Managing Archives - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

Managing Time Wisely

Work can take up most of your time especially those who do online business, where most of your time will be spend on networking with other netpreneurs, reply emails and provide online customer services to your clients etc…

You tend to forget there still a lot of housework s needed you to attend to. By the time you done your work, you simply got no “energy” to do anything but to close your eyes and sleep.

Now I understand, why most women tend to work at home, part of the reason is that they can earning a living at home at the same time they can attend to errand, kill two birds with one stone, how wonderful !

But most of the time, thing cannot turn out what we want it to be, isn’t it? Hours seem to fly by when work online. You are tired, and it required a lot of effort s even to do the basic of household duties like l fixing dinner, fetching your kids from school etc.

Now fear not, start organizing your schedule well. Here are some tips to help you balance your work as well as your home. It worked for me and I hope its help.

1. Managing time wisely – First of the most important factor is to ask yourself how and where you want to spend your time is key to how to keep a balance in your lifestyle. You can start keeping a PDA or notebook to keep track your entire daily schedule. You can even do it online. Through this way, you can definitely cut some time out by doing certain tasks; for example you can read a newspaper or knitting in the car while you are waiting for your husband or children to knock off from work or school respectively.

2. Prioritize your tasks – Divide available hours between your home and your work diligently. In order to reach your personal, business or family goals, you must learn to cut down on “redundant” activities. For example, you can cut down these “helping other” activities (I know it tough as women we tend to have difficulties saying “No” as we are helpful by nature) but who going to help you when your life is “messed up”. So most importantly you really need to prioritize the activity according to its value or importance.

3. Learn to relax – Like I said ‘We Work to Live, We do not Live to Work’. It’s no point being successful at the expense of your home and your family. Set aside some time to relax some that you can recharge your life “battery” too much some thing is not good. You can organized some activities like going picnics at the park with your family or meet up with friends for coffee, these in turn will help maintain your social life. Similarly, surf the internet with your husband or children. Show them websites of their interest. That way, you will strengthen bond with them as well.

These are some of few suggestions on balancing work and family. Hope you find it useful and most important thing is that you should start it Right Now! Cheer!

Managing Your Restaurant Reputation

Internet marketing has influenced the attitude of people in promotional aspects of their business. Social media has strongly invaded life, changing the concept of promotion itself. No longer does advertising alone work. Advertising seems to play a less significant role in promoting business. Online marketing to promote your business is now seen as an investment. The voice of your current consumers is now a very significant factor for influencing the minds of your new consumers. With the onset of social media, are you really aware of your restaurants social reputation? With just a few clicks of a diners mouse, it could change instantly. Don’t let bad reviews cost you your business. There are over 40 food and drink review sites. Can you name the top 10?

People like to know the experiences of others to help themselves make better decisions. With the economy the way it is today, the consumer is being more aware of where they are spending money. As such, you can see diners are reading reviews online before deciding to book a table. This is proved from the increased number of review postings online. This is further established by direct participation in social media.

Companies are extremely concerned about what the users say or what the published reviews are. These reviews reflect on the reputation of your restaurant that you have built; every business needs to save its reputation. After all, knowing what others say is the best way to diagnose the lapses. Never let a bad review go unanswered and don’t forget to say thank you for your good reviews as well. Interaction is key. <p>

A one-star decrease on a review site can reduce your restaurants reviews by almost 10%. Review tracking companies notify you of reviews and alerts so you can respond and evaluate the performance of your locations and strive for excellent customer support. Your online presence is an investment in your restaurants business. Take it seriously. You have worked too hard for your name and reputation to have it hurt by a bad review. A strong online presence is a must in today’s market.

Today more than ever, getting guests to dine at your restaurant comes down to the reputation you have built, wither you like it or not. Respond in a timely fashion to your reviews. Many times, people just want to know they are being heard. You can easily turn a dissatisfied customer around when you acknowledge the situation, and make good on it. A good dining experience doesn’t have to stop once a patron leaves your establishment.

The CEO’s Guide To Succession Planning – Managing Risk & Ensuring Business Continuity

Introduction

Once reserved for the upper echelons of senior management, and often viewed as replacement planning should catastrophe strike, today’s succession planning is being redefined. The discipline has broadened in both breadth and scope to become a central component of board-level strategy.

Succession planning focuses on managing risk and ensuring continuity across all levels of the organization – risk of untimely departures of critical personnel, risk of retirees taking their skills and knowledge with them and leaving nothing behind, and risk of losing high value employees to competitors. It does so by helping your business leaders to identify top performers within the organization, create dynamic “talent pools” of this critical talent that other leaders can leverage, and prepare and develop these high performing employees for future roles.

