Tax Cuts for Small Business

Good news for your business: "To further assist small businesses during the global financial crisis, the government recently announced a tax cut to the quarterly Pay As You Go (PAYG) instalment. The PAYG reduction will generally only be available to small business entities which have an aggregated turnover of $2 million per annum or less.

For PAYG instalments due on either 21 January 2009 or 28 February 2009, the amount payable will be reduced by 20 per cent."

Any reduction in the amount of tax paid by a small business is good and this announcement before Xmas on Dec 17th was a good Xmas present. See the ATO website for more information.

theBizWiz

http://www.boulterassociates.com.au/
http://www.informgroup.com.au/

Free CRM - a great tool!

Keeping Contacts up to date, tracking your Sales Team Funnel and doing email marketing campaigns are all challenges for companies in the SME sector. There are alternatives: from stand alone or groupware software like ACT from Sage through to online systems such as SalesForce.com

Recently I discovered freecrm.com an online alternative that comes already configured with all the things a business needs. There is a Pro version that has no advertising and better guaranteed uptimes as well as integration to Outlook and others. The advertising I have seen on the free version is unobtrusive.

With the free version you get: Calendar, Companies, Contacts, Deals, Tasks, Cases, Email and SMS campaign managment. As well you can manage documents stored and setup Surveys and forms for customer satisfaction. Lastly, you get about 55 reports preconfigured. Need anything else.....for no cost to you?

Yes it is software as a service and you are entrusting your data to a 3rd party. But, if you export from the system regularly, you will get the backups of where you are at. Keep your reports and run those weekly as well.

To get started you can import your lists of contacts from Excel or however you are doing it today.

Advantages:

• you do not have to maintain an infrastructure of computers and servers dedicated to this task
• free.....I said Free!
• already comprehensively setup, no setting of forms or reports
• they do backups
  

Disadvantages:

• you do not have the data in house unless you export and save
• if company fails you dont have a stand alone copy of the software to keep running

Overall, these days we trust our email to Google (Gmail), we store our photos on Facebook or Flicker, we trust so many "Cloud Computing" applications.

If you are starting up or you are looking for an alternative to reduce your costs have a look at feecrm.com

theBizWiz

http://www.boulterassociates.com.au/
http://www.informgroup.com.au/

Developing a Functional Organisation Structure

InFormGroup has just released a new E-Book to our range of books available from the InFormGroup site. This new release is from Wayne Moloney.

"When organisations are built around people and personalities, when multiple lines flow
into individual boxes, the structure will be non-functional.". Wayne describes the:

• Dangers of non functional organisation and management
• what a functional organisation looks like and how it should operate
• use of authority
• lines of accountability and working relationships
• how Org charts fit in to the models

There is a full range of Free downloads as well as products for purchase in at the site.

theBizWiz

http://www.boulterassociates.com.au/
http://www.informgroup.com.au/

Netbooks - Dell Inspiron Mini 9- Asus EeePC 901-Acer Aspire One 270-Lenovo N270

Gee, It wasn't too long ago when I started the journey of seeing if one of these devices could work for my daughter starting University next year. Has the job gotten easier?

Nope. This afternoon I opened the latest Harris Technology catalogue. Page 4 has a host of Netbooks. The Del, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Wind versions are all there sporting essentially the same specifications. Mostly they differ in the hard disk drives and the battery life and most importantly price.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 does not come with a hard disk drive and so has higher battery life. To get extra data or applications you would use a 8GB Flash drive or attach a USB powered external drive. Of course with that attached and sucking power it will reduce the battery to the life of the others.

It might be good to look at the details closer.

