conditions will your card be used? In an emergency (if you need a plumber) you would want your card to jump out of the stack.

Exotic or unusual cards are clever but not exactly suited to the business environment. Exceptions being if you can identify on your card some service you perform like embossing, hot foil stamping or product you sell, specialty papers or if you happen to be an exotic dancer. Bright colors are not a good idea unless you are involved with color in your business paint, flowers, decorating, etc. Specialty effects such as vignettes and shadowing get lost in such a small space. Keep it simple and not distracting. I recently got a card on an opaque material and I simple could not read what was printed on it.

Many people now include their photos, this is especially touchy feely. But if you are involved in the photographic business like Eastman Kodak or are a photographer this is a great idea.

A couple of things to consider about photos:

o Some people judge services by the person’s appearance.

o There may be security reasons why you might not want your photo on your card.

o Photos can “date” you or your product.

o Photos can personalize you and make you more accessible.

It is perfectly acceptable to have multiple cards. You should consider having both a professional and personal business card. My husband, a retired Marine, has a somewhat risqué but funny business card he gives out to Marines he might meet. Another example would be if you were looking for a job you would want to differentiate your work, address and contact information from your home information. You may also have a sideline business that you would want identified separately.

Business card essentials:

On the front:

o Name, Title, Company name & logo, mailing address, phone and fax numbers, E mail address, website & cell phone number.

On the back:

o Who you are what you do, your mission statement, your vision, services you perform, skill sets you have, awards you have won, associations/memberships.

TIP: Make sure one side of your card is always in English. If you plan to travel or do business in a foreign country, it’s a good idea to invest in a translation of your essential details for the other side of the card. If you do a lot of international travel especially countries that have security risk it might be worth downplaying your title. Do NOT have a card that shows that you are someone of great importance.

General writing tips:

o Stay away from unusual fonts and different fonts on the same card;

o Make sure your card is legible and credible;

o Make sure the information is well organized and makes sense in the layout;

o Make sure your name is large enough that people can read without glasses;

Don’t rely on one card to do it all.

Plan your cards as carefully as you would a resume. Be proud of your card. It’s a reflection of you. Business cards are an inexpensive yet essential selling tool. Be prepared to give out your card in any circumstance and for heaven’s sake “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

To Create Wealth Marry the Mindset of an Entrepreneur to a Network Marketing Business Opportunity

No professional entrepreneur with a thorough understanding of Network Marketing will deny its viability as a wealth creational asset that makes available the ability to persevere in the profession of entrepreneurship. Network Marketing and the Direct Selling industry as a whole continues to grow through good economic times as well as bad. It has survived a roller coaster ride of poor press and bad word of mouth criticism that still lingers in the memories of some to this day, yet through the entire tenure of the business models conception it has prospered and enriched the lives of all whom are able to bring to it an entrepreneurial mindset to succeed in business.

The vast majority of businesses, conventional and those offered through a Network Marketing home business opportunity will fail within their first few years. The cause of most conventional business failures is due to the inability of the entrepreneur to continually raise the necessary capital to keep the business afloat until it is able to operate solely and continuously from its accounts receivables while maintaining a security cash reserve. The most common cause of failure among those operating a Network Marketing home business is that the newly independent business owner is either not an entrepreneur, or has failed to adapt the mental mindset of an entrepreneur.

The low cost of operating a Network Marketing home business and the fact that it can be started and operated part time makes it an attractive option to the employed and unemployed that see a visionary path to financial freedom, and gets excited about it. When it does not quickly transpire, they quit, and continue along the path of their familiarity, and believed security of being among the employed working for someone else. An entrepreneur sees a market demand, an opportunity to create a business to address it, and moves forward with a vision so clear that others are willing to follow.

Entrepreneurs are not born with a special gene. They acquire a philosophical way of thinking that those that are not do not have. However among the few things that is freely among our control in life, our way of thinking is one of them. This mental adjustment is within your powers, and adapting it to its fullest is within your capability. The cost effectiveness of starting, owning and operating an independent Network Marketing home business monetarily affords you the time. It further exposes you to others that will help you through the maze until you exit at the door of the financial prosperity that only an entrepreneurial path can bring you too.

