Month: June 2016

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Successful new product development is key to a healthy manufacturing business, but typically only about 30% of products launched onto the market actually deliver the returns that were expected of them.

So I want to take you through the 5 top mistakes which I see made time after time again, not just by small and medium sized manufacturers, but large global players as well. The difference is that the global players tend to be able to ride out their mistakes and disguise them more easily than organisations with less cash to throw away.

So here they are:

1. Failing to have a strategic plan for the future

New product development is all about creating the future. Designers and engineers work in the future all the time, so it makes sense that if the designers and engineers are to have a place to aim for, then there needs to be a strategic plan which will lead the way for future product developments.

2. Developing a product where the technology is not ready for launch

Using new technology is always a good way to keep the competition at bay, but if the technology is not fully developed or even if it is well established but new to your company, then it is likely to be high risk. There are so many things that can go wrong in these situations and they will, more often than not, result in the project going significantly over budget and missing the intended launch date.

3. Over-estimating the sales volumes

It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new project or idea, but it is essential to remain objective at the early stages in order to ensure that the right resources are spent on the most appropriate opportunities. Over estimating the sales volumes can be more dangerous than under estimating them.

4. Developing a product for wrong market time

Products are often developed in response to the demands of the current market. However, unless the product development process is very fast, it is likely that the market will be demanding different products by the time your product has reached the market.

5. Trying to be all things for all people

This is normally brought about by manufacturers who really do not understand their market well enough to be able to segment and target specific market groups. Adding features simply because competitors have them is rarely a good idea and typically features do not always translate into customer benefits anyway.

Perhaps you recognise some of these errors from past projects, but have a look at your new products which are currently undergoing development and check that you are not making the same mistakes again.

Enjoy the opportunity!

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Source by Daniel Rowntree

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Grifols is a producer of biotechnological products and services for the healthcare sector.

The website starts with strong statement: "What matters most: People." More difficult it is to evaluate the site and the annual report on this statement.

Their vision: to assist professionals in securing the health and well-being of humanity through dedicated service and innovative products.

Grifols is a group of companies, which serves healthcare professionals and patients in over 90 countries around the world. They research, develop, manufacture and market plasma derivatives, IV therapy, enteral nutrition, diagnostic systems and medical materials.

The mission statement is divided in five areas:
– Health. Our services and products help you improve the health and well-being of humanity.
– Innovation. New products and services from Grifols enable major advances in patient health and medical capability.
– Experience. Grifols: a proven, trusted plasma pioneer since 1940.
– Resources. As part of the global Grifols family of companies, Grifols gives you access to world-class resources and worldwide service.
– Commitment. A heritage of more than sixty years of innovation, safety and service.

The organization of Grifols is divided roughly into

Industrial area, dedicated to developing, research and manufacturing of products and services (diagnostic, laboratories, engineering, biomat, plasmacare and biologicals) and a commercial area (marketing, distribution and customer service) which is setup regionally (America, Asia and Europe) a third branch "Others" covers "grifols Viajes" (travel)

A family business: the company was founded in 1940 by Dr.Grifols i Roig founds Grifols (Laboratories) together with his sons.

Interesting facts on the timeline starts as soon as 1943 when "The first single donor lyophilized plasma in Europe and the first penicillin in Spain are produced." In 1945 the first private blood bank is opened in Spain and in 2006 the company Grifols is listed on the Spanish Stock exchange.

There are three divisions:

Bioscience Division. Specializes in the research, development, production and commercialization of high quality plasma derivates. Grifols' original product line.
Diagnostic Division. Focuses on researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing diagnostics products for laboratory analysis, including products for Hospital Blood Banks and Transfusion Centers.
Hospital Division. Provides a wide range of non-biological products used in hospital pharmacies, surgery, nutritional support, fluid therapy and for other therapeutic uses.

Interesting about the annual report is its design, simple but the statistical and financial figures are represented with test-tubes stressing the laboratorial business.