If this was easy, everyone would be doing it. The problem that exists today is that succession planning is barely automated, let alone optimized. This CEO guide provides five key tips for jump starting your succession planning efforts.

1. Automate and Reduce Costs

Today’s succession planning efforts are characterized by fragmented, inconsistent, paper-based processes. Indeed, 67% of companies are still primarily paper-based, according to a global survey conducted by SumTotal.

Conventionally, business and HR leaders will spend weeks or even months manually scouring different parts of the organization for information needed to build lists and pools of nominees and successors for specific job families or positions. The information required to generate the lists often includes self assessments, past performance appraisals (often paper-based), and 360 feedback. After a lengthy period of information gathering and aggregation followed by manual analysis (e.g., nine-box, gap analysis), the results are printed and collated into large three-ring binders for use in executive planning meetings. This time-consuming, inefficient, and costly process is still commonplace today.

To effectively transform succession planning from a manual, paper-based process to one that is systematic and technology-enabled, CEOs must focus on laying a solid foundation supported by strong executive leadership.

Program & Process Foundation

Establish dedicated management function (e.g., program management office) with CEO-sponsored executive leader or council (with senior representation from line-of-business, geography, and corporate HR)
Define core succession process along with key constituents and tasks at each step of the process; Clearly articulate touch points to other business processes (e.g., performance management, career development)
Understand implications of change with emphasis on managers & employees
Align program with broader business strategy
Determine initial scope (e.g., enterprise-wide, divisional)
Define processes independent of technology

Technology Foundation

Must support and enable key processes
Must integrate learning and development
Must link seamlessly to other business processes, especially performance management
Must be flexible and configurable to meet unique needs
Must centralize and consolidate key information and data
Must be easy for managers and employees to use

2. Drive Succession Planning Deeper into Your Organization

Many CEOs still view succession planning as replacement planning to designate successors in the event of a catastrophe befalling senior company leaders. Indeed, succession planning penetrates only the highest levels of the organizational hierarchy, according to survey data. Only 35% of companies currently focus their succession planning efforts on most critical roles within the organization.

Yet a most dramatic transformation is underway: 65% of the organizations surveyed plan to extend succession planning to all critical positions within the two years. Applying succession planning beyond the top layers of management is critical to retaining high performers across all levels of the organization and mitigating the risk of untimely departures of personnel in high-value positions.

The key to extending succession planning into the organization is to provide career development planning to employees. Indeed, fully 97% of business and HR leaders believe that a systematic career development process positively impacts employee retention and engagement. These leaders also believe that providing career advancement opportunities as well as dedicated development planning to employees are the two most important mechanisms for retaining high performers.

Retaining existing employees not only has the potential to minimize the effects of talent shortages, it also provides significant and tangible cost savings (since replacement costs range from 100%-150% of the salary for a departing employee).

3. Establish Dynamic Talent Pools to Improve Pipeline Visibility

Centralized talent pools provide CEOs with global visibility into their talent pipeline and overall organization bench strength. They provide a mechanism for ensuring that the organization’s future staffing plans are adequate, thereby reducing risk and ensuring continuity. To be truly effective, talent pools need to be dynamic in nature. For instance, if an employee is terminated, that person should be automatically removed from existing successor pools. Alternatively, if an employee closes a key skill or certification gap that had previously kept her from being considered as a successor, the pool should be updated appropriately. Talent pools that are inaccessible or not up-to-date are of little use to decision makers.

A key element of making talent pools accessible is in-depth searching for talent exploration. A talent pool is not much good if managers cannot easily view, track, update, and search for potential successors. Dynamic talent pools should take the guess work out of succession planning by aligning employee assessments, competencies, development plans, and learning programs. Proactive system monitoring ensures that as employees learn and grow, talent pools are dynamically updated to reflect the changes. It is this element in particular – supported by robust reporting and analytic capabilities – that helps CEOs make more objective staffing decisions and better plan for future staffing needs.

4. Promote Talent Mobility to Retain High Performers

Industry analyst firm Bersin & Associates defines talent mobility as “a dynamic internal process for moving talent from role to role – at the leadership, professional and operational levels.” The company further states that “the ability to move talent to where it is needed and by when it is needed will be essential for building an adaptable and enduring organization.”[1]

Talent mobility is:

A business strategy that facilitates organizational agility and flexibility
A mechanism for acquiring and retaining high performing and potential talent
A recruiting philosophy that favors internal sourcing over costly external hiring
A method for aligning organizational and individual needs through development
A proactive and ongoing approach to succession planning rather than a reactive approach

