RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

We live in uncertain time wich is charaterized by many risks.We define mangement risk as the effect of uncertainty on objectives followed by cordinated application to minimize the probability impact od unfortunate events or to maximize the realization opportunities.

In business environment risk can came from uncertainly financial markets,development,production,failure projects ,credit risk .Risk mangemnt strategies is associated with ISO standards .For any economic entity is important to have a good risk mangemnt strategies that can provide growth.Any economic organization can implemnt and develope risk mangemnt strategies .

Back to my article we can include the following risk strategies:

1. UNDERSTANDING AND VISAULIZING RISKS
2. MEASURING RISK
3. MANAGING RISK
4. MARKETING OVERVIEW
5. PUTTING IT TOGETHER
6. CONCLUZION

This are few mangement strategies that you can use.In the next articles I"ll speak about each one.

IT'S IMPORTANT TO WORK EVEN IF YOU ARE IN VACATION

At this subject I"ll answer in the next moment.With all now the key of the success is your work.When you work it's important to put passion in what you do.If you do that the results of your labor will came soon.
All famous entrepreneur or business leaders are folowing theit business no mather where they are.Even their are at home or in vacation they will never forgot their business.
A research show that fifty percent of people sales check their emails,to stay focused on their business and to offer suport of their customers in the hope to not lose customers.
They ussualy use smartphones or tablets to acces their emails or software aplications.Today the modern technology help us to connected 24/7 from anywhere at anytimes.So it's important to combine utility with pleasure.

WHAT IS MANAGEMENT

When I first started my company, I hit the business plan competition circuit for funding and feedback. At each event, I encountered the same question from a judge or a member of the audience: "This seems pretty simple, why doesn't [insert large competitor] just do this?" My response was always the same: "I don't know­--they just don't." The answer was always oddly sufficient, probably because the asker had no idea either.

That question ultimately became rhetorical, in the eventual sale of my company and in general observations on how big companies and startups act. Why do large companies more successfully acquire instead of innovate? They certainly have the talent, the money and the existing market share to launch startups with ease, yet they don't do it very well. What's clearly missing is something in their DNA, but also something in the numbers. As big companies look at growing internally or via a shopping spree, it's important to consider the underlying motivations and math.

People and culture: Startups require innovative entrepreneurs, and that typically isn't in a job description for a large company. Big companies hire people when the workload demands it, not when they can come up for air and think about innovation.

By the same token, people work for big companies when they want a stable paycheck, an eight-hour workday and projects lined up on their desk. Mechanically, the ability to break away from a billable workload to pursue something innovative requires significant buy-in and resources from managers. Those managers are likely evaluated by their higher-ups on the profitability of existing, not future, business.

Cost and organizational structure: Large companies simply can't compete with startups on a cost and execution basis. Organizational hierarchies slow decisions that could be made over lunch or beers in a startup, and established salaries and service providers create costs that would bury almost any early stage company. While startups beg, borrow and barter, large companies follow established processes, protocol and prices to accomplish the same things at a much slower speed and a heavy multiple of the cost.

Risk: Unfortunately, all of those extra dollars and time spent do little to mitigate the risks of the actual concepts and, unlike startups, big companies have a lot to lose. Failed internal ventures not only hurt the balance sheet, but the corporate brand companies invest significant resources in building and protecting. The only risk in acquiring established and derisked companies is overpaying. That premium debatably trumps the risk of having several internal failures to get something right. Like everything else in business, it boils down to math--mainly probability and statistics.

FINANCIAL STRATEGIES

Investment strategists typically draw a base case for the global markets and also an outside case -- low-probability events called "tail risks" that are more "what if?" than "what now?" situations.

But nowadays market volatility has grabbed investors by the tail, and risk-management is front and center. With uncertainty and unrest spreading from Athens to Manhattan's analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch thought it timely to assess some potential tail risks that could develop in 2012 and tell investors how to take advantage of them.

The base case for Merrill Lynch analysts is a relatively optimistic scenario. Here, the global economy slows but avoids recession, emerging markets post respectable growth, and China and the United States muddle through their economic troubles, said Kate Moore, a Merrill global strategist who contributed to the recent research report.