In 2007 Grifols recorded total revenue of 703 million euros and total profit of 87.8 million euros.
We have a low level of debt (net financial debt is 1.9 times EBITDA), which gives us a comfortable margin for carrying out the next stage of our business expansion plan. (An ambitious, 400 million euro investment plan to fund its growth in the next five years, which it began implementing in 2008)

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Source by Hans Bool

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When Amazon was launched, it began as a online bookstore. Outside the span of economic opportunity was the chance of enhancing the buyer experience by widening the customers' choice. Creating the world's first online bookstore was recognizing that, in 1995, you could not walk into any bookstore in the world and be able to review or purchase the millions of books in circulation. Even from the beginning, Amazon was focused on creating the best customer experience with a deliberate focus on convenience and the vision of pioneering other technological advancements as the end of the 21st century approached.

I believe it's fair to say that Jeff Bezos and many others, including myself, believed the 21st century would include the convenience of flying cars, the convenience of getting your annual checkup without having to visit the doctor's office, or being able to order a ride to anywhere in your city all at the press of a button. In 1995, all of these technological advances were just storylines of The Jetsons and other science fiction. Innovation has now made all but one of those storylines a reality – but I'm sure Elon Musk is working on getting us those flying cars.

Amazon has pioneered a number of technological innovations through their now-extensive product lines. From its conception, the company was focused on making every book available for purchase online, but their focus has now evolved into "selling everything to everyone." Over the last 16 years they have come closer and closer to that goal. Their product lines include:

• Amazon Fresh (currently in beta), where they sell fresh produce.
• Amazon Prime, which provides video and music content instantly to customers via their smart devices.
• Amazon Fashion, which launched last fall.
• Amazon Fulfillment.
• Amazon Marketplace, which provides customers with the opportunity to become entrepreneurs while utilizing the company's logistics and distribution infrastructure.
• Amazon Kindle, which I believe was the predecessor of all other tablet devices.
• Amazon Web Services, which was a business born out of Amazon's necessity to create a sustainable infrastructure for their online operations. They did it so efficiently that they had extra capacity to support the infrastructure of other companies, some of which could be considered their competitors.

Their latest and possibly most ambitious endeavor, Amazon Prime Air, will revolutionize ecommerce as well as logistics and distribution. Amazon Prime Air extends the products that the company can sell. With a vision of leading innovation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) delivery, Amazon Prime Air will enhance all of their other product lines by allowing their customers to get the goods they order much faster, effectively enhancing the Amazon customer experience. Skeptics (including myself) have wondered how big is the customer base that would use such a service and why would anyone ask for a drone to come anywhere near their house. Drones definitely get a bad rap, and rightfully so, but most of those concerns are out of place within the APA discussion as these UAVs will not have missiles or cameras attached to them. So the real question is, does this product line and technology have a customer base or serve any real need outside of its "coolness" factor? Well, let's take a look at what the data says:

Amazon has been working on UAV technology for some time but it was not until November of last year that the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) announced a plan to create a standard for the commercial use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). It is obvious that Amazon has to go on a public relations blitz to inject the acronym "UAV" into the public discourse in the place of "drone" in regards to APA as it will enhance the public's perception once they launch the platform. And according to the FAA's UAS commercial integration plan, they have plenty of time.

Here is the FAA UAS integration timeline. It is broken into 3 phases:

The first phase, Accommodation, extends into 2015. During this time, I believe Amazon will work to attain the Certificate of Airworthiness (COA). The second phase, Integration, extends into 2020, and in this phase I believe Amazon will mostly focus on beta testing in select markets. The third and final phase, Evolution, extends past 2021; Amazon would have not only developed a UAV ready to interact with the public but also a UAS that incorporates the various aspects of storage, fulfillment and distribution. At this point, they can expect that there will be many competitors who would also utilize UAVs as a form of logistics such as Fedex, UPS, other online retailers, and big box stores such as Walmart and Target. So Amazon's main focus at this point should be creating a UAV / UAS that will be the safest and most reliable, and not only meet FAA standards but exceed them with the goal of Amazon Prime Air becoming synonymous with UAV delivery. The FAA has made it clear that it is not a matter of if but when, and if Amazon follows through with its plan, it could pioneer a completely new form of delivery.

Google Trends

The day after Amazon Prime Air was announced on the show 60 Minutes happened to be the largest consumer holiday of the year, "Cyber ​​Monday." It was also the first time that Cyber ​​Monday surpassed Black Friday in sales. Utilizing the Google Trends tool I was able to gauge consumer interest. Google Trends is a research tool that allows users to gain insight on Google search data by comparing search phrases. In this graph "Cyber ​​Monday" was at 100pts with "Amazon Prime Air" and "Amazon drone" representing 75 and 74 points respectively. So for every 4 people that searched for Cyber ​​Monday deals, 3 searched for Amazon Prime Air. I believe it is fair to say that for every 4 people who made a purchase on Cyber ​​Monday, 3 would have been a customer of Amazon Prime Air!

