The Business Blog

Most people have come to view Google as synonymous with innovation, but it’s now taking on an older idea, but giving it a new and exciting twist. Google is hosting the Global Science Fair 2011 for students between the ages of 13 and 18.

Students, as individuals or in teams of 2 or 3, will develop projects and post them on one of Google’s Google Sites pages along with either a two minute video or a presentation of up to 20 slides. The web page will include a summary of the project and a biographical section. The page will follow along the stages of the scientific method with a conclusion and a list of works cited. Google does require permission from their parents and that the documents are in English. The deadline for submissions is April 4, 2011.

Initial entrants will be pared down to 60 semi-finalists by a panel of teachers, but there will be a People’s Choice Award selected by voting open to the public. Of the 60, 15 will be flown to Google’s California headquarters to give a presentation before a panel of Nobel Prize winning scientists and top technology thinkers. They will select winners from three age group categories and the Grand Prize Winner.

The winner of the People’s Choice award will receive a $10.000 scholarship. The entire group of 15 finalists will receive an assortment of items from LEGO, an Android phone and a Google Chrome Notebook. Finalists receive a $25,000 scholarship and a Once in a Lifetime Experience at CERN, Google, LEGO or Scientific American. The Grand Prize Winner will receive a 10 day trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions, a $50,000 scholarship and a Once in a Lifetime Experience. Team members will equally split any scholarships.

In a world overrun by public popularity contests, Google’s contest is a valuable promotion of worthy endeavor.

This is a sponsored post but the views and content are fully my own!

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Australian Super is counted among the largest pension funds of Australia and is well-recognized across the continent. More than 10% of Australia’s working population depends on the services provided by this company. Its member-count crosses 1.5 million spread over 120 thousand workplaces. The skilled employers of this concern manage more than $32 billion of funds and work for the benefit of the members.

Becoming a member of this competent superannuation fund company is as easy as clicking on a button saying “Sign Up”. Their user-friendly website http://www.australiansuper.com/ enables fast and easy processing of member’s requests. Some of the striking features of Australian Super are access to online publications and application forms, provision for comparing its fess with that of other companies, estimated calculation of retirement readiness, healthy communication with members via regular updates, news articles, statements and educational materials, free seminars and advices for retirement or general financial planning, continuation of the same super account even after changing jobs and lots more.

However, the factors and features which make Australian Super totally irresistible go beyond the aforementioned ones. They demand lower fees and provide competitive returns, flexible insurance, value-added services and products and 16 varied investment options. Moreover, they focus entirely on benefiting the members and not the agents or shareholders. All these impressive elements undoubtedly make Australian Super a favourite among the working people of Australia. Those who have been associated with this fund have appreciated its services a lot and have recommended it to others who wish to experience a tensionless supply of pension in future.

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When looking to buy a home insurance cover there are many features that need to be considered, these ones affecting the decisions you have to come upon, therefore you should keep them in mind when chasing after a right home insurance plan for you. Thus you can reach for the online websites that show various home insurance policies among which you will be able to make the right pick.

This research is meant to bring in front of your eyes various insurers, the policy that comes together with them, the related prices and features, important factors (such as the budget is) that influence your decision before rushing into signing the home insurance policy!

Further on, these factors will be discussed for the future policy holders to know how to fix the problems regarding the areas in the houses that have an effect on the costs of the plan and on the good insurance as well. When you have the right information you will be able to correct the bad things and as such to take advantage of a right home insurance policy for you at affordable rates.

You might want to call in a home inspector who can point out the defects and as such for you to take the corrective measures, such as securing the house, fixing the roofs, and so on. In this way you can save also a lot of money when you will buy the right home insurance plan for your house benefit!

The location of your house, how prone it can be to vandalism, the materials used for buildings are again other aspects that to have an influence on the home coverage rates and to what extent you can actually be covered. If you are in a flood prone area, you may also look closely on hazard insurance

So, to buy the right home insurance plan, you should approach the negotiation terms when it comes to the positive aspect of your house. This should definitely take place only after you have fixed the flaws exiting in your house.

More than this you have to think of other measures that can be taken and that can affect the coverage as well as the rates of you home insurance plan. A regular home renovating and repairing of the house will enable you to prove for its solidity and as such you can negotiate after you have shopped around and found the right home insurance plan for you.