An entrepreneurial mindset is a positive attitude. It may seem difficult to develop, and even harder to sustain when most of the attitudes around you are conditioned to its opposite. If you want to be among those who obtain long term success in Network Marketing (it will not happen quickly), you must acquire it and sustain it even during periods of your worst doubts. Wealth is not a privilege, it is a right! You have the ability to achieve financial abundance through Network Marketing, time, effort and the help of others (no one strives to financial abundance on their own, we all need the help from others), but wanting it is not enough; you have to want it bad.

How to Create Wealth?

When you have born, you have nothing of that sort called wealth! You are born really very much bare! Similarly, when you go out of this world after your stay here, you take nothing with you! You are again very much bare! In between lies what is called life with full of necessities.

Born with silver spoon!

To meet the needs and wants of your life you should have sufficient resources called money and wealth. Some might have born with a silver spoon. They will have their fore father’s wealth just transmitted to them and always there at their disposal. Hereditary transmission of wealth and money to the youth could be the easiest way to create wealth. The next choice is getting wedded to a rich girl.

Bare foot shrewd entrepreneur:

But earning money for the livelihood and to create wealth for a family with out these starters is a difficult task for a bare footed entrepreneur. But a shrewd entrepreneur will make it possible and become successful to create wealth with certain assured principles.

To start with earning for a livelihood requires certain analysis about the entrepreneur.

Open Mind learns:

The entrepreneur should have an open mind to learn what is essential to start and establish a business needed by the people. He should have common sense towards invention and innovation to question his brain by bombardment so that it releases good ideas for the business. He must have well trained concentration in learning a skill and in execution process too.

He should either have a skill or master a skill matching the business need. He should be in a position to work and manage his people to work for production of the matching product or service.

Match skill more pointedly:

He should have a plan to do the business more pointedly to bring success initially. He must be in apposition to expand it further, to make it reach the people in more areas. He must be a specialist supplier of the unique service. He should plan for a multifold growth of the accepted service to the people.

Serve More Unit Quantities:

Let it be a chain of department stores, restaurants, fast food counters. The aim is to serve more people, more times, and then the volume will become huge to bring money and create wealth.

Division of labor-work sharing society:

He should divide the work and delegate the sub works to the desiring work sharing society. The target oriented approach towards ‘supply and demand’, will make things easier.

BPO and Quality control:

Business Process Outsourcing with quality management will help the entrepreneur to expand the business as desired. He can create wealth by converting the money earned so far in these businesses. He can reinvest or plough back or diverse in associated fields of his existing business.

Vision and Ambition:

The limit to create wealth lies with the vision, ambition and capability of the entrepreneur’s managerial groups. This depends mainly on the people outside and inside of the organization.

The entrepreneur who excels in performance and serves more people in a society will multiply his earning power to create wealth.

Create Your Own Business Plan Competition

You still remember a few years back where you asked a few of your school mates to be part of a team to join a business plan competition organised by your university. It is so vivid in your mind about the dedication, persuasiveness and analytical skills that got your team to the finals with a lot of offers to take your business plan to initial public offering (IPO). You feel that your entire team has matured and become more focused in the quest for success.

Now you have decided that you do want to create a business-plan competition as a way of giving back to society. However, you start to realise that it requires a lot of planning, strategizing and focus because this business plan competition can also be the launch-pad of an unknown startup. This is the magic of being part of a business plan competition. You feel the immense feeling of a big achievement already.

Here are some tips that will help you along this path.

Your purpose:

Before you even start to create your own business plan competition, you have to be very clear about what separates yours and a host of other business plan competitions globally. How do you measure the success of your business plan competition?

The prize:

The prize need not be all in cash. It can also include free administrative support or even the matching to a venture capitalist.

Judging Criteria:

The judging criteria has to be clear and constructive to participants so that they know what to emphasise during their group presentations.