The data shows that there is some consumer interest, but whether this is a true reflection of real opportunity is to be confirmed. Regardless, a showing of 3 out of 4 consumers definitely leans towards further investigation. The opportunity and economics of this new business line must be examined. Amazon Prime Air's current prototype has a max payload of 5 lbs or less, which qualifies 86% of their shipments as eligible for Amazon Prime Air. According to resources, their free shipping policy on select orders cost the company about $ 6 billion just last year and with FedEx and UPS (their shipping partners) increasing the rate by 4.5% they can anticipate that this cost will go up and continue to increase over time. The data available on the Amazon Prime Air R & D budget is not publicly available so I had to get creative and also make a few assumptions. I deduced the opportunity cost by multiplying 86% of their daily shipping count which at its peak represents 13.5MM by the lowest 'one-day shipping' rate which is the closest service to Amazon Prime Air and then the highest 'one day shipping rate' and captured an amount totaling $ 52-103 billion. I then took this a step further, considering Amazon's customer-centric philosophy and their current business model of low margins. Even at a 2% margin they would still net $ 1-2 billion dollars. The opportunity is large enough that Amazon will either be a huge customer of UAV delivery or a huge provider of UAV delivery.

So far I've covered the vision, strategy, and the why (albeit briefly), and now for the execution of the most innovative product of the 21st century – so innovative that the government is still trying to determine the regulations.

Amazon Prime Air is the name of Amazon's unmanned aircraft system. The system will be developed by framing every possible user story with the consideration of their customers, the public, their employees at the fulfillment centers, the deployment, the UAV hub and most importantly, the unmanned aircraft vehicle.

At their current capacity of 96 fulfillment centers around the world, they do not meet the 10-mile distance requirement for the UAV prototypes, so as part of their strategy they would need to continue the development of fulfillment centers as part of the unmanned aircraft system .

UAV MVP

Amazon's primary focus should be creating a safe UAV, so discussing and developing user stories with the engineering team will be prioritized by safety, security, and reliability. They should also focus on defining and exploring specs utilizing current FAA requirements such as sense and avoid, control and communications and the others as detailed.

The current roadmap details the definition and exploration to meet FAA requirements within the next two months, exploring SAA technologies such as electro-optic, infrared, and radar, with the second phase focusing on building and testing of the UAV through the rest of the year . The last phase, focusing on developing the rest of the Amazon Prime Air system, will extend into 2015 calendar year.

Launching Amazon Prime Air will not be an easy task, as can be expected for such an ambitious endeavor, but I believe even with this brief analysis of the project, Amazon could lead in the innovation of UAV delivery.

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Source by Toye Adeyemo

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International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is a set of accounting standards developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

IFRS has been adopted by more than 12,000 companies in over 100 nations and is becoming the global standard for the preparation of financial statements of public companies throughout the world. However, in the US, GAAP (General Accepted Accounting Principles) is applied. Recently, the G20 leaders have called for significant progress towards moving to one set of high-quality global accounting standards. President Obama also called for one set of standards and substantial progress to be made in 2009. Now SEC is working on an updated "roadmap" that will layout a schedule and major milestones for moving US towards its adoption by all US public companies. There are advantages and disadvantages of converting to IFRS, and various arguments have made for and against its adoption.

A single set of accounting standards will provide comparability, and enable companies from different parts of the world to apply the same standards. It increases transparency, allowing easier cross-border investment with greater liquidity and low cost of capital. It will also cut down the time and costs of preparing financial statements according to different standards and regulations, achieving enormous savings of capital in the longer term. The transition cost is estimated to be 8 billion dollars for the entire US economy, with average one-time cost of $ 3.24 million dollars for multinational corporations. Since the financial reports were reduced from three to one, they will save money in the long run. The adoption of IFRS and use of uniform accounting standards will also eliminate the possible different accounting results from applying different standards and help investors to pursue various strategies including global investment diversification.Many companies may soon be required to report in multiple accounting standards if the US does not either accept or move toward IFRS. Maintaining multiple standards reporting only increases accounting and auditing costs and provides no value to any country. Over 100 countries have adopted or in the process of adopting IFRS. Delays in adopting IFRS by the US will make multi-national companies to report their primary reports in IFRS, resulting in parallel reports in US GAAP.

