New ADP Report Shows Job Growth In Franchising

New ADP Report Shows Job Growth In Franchising
Users Complain of Wi-Fi Problems with MacBook Air
Review of Moz: Demystifying Search Engine Optimization
WhatsApp Offers Alternative to Paid Texting, Social Sites
How small business credit has changed since the Great Recession

Posted: 24 Jun 2013 04:00 PM PDT

The International Franchise Expo-the largest franchise expo in the US, was held in New York City last week. Thousands of would-be franchise owners were in attendance all hoping to find a franchise opportunity that they could someday buy.

Also in attendance; franchise industry insiders. These insiders…some of the top movers and shakers in the industry, were there hoping to gain insights into some of the trends shaping franchising this year. And they were able to, courtesy of ADP.

The first-ever ADP National Franchise Report ^SM using the Moody's Analytics methodology was released live during the start of the expo. (I was invited to listen in live as the report was presented.) The much-anticipated report showed an increase of 19,160 jobs in May.

The chairman of the International Franchise Association, (IFA) Steve Romaniello, in his remarks, reminded us that:

The franchise industry includes over 825,000 establishments providing $2.1 trillion in economic output which helps us make the case to policy makers that public policy should help not hinder franchise businesses so that the industry can continue to grow and prosper to create millions of jobs across the country.

The ADP National Franchise Report ^SM utilizes actual transaction data to measure the number of new private-sector franchise jobs created. Going forward, the report will be released on the third Wednesday of every month.

More ADP Franchise Report Insights

Job creation is vital for the US economy. Data, precise data, is needed to track its progress or lack thereof. And, now, thanks to ADP, we have a way to track job data in the franchise sector.

Below are additional insights into The National Franchise Report^SM, as provided by Ahu Yildirmaz, PH.D, the Senior Director of Market Insights at ADP, where she serves as lead economist for the ADP Research Institute®. Dr. Yildirmaz is responsible for managing the world-renowned ADP National Employment Report®, a monthly measure of U.S. employment derived from an anonymous subset of roughly 500,000 U.S. business clients. Sponsored by ADP, the report is developed and maintained by Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC.

* * * * *

franchise report Small Business Trends: Is this ADP’s first deep-dive into franchise industry employment data?

Ahu Yildirmaz: Yes, this is ADP's first deep dive into examining franchise industry employment data. As a leading global provider of human capital management solutions, ADP is committed to providing the deepest, richest insights into the U.S. labor market in order to help inform workforce strategies.

As a part of this continuing effort, ADP launched the ADP National Franchise Report ^SM, which provides data and insights into private sector franchise employment trends across key industries.

Franchises are an essential driver of the U.S. economy, providing 8 million jobs and delivering countless products and services on which the public relies every day. The report is produced by ADP in collaboration with Moody's Analytics, Inc., and its experienced team of labor market researchers.

Small Business Trends: Compiling data on franchise employment trends on a monthly basis sounds like a massive undertaking. What is ADP’s goal for this project?

Ahu Yildirmaz: The report is derived from ADP's actual payroll data and will be issued each month by The ADP Research Institute®, a specialized group within the company that provides insights around employment trends and workforce strategy.

The ADP Research Institute® is also responsible for producing the ADP National Employment Report® and the ADP Regional Employment Report ^SM. The goal of the ADP National Franchise Report ^SM is to provide specific, in-depth data on U.S private-sector franchise employment trends, among both franchisees and franchisors.

Small Business Trends: Will ADP be gathering data from every sector in franchising? Can you name the ones that you’ll be gathering data from?

Ahu Yildirmaz: In gathering data for the report, ADP is employing classification of franchisees and franchisors based on the North American Industrial Classification system (NAICS) and on the 2007 Economic Census Franchise Report from the Census Bureau, the only comprehensive government report on franchise employment.

The report features monthly employment changes across the following industries (in alphabetical order):

Accommodations
Auto
Parts and Dealers
Building Material and Garden Equipment
Business Services
Education
Food Retailers
Gasoline Stations and Auto Repair
Leisure
Manufacturing
Personal Care Retailers
Personal Services
Professional Services
Real Estate
Rental
Restaurants
Other

Small Business Trends: Specifically, what information will be gathered from franchisors to be used in ADP’s monthly reports?

Ahu Yildirmaz: The matched sample used to develop the ADP National Franchise Report ^SMis derived from ADP payroll data, which represents 15,000 Franchisors and Franchisees employing nearly 1 million workers in the U.S. The sample size of the overall ADP data set from which the ADP National Employment Report® is derived is 406,000 U.S. companies and 23 million employees, which accounts for more than 20 percent of all U.S. private sector employees.

Small Business Trends: How can Small Business Trends readers access The ADP National Franchise Report ^SM every month?

Ahu Yildirmaz: Your readers can access additional information at ADP National Franchise Report ^SM.

