Do Business Well

1. Minimise your stationery stocks

You probably have several stationery stores. People hoard paper, stationery and office sundries. Get them to have a big turn-out, and see how many pens, pencils, rubbers, clips and stapling machines they are hoarding. Then collect everything together and put it back into your office stationery stores. The same applies to letterheads, envelopes, photocopying paper etc. You could quite easily find that you have one or two months’ stationery purchases in stock around the offices, plus another two or three months’ in the stores. So why not get it under better control (you may even find you don’t have to buy stationery and sundries for a couple of months)?

2. Stationery purchasing by a trained buyer

Some companies leave stationery buying to a secretary or senior clerk. However, there is much more to buying than placing orders with the same supplier. One of your buying staff may make a sizeable impression on your purchase prices, obtaining competitive quotations and considering contracts with large quantity discounts. Continue Reading »

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The issue of digital trademark and copyright protection has become a hornet’s nest since the commercialization of the World Wide Web. You need to register a domain name if you want to do business on the World Wide Web. Network Solutions, which handles the registration of domain names, has been doling them out on a first-come, first-serve basis, regardless of who owns the trademark. But now that companies are waking up to the commercial potential of the Web, they are screaming foul if the name they want has been taken by someone else, especially if they have a federal trademark protecting the name. Continue Reading »

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If there is one single factor that has enabled small growingcompanies to compete on a level playing field with large corporations it is the availability of ever greater computer and othertechnological capacity at lower costs. Entrepreneurs can now easily acquire the computer power that during the 1960s and 1970s filled entire rooms of large corporations and cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Increasingly, technology and information management are being used by small growing companies to achieve competitive advantages. Mail-order firms can immediately access past buying records of customers who call in orders, determine availability of products, make the charges, and initiate the packing and shipping—all with a few keystroke taps on the computer. Continue Reading »

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Remember one of the most talked-about business events of the late 1990s—the year 2000, or Y2K, scare? Companies and governments scrambled to prevent outdated computer code from crippling their information systems. Bracing themselves for power outages or actual disasters that were expected to mark the end of the twentieth century, untold numbers of consumers stockpiled staples, candles, and water. Then, at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999, the Y2K scare fizzled like a burned comet. All but forgotten in a matter of months, it was overshadowed by weightier pressures such as coming to grips with the Internet and the bobbing stock market.

Some critics called the scare a blatant marketing ploy, fanned by consultants, technology providers, and litigation lawyers planning to intimidate gullible managers into parting with half a trillion dollars worldwide. Even though that is a staggering number—it is more than. five times what the United States spent in the Gulf War from 1988 to 1990 to fight another menace, Saddam Hussein—the financial toll of Y2K was not excessive. Continue Reading »

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