Roadmap to Venture Capital Funding

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As a business start-up, entrepreneurs often need quite a bit of money to get the business started properly. More often than not, they do not have the money needed to pursue their dreams. It is at that point that the need for venture capital funding is required. A venture capitalist brings money to the entrepreneur in exchange for a share of future profits.

Banking Verses Venture

Venture capital financing is quite different than obtaining bank loans. With a bank loan, there is an expectation initially to pay the money back on a monthly basis with interest. On the other hand, venture capitalists, who are often called angel investors, provide money to entrepreneurs trying to raise money by providing it directly. However, the payback comes much later with a deal to get often three to five times the investment, or part ownership in the company.

The Time Consuming Task of Seeking Venture Capital Funding

You may be asking yourself, where do I look to find a venture capitalist? Sometimes it’s just a matter of who you know. There are companies who specialize in approaching and lining up venture capital financing for businesses. Don’t be afraid to seek out financing by this route, it will cut out lots of wasted time and effort on your part in seeking out financing. You need to be concentrating on your business.

Entrepreneurs can approach the venture investors, but it can be a long and drawn out process. You may talk to a hundred investors before you actually find the one who is willing to invest in your project. It may take a numerous business meetings, conference calls, business plan revisions, with a number of venture investment companies before you actually find the one who will fund your business.

Doing A Business Man

One of the first things that a venture capital investor will need is a business plan. The business plan gives a timeline. In the timeline, it generally provides a ballpark idea on the financial outlay required and how long it will take to get a return on investment.

Final Thoughts on Venture Financing

Venture capitalists vary in the way that they approach your business. Some have a hands-on approach and will make sure that every penny of the finances is spent properly. Some are more laid back, and even more leeway. But in the end, investors want to see a profitable enterprise taking off. Stay focused on the business plan, be open to advice from your investors, and go about making your business successful.

Six Sigma and GE: A Case Study of Success

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Many people who are considering implementing Six Sigma in their companies are curious as to how it has been used in larger corporations. One example of Six Sigma training success is General Electric, which went from a wasteful, bureaucratic conglomerate to a lean, streamlined business through the Six Sigma training process. For GE, Six Sigma certification has made the difference between success and failure.

General Electric was your normal American corporation, fraught with greed and waste on the corporate level. They decided to do the Six Sigma training. Their corporate level workers went through black belt training, the lower level workers the Six Sigma training. After proper training, GE applied the principles of Six Sigma to their business.

Processes were evaluated until they could be reduced to quantifiable steps. This left no room for waste. Executive level workers learned to ask for input from employees in all levels. Lines of communication became more open, which left room for better efficiency, customer service and boosted morale and productivity. This is what has made GE different in their field.

The process through which Six Sigma delivers such excellent results is quite simple. The employees who have passed the Six Sigma black belt training now identify the aspects that are Critical to Quality (CTQ’s). Identifying defects, and measuring the process capabilities is then performed.

They then compile all of this data, and are then taught to identify variation, which is when processes do not deliver the outcome expected. The process will then be redesigned and controlled in order to prevent variation. Six Sigma is ,in essence, all about altering processes to make an efficient, streamlined company.

Does maximum customer satisfaction and higher efficiency sound good to you? If so, Six Sigma training may be the single factor that turns your company around. With so many companies finding new and unprecedented levels of success with Six Sigma, this may be training you cannot do without.

Six Sigma and Five Why’s

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Six Sigma is a quality assurance program that is sweeping the nation and changing the corporate landscape with its unique blend of results-driven change and thoughtful program management. How can Six Sigma training make this huge difference in business? One key reason is that this program identifies root problems through a process known as the Five Why’s. The Five Why’s are a process of finding the root cause of a problem by following the problem’s process to a single, changeable root cause.

Maybe it is easiest to describe the Five Why’s by this example: Imagine your kid is getting bad grades. the first question you ask is why, and you immediately think the child is not performing well. If the thought process ends here, you do not have enough to form a solid conclusion. But, if you keep asking, you will come up with a root cause, like this:

Problem: Child is getting poor grades Why? He is underachieving. Why? He doesn’t study enough. Why? He is busy doing other things. Why? He is overscheduled. Why? He has too many after school and extracurricular activities.