Sponsorship:

Start getting sponsors early. It is essential that you have a detailed meeting with potential sponsors and understand how your business plan competition can give their organisation more positive publicity and mileage.

Judging panel:

Ensure that you get a big pool of judges who are considered as subject experts and have no vested interest in any of the teams and are unbiased and fair in their judgement. Organise a meet-up where you can brief all judges about the judging criteria and how they must adhere to the agreement of non-disclosure and confidentiality.

The more experienced judges can be offered the opportunity to be judges for the finals and must have the ability to do Q&A and articulate about what made them offer certain points.

Mentors:

For a more hands-on group of professionals, you can offer them the opportunity to mentor the participating teams. This may give your judges the opportunity to continue to be part of the startup even after the end of the business plan competition.

Media Publicity:

Every startup participating in your competition desires to get as many people to know about their product or expertise. Thus you have to ensure that your business plan competition is accorded the most positive publicity as possible.

This is especially important for startups that may not have won the competition but are very eager to get more potential customers to learn and use their products or services.

Any form of publicity can be put to advantageous use.

Publication:

Consider choosing a few finalists to be part of a book to recognise how they have gone beyond just being startups. This book may give them more credibility on a global platform.

You can also create a directory listing the product or services of all your participating teams and you may obtain a commission once there is a good match.

How to Create a Value-Based Business Plan

Business plans are usually written by executives who want others to invest in their companies, but they can be an effective tool for helping new businesses to plan for their futures. The plans are a kind of snapshot of where the organization is at present, and where it hopes to be, typically in three years.

Value-based business plans emphasize what they will give to the customer or the investor, rather than what they will get in return as a result. This is opposite of the way many such plans are written.

Business plans consist of seven sections: Executive Summary, Products and/or Services, Operations, People, Marketing, and Appendices.

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary is similar to the overture in an opera. It ties together all of the main themes that will be presented in the document, and enables those who read it to get an overall understanding of what is to follow. Although it appears first, it’s written last.

Products and/or Services

This section explains in some detail the what of the organization. What is the company selling? Does it sell physical products or services? The answer you give will dictate how the rest of the plan is written.

Operations

This part of the plan explains the how. How will the organization deliver the products and/or services it described in the previous section?

People

This section lists the primary players, and briefly summarizes the contribution they will make. Why does the success of the business depend on this person or team of people.

Marketing

This section describes how the organization will make itself known to potential customers. Topics include target market and the expected return-on-investment. Sometimes letters-of-intent and existing contracts are placed here.

Financial Projections

In even the most complex business plans, this section often can be kept to one page. It summarizes the expected income, expenses, and profit-before-tax for each of the years covered by the plan.

Appendices

This section is usually the longest part of the plan and can include copies of patents, descriptions of research and development projects, or a more detailed description of complex processes.

It may also forecasts on the quantity of units that it will produce, or the number of customers it expects to serve over the term of the plan. The resumes of the personnel described earlier in the plan will be here, and detailed financial projections for the period.

There is no prescribed limit on the length of business plans, but without the appendices 30-50 pages is the norm.

While the plan may be for internal use only, this is not the place to skimp on the detail. The more that readers can understand about what you do, the more likely they will be able to help you achieve your goals.

ITIL for Beginners: How To Create a Backout Plan

It is not the best moment of the week, when after long hours of preparations and intense work during an implementation window, your change fails. Moreover, it breaks other things as well. Sometimes, it is evident right after implementation, but sometimes you find out hours or days later. If you are fortunate, you can apply an emergency change to fix a pretty apparent root cause, e.g. missing one of the items on the implementation checklist. However, in many cases it will not be possible and you will need to back out the change.

A key to a successful backout is to have a plan. Yes, a backout plan, the thing that is often overlooked. After all, you want your backout to be an honorable surrender, not a panic escape. In order to limit damage to the business, and your reputation, you need to stay in control of the situation. To do that, the team of engineers need to know what to do and the Service Desk needs to keep the business informed.

A backout plan is intended to keep you in control. It is your insurance policy against Murphy’s Law. Let’s be honest with ourselves: we do not insure everything. Do not prepare a formal backout plan for every change. Just make sure the team can verbally describe how to go back in case things get messy.

