Posted by: Tony Peake in IT on
Feb 28, 2010
If you can recall from my previous article, it is important to back up our data. Not just the data which we generally think about, but we need to search around and ensure we are getting copies of ALL valuable data in our business. We also discussed the need to backup as frequently as we can, and of some of the pitfalls which may occur.
This time, we'll press on and ask some more questions and examine some common best-practice strategies for small business.
How do we know we have a successful backup ?
Posted by: Andrew Penfold in Penfold Research on
Feb 22, 2010
I have just completed a series of discussions with industry operators about the state of the market, key trends - and what keeps them awake at night! One of my central observations is that although we all supposedly work in the one ‘office products' industry there is such a diversity of issues and fortunes according to the sector, niche or categories we operate in. One persons sleepless night can be anothers proud blush of success.
The strength of the independent dealer community has been a feature over the last year. Overall they have grown at higher than average rates, aided by their close customer contact and operational flexibility during the downturn.
While there are a large number of office product trends affecting different parts of the market, my top three in terms of overall long term impact are as follows. It is worth keeping these in mind as you plan and make decisions for your business in the coming years.
Posted by: Anjana Rames in B2B on
Jan 30, 2010
The products each reseller offer to their clients are more or less the same in the Stationery and Office Supplies Industry. So the key differentiator between any two resellers is the service levels they offer.
Service comes in different forms and shape. One of the most important aspects of a good service is the ability to fulfil customer orders in a timely fashion. This in turn is dependent on the availability of the right stocks in your warehouse or store.
Posted by: Tony Peake in IT on
Jan 30, 2010
This month I'd like to run through some thoughts on a most mundane topic - data backup. It's one of those things that really is a bit of a waste of time .......... until we need to recover a lost file which has great financial implications for us. What could be so important ? Perhaps the payroll files from last week, perhaps a proposal which we have been preparing for a month and it is to be delivered tomorrow, perhaps our outstanding orders file, perhaps our email file. When you think of it, we have quite a bit of valuable data lying around that would be difficult to quickly recreate accurately.
Lets run through and ask ourselves a few question !!
Posted by: Anjana Rames in B2B on
Dec 21, 2009
In our previous blogs, we looked at the importance of Identifying Dead Stock and went through a few strategies we could use to clear the Dead Stock identified.
Having the list ready for action is one mile stone completed, however execution is the key part of this exercise.
If this sheet is simply passed on to one of your staff members to take action, chances are this will be the last on their list of priorities.
Posted by: Tony Peake in IT on
Dec 21, 2009
This is the third and final discussion point on Business Continuity and discusses simple plans to ‘work around' IT system failures.
As a refresher - we set out to develop some basic plans in advance of any mishap to help us keep the business going in the event that we had a prolonged outage of our communications (phone / fax Internet) or of our IT systems.
Let's assume our IT Systems (in this case our IT server) has failed and we have determined that it may not be available for at least two day. The reasons for this may be a hardware component failure such as a main circuit board or our data has become corrupted or perhaps something else. In any case the rescue operation must be undertaken by IT experts and we need to focus on keeping the business running.
Posted by: Tony Peake in IT on
Nov 29, 2009
In the earlier article on this topic we made several basic assumptions around our Business Continuity planning and needs. They included that we would focus on the need to re-establish some key IT and communications functionality to keep our business operating for a few days while ‘normal services were resumed’. We also needed to do this on a limited budget and decided that we would do some planning to identify our key pain points should a fault like this occur.
General consensus is that our list of priority systems would include :-
1. Email & Phone - To communicate with our customers and staff
2. Fax – to receive customer orders and place our orders with suppliers
3. Accounting system – To place orders in our system and record transactions for stock dispatch
4. Internet Connectivity – To access supplier websites for product research, placing supplier orders, access bank account and make payments
Customer service is all around us. Most of us engage in customer service activities of some type during our normal daily routines at work. All of us encounter customer service when we go to the shop, call a company on the phone, or visit a business's web site.
However, simply being exposed to customer service doesn't mean you understand how to do it well or how to evaluate whether you are receiving an acceptable level of customer service.
Excellent customer service is every employee's responsibility. And more important, the major responsibility for creating a customer friendly atmosphere begins with the manager. Not only are you responsible for teaching excellent customer service skills, but as their manager, you must practice what you preach and be a role model for your employees. Without positive examples from you, they're not likely to improve.
Posted by: Tony Peake in IT on
Oct 31, 2009
As my expertise are in small business and relevant IT systems, I'd like to offer some clarity on this topic from an IT and Communications perspective as we all know that IT systems have become a basic element of our daily business life.
Firstly let's share some basic assumptions regarding Business Continuity.
First Assumption
Our first assumption is that the definition of this is that if a severe fault or incident occurs in our workplace, we'd like to be in a position that we could continue trading, even if it was in a restricted format.
Posted by: Anjana Rames in Untagged on
Oct 30, 2009
Your software package, accounting package or ERP system may have in-built features that can take in specific parameters and list the SKUs satisfying the input conditions.
If this facility is not available, you can export the stock sheet for each location or warehouse into a format that can be opened using Excel. The data fields that could be pulled out include:
- Date on which the SKU was created
- SKU number
- Description
- Quantity of Sales for the past 6 months
- Bin number
- Avg Cost
- Stock on Hand
By using simple Excel functions, you will be able to identify all the SKUs that have 0 quantity of sale in the last 6 months.The calculation logic could be If the 6 Month Sum of Qty of Sale of SKU is zero then Flag the entry as Dead.