A systematic talent mobility strategy enables business leaders to more effectively acquire, align, develop, engage, and retain high performing talent by implementing a consistent, repeatable, and global process for talent rotation. Without a cohesive talent mobility strategy, CEOs face several risks:

Focus on costly external recruiting vs. internal sourcing
Wrong hires (cost can be 3-5x person’s salary)
Increased high performer churn
Reduced employee engagement
Reduced flexibility as business conditions change

CEOs should consider the following integrated processes – and a complete technology platform to support them – to promote and enable talent mobility:

Current workforce analysis:Includes detailed talent profiles, employee summaries, organization charts, competencies, and job profiles.
Talent needs assessment: Assess employees on key areas of leadership potential, job performance, and risk of leaving.
Future needs analysis:Development-centric succession planning to create and manage dynamic, fully-populated talent pools.

5. Integrate Succession Planning to Broader Business Processes

Succession planning is not a silo. It implicitly relies on other talent processes and data, especially assessments that provide a performance and competency baseline. Yet unlike a performance management process, which can be executed in a relatively self-contained fashion (assuming it has access to core employee data), the same is not true for succession planning.

Succession planning requires foundational data (e.g., competencies, job profiles, talent profiles, and employee records) and inputs (e.g., appraisals, feedback). Outputs include nominee pools, successor pools, development/learning plans, and reports. To facilitate the level of integration required to get succession planning right, a single, natively-integrated technology platform that centralizes key talent processes and information is required. With this single platform, the time to develop succession plans can easily be reduced from weeks or months to mere hours. The benefits can be significant: reduce costs, reallocate personnel from tactical activities to more strategic endeavors, and mitigate the risk of untimely departures of essential personnel.

Additionally, a single technology platform promotes the linkage of learning and career development to succession planning. By bridging these processes, nominees who are not ready for advancement can be assigned detailed development plans that guide them to improve the competencies and skills required for new job positions. Learning paths and specific courses can be established for employees to facilitate their career growth. By providing learning opportunities and development plans to employees, CEOs can take a more active role in promoting employee growth, retention, and engagement.

Finally, with a single system of record, reporting and analysis is vastly improved, since all relevant talent data resides within a single data structure. Strategic cross-functional metrics can be readily established (e.g., measure the impact of learning and development programs on performance). Reporting and analysis are key to the CEO’s success in managing employee resources and implementing strategies that support corporate objectives and initiatives.

Conclusion

Organizations can realize significant efficiency gains and cost savings by moving from a manual, paper-based succession process to one that is fully technology-enabled. The shift to a single technology platform facilitates extending succession planning deeper into the organization, since a well-architected solution seamlessly links succession to career development and learning. A complete platform improves senior management’s global visibility into the talent pipeline and bench strength, and promoting talent mobility to retain high performers becomes a viable engagement strategy. Succession planning, done correctly, is all about process and supporting technology integration. Without integration, succession planning becomes just another organizational silo.

Endnotes

[1]Lamoureux, Kim. “Talent Mobility: A New Standard of Endurance.” Bersin & Associates, November 30, 2009.

Integrative Business Planning – Managing Complexity

Introduction

Business Planning is normally done when a business plan is needed for financing purposes or to use as a guideline on running and growing a business (as a start-up or for the next time frame). Many crucial features of a business need to be addressed and balanced in this planning process. Various options, problems and risks relating to these features will be considered.

Entrepreneurs often assume that one variable has a linear relationship with another (e.g. $x spending on marketing will create $y income in sales). Business is, however, seldom that simple. Many multi-directional relationships tend to occur between the various features. Sales would for instance also be influenced by product quality, price, etc. Sales on the other hand will influence future expansions. To cater for this phenomenon an integrative business planning process is required.

Crucial Issues in Business Planning

Every business is different and the crucial issues in one does not necessary occur in another. What is, however, important is that the business planners ensure that they analyse and plan for all the relevant features for their specific business. This would normally include the issues that is highlighted below.

The Business – It is essential to ensure that the opportunity, the business concept, its products, services and strategies and the industry that it operates in are sound.
Marketing – Marketing strategy needs to be considered. This include aspects such as pricing and promotion.
Market Research – This is a crucial issue that is often neglected. It is important to know and understand the customers, the market size and trends and who the competition is.
Development – All issues regarding the development of new products, services, markets and facilities need to be planned for.
Operations – All aspects regarding the what, where and how of operations must be considered.
The Team – The management team need to match the requirements of a business. It would be preferable to establish what skills/jobs are needed and then to link the people to it. Where there are a lack of skills, training programmes can be implemented and new people can be hired. The whole organigram and composition of board of directors, management teams, etc. need to be planned for.
Finances – Finances are the ultimate yardstick of the success of a business, but it can not stand on its own. Important financial issues would typically include investment-, financing- and dividend decisions and policies. It is also crucial to plan for turnover (sales), gross profit margins and cost control (of expenses). The relationships between these issues (financial ratios) need further planning to establish if the business will be profitable, liquid and solvent. Return on investment (ROI) and sustainable business growth would for instance be specific aspects to consider.
Risk Management – The various risks that occur need to be determined, analysed and catered for. Fatal flaws need to be eliminated. Operational- and financial risks can often be hedged. This would incur certain costs and strategies such as manufacturing in various countries and buying and selling futures and options in different currencies.

