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Top 4 U.S Banks Pledge to Increase Lending To SMBs

Apr 20

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According to a new survey by Wells Fargo/Gallup, it was found that, the lending has seen a surge, as the confidence in small business owners dropped to the lowest level in last seven years.

43 percent (down from 53% in the previous quarter), expect increase in their company’s cash flows, while 13 percent(down from 18% last quarter) companies plan to add jobs. These figures were the lowest ever figures in the 29 quarters history of the survey.

The four largest banks in the U.S. are planning to increase lending to small businesses.

Bank of America promised to increase lending by $5 billion to small business this year, and it has already reached the half this week, with $45.4 billion being loaned in the first half of 2010. It is almost $9 billion more than the last year during same period.
Wells Fargo, increased lending by 30 percent to the small businesses in the last quarter.

Citigroup also said lending to small business had doubled in the last six months, and JP Morgan Chase said its lending (which also includes credit cards) to small business was up 37 percent. JP Morgan said it’s goal is to make $10 billion from new loans to companies with under $20 million in revenue(up from $6 billion in 2009).

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U.S Governments Plans to Improve Lending Goes in Vain

Apr 20

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It was found that many of the small-business owners say they are stuggling with lack of customers for their business.

A survey was conducted by National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group, which had found that 51 percent of small-business owners viewed lack of sales as their greatest challenge and 8 percent lack of loans. Further it was found that drop in home prices had made it hard for smalll businesses to get loans, as homes as pledged by most of them acquiring loans as collaterals.

Problems such as lack of sales and assets are making it difficult for the small businesses to achieve growth, during economic recession. New plans were introduced by the Government to reverse the condition of decreased lending.

According to federal data, banks reduced lending to small businesses by $15.7 billion(or 2 percent), between September 2008 and 2009. Obama proposed another round of federal aid to community banks, to assist banks keep safe their capital reserves, which are saved for unexpected losses. The aid announced is up to $300 million per bank and $30 billion in total. This lets the bank give more loans and take more risks.

According to NFIB, small-business owners are not ready to go for borrowing from banks, as their homes which are peldged as collateral have lost value. According to the experts, from the above thinking pattern f SMB owners, even the new federal aid proposed by government of $30 billion to community banks is also of no help. This makes the government to come up with new ideas to improve lending.

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Performance of SMEs in Various Regions of Great Britain

Apr 10

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The Barclays Business Regional Impact Index released in partnership with Kingston University, reveals some of the statistics regarding regions in Great Britain which are majorly benefitted by the good performance of SMEs, which in turn help the progress of economy. The reports are based on the analysis of response collected from owners of 1000 SMEs. Each region is also ranked based on 13 aspects of business, such as investment in training, employment generation, outlook on growth, last year profits, expected profit in 2010, innovation, purchases from local suppliers. The important findings of the report are:

SMEs in London, South West regions and Wales are found to top the Index in making significant contributions to their home regions. SMEs in Yorkshire and Humberside were found to be making high profits (followed by North East and East of England), South west SMEs were found to be leading in terms of innovation and increase in head count, SMEs in Central England were found to have highest turn over and were also found to be contributing majorly to the overall 10% job creation rate during economic crisis. Whereas, South East England and South West England were optimistic about job creation for next coming years. SMEs in South West England followed by London and Wales, were optimistic about overall growth of Britain due to development in every region. SMEs of North West were found to prefer mostly, local products and services, while SMEs of Scotland, Yorkshire and Humberside were depending on other area products.

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UK Businesses Selling Online See Increase in Orders

Apr 10

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A survey conducted by Actinic on 200 SMEs selling their products and services online, showed an increase in online sales by 18% revenue in the second quarter, in the three months till end of September, 2010. Though an increase in sales was seen, the e-retailers are finding it difficult to cope with the highly competitive environment amidst the Christmas season. When compared to the last year, during the same period, it was found that, the total number of orders processed by every e-retailer, increased by 13%.

The average cart value increased by 4% to £76.81 in 2010, from £73.81 in third quarter of 2009.

In wake of decreased confidence among customers, this increase in orders online, is giving smiles to the online merchants, especially during the Christmas season. According to experts, this increased in orders may be due to increse in stock levels of products for niche markets, which is helping in reducing the time gap between the time of order and delivery.

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Two Thirds of UK SMEs Use Social Media Less Than Once in a Year

Apr 10

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According to a survey conducted by Daryl Willcox Publishing, conducted on 269 companies, it was found that one third of the SMEs promote their business through social media.

Among the total respondents, 54% used social media, among which 35% posted updates almost daily in LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, while quarter updated for few days and 17% used weekly and more than two thirds used it for less than once in a year.

Of the companies using social media, 73% used LinkedIn, 64% used Facebook and 63% used Twitter. The reasons given by respondents for finding social media successful were, networking (68%), increasing the brand awareness (61%), attracting new customers (63%), influenced by competitors (14%), just for gathering followers (12%). Of the respondents who could not reach customers through social media, cited reasons as, lack of time (35%), irregular usage by customers (31%) and 24% were unable to understand it’s functioning.
On being asked about the incentives and offers given by the SMEs to attract customers, 83% of the SMEs were not found using any such incentives. 60% of the respondents opined that social media was helpful tot heir business, 46% reported increase in brand awareness while 36% said that social media helped them in getting new customers.