It might happen so that you could be offered a policy that is lower in rates but having a wide coverage.

A finance specialist is wise as well to be consulted and see how a home insurance plan can be bought within the limits of your personal budget. And the last advice: try to keep a good credit record – this thing can enable you to benefit from the right home insurance plan for your house.

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When calculating your income to secure your proper tax credits, many things must be taken into consideration. If you have been saving your receipts, pay stubs and checks you have done well. All of your monetary amounts you have received for the previous year need to be totaled. This will give you the amount of money you have earned. What needs to be determined next is how much of it is taxable. Your taxable income is ultimately what it comes down to. Tax credits can offset the amount in the form of pre-paid credits. This is why it is important to gather all of your finical records to get an accurate amount of your total income earned. You should even have your childcare receipts and other similar records available. The pay stub from the end of March will show how much you have earned year to date. Always make a copy of this and save it because it is important for taxes. For the self employed you will also need various records but some differ from regular employees. Bank statements, detailed information about business profits, tax returns and business expenses need to be produced. Once you have all of the documents in place, simply use a calculator and add them up. You should now have the amount of your total income.

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Join Charley as he explores ‘The One Thing’ to do in Paris

The Eiffel Tour and The Arc de Triomphe, the magnificent Louvre to the grand Notre Dame, Paris boasts many iconic landmarks. But there’s a side to this city that only an experienced Parisian guide can reveal. Join Charley as he explores ‘The One Thing’ in Paris, a unique tour of the city, from the seat of another Gallic icon, the classic Citroen 2CV

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Having stated that a different perspective is required in business, it is worth risking a little confusion to point out that there are many instances of businesses not doing what, strictly, they should. (This could be because of all the people to be found working in them whose instincts are to follow domestic behaviour.) Examples are marketing and training budgets, which are typically reduced following poor trading performances. Logically, there is every reason that they should be increased, to improve performance. Marketing activity precedes the sales it generates, and training enables people to do things they could not previously do so well or at all. These expenditures should relate to the income they will generate, not what has already -and unsuccessfully – passed. It may be good housekeeping to reduce expenditure in response to reduced income, but it is not commonly good business.

Marketing and training are examples of expense items, money which is ‘spent’ in the course of generating sales, and not money ‘invested’ in assets – things which a business owns and maintains in order to operate at all. In private life, the distinction is unimportant; it is our prerogative to choose to starve seated in period armchairs, or to eat lobster while reclining on bean bags. ‘Investment’ is something we may choose to do with any money we are lucky enough not to need to spend. A business, in contrast, must ‘invest’ the money it is provided with, or it will achieve nothing. It requires assets which will enable it to trade effectively in its chosen sphere. Thus, no matter how good its lobster, a restaurant is unlikely to succeed unless it also invests in chairs for customers to sit upon.

Once again, the great diversity of the business world can come up with exceptions, but these only prove the rule, as the expression goes. Yes, there are businesses for which investment in the financial sense is their actual trade; ignore these. There are also restaurants without chairs, notably in the Wall Street district of New York where there are far too many people for everyone to sit down at street level; these are not restaurants in other than a very functional, obsolete use of the term, and are better called lunch counters. It is not known whether there have ever been restaurants where the customers sat on bean bags – it may have happened in San Francisco at some point in recent history. An American text from the seventies records the story of experimental restaurants where the customers brought and cooked their own food. This concept was ‘brainstormed’ in response to the criticism that one thing people did not care for about contemporary restaurants was the lack of home-cooked food. There are no prizes for guessing how they fared.

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This expression does not mean that cash flow should be ignored, of course; rather, it refers to the sophisticated economic process of evaluating alternative capital investment projects, whereby cash flows associated with each project are forecast, in the manner just described, but probably quarterly rather than monthly, and the total net cash flow for each period calculated. The intention is not to raise finance, this is assumed to be available; rather, it is to decide which investment(s) to pursue. A rate of return sought by the company (the discount rate) is used to equate a future cash flow to a value in the present, and the overall effect gives a Net Present Value for each of the projects, with the highest receiving the funding. As an alternative, an Internal Rate of Return may be calculated which, as it were, smoothes out the cash flows to give rates which can be compared instead of values.