You can see by the illustration that the Five Why’s taught in Six Sigma training have solved a problem by reducing it to a single root cause. The parent can now decrease the extracurricular activities, and if that is really the source of the problem, the grades will go up. If results are not seen right away, then the parent can go back to the beginning and start over. This can create a big difference in the business world.

Six Sigma teaches this as well as other techniques that will help your business become more efficient. You will become a quality assurance minded person as well as creating a corporate edge for your company. Six Sigma creates a competitive edge in a way that no other training compares to. it only takes a few weeks to learn these strategies that can turn your company and life around.

6 Good Reasons To Screen Potential Employees

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However keen you are to take on new employees, there are many valid reasons to ensure the screening of potential applicants takes place prior to going ahead and hiring them to do the job.

Learn About Their History

It is important to know your potential employee’s history so you can make a good judgment about what they will be like in the future for you. Knowing history means that you will be able to make a good guess about how they will perform for you.

Knowledge of Their Abilities

When potential employees undertake screening their abilities will be apparent and you will get a good idea of what they are capable of. This will ensure your decisions about whether or not to recruit them, are much easier for you to make.

Know their strengths

By screening your employees you will find out about their personal strengths. Are they innovative and able to work on their own initiative? Do they work well as an individual or are they more team work oriented? Do they have an honest and reliable nature? These are all questions you should be asking during the screening process.

Be Aware of Their Weaknesses

It is also important when you are screening potential employees to get an idea of what their weaknesses are. Sometimes weaknesses will make people better apt to fit into team situations, and sometimes weaknesses might prevent them from doing their jobs. So, it is important to understand these weaknesses before you start.

Are They Interested In the Job?

The screening process gives you the opportunity to see that the potential employee is actually interested in the job you have on offer. Throughout the screening process, the potential employee can ask questions to enable him or her to understand what the job entails and get a feel of what would be expected of them. How interested they are in the job will help you to make the decision of whether of not to employ them.

Make a Good Match

Screening potential employees will give you the best opportunity of all to make sure you are making the all-important match. Talk to them, find out what they are about and listen to what they have to say.

You need to find the right person for your needs and screening potential employees, even though it can sometimes be both time consuming and a little tiring, is the best way to select and recruit new employees who will hopefully remain with you for years to come.

This free article about employee screening was brought to you by www.macdataadvantage.com

Used Office Furniture Substantially Save Growth Dollars

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When you look around your office, how much office furniture can you see? Chairs, tables, sofas, cubicles, conference tables, desks and bookshelves are some of the common pieces. Can you consider what would happen if half of all the office furniture was dumped into landfills?

It is important to reduce the strain on our landfills. The BIFMA or Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association stated that in a survey that approximately half of the scrap at present ends up in landfills. Most of this type of waste is still in good condition.

The problem is that when most companies move, they opt to buy brand new furniture for their new office. It makes sense. After all, who would want to put old beat up furniture into a brand new office space.

With a little effort however, old used furniture can be restored and made to look like new. There are plenty of companies who specialize in buying used furniture. They then restore it, and turnaround and sell it.

Almost 15 years ago it cost $32 to dump each ton of scrap. These days, there are recycling companies who might actually pay you a few bucks for your scrap. Get a used dealer to look at your furniture, and you might get paid a pretty dime.

Some experts also believe that for every pound of natural resources utilized in refurbishing, almost five to zero pounds are conserved. In addition, for every workstation which is recycled, an average of around 850 pounds is being diverted from the landfills. Isn’t it great to know that used furniture can be re-manufactured again?

You can find available used office furniture almost anywhere these days. In the past used furniture has gotten a bad wrap. People have a certain image in their mind about it, but it is just not true.

When furniture gets remanufactured, it looks and functions like brand new. There is also often a new warranty that comes along with it. The process is quite thorough and can involve new surfaces and new interior.