This will create more auditing fees and possible errors. The US should move towards the IFRS standards as a matter of urgency. As more and more countries adopt IFRS, it is in the US interests to apply the same accounting standards. Most of the US companies will benefit from one set of accounting standards since are multinational companies and they operating globally. IFRS will make it easier to control and monitor their subsidiaries in foreign countries and achieve cost savings from maintaining several accounting standards. It can also help to eliminate potential financial misunderstandings and simplify investment decisions. With its strong moral standard, intolerance for unethical behavior, the US has been a world leader for centuries. Its financial and accounting standards have been used by other countries as a yardstick to measure their economic and financial success until recently. We need to be a leader and the driving force in establishing and adopting international standards.

It is the time for us to get involved and play an important role in shaping the international standards. Otherwise, it will hurt us in the long run. Competition works and is a good thing because it will ensure better quality with lower price. Competition between different sets of standards will offer the advantage of getting better information. There is really no one size fits all standards. The uniform single accounting standard can stifle innovation, ingenuity, competition, creativity and capitalism entrepreneurship. The differences between GAAP and other countries' standards can be very useful and provide insight into the reasons and values ​​they conduct financial reporting in a particular way. By focusing on our differences, we will benefit from increased productivity, higher quality, technological innovation, thus better meet the demands of the marketplace. Switching to IFSB will give IASB monopoly status, with the potential to compromise the quality of the IASB standards. A recent survey shows that to convert to IFRS, US companies have to pay more than their European counterparts. The added benefits of comparability versus cost to implement IFRS will not justify the adoption.

According to the SEC, it will cost.12% of revenues to implement the standards nationwide, which means the cost can be as high as several billion dollars. The cost to achieve the additional comparability is not worth several billion dollars. It will drain on our slowly recovering economy. From a cost benefit perspective, convergence is obviously superior to adoption. Transition to IFRS itself can present be a lot of challenges. The economy of the US is the largest in the world and nobody knows exactly the scope and magnitude of applying IFRS to such a large economy. IFRS has not been tested in any country like the US On the other hand, US GAAP has been evolving with various changes in the US and stands the test of time, especially the frauds such as Enron and Tyco International.

Enforcement can also create some problems. While the US has effective enforcement, it is very challenging to implement stringent enforcement among those member countries due to the differences in economic and political system among the adopting nations and their financial reporting practices. In summary, adopting IFRS will provide comparability, increased audit efficiency, reduced information misunderstanding and cost savings as more and more economic activities become globalized. The flip side is it will eliminate competition and incentives to innovate. The quality will suffer since compromises have to be made to achieve consensus due to various political pressures and economic interest. However many support for a move to a single set global accounting standards and it is believed that the US will ultimately IFRS or have IFRS and US GAAP coexist.

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Source by Ashlley Jarmari

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What is an idea? Use these quotes from famous people to think about what ideas are and how to get them.

1. "An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements." – Jack Foster

2. "Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought." – Napoleon Hill

3. "The ability to make big leaps of thought is a common denominator among the originators of breakthrough ideas." – Nicholas Negroponte

4. "Ideas are the mightiest influence on earth. One great thought breathed into a man may regenerate him." – Channing

5. "The men who build the future are those who know that greater things are yet to come, and that they themselves will help bring them about. Their minds are illumined by the blazing sun of hope. They never stop to doubt. They haven 't time. " – Melvin J. Evans

6. "The inlet of a man's mind is what he learns; the outlet is what he accomplishes. If his mind is not fed by a continued supply of new ideas which he puts to work with purpose, and if there is no outlet in action , his mind becomes stagnant. Such a mind is a danger to the individual who owns it and is useless to the community. " – Jeremiah W. Jenks

7. "All advancement and progress come through ideas, not through physical force or mechanical force." – Emerson

8. "An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea." – Buddha

9. "A single idea / the sudden flash of a thought / may be worth a million dollars." – Robert Collier

10. "The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another." – Marva Collins