It was found that most of the SMEs were still preferring traditional ways of marketing their businesses. 50% preferred email marketing, direct mailing and SEO for their websites, 34% use online press. This shows that the social media usage is still in it’s starting stage, therefore there is a need for SMEs to know about the advantages of social media.

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Best Practices for Building Effective Video Ad: IAB

Apr 10

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Online advertisement is getting more popular, business companies are spending more money for promoting themselves. Online promotions are beneficial when they promote the business effectively. International Advertisement Bureau (IAB) has the Dwell research reports. It measures the impression of video advertisements and it gives information on effective video promotions. Those are

  • Video advertisements make the business promotions more attractive to the audiences and grab their interests for longer periods.
  • Prefer to choose the video ads which provide automatic initiative facilities; as per the Media Mind research, auto-initiative video ads receive higher visits.
  • Take care of your video ads; they should be relevant to your content.
  • When your content is powerful, your ad grabs visitors’ interest and it’s more effective in increasing the users browsing time.
  • Create your ad what is richer and more visible to show results; when your ad is more visible, it increases the visitors’ interest in watching it.
  • Take the advantage of your ad creation, video ads provides the better facilities to businesses where attract the visitors to turn their eyes on your ad.

These practices impress your target audiences and promote your businesses effectively.

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Online Ad Revenue Growing – Print Ad revenue Declined in 2011: US

Apr 10

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Online business provides new business advantages to companies. Online business promotions are growing rapidly. Every year online ad expenses are increasing; International Advertisement Bureau (IAB) gave the reports on online advertisements performance in the market.

Online promotion is competing with print media promotions and it has led to decrease in the print ad revenues. Print ad revenues in US for 2011 decreased greatly, it has been decreasing for the last few years. Print media promotions reported its 20th consecutive decline in promotional revenues, the first quarter of 2011 print ad revenue was decline at 9.5% to report $4.75 billion loss.

International advertisement bureau reported website ad revenue for the first quarter of 2011. It increased by 23% to attain 7.3 billion dollars. IAB explains the behavior changes of business companies. Traditional printing ads are reducing their revenue value gradually.

As per the recent print media reports, revenues have reduced nearly more than 50% during last five years. The president and CEO of IAB said, “as per the business demonstration, digital promotions are more effective and hence the increasing popularity”.

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Importance of Server Monitoring for Small Businesses

Mar 15

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Having a business website, is not enough to boost your business revenues. The higher downtime and some other issues related to the server and network could result in the unavailability of the website to particular geographical users or sometimes to everyone. Unless your admin opens the site, you will not be aware of your site’s performance. So, in order to know the performance of your website, some monitoring tools are available which help you to take right decisions at appropriate times.

Website and server monitoring are two such services which are offered by third party service providers. While Website monitoring tests and tracks how end users are using and interacting with your web applications, Server monitoring is a lot wider. These services make the owner aware about the performance of different services offered by him using reliable web server monitoring methods.

Server monitoring is mainly important because if your server suddenly crashes, it results in the downtime of your website and hence reduces the number of users and revenues for your website. Though server crash is a major problem and can be identified by you, there are few other things which affect the performance of your server and cause downtime or creates loading problems for your website. So, in order be aware the performance issues in your server, monitoring is necessary.

There are different methods like pinging, manual checking, monitoring software and hiring third party monitoring services to monitor the performance of your servers. Employing a best and reliable method helps you effectively face any issues related to your servers.

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Online Advertisement: Cheapest Way of Business Promotion

Mar 5

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Business promotion is important, because companies generate new leads by it. Companies are spending huge amounts for promoting their products or services. Business promotions can be done in different ways. Of them online advertising a better and cost effective method.
Online advertising promotes businesses wider area in markets to increase scope of business. Its very effective for continuous promoting. It reduces the promotional expenses of businesses more than helping for getting profits.

The main aim of business promotion is to reach more number of customers and create awareness in globally. Online advertisement is a simple method by which business reach potential customers worldwide with less promotional spending. Thus online advertising is effective in generating worldwide leads.

Online advertising is really cost effective in the sense that showing the information to visitors along with typed key words you can promote your business. Online advertising is a continuous business promotion method. It is helpful to businesses in generating leads at any time( 24X7).

The best invention in online advertisement is pay per click promotion, which controls the business promotional expenditure. Online advertising requires less business promotional expenditure like CPM (click per thousand), CPC (cost per click), CPV (cost per view), CPL ( cost per lead) etc. These facilities control the businesses promotional expenditure.

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Benefits to Business: ERP Software Implementation

Feb 24

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ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is an important tool in any organization. ERP system integrates all function in an organization like planning, inventory management, engineering, order processing, manufacturing, sales, accounting finance, etc. The major advantage of the ERP system is it is equipped with real-time capabilities. It is forecasting the company’s performance for the future period.

Organizations are getting many benefits from the ERP system, few are
it maintains the work flow and the processes on the same track

  • It follows uniform processes for better business practices
  • It improves the work flow and process speed
  • Enables on-time delivery and effective quality to satisfy the customer needs
  • Reduces the inventory costs to follow better planning and forecasting of requirements
  • Reduces the operating costs
  • It facilitates day-to-day management of businesses
  • It provides good strategic plans to an organization
  • It gives the track reports on sales, inventory and receivables of the organization

The ERP system provides solid backbone support in processing, it improves productivity simultaneously reduces the operational costs. So the ERP software installation is beneficial in any organization.

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