The process can be broken down to a science. The bottom line is that it can save the end user a ton of money. You get what you pay for in life, but the first owner is the one who usually pays for most of it.

When you put new furniture and used furniture side by side, the decision is usually easy. China has come out with a new line of office furniture that specifically competes with used. This was a demand change of the market due to the increasing popularity of buying used.

There are many pros to consider when going for used furniture. Beyond saving a lot of money, you can actually do your part to reduce the effects of global warming. You can feel good about your choices in the business world.

Which Of These Time Management Skills Are You Missing?

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For many people, time management is difficult as a concept; however, if you take the time to learn some time management skills you can manage your time well so that you get everything done you need to.

Here are three time management skills for you to consider and identify which you need to be implementing now to help you reach your goals much more quickly.

1 - Make Things Simpler. Even though it might seem you have a lot of things streamlined, you can usually simplify a lot of things so that you can manage your time better. For example, if you have a lot of clutter, get rid of anything you don’t use, need or love; alternatively, perhaps you have too many tasks “cluttering” up your day and don’t have time to get everything done, so that eliminating or rescheduling some of these things can remove some clutter and make your day simpler. If you do this, accomplishing what you need to in your daily life will be much more simple and straightforward; you’ll also take less time to do this, which can save you a significant amount of time every day.

2 - Review and Reevaluate Weekly. Once you’ve established your time management techniques, you need to sit down every week at a scheduled time and determine how effective your time management techniques have been that week; by doing this, you can change what’s not working for you so that you make it more effective. If you do this every week and make a plan to consistently reevaluate the time management techniques you’ve put in place, you can change what’s not working and keep reevaluating them so that they continue to do well for you. Figure out what’s working and what’s not, so that you have an excellent foundation to build further time management skills and fine-tune the ones you have in the future.

3 - Love Your Routines. Develop and learn to love your routines, so that you’ll always have a very good idea about what you need to accomplish and by when. Establishing a routine will help you stay on track and keep action and momentum going; therefore, if you feel like you’re not getting enough done in a given day, or if you think your time management strategies could use some revamping, routines might just be the way to give you the boost you need. Create routines for different areas of life, such as what you have to do every morning at work, or as a weekly cleaning schedule. When you don’t have to figure out what you need to do next because you’ve laid a schedule out already, you’ll find that you save a lot of time.

The Importance Of Lean Manufacturing Strategy

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Sometimes companies cannot manage the competition and are forced to lower the charges and lose profit. While doing this, they might also lose clients so sometimes the strategies applied only lead to disaster. The most beneficial thing companies should do when they have problems is implementing lean manufacturing.

The lean manufacturing strategy proved to be one of the greatest advantages when it comes to changing company’s strategy. It is one of the most effective ways to decrease costs and increase profit on long term. Its philosophy is called “elimination of seven wastes”.

What lean manufacturing wants to obtain is effectiveness. Although producing more is good, lean manufacturing teaches us that producing exactly how much we need is better because producing more means more effort wasted. So what people should obtain is effectiveness inside and outside their company.

Inventory And Lean Manufacturing

Implementing lean manufacturing systems means that there should no waste. That is, no unnecessary stockpiles that could just sit at warehouses and left to rot. If you produce more than intended, this is what will likely happen to your inventory.

You’ll take up warehouse space and see the products get worn by time. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to dispose of the excesses, but they won’t likely be sold at their original price because, well, they’ll be considered old stocks or overruns.

Make sure that you are prepared before taking the decision to implement lean manufacturing. Many people have the opinion that lean manufacturing is a bit difficult and they aren’t entirely wrong because it may be tricky at some point.

Although it may seem like a long a difficult process you should consider the long term benefits. You will surely find more advantages than disadvantages when it comes to lean manufacturing strategy. As soon as you have your strategy plan, you can go out there and show other companies how real business is made.

Options for Buying Property for a Profit

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Due to the increasing profitability of real estate investment there has been an increased interest in purchasing property solely for profit. In fact, about a quarter of all homes sold are for investment opportunities. If real estate interests you and you have access to funds then this can be an interesting and profitable business for you. Here are some avenues for property investment that you should look in to.