11. "The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment." – Earl Nightingale

12. "All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea." – Napoleon Hill

13. "Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea." – Jim Rohn

14. "Money never starts an idea. It is always the idea that starts the money." – Owen Laughlin

15. "Ask for prosperous ideas." – Catherine Ponder

16. "Everything begins with an idea." – Earl Nightingale

17. "An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied." – Arnold H. Glasgow

18. "When you are finished creating ideas, you are finished!" – Vernon Myers

19. "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages. " – Mark Twain

20. "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death." – John F. Kennedy

21. "Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!" – Les Brown

22. "Do not worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." – Howard Aiken

23. "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." – John Steinbeck

24. "Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done right." – Walt Disney

25. "It just takes one idea to live like a king for the rest of your life." – Ross Perot

26. "Ideas are a dime a dozen . People who implement them are priceless" – Mary Kay Ash

27. "The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds." – Mark Twain

28. "Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle." – Ken Hakuta

29. "Ideas will be the major source of new wealth." – Brian Tracy

30. "… new ideas and opportunities come to those who decide what they want and have the courage to pursue it." – Michael Leboeuf

31. "One idea can make you rich. A dozen ideas will make you richer … quicker." – MR Kopmeyer

32. "The one thing no one has figured out how to do is to outsource the creation of ideas." – Keith Ferrazi

33. "The solution to any problem is just an idea." – Marsh Fisher

34. "Once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it." – Joseph Murphy

35. "When your mind is functioning correctly, there is an out streaming of light from within in the form of inspiration, hunches, leadings, and intuitive flashes – trust this process of inspiration." In the twinkling of an eye "ideas and plans may flow into your mind. " – Eric Butterworth

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Source by Vernon Myers

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Culture change is making its way throughout nursing homes and other long-term care settings across the nation and one of the most exciting innovations in culture change is in the dietary department. Some people believe that the kitchen has been one of the most forgotten and underrated place within long-term care. But, not any more! Many facilities that implement person-centered care as a part of their culture change start in the kitchen because it can lead to significant improvements in the quality of dietary services. Everyone looks forward to great food and how food is served, and these changes are highly visible to residents, their families, and staff. Also, there are endless possibilities and opportunities for change in dietary.

Hippocrates made the connection between food and health over 2000 years ago. He said "Let food be your medicine". Food is a very important part of health and in addition to its nourishing aspects, food has the power to heal and comfort people. Food is also a powerful symbol of nurturing, love and celebration. But, food has to be attractive and desired. It has to be served in ways that appeal to people. Uneaten food has no nutritional value and does nothing but go to waste. Remember, meals many times are often the highlight of our resident's day.

One goal of making dietary changes is to bring in the concept of "home" as much as possible to the dinning experience. Think of your own homes. You can find and have a snack anytime you want. You can make a meal for yourself or for your entire family. You can drink what you want when you want. You can put on a fresh pot of coffee, make tea, have a glass of ice water or whatever else you wish. You can eat with your family, in front of the television, while reading, or chatting on the phone with friends. You make a grocery list, hang it on the refrigerator, anyone can add to it, and then you go shopping. Just as we choose foods to eat, resident councils choose their own menus. Ethnic food choices are also important to consider.

Another goal when making changes in dietary is to offer flexible meal times. In person-centered care, the point is to de-institutionalize meal times and the dining experience. To facilitate residents sleeping in later in the morning, we must develop systems to serve meals to our residents at the times they choose to eat. We will have to become more flexible in how we think about food service. And as residents come and go we may have to further tweak our dining services. Many long-term care facilities have decided to implement flexible meal schedules such as the following: breakfast will be offered between 7:30 am to 9:30 am weekdays and maybe slightly later on the weekends; lunch will be served between 11:30 am and 1:30 pm; and dinner will be served between 4:30 pm (for the "early birds") until 6:30 pm for those who prefer it later. Flexible meal times offers choice and freedom to residents and simply makes the meal experience better, because they can choose when they prefer to eat.