"The prevailing assumption is that companies are going to struggle and we're going to grind to a halt," she said.That's not how we view the world."

1. The Fed hikes interest rates

The idea that the U.S. economy would strengthen enough for the Federal Reserve to raise rates in 2012 strikes most observers as farfetched, if not ridiculous.

"It's a good thing to think outside the box, but that's in outer space," said Ed Yardeni, the president of market strategy firm Yardeni Research.

The Merrill strategists don't disagree -- in fact, their models indicate that the U.S. economy won't be strong enough to support a Fed rate hike until the third quarter of 2014. But that doesn't mean a rosy picture is out of the question.

"It's not a zero-probability event," Moore said. "The big surprise would be that the economy has bigger and stronger growth than we and the rest of the market expect."

Catalysts for U.S. economic growth would include election-year cooperation in Washington on spending and deficit reduction, and low mortgage rates spurring home sales and buoying the banking sector.

What to do

Whenever the Fed does hike rates, look for stocks to outperform bonds. Specifically, investors should then favor U.S. equities over emerging markets, and domestically focused small caps would trump globally oriented large caps, the Merrill report said. Municipal bonds do better than Treasurys, while corporate bonds and gold would come under pressure.
2. Social unrest rises

Seeds of social unrest are sprouting worldwide. In the United States, the fertilizer is double-digit unemployment, while income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and average citizens has hit a level not seen since just before the Great Depression.

Jeffrey Gundlach, the bond fund manager and CEO of investment firm DoubleLine Capital, offers this view of the Occupy Wall Street protests: The average American doesn't watch the stock market day to day, he said, but "they do know something is wrong when the library is closed on Thursdays, the potholes aren't getting fixed, big corporations are doing well and the CEOs look relaxed and tanned." So they are protesting "income polarization and policies that support it."

What to do

Social unrest is one tail risk that appears to be growing. The development doesn't bode well for most stocks, as it reflects deteriorating economic conditions, a stretched consumer, austerity in the absence of growth to repay debt and a lack of leadership and collective will to put people back to work.

The Merrill research noted that protests around the world create an environment that favors bonds over equities, and defensive stocks over cyclical stocks that would benefit from a clearer economic picture.

Treasurys are favored over corporate bonds, and in a more volatile world, safe-haven assets such as gold, and a play on food scarcity through agriculture and agribusiness shares would be warranted.

Source:(MSN)

BRAND BUILDING

Lead generation for any business is expensive. Brand building even more so.

But when it comes to a choice between building a brand or getting more leads, always opt for leads, because they, in turn, will help you build your brand. How exactly?

By developing your reputation as “the go-to” place or person that consistently delivers excellence to new and repeat customers.

That way, you can build your brand on the experiences your customers have with your company based on their own perceptions.


An emotionally satisfying customer experience can be powerful, especially these days when service expectations are so low.

Nothing is more valuable to your business than a great impression that lasts beyond a single purchase or transaction. Remember that today’s exceptional service means customer loyalty and repeat business over time, and better yet, great word-of-mouth for your company.

The key, of course, is being able to deliver what you say you’ll deliver, when you say you’ll deliver it, whether it’s your product, service or some kind of positive result.

TRAINING FOR WORKFORCE

If there’s one question that comes up predictably at the end of most job interviews, it’s candidates wanting to know about the training on offer. Even bosses of startups will be questioned by candidates about the quality and quantity of training.

For those running smaller businesses, even ten years ago it would have been unthinkable to face expectations of this sort about structured training programmes and career progress. The job on offer was the job, take it or leave it.

Not all questions about training in interviews are really questions about training, however. Some job interviewees feel that to look interested and keen in the position offered, they are obliged go through the motions about career development to show they are in it for the long haul.

But increasingly those people are in the minority. Today, candidates genuinely want to know whether a prospective employer will be able to provide the skills and experience required for them to remain employed and develop long-term careers in fickle market places.

Consequently, companies of all sizes, including startups, must have training plans in place that meet the needs of staff, from juniors to senior management.

Output in the early 21st Century is information-led, measured in digits, phone calls, or pieces of paper. Accordingly, today’s market places demand flexible, highly-trained and skilled workforces that can be quickly scaled up or down, or remodelled if the market place has changed.

