Business, Not Government, is Leading the Green Movement |  |
- Business, Not Government, is Leading the Green Movement
- What’s A Business Without A Website?
- Establishments Are Less Likely To Fail Than Firms
- MobileMe Vanishes, Community Broadband Questioned, and What All This Means to You
| Business, Not Government, is Leading the Green Movement Posted: 02 Jul 2012 11:00 AM PDT Many people were disappointed with the recent Rio+20 summit, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The 100 international leaders who attended made little progress and few commitments beyond reaffirming the same environmental goals they set 20 years ago at the 1992 Earth Summit.
But the summit did reveal something important: Even as governments and politicians drag their feet on sustainability, businesses continue to take large steps. At the summit, dozens of companies unveiled plans for how they intend to lower their environmental footprint. Microsoft committed to being carbon neutral by end of fiscal year 2013. Kimberly-Clark, parent of Kleenex and Huggies, unveiled it would cut the amount of wood fiber it uses from natural forests by 50% by 2025. And Coca-Cola pledged to recycle the water it uses by 2020 and increase water efficiency by 20% by 2015. You can rightly argue that these initiatives aren't bold enough to counteract global warming or other large-scale environmental problems. However, it's a good sign that companies are voluntarily taking steps even when they aren't required to by government regulation. It shows the tide is turning: Businesses are realizing the benefits to being environmental stewards and setting sustainability goals on their own. What's going on? In the past, businesses found few incentives to invest in earth-friendly practices. But in recent years, consumers have started to factor sustainability more into their purchasing decisions as there’s a growing awareness about the health and lifestyle benefits to being green. Governments have provided financial incentives to help companies' implement eco-friendlier practices. And as companies embarked on these initiatives, they started to realize many benefits from sustainability. Here's a look at the benefits big and small businesses alike have reaped by undertaking sustainability initiatives: - Good publicity. Touting environmental good practices has shown itself as an excellent way to draw positive attention and more customer loyalty to a business (as long as it's not "greenwashing.") Check out any corporation's web site these days, and you can pretty easily find its page devoted to sustainability initiatives. - Bottom-line savings. Sustainable business measures often come with upfront costs (think installing new energy-efficient equipment or hiring a sustainability consultant). But the paybacks on many sustainability measures, whether lower energy bills or lower transportation costs, can save businesses a lot of money over the long run. (Coca-Cola says it saved $90 million in 2010 alone by reducing its packaging waste.) - Happier people. Whether or not they choose to do business with you because of sustainability measure, many customers feel good knowing they are supporting businesses doing the right thing by being environmentally friendly. This can also spill into employee morale. With many younger workers now seeking to work for socially conscious employers, it's in a business's best interest to be that. Given the many benefits businesses are finding to "going green," it's likely that more and more businesses will continue to do so, regardless of what government leaders do. How have environmental sustainability efforts affected your business? Have you discovered any benefits to being green?
From Small Business Trends |
| What’s A Business Without A Website? Posted: 02 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT Well? What was the first thing you thought of? Bankrupt? Stupid? Behind the times? Surely this must be a trick question. It’s 2012. Every business has a website. Right?
OK, it was a trick question. While more than half of small business do have an actual website — temporarily ignoring the fact that that means there are still about half of small business that don’t have a website — the majority of them aren’t doing enough to proactively make sure it’s working. You shelled out the chunk of change to choose a web design company in the first place, so why wouldn’t you get the insurance to protect it? Because of limited budgets, companies today are being more careful about where their IT dollars go to, and as a small business, you may not have the resources to devote to a full-time in-house monitoring system. And frankly, when your website is working right now, it’s not high on your to do list. “Effective network monitoring is much like a disaster recover plan,” said David Nizen, vice president of business development at iGLASS Networks, a network monitoring service provider for small businesses and larger corporations. ”You only need and appreciate it when a disaster strikes, but if you keep putting it off, you’ll eventually get burned. Often that disaster will turn out to be way more expensive than it would have been if you planned ahead. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. (Ben Franklin said that.)” How bad can it really be? You know how imperative your online presence is. It’s the heart of your overall marketing initiatives and a significant source of leads and revenue for your business. And supporting all of that is your business’ core IT network. Your network is the foundation upon which your business is built, powering and supporting your website, email, point of sales and so much more. It connects your customers to your services and goods, employees to sales and support systems they need, and management to the data and applications they need to make critical decisions. So what if it in the middle of the night, while you are slaying dragons in your sleep, your network drops? How bad could that be? Loss of employee productivity. Loss of customers. Loss of revenue, about $1.7 billion each year according to CDW survey. Customers ill-will from a bad experience with your business. Loss of business opportunities to competitors who are just a click away… The list goes on. In short, pretty bad. “Some of the worst things that could happen are outages which idle employees or prevent customers from doing business with you,” Nizen said. ”The most painful ones, from your boss' perspective especially, are outages which could have been prevented, had you only known about the problem ahead of time.”" What problems could I see? While network problems come in all flavors and sizes, Nizen identified some of the most common issues that could happen:
Still, the worst problem that could happen is one that could have been prevented (or resolved faster). The runner up is just not knowing it’s happening at all. What can I do to prevent them? The good news is that there are a few precautions that small business owners can take to ensure that network downtime is at the utmost minimum. The SLAC National Accelerator Library at Stanford as a running list of network monitoring tools, but it boils down to four options:
What can I do to keep it all in check?