Another goal of change in dietary services is to be innovative and creative in how food is served. Some of the more common dinning styles utilized in long-term care facilities include buffet-style dinning, restaurant-style dinning, 24-hour room service, and open access to food. These styles offer more choice to residents and can make meal times more enjoyable. Buffet-style dinning involves a hot steam table in a central area (dinning room) or placed in multiple sites within the facility (ie on each unit or wing). Many facilities have indicated that the buffet works very well for breakfast. Restaurant-style dinning can be used in the main dinning room and those employees working in the dinning room can wear chef coats and black pants, to create a restaurant atmosphere. A restaurant-style menu is placed on each table and residents order whatever they wish from it. The menu can be changed once a month, quarterly or seasonally. Many facilities have always offered room service, but perhaps never called it "room service" and indicated that it was available 24-hours a day. This is a nice feature for residents who are up at night and prefer to sleep throughout the day. It is also a nice option for family visitors who work odd shifts and visit their loved one during late evening hours. And finally, all residents, family and staff may have access to snacks 24-hours a day by creating or building small, kitchenette areas in the facility. And, do not stock it with just healthy snacks. Stock it with what residents and families want.

Other innovations in dinning include a private dinning room for special occasions, dinning areas that have a warm and comfortable appearance, bread- and cookie-baking throughout the day to create a more homelike atmosphere and to stimulate the diet, replacing 4-top tables with larger dinning room tables that seat 8 or more people, natural lighting or attractive lighting, salt and pepper shakers, hot sauce, and sugar bowls placed on each table, and kitchenettes complete with microwaves, small refrigerators, coffee pots, and storage space for snacks .

Dietary services are important in long-term care and culture change is providing great ideas concerning how to become more innovative and creative with food and how it is served. Food is vital to life and the kinds of food and how it is served should enhance the quality of life for residents in long-term care.

James H. Collins, Ph.D.

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Source by James H Collins

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Is it possible to run the business from anywhere even without requiring a system of hardware and software? Yes, it is, and all the credit goes to a new innovation called cloud. A new model of technology has already taken shape, and the world is benefiting from it in a big way. Is not your business benefiting? If not, it's then a perfect time to understand CRM solutions and their vast utility.

Having a CRM or Customer Relationship Management system in place is like making your business organized and streamlining its processes. This system is basically about centralizing data and information related to every aspect of the business to help ease the decision-making. It's about understanding the requirements of customers and making ways to meet them. Such a system is giant step forward in doing a timely investment in innovation. It's also about enhancing the infrastructure.

With a cloud-based and feature-rich CRM system implemented in the business, your business gets enriched with upgrades and features to expand capabilities and competencies. Besides, you need not bother a bit about data security as the flow of your business is going to be as smooth as desired. Every aspect of security is boosted and businesses are delivered with a total control over data access and user authentication.

In addition, a top-quality CRM is one that comes with customization options where it lets businesses get productivity and flexibility as per own specific needs. The platform either has to be customizable or must come with ability to enable development of business and process-specific apps. More so, it has to come equipped with prebuilt applications which are relevant and powerful at the same time.

Furthermore, the CRM software has to allow integration with third-party apps to smoothen the passage of growth. More so, it needs to take care of every aspect of the business, be it sales, marketing, analytics or customer management. The business should have the freedom of connecting, accessing and managing data from any system or source. In a sense, the software must have all those features / functionalities / qualities that a top employee is expected of.

The CRM is not worth the trust if it does not help drive the sales forward and benefit the revenue growth and ROI. More so, your business will get benefits on the front of sales projection, existing trends, targets for employees, customer responses and processes automation. Every aspect of your customer relationship is improved as customer-related data is easily accessible and sharable between departments.
In essence, it pays a lot to have a quality-focused and domain-leading customer relationship management system in place. You do not the if have, then the time has come to the find an experienced Salesforce Implementation partner . In doing so, you harness the potential of the business and boost its prospects. Your flaws are ascertained and processes run as effortlessly as they should.

So, never look beyond a proven and quality CRM solution else your business objectives may not be realized in the way it should. Take a sensible decision and grow your business!

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Source by Prince Kumar

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If there is one brand that has been able to stand the test of time purely because of its innovative use of natural materials like sheepskin and rubber, it has to be Ugg boots. This brand that came into existence in Australia created a flutter in the market when it introduced its range of boots made out of high quality sheepskin.

Consumers who were till then well accustomed to using top notch leather footwear now had something different to look forward to. The Merino sheepskin used to manufacture Ugg boots proved to be not only very durable but extremely soft and with excellent cushion qualities.