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Users Complain of Wi-Fi Problems with MacBook Air

Posted: 24 Jun 2013 01:30 PM PDT

new macbook

If you use Apple products to make your business more mobile, beware. The new MacBook Air, previewed at this month’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, may have run into problems.

Chris Mills of Gizmodo recently reported many who picked up the new MacBook in the last few days have descended on the Apple Support Forums to complain about intermittent Wi-Fi connection. This isn’t good news for a device intended as a mobile productivity tool.

The new MacBook Air was certainly designed with mobility in mind. Media reports have focused on the 13-inch device and its 12 hour battery life. (An 11-inch version of the MacBook Air still boasts nine hours of power without needing to plug in.)

However, on the forums, users complained the real problem with the laptops isn’t with the impressive efficiency of the new Intel Haswell processor. This is one of the things that makes both computers able to go so long without recharging, reports say. The problem is that, while out and about enjoying that impressive battery life, users are having trouble staying connected.

Mills says all users report a somewhat similar problem in which WiFi connects but then stops working after a minute or two. A reboot is then needed to reconnect.

Mills admits the problem could be anything from a software bug to a problem with the hardware, (probably the Wi-Fi antenna.) It could also be that users are just “holding it wrong,” Mills added. But that’s probably not an adequate excuse coming from a company that prides itself on customer service and experience.

Business Insider reports users have suggested everything from upgrading Wi-Fi router firmware to changing the channel on the router as a fix for the problem.

Will these technical issues make you think twice about getting a new MacBook Air for your business?

Image: Mac

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Review of Moz: Demystifying Search Engine Optimization

Posted: 24 Jun 2013 11:00 AM PDT

MOz.com review

The U.S. Military has certain equipment that it calls a “black box.” In some computing circles, a black box refers to a program where the process is largely unknown outside of a certain few people. How Google, Bing and other search engines rank a website to show it in search results is often considered a modern black box.

Moz, formerly known as SEOmoz, is a suite of tools focused on demystifying the black box process of search engine optimization (SEO).

The re-branding of SEOmoz to Moz tells part of the story of how you build a presence for your company and website. SEOmoz as the name implies — was focused on search engine optimization. The process of getting your website to rank well and show up in search engine results. While the company is still focused on SEO, it has now broadened its focus to encompass how to do better marketing.

Moz Review

As a suite of tools, I won’t be able to cover them all in great detail, but Moz offers a number of free and paid tools.

First, let’s look at some of the free services and what they can mean for your business:

GetListed is the tool to help you with your local marketing. You can claim your local U.S. business listings on Google+ Local, Bing Local, Yelp and other local search engines. This used to be a stand-alone service, but was acquired by Moz in late 2012.
Followerwonk is a social analytics tool to let you analyze your Twitter metrics. Segment your followers, compare users, and learn more about engaging your audience. As you can see in the screenshot below, I don’t have any followers in Antarctica yet.
Open Site Explorer is a link tool. You enter your website, or any website, and it returns the details of other websites that link to it. It’s used for competitive intelligence and targeted link building (which is part of how your site improves its search engine ranking).

There are some paid tools, in addition to free ones. On the paid front, if you subscribe to the Pro level on a monthly basis for $99/month you get access to the following tools:

Weekly website crawls and rank tracking. You may have heard that Google has “spiders” that crawl websites and that’s how they index the content on Web pages. Moz has their own set of spiders and algorithms to help you improve your site ranking. Part of this is Rank Tracker which retrieves search engine rankings for pages and keywords you specify. This way, you can see whether your activities are improving the rank of your pages — or not.

Social media monitoring. The Fresh Web Explorer will search for and analyze mentions of your brand, your competitors, and industry topics to discover the latest relevant content being published on the Web. Think of it as a Google Alert, on steroids.

Moz wants to help you optimize your keywords with its On-Page Grader. The best part about this tool – they don’t just point out the problems on your site. They give you a detailed, easy-to-understand set of steps to fix each problem. They rank them, too, as Easy Fix or worse. Thankfully, the page I’m showing you here received an “A” grade.

As you can tell, there is a ton here in Moz. But one of my favorite tools is the Keyword Analysis. It lets me study a word or term to find out how difficult it is to rank for it. The score is based on the top 10 competitor sites that currently rank for that same term or phrase.

It isn't very often that I dig into a tool and love it. But I have to say that I love Moz. It is perfect for any business owner or executive that has to figure out how to make their website perform better. Moz provided a long media trial for me to evaluate the many tools in its suite. Frankly, they did it because I'm pretty slow, even after years of reviewing software and hardware stuff. They offer a free 30-day trial on the paid tools, so you can dig in and see how it can help your marketing on a trial basis.

So, what you are doing to optimize and improve your website?

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WhatsApp Offers Alternative to Paid Texting, Social Sites

Posted: 24 Jun 2013 08:00 AM PDT

Whether you use texting or social media for your business communications, you know there are downsides to both. Telecom companies charge fees for texting added to your overall mobile phone package. Social media leader Facebook has begun selling ads and sponsored posts. This means it’s much harder to reach your customers without paying extra.