Feature	Dell Inspiron Mini 9	Acer Aspire N270	Wind U100	Lenovo N270 or Netbook S10
Processor	Intel Atom 1.6GHz	Intel Atom 1.6GHz	Intel Atom 1.6GHz	Intel Atom 1.6GHz
Memory	1GB	1GB	1 GB	1GB
Hard Drive	16GB SSD	160GB SSD available	120GB	160GB
Screen Size	8.9"	8.9"	8.9"	8.9"
Integrated Webcam	Optional	Yes	Yes	yes
USB 2.0	3	3	3	3
Bluetooth	No	No	Yes	Yes
WiFi	g	a/b/g	a/g/n+	a/g/n+
Price	$549	$529	$699	$699
Weight	2.28lbs	n/a	1kg	2.65lbs

Over all so far the Acer Aspire One 270 looks the best. It has a low price, a real HDD so you can put some data on it. I assume it weighs the same as the others which is about 1KG.

Next stop is to go and have a look at the shops. I would get the Windows XP version as it is easier to understand. If I bought one for myself it would have Linux, of course.

If you have one of these I would love to hear more.


theBizWiz

http://www.boulterassociates.com.au/
http://www.informgroup.com.au/

Have you used an in car GPS?

My wife and I spent a night in the City a few weeks ago. We stayed at the Sydney Harbour Bed & Breakfast.

We had a great time and maybe a review later on. But I had just obtained a Navman and thought i would use it to get to there from our home at Glen Alpine. Now you may say that this trip was not difficult. Just M5 to City, take a city exit and make you way over to the Rocks. Well yes.......

On the M5 no problems, but loved the speed camera alert that was pretty accurate. It said I was near it in the M5 tunnel and I looked around and sure enough I could see the camera for the first time.

Next, I would normally take the Kings X exit and make my way across the City that way. The Navman told me to go further on the ED and exit around the Art Gallery. It then expertly directed me, with Karen telling me to left and right etc through Hunter Street, across George and eventually into the Rocks ending near the King George V Recreation Centre and the ubiqutous Australian Hotel.

The story was the same the next day. My wife had taken the train to the City and she heard all about the Navman at dinner that night. Mrs Technophobe was even impressed by the Navman on the way home although she was wondering what other voices were available.

I have been thinking of new voice that could save your wife from having to get huffy on the usual car trip. "Turn left 300 metres.....turn left 100 metres.......Oh [sigh].....turn around and turn right 100 metres....I told you we would be late !"

theBizWiz

www.boulterassociates.com.au
www.informgroup.com.au

Asus EeePCs

The other day my daughter was looking for a laptop for University. She would have a long commute to/from University and wanted something cool that would not be a piece of luggage. I thought I would ask some questions on LinkedIn.

The response was great. Within the hour I had comments from all over the world. Some people were users and not geeks, others were geeks. the balance was great. I quickly understood the technical aspects of the machines in question and also had live experience from users.

Just about all the responses (over 80) were positive. There was always a note of caution about what the machines limitations were. These essentially revolved around the screen sizes and the keyboard. The screens are around 10" in size and the keyboard a bit small for lots of typing.

My thoughts would be to have the no disk drive version (SSD) and carry a small external drive (like a Seagate 120GB) that plugs into the USB for the files I may need sometimes.

Battery life was exceptional and the weight was a plus. The price is outstanding and on EBay you can pick these up around the AU$399 mark running Windows XP.

theBizWiz

www.boulterassociates.com.au
www.informgroup.com.au

Retaining Customers in Hard Times

Back to basics is probably the best advice that was given to me recently. You may be having trouble getting people to buy your products or services at present, especially if your business is not in the necessity category. But if you already have customers that buy from you regularly, keeping them is a number one priority.

So how?

Well first remind them of your services or products.But you have to watch your own costs, so develop a focused and planned marketing message that consistently reaches your target audience through the best channel.

Tell them why you are different. Brand is partially about great customer experiences. If a customer has a good experience with your business they will relate better to your brand and be a marketing channel for you.

If a customer is loyal, reward them. This can be as simple as a discount program for repeat purchase. It could be a competition only open to existing customers. It could be special days where only existing customers are invited to your showroom and items are specially discounted.

We all know how hard it is to get a new customer. Keeping the ones we have is even more important.

theBizWiz

www.boulterasscociates.com.au
www.informgroup.com.au