What distinguished Ugg boots from others apart from its use of sheepskin was the fact that consumers could wear them during both summer and winter seasons. These boots had wool whose outer part could be enveloped with generous fleece for that ultra soft feeling, while the inners could be covered with skin.

Merino sheepskin with its double faced attribute thus offered a thermostatic kind of setting whereby your feet remained very cosy and warm during cold winter but became cool during summer. Fleece helped in keeping out moisture and thus ensured that your feet always remained dry. The soles were made out of rubber and stitched firmly into the boots on the outside. The use of such material naturally pushed up the cost of these boots but people were more than willing to pay the price given the exclusive benefits they could enjoy with Ugg boots.

It was not surprising therefore that these boots soon had many imitators who tried to introduce their own brand. Over the years, very few have succeeded in their endeavour as they have not been able to duplicate the effect and comfort Uggs have been consistently delivering to its consumers.

Ugg quickly realised that in order to maintain their competitive advantage, they had to bring out these boots in a whole range of colours and sizes. You thus had access to pretty attractive colours like blue, pink, chestnut, fuchsia and many others. Women found them ideal as they could now complement their attire with the right footwear and rest assured that their feet would remain well protected through the season.

The height of the boots introduced by the brand varied from ankle high boots to those reaching above the knee. Tall boots were always preferred by many women and since they were available in vibrant colours available, they were quickly snapped up.

Unfortunately, like most other successful brands, Ugg too have to face the scourge of duplicates and replicas flooding the market and wooing the consumers. These are made out of cheap pigskin or cowhide and if you are not careful when buying them, you could end up burning a hole in your pocket. Such products are also not good for your skin due to the spurious chemicals used in their manufacture.

It is therefore advisable that you do not look out for cheap Ugg boots, but pay more for the genuine article.

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Source by Charlotte J Wilson

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What do person, place, product, and process (the 4 P's) have in common? According to creativity researchers, these are the four generally accepted facets to creativity. Additionally these facets are interrelated, which makes creativity complicated to understand and to cultivate, especially in organizations. Understanding its multiple aspects, however, is a critical first step in bringing more creativity, and hence innovation, into a corporate environment. Creativity is generally considered to be a new idea or insight that is recognized by experts in that field as having value. Creativity is the necessary first step to fueling innovation. This first article, in a series of articles about the facets of creativity, will present an overview of the 4 P's of creativity and how they are interrelated.

Person

Stories about modern eminent creatives such as Steve Jobs and IM Pei and past creatives such as Thomas Edison, Madame Curie and Michelangelo warp our image of the creative person. We tend to think of people as being either creative or not creative, like it is a fixed attribute such as one's height or eye-color. Creativity is not unique or mysterious; we are all creative to different degrees. Creativity has little to do with IQ. It is our usage or under-usage of our ordinary thinking processes that impact our creative output. Creative thinking approaches can be learned by all individuals. Research has shown that the use of creative thinking techniques reduces costs, increases efficiency and positively impacts ROI.

Place

Our families, schools, community, religion, and workplace as well as the overall culture in which we live have major impacts on creativity; this is referred to formally as the press of the environment, which I refer to simply as 'place.' The values ​​and norms of our upbringing and current environment dictate whether we are encouraged or discouraged from being creative and whether our ideas or products are recognized as being creative. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont professor and creativity researcher, says that the environment has more of an impact on creative outcomes than an individual intent on creativity. Interestingly, studies have shown that creativity tends to thrive during times of political unrest, civil disturbance, and intellectual diversity. For example many young people were motivated to become artists and architects during the Renaissance. Teresa Amabile, Harvard professor and organizational creativity researcher says that our social environment can significantly affect intrinsic motivation, both positively and negatively. We often become motivated to think and act creatively when we become personally interested in or curious about a new technology, research data or trend. Working on something imposed on us by outside sources, without being personally interested has negative effects on our creativity. For example, the proliferation of the Internet has laid the foundation for an increase in artists and designers. This new surge in visual images has contributed to the current trend in businesses to utilize design thinking in addition to analytical thinking.