For this reason, work place training and ongoing career development have taken centre stage.

The best estimates suggest that the UK is spending about £4.5 billion a year on training. The argument is that this money will lead to the creation of strong, adaptable organisations that can keep up or even ahead in fast-moving, never-the-same-day-twice market places.

The amount we spend on workplace training has also produced a strong belief, read faith, in the training process. This is shared by bosses and staff alike.

For startups, training can never be a panacea for all human resources-related problems. If a team member of a small firm isn’t performing or is consistently turning up late to work, it will be hard to justify spending the time and money on sending them to courses on how to manage their lives and their careers.

Likewise, if a staff member can’t use the computer properly, there are plenty of training courses to send them on. But is this really the right solution?

Surely it would be better to recruit from the outset someone who could use common software packages, and who was already motivated?

It boils down for bosses to make sure they hire well, and ask anyone who joins their organisation to already have the key skills in place. Today’s youth, for example, are much better at IT than their predecessors. It is not unreasonable therefore to test job candidates on their use of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Let’s face it, bosses of startup companies are going to be better off spending more time on whom they hire, than wasting money on expensive remedial fixes for employees who start without the core skills.

It must be recognised that no matter how much training someone receives at work, if they lack talent or aptitude, they will not become skilled.

Neither will training turn a borderline rookie into the company’s number one employee. It simply won’t. Inevitably it comes down to the quality of the individual and that is something that has been in the hands of earlier influencers: chiefly parents, schools and universities.

My advice for younger organisations is to spend more time, effort and, frankly, money on improving selection and recruitment techniques to find the staff they need, rather than relying on training to right the wrongs afterwards. To resort to a useful proverb: you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Organisations need the right people. Someone who is right for one company will be wrong for another. It’s that simple, and even more so in smaller companies.

Football managers learnt this fact a long time ago. Even with today’s sophisticated talent spotting and youth acadamies, most clubs are not turning out the likes of George Best, Pele or Zidane. The Beckham/Giggs generation at Old Trafford has turned out to be very much a one off. For these stars, football clubs have to go into the transfer market to find the best talent.

In the case of a business, it is the job of the boss to acknowledge that strong selection processes, followed by integration and a team-led culture, are what deliver the value. Bosses should also not be blind to the importance of influences beyond their control. Young employees are still being influenced by their parents, peers and friends, most of whom have no contact with the employer.

I’m afraid a lot rests in the hands of HR, on the skills and experience of staff charged with recruitment. Only by careful shopping will you get the best ingredients. And only these will produce the memorable meals.

SWOT ANALYSIS

A SWOT analysis is a method for describing your business (or your business proposition) in terms of those factors that have the most impact.

Essentially you nominate the Strengths and Weaknesses of the business (its internal resources and capabilities), then you identify the Opportunities and Threats it faces (factors external to the organisation).

This is an easy, understandable way of identifying key issues and communicating them to others. And to make things even simpler to grasp, the typical SWOT analysis is done on a four-cell grid:

The exercise is simple: All you do is list factors in the relevant boxes. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors; the quality of your product or the skills of your management, for example. (Both might also be weaknesses, of course, if the product quality is low and management incompetent.) Opportunities and threats are external factors, for instance the development of a whole new market (opportunity) or the arrival of a clutch of new competitors (threat).

Sometimes it helps to start without the grid. List any issues at all that might affect the business – internal or external, real or perceived. When the flow starts to dry, organise the items into the SWOT categories.

So what are those categories?

Strengths

In the first box list all the strengths of your company. Why should you succeed? What do you do well? Why do customers say they enjoy doing business with you? What distinct advantages does your company offer?
The important consideration is veracity: don’t be modest, but do be realistic. Any SWOT analysis is essentially subjective, but try for a third-party viewpoint: what strengths does the outsider see?

Here’s a jump-start trick, especially for a group SWOT session: begin by brainstorming adjectives that characterize your company, write them down as quickly as people say them, and then use those words to construct a more considered profile of your company’s strengths. If you’re the sole proprietor or the prime mover in the business, try starting with a list of your own positive personal characteristics.