Financial theorists have developed detailed mechanisms for determining appropriate discount rates, the theory being that there are two elements that make up the risk associated with the project. One part is the risk that is inherent in being involved in the industry, the environment and the world surrounding the project, and this is called the systematic risk, to reflect which a suitable discount rate can be computed using independent data. The other element is the specific risk for the particular project, and this is deemed by the theory to have been fully investigated by the management team preparing the cash flow forecasts. In a theoretical, perfect world, all available information has been incorporated into the forecasts, all of which have been prepared under comparable sets of assumptions.

This has a validity if alternative projects are actually being compared, but it is often the case that individual investments are subjected to this process. As they say in the computer industry, garbage in, garbage out, so, if the forecast cash flows are garbage, sophisticated computation of a discount rate will make no material difference, and attention is being paid to the wrong end of the equation. The chances are that any major investment big enough to warrant discounted cash flow evaluation is going to have a significant impact on its marketplace, likely to change its nature. The effect of this cannot easily be forecast, because it will probably induce competitive reactions, the nature of which the competitors themselves cannot predict until the event occurs, unless they have a predetermined set of responses for every contingency. Using management consultants to ask competitors what they would do is not really helpful, because you cannot assemble the group of people who would actually take the decision – and, if you could, do you think they would tell you?

Comparing alternative investments under different sets of assumptions can be done, and if a particular one is consistently ahead, that should be the choice. Usually, two scenarios (an optimistic and a pessimistic) would be the limit, if only because of the work involved. The point really is that major projects are actually undertaken by big businesses as part of a strategic commitment, rather than on a purely economic evaluation. The forecasts are reviewed and revised until acceptable financial consequences are projected. (The parallel for the small trader is to revise the projections until the level of overdraft is acceptable to the bank manager.) The difference in the big business is that it takes more people to manipulate the cash flow forecasts. The wisdom they acquire in the process is not usually available for the people who end up running the subsequent project, who may find the reality something of a shock. On the other hand, as Eurotunnel has demonstrated, banks are unlikely to foreclose on multibillion pound projects.

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Brands definitely acquire personalities of their own, and serious research is undertaken aimed at encouraging consumers to articulate their feelings about the personalities of products they buy regularly. It is used by brand managers to explore the scope available to them in dealing with the user/non-user dilemma, since new images in promotions ought to be acceptable to existing users if they are consistent with a brand’s personality. In the case of so-called ‘executive cars’, the brand personality is sufficiently powerful that aspiring buyers will not include certain marques on their lists for factual research and test driving unless the personality effect is acceptable. You only have to think about the circumstances in which people – men, mainly – insist upon commuting alone in their cars to realise that there is often an exceedingly complex relationship between a man and his motor.

Where a human personality is actually subservient to – or expressed through, as you prefer – the personalities of the brands the person chooses, this phenomenon is referred to as a projection of situational self-image. This could not arise without publicity, and frequently has something to do with advertising. (Someone once remarked that if you can create a public image without advertising, it is immensely valuable. Unfortunately, it was John Delorean, whose credentials were rather discounted after his eponymous motor car factory closed with losses to creditors and HM Government before any cars were sold.) Awareness is important in ostentatious brands, since it matters to the consumer to be seen, for example, to carry Louis Vuitton luggage or wear a Rolex watch. This depends upon other people recognising the choice, and of course, these have to be ‘the right’ people. A division develops between mass and exclusive brands in such circumstances – for so-called adults. Exclusivity is essentially at odds with market share, so for frequently purchased goods, exclusive brands tend to be small scale affairs where the commercial objective is to sell out available production capacity for the maximum revenue. The products actually have to be high quality as well.

In the final analysis, persistent advertising claims which are unsupported by the products they represent fail, much as the marketing industry would like to have the final say. The person who wrote the slogan ‘great taste, great value’ (which appears on a pack, not an advert, in fact) may have been particularly pleased at coming up with something undeniable. It features on packets of catfood, so the human cannot comment on the taste, nor the cat on the value. The cat can refuse to eat it, though, and has the last miaow.