Even though Twitter has only begun to sell advertising, increasing traffic and “noise” on the site has made it tougher to focus your message and get it heard.

Enter WhatsApp, a mobile messaging app that is growing in popularity and may offer an alternative to both.

How WhatsApp Works

Download WhatsApp to your smartphone and you can message any other connection that’s using the service. You can invite other business contacts to join you on WhatsApp by sending out invitations to your Facebook, Gmail and other connections. You can also take advantage of social features like group chat that create a similar experience to the way users communicate on Facebook or Twitter.

WhatsApp does all this without charging monthly text messaging fees like your mobile carrier. The service also doesn’t sell or display ads and developers say they have no plans to start.

Instead, iPhone users are charged a one-time installation fee of $.99 to download the app. Users on other operating systems including Android, BlackBerry and Windows get a one year download free with a $.99 per year charge after that for the service.

An Interesting Business Model

WhatsApp is more than a potential business tool. It’s also an interesting business model.

Business Insider reports founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former Yahoo! engineers, have already made millions on their app despite the low annual fee for most users and a refusal to sell advertising.

How?

Well, the company told the Wall Street Journal last week, it now has an estimated 250 million monthly active users. That number may put it ahead of Twitter which announced passing 200 million active monthly users in December. It may also mean the service is gaining on Skype which owner Microsoft claimed had reached 280 million users in October.

At $.99 per active user per year, it’s not hard to see how WhatsApp has raked in the profits in the four years since it was founded.

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How small business credit has changed since the Great Recession

Posted: 24 Jun 2013 05:00 AM PDT

Bankers reported easing credit standards on small business in the second quarter of 2013, the April Federal Reserve Survey of Senior Loan Officers showed. But despite the recent lessening of lending standards, small business owners are still having a harder time getting credit now than before the Great Recession. In fact, virtually aspects of small business credit – the amount businesses borrow; where they source capital, and the terms of their loans – have changed since the financial crisis and Great Recession.

To begin with, small businesses are borrowing less than before the economic downturn. In the last three months of 2012, the inflation-adjusted value of commercial and industrial loans smaller than $1 million – a commonly used measure of small business loans – was 22 percent below April-to-June 2007 level, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation data indicate. Moreover, the number of small loans declined 344,000 between the two periods, despite an additional 100,000 small businesses being in operation.

Fewer small businesses are looking for credit. In May of this year, 29 percent of the small business owners who belong to the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) said they borrowed at least once in the prior three months, as compared to 37 percent who indicated that they borrowed in April 2007.

The number of discouraged borrowers – small business owners who don't apply for credit because they don't think they will get it – has increased. According to data from the NFIB's Annual Finance Survey and the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, the percentage of small business owners who did not apply for credit because they didn't think they would get it increased from 18 percent in 2003 to 29 percent in 2011.

Small business owners believe that obtaining credit has become more challenging. Thirty percent of the respondents to the second quarter 2013 Wells Fargo-Gallup Small Business Survey – which taps a representative sample of 600 owners of companies with up to $20 million per year in sales every three months – said that getting credit in the past year was difficult, up from 14 percent in the same period of 2007.

Small businesses aren't as attractive to lenders as they used to be. According to a recent https://wellsfargobusinessinsights.com/File/Index/y1o9AemryEuwEcD31jekgA, only 48 percent of small business owners reported their cash flow as "good" in the first quarter of 2013. That's significantly fewer than the 65 percent who said their cash flow was "good" in the second quarter of 2007.

Moreover, small business credit scores have fallen. In 2003, the Federal Reserve's Survey of Small Business Finances showed that the average small business had a PAYDEX score of 53.4. In 2011 The NFIB Annual Finance survey showed that the average small company' PAYDEX score was 44.7.

Bank lending standards have tightened. When the Federal Reserve asked bank Senior Loan Officers to describe their current loan standards last year "using the range between the tightest and easiest that lending standards at your bank have been between 2005 and the present," 39 percent said that small firm loans are currently "tighter than the mid-point of the range," while only 23 percent said they are easier.

Collateral requirements have increased. According to the Federal Reserve Survey of Terms of Business Lending, 84 percent of the value of loans under $100,000 and 76 percent of the value of loans of between $100,000 and $1 million were secured by collateral in 2007. In 2013, those numbers had risen to 90 percent and 80 percent, respectively.

Banks have become a less dominant source of financing for small businesses, as many large banks have pivoted out of the small business loan market. Between 2007 and 2012 the fraction of non-farm, non-residential, loans that were less than $1 million – a common proxy for small business lending – declined from 39 to 29 percent.

As always, obtaining credit is important to small business owners. However, the small business credit system has changed since the Great Recession. Fewer businesses are borrowing and the amount of credit has declined. Fewer banks are lending to small companies and those that are have become stricter about loan qualifications. The average small business has become less credit worthy. Collateral requirements have increased, and getting credit has become more difficult.

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