How to Implement and Manage Successful Change Programs |  |
- How to Implement and Manage Successful Change Programs
- Google Plus Now Integrated with Authorship Program
- Stop the Headaches: Review of Freshbooks Invoicing
- Twitter IPO Highlights Marketing Power
- How Common are Small Business Administration (SBA) Loans?
| How to Implement and Manage Successful Change Programs Posted: 16 Sep 2013 04:00 PM PDT
In today's organizations, the rate of change has never been more rapid or more constant. Whether the change is a small one, like the implementation of a new system, or a much bigger one such as a company takeover or merger, the way that change is managed makes all the difference to its success or failure. Good change management training is essential for supporting leaders and managers to effectively drive change throughout their organizations. People rarely welcome change. As human beings we tend to be adverse to change and, in a world which is increasingly changing at an alarming rate, people can be skeptical and resistant to anything that threatens the status quo of their working lives. It is also fair to say that not all change is positive. Sometimes it seems that doing things differently does not actually equal doing things better in the long run. With this in mind, introducing change and transformation has to be done carefully, sensitively and collaboratively. Managing people through change training courses equips leaders and managers with the essential skills to seamlessly implement change within their organizations. 3 Stages of Implementing Change1) Communicate the Rationale Behind the Need for ChangeThe first stage of introducing any change, however large or small, is to explain to employees why it is important for the change to occur and the intended benefits. This needs to be handled carefully and communicated to all affected parties. There should also be adequate opportunity for people to voice their concerns and contribute their thoughts, views and opinions. Missing out on this stage of the process will almost certainly damage the change process before it has even properly begun. 2) Implement the Change in PhasesChange is usually best received when it is implemented in bite sized chunks, unless of course, this is impossible (as in the case of mass redundancy or bankruptcy). Most change can be broken down into phases that can be reviewed along the way. Collaboration is key so, if circumstances allow, having a pilot group of employees to test the change before it is fully embedded is a good way to ensure that more people 'buy in' to what is happening and why. 3) Evaluate, Review and Report on ChangeCareful monitoring of the entire change process is essential in order to be able to measure its impact and evaluate its success. People need to be kept informed about how things are progressing, the results that are occurring and whether the change program has met its objectives. An organization's intention when it decides to embark on a change program is usually to make improvements. It is, therefore, important that employees understand whether the change has had the desired effects and what is to be done if further work is needed. Change Quote Photo via Shutterstock The post How to Implement and Manage Successful Change Programs appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Google Plus Now Integrated with Authorship Program Posted: 16 Sep 2013 01:30 PM PDT
[Google Authorship Examples] There’s now an easier way to get authorship attribution for your content by using your Google Plus sign in. In a recent post on the official Google Plus Developers Blog, Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management for Google Plus explains:
So far you can only connect accounts on WordPress.com and TypePad to your Google Plus account. But Sternberg says Google is working with other sites like About.com, WikiHow and Examiner. So the hope is that Google will be able to expand this pilot program to lots of other sites and apps using Google Plus sign in. Sternbeg adds:
The new sign in integration should encourage more people to use Google Plus, says Barry Schwartz in a post at Search Engine Roundtable. Are you using the new Google Plus sign in for authorship attribution, yet? The post Google Plus Now Integrated with Authorship Program appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Stop the Headaches: Review of Freshbooks Invoicing Posted: 16 Sep 2013 11:00 AM PDT Let's face it, billing customers is a pain. Keeping up with outstanding invoices and requests for payment are time-consuming, to say the least. This review of FreshBooks, one of the leading invoicing and financial-tracking solutions, is for any small business owner who needs to get a handle on the "making sure you get paid" part of business. Invoicing With FreshbooksFreshBooks signup is easy, fast, and free. No credit card required, which is always helps reduce signup friction. You can trial the software for 30 days for free, then decide on a paid plan or a forever-free plan. Of course, the free plan is limited, but it may work for your business. Paid plans start at $19.95 per month. With over five million users, the company has an established track record.
FreshBooks started as a tool for managing invoicing, collections and revenue tracking. The company has expanded to what they call a cloud accounting platform. To be clear, Freshbooks is not a full traditional accounting package. For instance, the expense features are more about importing expense payments you’ve made via bank, PayPal or credit card accounts, so that you can keep track and run reports in Freshbooks. The software isn’t really designed to let you enter expenses directly in it, track payables, handle payroll or other advanced expense payment features. However, for very small businesses — such as solo entrepreneurs, or an uncomplicated business such as a small Web design firm with a handful of clients — what Freshbooks offers may be quite sufficient for their “accounting” needs. Roughly half of the small businesses in the United States are single person businesses, or partnerships such as a husband and wife team. Most of them do not need a full double-entry accounting package in the traditional sense. They need to get paid on time by their customers. They may need to track their hours in order to generate accurate invoices. They need to run reports to see if they are earning a profit and for taxes. They may already have good records about their expense payments (many of which may be already set up as recurring electronic bill-pays or automatic debits, anyway). So they may have no need to separately enter expenses and bills in an accounting system – doing so would just add complexity. And when you factor in features such as time tracking and integration with other software platforms and solutions., Freshbooks offers plenty of value. Sage 50, for example, has an add-on tool, as does MailChimp, Gmail, Zendesk, and others with Freshbooks. Creating An InvoiceLet me jump right to the core of what most business owners claim is their biggest hassle – creating and tracking an invoice. As you see in the screen below, you fill in the details and, well, FreshBooks generates the invoice. Most likely, you will send it via email, but just about every other way to send an invoice is possible. I'm sure that when "Deliver by Drone" becomes available, FreshBooks will have it. Note: This is not a military drone, by the way, but a growing number of startups are testing how to deliver parcels by remote control quadcopters. No kidding.