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At the BBC, a system of budgeting for accountability was introduced in the early 1990s, a necessary component of an internal market system which was intended to make staff of the Corporation aware of how much things cost, and thus show that they spent the licence income responsibly and efficiently. This was not the only imposed ‘market system’ to experience difficulty, for market systems tend to require regulation if they are to work for the benefit of the many and not the few.

At the BBC, it was determined that physical accommodation should be costed, and where the Corporation owned freehold buildings, the equivalent market rent should be used. This is potentially a nonsense, because one reason for owning property is that it is cheaper than renting it. Otherwise, how do property companies make profits? Some budget centres worked out that it would be cheaper to move out of BBC premises, but this route had to be denied to them, since a move to rented accommodation would obviously result in overall increased expenditure. So much for freedom of choice.

In the case of the Television Centre, there was no market rent, since there is no other organisation in the UK which would want such a building. Instead of realising that this gave the BBC a major scale advantage over other TV businesses (namely that it was big enough to afford its own TV centre which cost only maintenance) the powers-that-were insisted on allocating the TV centre a cost that would apply if it were an office building. The result was that budget holders shrank the space they used, and producers started hiring external studios, leaving their own empty. It is pretty fundamental to the market system that the achievement of economies of scale through investment in production facilities results in a lower overall cost position, an advantage actually denied to the BBC by its own ‘market system’.

It not known how the decision about the TV Centre was taken, whether by an individual or a committee, but whoever it was should realise that to play God requires not just omnipotence but also omniscience. A depressing aspect of this whole process is that the Corporation was advised throughout by the consultancy wings of two of the world’s largest accountancy firms, who should have cut their teeth on accounting for profits. Such nonsense is still about. A recent news item reported that the new system of internal charges for the BBC’s record library meant that any programme maker wanting to use the same CD twice would find it cheaper to buy from a shop, which was exactly what was happening ¡ª several times over!

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This is about organising the various functions within an enterprise to achieve the same set of objectives, which have been identified as the directions in which the business wishes to develop. In that sense, this article is about strategy at work, since everything should relate to the general premise that a business must sell things repeatedly, over time, for more money than it spends in so doing. The strategic planning process for a firm is about deciding what these things will be, and to whom they will be sold; the consequent how, where, and so on, are the essence of good management. History has a big part to say in the answers to these questions, but that little bit extra which makes the difference – those few pence of earnings per share which the chairman has promised shareholders – comes from strategy.

Identifying the things and the customers at the same time introduces the product-market concept, something central – but often overlooked – in the ‘classical’ approach to strategy developed by H. Igor Ansoff. Any firm operates in an environment which is not static but dynamic, being in the broadest sense influenced by political, economic, social and technological factors, which need to be examined. This is the so-called PEST (or STEP) analysis. Within this environment, the firm operates in a number of product-markets, as do its various competitors. The concept of product-market is crucial, defining the firm’s activities not just by what it sells, but also to whom it sells the ‘what’. Statistical classification of industries usually involves one or the other, but both are needed. A manufacturer of animal foodstuffs is in the same productive arena as a major bread producer, but not the same market; it is in the same market as a tractor manufacturer, but not the same industry.

For each of its product-markets, the firm may compare itself with its competitors, in terms of its relative strengths and weaknesses. This can be difficult to do objectively, and has given rise to the concept of benchmarking – finding out what others achieve to make direct comparisons. At the same time, anticipated events and trends in the environment raise the prospect of opportunities for growth or new product-markets, and threats to existing business. The examination of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is known as SWOT analysis.

SWOT seeks to identify product-markets in which the firm has a comparative advantage over its competitors, and these are the key business activities in which the firm should concentrate. It should then endeavour to protect its superiority through the building and reinforcement of economic barriers to entry. The origins of comparative advantage can be explained in part by economic factors such as economies of scale in production, research and development, or frequently, marketing and distribution. It can derive from intangible but definite factors such as the ownership of intellectual property rights (patents, trade marks etc). It can also be because one firm is simply better at certain things than its competitors. This ‘being better’ is termed distinctive competence.

That this is the same root as the modern core competence should not come as a surprise, since specialisation is as old as firms themselves. When a firm forecasts that it will make a superior profit, the question should be: why? If this question can be answered satisfactorily and objectively (and it is not based on some innate belief such as ‘we have never failed yet’), then the particular procedure chosen for the analysis is unimportant.

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