The Complexity of Detailed Business Planning

A quick review of the brief summary of the crucial issues that need to be considered gives a glimpse of the complexity involved in business planning. If we just look at the financial issues we will see that the price will have an impact on the sales (turnover). The lower the price the more the physical volumes will normally be (except if image requires a high price). Turnover and total profits will, however, not necessary be higher. There is normally a fine balance that exist between the price, volume sales, turnover and profits.

To complicate this even further the turnover, costs and profits and there timings have a direct impact on the cashflow of the company (a very critical issue). This whole aspect is then further complicated by the investment- (capital expenditure), financing- (equity or debt?) and dividend decisions. By spending too much on a plant, having too much debt and paying out too much to shareholders will have a negative effect on the sustainable business growth of the company and this will reduce the targets that are achievable. This scenario shows only a portion of the various aspects that need to balance within the broader financial sphere.

Unfortunately the complication of the example does not stop with the finances. The finances influence many other crucial aspects of the business. On the other hand many of the other crucial aspects also have an effect on the finances as well as on each other.

The financial decisions would for instance have a direct bearing on the growth of the business (e.g. geographical expansions and new product development), marketing spending and people employment and development. All these issues would similar have an impact on the financial issues and on each other.

An Integrative Business Planning Approach

The general tendency in business planning would be to tackle each issue independently and then to just add the pieces together and re-plan if something is not making sense. Business planning often starts with some projected turnover and profit figures in mind. Everything is then worked backwards from there.

A much better option would be to have an integrative business planning approach. In order to do this the following steps are needed:

Determine all the salient features of the business.
Determine the relationships between these salient features.
Try and solve every feature by keeping the casualties and effects with other features in mind.
Use “what-if” questions to create better holistic solutions.

Summary

The idea in business planning is not to optimise the one aspect of the business and neglect or ignore some of the others. The various relationships (causes and effects) need to be catered for in an integrative way. One crucial salient feature or relationship that is ignored can put the existence of the whole business in jeopardy.

Tracking and Managing Help Desk Trouble Tickets Or Support Issues With Hosted SharePoint Template

Free SharePoint Software Template for Tracking and Managing Trouble Tickets or Help Desk Support Issues

Help desks are the pivotal point for end user and customer support. An effective help desk management software system is a key factor determining the success of a support department and needs the ability to track all help desk support issues or trouble tickets from opening to escalation to resolution. Well managed help desk services ascertain maximum return on investment in systems and technology.

Organizations are looking at deploying robust web-based Help Desk solutions which are cost effective and easy to implement. In order to gain better control of help desk activities, it is essential to have a system in place that provides all relevant information pertaining to each service request. For improving operational efficiencies, it is important to constantly provide adequate support and enhanced service to end users and customers. The help desk system should provide end-to-end visibility of help desk issues or trouble tickets, thus allowing tracking of issues and reducing time taken for resolution.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hosting software provides application templates that enable organizations to manage their day-to-day operations. The Help Desk application template is one of Microsoft’s SharePoint software templates that aids in effective help desk management. The Help Desk software template manages the entire process of handling service requests right from the time a request is raised till such time that it is resolved. Team members can login to the Help Desk site to identify open service requests. The template also helps in identification of root cause of issues. It allows tracking the status of each trouble ticket or service request to the support desk. Thus, unresolved trouble tickets or service requests can be identified and the necessary action taken. The template features role-based dashboards which provide information on performance history of customer service representatives. This helps the management to track the overall metrics of team performance.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 software templates are included free of cost with hosted SharePoint software service plans. These templates help in maintaining a collaborative environment and facilitate information sharing. These applications can be easily scaled to meet your business requirements. The basic hosted SharePoint software plans cost only $8.95 per month with access for unlimited users from hosted SharePoint service providers such as Apps4Rent. Also available additionally is a free set of 40 SharePoint software hosting templates developed by Microsoft. The SharePoint software hosting templates are available instantly after signing up for a low price SharePoint hosting plan. They include variety of features like dashboards, alerts, discussion and surveys.