Proper monitoring can be tricky to implement and it does require a great deal of time, effort, and skill to maintain it. There is hardware and software to buy, analysis and development to be done, implementation and customization, and then the ongoing updates, upgrades and maintenance. But don’t wait until you’ve gone through an outage once to take the steps to put some sort of system in place.
From Small Business Trends |
| Establishments Are Less Likely To Fail Than Firms Posted: 02 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT Since the mid-1980s, the number of U.S. business establishments has grown faster than the number of employer businesses, Census data shows. But this growth comes from higher odds of survival, not from higher rates of formation. The Census Bureau defines a business as an:
As establishment is "a single physical location where business is conducted or where services or industrial operations are performed." As Census explains, "the firm and the establishment are the same for single-establishment firms", but differ for multi-establishment businesses. The figure below shows the number of establishments and firms as a percentage of their 1977 level. As you can see, the gap between establishments and firms has widened since the mid-1980s, including during the recent downturn and weak recovery when the number of both has slipped. In 2010, there were 33 percent more establishments than employer businesses. Back in 1977, there were only 22 percent more.
This gap comes from a lower rate of failure for establishments than employer businesses. The difference in start-up rates has actually shrunk over time. In 1977 the ratio of new establishment starts to new employer business starts was 1.1 to 1. But by 2010, the amounts were virtually the same, with only 1.7 percent more establishments than companies being formed. The twitter-length message for entrepreneurs here is that, over the past 25 years, individual outlets of multi-unit chains have become less vulnerable to failure than independent businesses. From Small Business Trends |
| MobileMe Vanishes, Community Broadband Questioned, and What All This Means to You Posted: 02 Jul 2012 02:30 AM PDT Mobile and broadband technology may be as important to entrepreneurship as the Internet itself, but the future of both seems in a state of flux. Here are some of the major news items and issues shaping both of these technologies and how your business may be affected. The Times, They Are a Changin’Vanishing in an iCloud of smoke. As of Sunday evening, MobileMe, a cloud storage and syncing service debuted by Apple in 2008, was no more. If you haven’t heard yet, the service has been replaced by iCloud, but for those seeking a stable way to store important data and share between devices while on the go, it may be time to consider your options. MacWorld Walmart won’t stand still on mobile. The retail giant is introducing a new pre-paid MiFi service starting at $10 for 100 MB with no expiration. Though the new service, called Internet on the Go, is promoted as being for “casual users,” it can provide a WiFi experience using multiple devices and offer automatic online refills. Engadget Mobile TechGadgets to go. From mobile power to smartwatches and other wristband tech, mobile gear is exploding with many possible applications. As business moves out of the office, increasing your productivity and flexibility, these devices can go along with you to improve your effectiveness in transit. The Next Web Mobile and PrivacyLocation, location, location. Besides access on the go, mobile companies also offer a wealth of potential marketing information. These companies collect and hold onto location data about customers sometimes for years, and provide it to outside companies, whether privacy advocates like it or not. ProPublica Privacy as product. As an aside to the discussion about the amount of personal data now collected by mobile and other tech companies, one entrepreneur suggests some small businesses might consider using protection of customer information as a unique selling proposition. Solo Small Business A More Accessible WebBroadband opportunities not so broad. South Carolina has become the latest state in the US to pass legislation making it difficult, if not impossible, to create publicly owned Internet providers. While some insist providing cheaper, more accessible public Internet isn’t the role of government, others say it would benefit many including small businesses. Ars Technica Access equals growth. From California to Australia, communities are seeing the connection between adequate broadband and economic growth. Riverside, CA received the 2012 Intelligent Community award for establishing a municipal broadband system, while Australia’s Minister for Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy was named the Intelligent Community Forum’s Visionary of the Year. ComputerWorld Business Access Equals SuccessSlow and expensive. In an effort to advance broadband and the economic prosperity it can bring here in the US, the White House recently announced “US Ignite,” but critics say the plan falls short of addressing the real problem—slow and expensive connectivity in the “last mile” that connects the Internet to homes and some small businesses. PC Mag Leveling the field. On a recent visit to South Africa, Stephen Carter, executive vice president of global telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent, suggested a broadband policy is second only to a nation’s economic policy in terms of the prosperity it can bring. Carter suggests good access evens the playing field for all. Think about how your business benefits from such access. BusinessTech Call To ActionMission possible. Take a look at the story of Pagosa Springs, CO. The town council has recently embarked on a mission to provide municipal broadband to the rural community. The town’s experience is an important example of how these communities are working to improve access for their citizens and businesses, creating better economic opportunities in the process. Pagosa Sun From Small Business Trends |
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