Product

Can you make money from it? Do your peers and society admire you because of it? In our Western, materially focused culture, a physical product or outcome is typically the only facet of creativity that is recognized. We look at the finished product and forget there was a process of multiple creative failures that happened first. We may disregard the environment or the team of people that encouraged the development of the product. New products and ideas often have a difficult time getting past the 'gatekeepers' who determine the idea's value, sometimes arbitrarily or with limited foresight. A person known in the field or from a field predisposed to creativity, such as advertising is likely to have an easier time getting past the gatekeepers than an unknown or someone from a 'non-creative' industry. Occasionally the product or idea is so radical and ahead of its time, it gets ridiculed or goes unrecognized for years. The concept of Federal Express is a well-known story of a ridiculed idea; van Gogh was considered a sociopathic recluse rather than a genius, and died alone and penniless.

Process

What must occur in order for us to produce a creative idea or product? There are potentially exponential trials of creative processes compared to final products. Edison tried thousands of times to produce an electric filament for long lasting electric lighting. Should not all those failed attempts be considered creative? Our culture, however, tends to label only the one successful outcome as creative.

Each of us goes through four stages during our creative process. Preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification were originally introduced by Graham Wallas in 1926 in his book "The Art of Thought." In the first stage, preparation, we set ourselves up for creative success by acquiring some skill, gathering data, or understanding the basic problem that needs to be addressed. This is perhaps the most difficult stage as suggested by Edison in his famous line, "Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration." In the next stage, incubation, our brain is working on things in the background. It is the time away from conscious thinking. This is the most powerful of the steps and the one that probably gets overlooked most often. It is hard not to consciously and continually work on a problem to conclusion, since we all have a tendency to want to solve problems as soon as possible, and are often pushed by our organizations to do so. The 'aha' or illumination stage, however, can only occur after an incubation period.Sometimes we do not get a solution – but another way to approach the problem. But when we get that 'aha,' we know with certainty that we are on the right path. Finally, we need to be able to recognize when a solutions fits the problem. In the last stage, verification, we try and test the solution. We often go back and forth rapidly between the stages. The ability to shift between stages is important to the creative process.

How we think, how the gatekeepers respond to what we produce, the environment in which we live, and the processes we follow all combine to impact the production and acceptance of new ideas, insights and products. It is impossible to consider any one of these facets in a vacuum. We can not separate the person from their environment, the idea from the person, the process from the environment, or the product from the process. It is complicated, but not impossible, to address all of these facets within an organizational setting. In the next series of articles, I will go into each of the four facets in more depth.

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Source by Joanne Brunn

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The world is a colorfully diverse place and so are our workplaces. Diversity is an economic and legal priority in business. It increases the bottom line, jump starts innovation and keeps businesses out of legal jeopardy. Managers, supervisors and employees at every level of a company need to find ways to embrace and respect diversity in their departments and the organization as a whole. Here are ten ways to get started.

1. We all have biases. It's a natural result of our life experiences. Take a moment to write down what you biases are and how you can not allow these biases to affect the way you conduct yourself at work.
2. Get to know someone different than you. Take a genuine interest in someone with a different background than your own. Make sure that your conversations find common ground in an area that it does not offend cultural sensibilities.
3. Invite input from others with different backgrounds. Not only does this show respect, but it makes good business sense to have a diverse opinion.
4. Bring together diverse groups for innovation. Inviting as many backgrounds and cultures as possible will increase the pace and creativity involved with innovation. Companies that do not change and innovate will die and the diversity can be a company's most valuable resource in this area.
5. Respect religious holidays. Most companies respect Christian holidays, however the workplace is far more than just Christian. All important religious holidays should be respected for employees of that particular religion.
6. Find someone with a different background who shares the same company goal with you and strategize with them.
7. Find out about everyone in your departments skills, knowledge and experience. This will help you respect what they bring to the workplace.
8. Invite someone with a diverse background to lunch or change your table every day at lunch in the break room so you can sit with new people.
9. Avoid language that demeans a particular group of individuals. For instance avoid calling women girls and avoid jokes that have religious or cultural inferences.
10. When hiring or promoting individuals do so on the basis of facts only. Skills, abilities, knowledge and results should be the only factors involved in your decisions. Do not let biases or stereotypes affect the process.

Embrace diversity in your workplace and you are on the way to a more fulfilling and productive organization. The world is a beautiful mosaic of differences and the workplace should be as well. Respecting your co-workers and employees is paramount to tapping the valuable diversity in your organization.

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Source by Charlie Bentson King