You do need a more formal plan for more complex changes, though. Creating such a plan is one of the least favorable activities of many technical people. That is why the Change Manager should be accountable for getting it done. It should be included with the rest of change documentation, ready to be used if necessary.

A good backout plan should include:

low-level, technical instructions,
specific communication instructions, with contact names.

The list of technical instructions is created by reversing the order of activities from your implementation plan and describing how to back out from each of the executed steps. It may be relatively straightforward if majority of the work could be achieved by restoring the most recent backup. Consider a sample backout plan for such a scenario:

Notify the Service Desk about backout plan initiation. (Call them, send an email or raise a ticket – state it specifically.)
Disable user access to the system. (How? List the actions.)
Restore backup taken before the change implementation. (List the actions needed.)
Conduct system health checks.(List them all.)
Enable user access.
Notify the Service Desk of successful backout.

Often the plan will be more complex than it would seem. There might be many more restoration steps, involving various databases, file systems and other areas of the IT infrastructure. The basic template still applies. It needs to be detailed and tailored to every organization and every change. Needless to say, every action should have an owner, so make sure it is clear who does what.

Communicating with the Service Desk is very important. Communication in general needs to be part of the plan to maintain control over the situation. Moreover, the business needs to know IT is in control. The Service Desk should take care of projecting the image of control towards the business. They can do it by issuing regular communication if business impact is severe enough. They will also take calls from dissatisfied users and inform them about the resolution status.

A backout plan is your insurance policy. It is up to you to have it or not. It is recommended to have it for every complex change, because business continuity and IT credibility are at stake. Start by preparing such a plan for the most complex change you have coming up in your pipeline. Then build on that and over time you will have it ready for all high-risk changes.

How To Create A Business Model

Could a stranger enter your office and operate your business? They could if you have a business model that defines each step of your business process. Create one by using a simple business template that provides actual business processes.

Start with an outline of what you do each season of business.

Sell Product or Services

Define your product or services within a pictorial scale, including price, value, and description of what each entails. Give your products names that identify, define, and value the individual product or service, and then put them in your product or service journal.

Define Niche Market

Identify your buyers. Who are they? How much will they spend? How often will they buy? Will they return for more product? Are you going to meet them personally, or online? Will your buyers come to you, or do you take your sales to them?

Select Payment Options

How will you be paid for products and services? What finance plans will be available? Decide how you will accept payment and whether your accounting program will be cash or accrual. Will you send invoices, statements, and other billing options? How will you communicate collections?

How Product is Delivered

One of my favorite sections of the business model is the product section. We get to define our product, decide how it’s produced, and how to deliver our products. Some products are easy to figure out, others require a bit of finesse.

I specifically remember one product that included ordering a mass production from an auto-supply company, ordering boxes, and then spending hours inserting products in boxes, then shipping them out via USPS at the end of each day. Labeling because my most difficult problem. With each order I was downloading labels for shipping. After one particularly grueling week of shipping hundreds of boxes, my daughter found a “drop shipper” who did all the shipping.

We simplified our Business Model, increased our profit, and cut a huge chunk of labor off the shipping process.

The business model offers you a selection of methods for delivering not only one product, but several products. You can drop ship some, while personally shipping others, and some can even be digitally transferred. The key is to have a plan and know what happens with each product grouping.

Service Delivery Options

Another key component of your business is the overall development and delivery of services relevant to the end game of business transactions. Every business has a certain number of services, but determining how those are performed, delivered, and completed is part of the overall business model.

Functional Business Models can be as complete or as circumspect as you wish them to be, but for more automated systems, or for systems that are operated by non-owner entities, the more complete the Business Model, the easier it is to hire assistants to complete the work.

Creatively put as much effort into your Business Model as you expect to get out of it. The better it is written the more effective it will be.

Score Cards and A Book of Procedures might be important with your Business Model. These offer simplified methods of business, and distinctive directions and procedures for each segment of business.

If your business model needs some attention, you might want to contact a consultant.