Business and Money Tips

Get your business read now, not later.  Because fortune favours the prepared, so said my fortune teller.  For those in business, remember that fortune goes to those whose business activities are aligned with the common good.  The 7 areas in your business as foretold by your fortune teller: Customers : You cannot rest on your laurels and assume that customers will come back, even though you have been serving them for decades.  Look at Microsoft: people don't use Windows phones even though they have been using Windows computers for 4 decades.  If only Microsoft can wow its customers and add more value every day , we will all be not using Apple and Android phones Vendors : Your suppliers are also your customers, so treat them well.   Treat your vendors better than your customers and you'll have non-stop business.  From the "Greatest Entrepreneur in the World" e-book Employees : The goal of all bosses is to find employees that will work for you for free .  Their pa

Many people today are very wise, wise in pounds and foolish in penny.  Check to see if you do any of the following 7 things.  If the answer is none, call us at 6225-1784 for a chat.  If the answer is yes to the 7 questions, congratulations and please forward this article to your friends.  1.    Build Relationships with Suppliers by Not Squeezing Them .  Penny wise pound foolish Purchasers like to squeeze suppliers.  They often end up with very few choices as few suppliers would like to work with them.  As a result, they buy cheaply but didn't get the best choices in the market. In fact their purchasing cost went up! 2.    Train the Managers and Directors First Before Training the Staff. When things go wrong, the first thing managers do is to send their staff for training. For they feel that if the staff are better trained, there will be fewer problems.  Truth is the managers and directors should be the first people to be trained, because everything sta

How many times have you selected the cheapest vendor only to discover later that you have just paid top dollar?   Over the years the relationship between supplier and customer has focused hard on many of the wrong things. Price alone is almost always the most important factor in selecting any supplier.   Yet we know that price can only account for out-of-pocket costs actually paid out to suppliers.  Other factors that are overlooked are more important in determining the  overall cost of purchasing and its ultimate value to your organization .  The overlooked but important factors include  Cost of Value-Added services  (like customization and design), rework, returns, inspection, administration and inconvenience cost.  More important, these costs exclude the  opportunity costs of not doing business with suppliers who can provide significant benefits , which include: Joint Strategic Planning and Product Design Coordinated marketing Joint Customer Research Cross Selling Paperwo

How many times have you selected the cheapest vendor only to discover later that you have just paid top dollar?   Over the years the relationship between supplier and customer has focused hard on many of the wrong things. Price alone is almost always the most important factor in selecting any supplier.   Yet we know that price can only account for out-of-pocket costs actually paid out to suppliers.  Other factors that are overlooked are more important in determining the overall cost of purchasing and its ultimate value to your organization .  The overlooked but important factors include Cost of Value-Added services (like customization and design), rework, returns, inspection, administration and inconvenience cost.  More important, these costs exclude the opportunity costs of not doing business with suppliers who can provide significant benefits , which include: Joint Strategic Planning and Product Design Coordinated marketing Joint Customer Research Cross Selling Paperwo