Weaknesses

A weakness something that seriously impedes a firm’s effective performance, a limitation or deficiency in resource, skills, or capabilities. What could be improved about the business – markets, staffing, management, control? What stumbling blocks do you continue to encounter? What does your company do that can be improved? What should be avoided? What do your competitors do better than you?
Don’t try to disguise weaknesses, and don’t merely list errors, omissions and mistakes.

Look at things from the outsider’s perspective, too. For instance, a one-man business might list the proprietor’s knowledge as a strength; the outsider might see total reliance on one individual as a weakness.

Opportunities

Where are the openings for your business? What customer needs are not being met by your competitors?

You’ll probably start with marketing issues, presumably because your business fills a niche or can compete effectively, but do include all the possibilities. For instance, what are the interesting trends in your business sector – in terms of markets, yes, but also in technology changes, the legislative and regulatory environment, social patterns?

Threats

Threats are key impediments to the firm’s current or desired position. What are the more obvious obstacles in your way, both actual and potential?
Obvious candidates would include a sudden rush of bad debts or a slack sales period leading to cashflow problems. But think further than that: What is your competition doing that could take business away from you or stunt your company’s growth? How might your competitors react to any moves you make? What trends do you see that could wipe you out or make your service or product obsolete? Might technology changes threaten your products or services? Or your job?

It’s important to include a couple of worst-case scenarios. Weighing threats against opportunities is not a reason to indulge in pessimism; rather, it’s a question of considering how possible damage may be overcome, bypassed or restricted.

FIVE TIPS FOR SAVING MONEY ON SHIPPING

Shipping merchandise can be one of the most complicated operations for any small business. Poor or no planning can result in owners overpaying, as well as losing sales if the company can't provide consistent and cost-effective delivery to customers.

For businesses that don't often send larger shipments of several pallets at a time or can't afford to hire a logistics provider to manage its shipping services, developing a set of guidelines can be essential.

Effectively managing shipping costs directly affects a small business's bottom line," says Don Anderson, vice president of transportation services at Topkins Associates a Raleigh, N.C.-based supply chain and distribution operations consulting firm that works with large and small businesses. "Every dollar saved in transportation translates to an equal improvement in financial performance."

Here's a look at several factors business owners should consider ahead of time before shipping their products to customers:

Match delivery requirements and fees for common shipments.
Once you've chosen a shipping service provider -- such as UPS, FedEx, DHL or the U.S. Postal Service -- work with its small-business specialist to match the carrier's fees and services with common shipping requirements for your business, such as mode of transportation and delivery timing. According to Tompkins Associates, businesses that don't work with their carrier to map out shipping criteria can spend as much 40 percent or more in fees than those that do, Anderson says.

One factor to discuss with a specialist is when to ship a package by air or by ground. "How much can be saved by using ground services versus air services can depend on distance shipped, the weight and size of the package and its

Establish transportation cost charge-back policies.
Let customers know when they will pay for shipping and when your business will, Anderson advises. "For example, three-day parcel service may be the standard level of service that's paid for by the company, and any premium services -- such as overnight air or two-day parcel -- are paid for in part or entirely by the customer," he says.

Once these policies are set, inform your sales and customer services staffs, as they generally deal directly with customers, Anderson says.

Use a postage meter.
A postage meter is a portable machine equipped with a scale that weighs packages, assesses exact postage charges and prints shipping labels. Systems like these can help eliminate the need for mailers to guess the weight of a package and purchase additional postage "just to be safe."

Know when to consolidate.
When sending shipments weighing between 150 pounds and about 20,000 pounds (usually referred to as "less than truckload" shipments, or LTL) consider working with a freight consolidation service, which will combine yours with other shipments to create a full truckload.

"Less than truckload or container load rates are usually much higher than full truckload or container load rates," Pagano says. "LTL shipments have to go to a truck terminal to be consolidated [by the carrier] into a full truckload for shipment. If the small business has a full truckload shipment, then the carrier can pull up to the company’s terminal and load the truck and go, saving time."

Track carrier performance.
One way is to have your carrier keep a "scorecard," which usually tracks service and cost. Service factors can include pickup, delivery, response to customer service inquiries by shipper, access to online status data, accuracy of that data, meeting pickup or delivery appointment times and meeting agreed-upon in-transit times (from time of pick up to time of delivery), Anderson says.