What I Really Like:
What I Would Like to See:There is a forever-free level account, but you can't sort out what that entails once you start the 30-day free trial. It is a small point – I'm sure they make it clear after the trial. For the record, you can have three clients on the forever free plan. From all I can tell, you can change those clients and invoice new ones, but the maximum number is three. FreshBooks is a single-entry system, and does not have a traditional general ledger. That works for many business owners, for whom paying expenses is fairly straight forward. If your focus is on tracking time accurately and keeping your invoicing process in a healthy system, FreshBooks is the package to check out. The post Stop the Headaches: Review of Freshbooks Invoicing appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Twitter IPO Highlights Marketing Power Posted: 16 Sep 2013 08:00 AM PDT
Your business may already use Twitter for marketing and paid advertising. If so, the recent announcement that Twitter is planning an IPO reinforces how valuable that marketing has become. Twitter announced the filing in a brief tweet last week:
Multiple media sources project Twitter revenue from advertising to hit $1 billion next year. The company filed plans for a Twitter IPO with the Security Exchange Commission under a new law that allows some details of a business to remain private. But it’s clear expectations are high for the company’s earning potential. Twitter already has an estimated valuation of $9 billion based on sales of employee stock earlier this year to investment firm Black Rock Inc., The Wall Street Journal reported. Twitter Remains Huge for Small Business MarketingThe company also clearly stays focused on its importance as a marketing tool for small businesses. Just a day after tweeting about the Twitter IPO, the company was dispensing marketing tips over its Twitter small business channel.
Twitter’s announcement earlier in the week that it plans to acquire mobile ad exchange service MoPub for $350 million further seems to demonstrate this commitment. MoPub’s clients include some larger companies too. But Twitter’s plan to integrate the startup’s real-time bidding technology into its ad platform will certainly appeal to small businesses too. Launched in 2006, Twitter boasts 400 million visitors and 200 million active users per month. Twitter Photo via Shutterstock The post Twitter IPO Highlights Marketing Power appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| How Common are Small Business Administration (SBA) Loans? Posted: 16 Sep 2013 05:00 AM PDT
Small Business Administration (SBA) guaranteed loans get a lot of attention in Washington. President Obama, for instance, believes that "the SBA should be provided additional resources to assist small businesses in acquiring capital necessary to start, continue, or expand operations", the Congressional Research Service reports. Many in Congress agree. Over the past several years, our legislators have passed several bills to expand SBA funding and to boost the size of the agency's loan guarantee program, the Congressional Research Service explains. All this attention might suggest that SBA loans are a major source of small business finance. But the data show that SBA-guaranteed loans make up a small portion of the value of small business lending, and that an even smaller fraction of U.S. businesses receive SBA loans. The SBA's primary loan program – the 7(a) program – is designed to help businesses that might not otherwise receive outside credit obtain loans by guaranteeing a part of the funding provided by financial institutions. The 7(a) helps only about one percent of American businesses obtain loans. In its 2013 Congressional Budget Justification, the SBA says that it had a portfolio of 7(a) loan guarantees to "271,000 small businesses at the end of Fiscal Year 2011." The agency's Office of Advocacy reports (PDF) that 27.5 million US businesses were operation in 2009, the latest year for data are available. Therefore, roughly 1 percent of U.S. small businesses have outstanding 7(a) loans. The program's share of bank loans is of similar magnitude. Comparison of the number of 7(a) loans outstanding in 2011 with Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) estimates of the number of commercial and industrial loans of less than $1 million (a common proxy for small business loans) outstanding in September 2011 shows that the number of 7(a) loans was approximately 1.4 percent of the number of small business bank loans. The fraction of U.S. businesses that have any type of SBA-guaranteed loan is very small. According to the 2007 Survey of Business Owners (SBO), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, only 0.3 percent of U.S. businesses, and only 0.9 percent of businesses with employees, used a "government-guaranteed business loan to finance expansion." Because SBA-guaranteed business loans are a subset of all government-guaranteed business loans, the fraction of businesses that used an SBA-guaranteed business loan to finance expansion cannot exceed this share. By comparison, 9.0 percent of U.S. businesses and 34.2 percent of businesses with employees used a bank loan to finance expansion. Similar numbers can be seen for start-up funding. The SBO reveals that 0.7 percent of all businesses and 1.5 percent of businesses with employees used a "government-guaranteed loan to start or acquire a business." By comparison, 10.7 percent of all businesses and 14.5 percent of businesses with employees used a bank loan to start or acquire a business. SBA-guaranteed loans make up a larger fraction of the value of loan portfolios than their share of loans or borrowers because SBA loans tend to be relatively large. In 2012, the "total unpaid principal balance" of the SBA's 7(a) loan guarantee program was $59.4 billion, according to a May 2013 Congressional Research Service report (PDF). This figure amounts to 5.2 percent of the SBA's estimate of $1.1 trillion in outstanding bank and finance company capital provided to small businesses. However, this fraction is up significantly from the 3.6 percent it composed in 2007, SBA figures reveal. A May 2013 Congressional Research Report suggests that the value of all outstanding SBA loans make up a larger fraction of small business lending. That report indicates that the value of the SBA's portfolio of outstanding loans was $99 billion in fiscal year 2011, amounting to 9 percent of outstanding bank and finance company capital provided to small companies. However, the SBA's 2011 fiscal year report hints that this number includes "defaulted guarantied business loans receivable, direct disaster loans, and direct business loans receivable." Therefore, this figure may overstate the value of the SBA's loan portfolio. All-in-all, SBA-guaranteed loans make up a small portion of small business finance. Their outsize attention in Washington probably reflects the fact that they are the part of small business finance system that policy makers can influence most directly. Question Photo via Shutterstock The post How Common are Small Business Administration (SBA) Loans? appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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