Ramblings on project management, process re-engineering, business improvement, and anything else that may be pertinent.
Wow, last year was a lot better than we thought – Commerce Department Delivers More Good News on the Economy.
The department said that GDP grew 4.4% overall in 2004 – a full percentage point faster than in 2003 and the best result since 1999.
And at least the 1st quarter of 2005 should be the same!
Open Forbes, Business 2.0, INC. or just about any magazine or newspaper and you’ll discover yet another merger or acquisition by one of the “big” companies. These players in the corporate world survive, continue to grow and voraciously devour their competition in the business community.
More revenues and profits as a result of acquisition or merger is “THE thing” in today’s world of ultra high-tech computers and blinding speed interactions. Not that the more conservative growing methodically from within fails, but M&A expansion, when enacted with sound business practices, delivers more punch faster and with a force difficult to counter. Of course that is what Carly was hoping for, but got the boot when it did not happen. Always a risk. . . .at every size.
Mounds of cash combined with stock that has a market value provides the means for large corporations to extend product and service boundaries. A clear benefit from such action is to cut expenses, improve management, bolster finances and trim competition. Small business is looking for those same benefits, but with limited or non-existent cash reserves and no-par stock, small businesses watch with envy, and can rarely attempt such endeavors. To grow or even to survive, smaller companies must follow much the same basic business rules as big companies or endure a never ending struggle to exist.
Sad to say, many small business operators do not have what it takes to grow. Some owners lack business basics, or merely do not have the fortitude to endure the hardships necessary to expand. Some suffer from ego problems – a need to have only one name on the door. Others, with arrogant business dispositions, close doors to new ideas. Many small businesses are doomed because of an owner’s self defeating demeanor. I’ve seen ‘em all.
But I’ve also seen successful small mergers or acquisitions that provided those benefits to a small growing business. . . .and they didn’t have to lay-off thousands to make it. Small companies do merge, do get acquired and operate with a synergy that was hoped for and achieved. So don’t think you have to be on the S&P500 to work a little merger magic. It takes forethought, planning and a lot of research, but it can be done.
Oh, and we probably won’t read about it in the Wall Street Journal.
All the mergers and acquisitions are reminiscent of the ’90s. Makes me think about getting back into the stock market. Not that I ever left. Sure I have my mutual funds and IRAs, but back then I was watching the market everyday, several times a day. And why not? It was hard to pick a loser. I was playing the market everyday and playing fairly well.
Then the bubble burst. Heavily loaded in the tech industry stocks and owning and running a tech industry company, I was hit hard. It hurt. My own company I was able to unload at about a quarter of the cost I could have had just 2 years earlier. The stocks were the same story. It’s not that I lost a lot of money, it’s that I could have made a lot more just a couple of years before. It was a psychological hurt, a paper loss, but it still stung.
Now I’m older and wiser and the news has got me itching again. Have you seen the list?
And these are just the better known names. There have been dozens of announcements just since January 1st. I think I’m going to dust off my Excel formulas and fire up my charting programs. It’s time to test the waters and make E*Trade happy.
It’s more than just an annoyance — The time spent deleting spam costs U.S. businesses $21.6 billion annually. Time to buy a spam filter!
Don’t fell too bad about those coming back to work after being “sick.” Just 38% of sick days are taken by workers who are actually ill. Another 23% take a sick day to deal with family issues and 11% say they are stressed out. 18% say they have “personal needs,” and 10% simply feel they deserve a day off. Should we be asking for a note from the doctor?
Where and When Do You Get Your Best Ideas? is a poll on what triggers your ideas. There are 35 choices you can rate 1 to 5 and even a space to write in your own. Then check out the poll results. Looks like “Brainstorming with others” is a popular choice, but “Showering” is up there also.
Spam represents 75 to 80 percent of all e-mail. While more and more businesses have anti-spam measures in place, companies are receiving more spam e-mails than ever before, according to a new study by Postini, an e-mail security and managing firm. And it looks like the bigger your company, the better off you are — Smaller firms get up to 10 times more spam than corporations. Spammers are targeting smaller companies — those with 100 users or fewer — because they have less-sophisticated defenses. And certain industries, including publishing, advertising, legal and real estate, received more than 10 times the amount of spam per user per day compared with organizations in banking, financial, manufacturing, electronics and pharmaceuticals.
And who is most likely to be swamped with spam? Companies that publish their employees’ e-mail addresses on the Web.
Cornell University has found that Warm Offices Link to Higher Productivity.
“At 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time with a 10 percent error rate, but at 68 degrees, their keying rate went down to 54 percent of the time with a 25 percent error rate,” Hedge says. “Temperature is certainly a key variable that can impact performance.”
Which I guess correlates to keeping your employees “hot under the collar” will mean more output.