Flipping Property

“Flipping” property has become increasingly popular especially in urban cities. “Flipping” is buying a property, fixing it up and reselling it for a substantial profit. You have to make sure and find an undesirable property in a good neighborhood or in an area that is soon to be renewed. You have to also make sure that your profit will outweigh the tax implications for selling a property for a quick profit. You’ll not only be paying hefty taxes but also insurance, repairs, and remodeling fees as well as the normal mortgage payments until the house is resold.

Rental Investment

You may want to purchase a property and rent it out so as to have a small profit or for the property to “pay for itself”. Sometimes you’ll have little choice if the appreciation of a property will not offset the amount of your initial investment. Being a landlord is not for everyone. Consider the time and effort you’ll need to put forth in finding tenants and maintaining the property. Even if you use a realty manager you’ll have to include their fees into your profit margin.

Foreclosed and Abandoned Properties

Many find investing in foreclosed properties profitable. A foreclosure happens when the owner does not make mortgage payments and the financial institution sells the property to regain its money. They can be acquired below market price but they generally require more work. Some of these homes are located in less desirable neighborhoods and many of them are in disrepair. If you are willing to do the leg work in researching the market and know you can get the property in order for a reasonable amount then this could be the investment opportunity you are looking for. This could range from a diner in Detroit to a golf property in Costa Blanca.

Abandoned properties have some of the same considerations as foreclosed properties. They are usually in disrepair and will require a lot of repairs and work. In addition to this, it may not be clear who holds the title to the property so a title search may need to be done which can delay the transaction.

Non-Property Investments

Paper investments are possible which require no cash or physical property. These kinds of investments became popular in the 1980’s when monetization of property came into existence, including real estate investment trusts. Before you choose these non-property investments you need to discuss this option with a broker.

ISO 9001 2000 Quality Policy

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ement 5.3 of ISO 9001 Standard requires an organization to establish a quality policy. More specifically, the standard requires: “The management” of an organization to “ensure that the quality policy”:

- Is appropriate to the purpose of the organization;

- Includes a commitment to comply with requirements;

- Includes a commitment to continual improvement of the effectiveness of the QMS;

- Provides a framework for establishing and reviewing quality objectives;

- Is communicated and understood within the organization;

- Is reviewed for continuing suitability

Despite the fact that these requirements appear to be rather simple, most companies I worked with as a consultant or an auditor, had difficulties with documenting their ISO 9001 quality policies by not addressing all the requirements above. Establishing a quality policy that, as a minimum, addresses all the requirements above is important because of our commitment to establish a QMS that comply with a given standard. Therefore, we have to adhere to it’s requirements. What if our quality policy does not require its review “for continuing suitability”? Most likely that this review will not be done.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of quality policies. If you open your browser and type “iso 9001 quality policy”, you will see a list of companies that placed their quality policies on their Websites. For example, let’s take a look at a few of them:

“It is the policy of [Company name] to provide a range of [services] which is reliable and consistent with the expectations and requirements of its clients; the Company’s objective of consistent high quality performance is met by mandatory adherence to protocol, through staff training and the development of personal responsibility for all personnel, together with the provision of adequate resources, according to the principles of Quality Assurance. Company policy is to review and update as necessary the Quality System through the mediation of a Quality Team, whose members undertake the responsibility of ensuring that the Quality policy is understood, implemented and maintained at all levels within the Company.” Can we say what standard this company is compliant with? Do you see a commitment for continual improvement of the effectiveness of the QMS? Do you understand how this company establishes and reviews their quality objectives? I did not find answers to these questions. However, the policy does commit to communication and understanding of its quality policy and review for suitability.

The second example states: “Our goal is to exceed our customers’ expectations continually by delivering the highest quality services. [Company name] complies with our quality policy by: Consistent management focus on quality, Continually improving the effectiveness of our Quality Management System; motivating our employees to take ownership of their work; understanding our customers goals and embracing them; providing ongoing training to advance the skills of our greatest asset, our employees; identifying and solving problems to avoid compromising the quality of our services. [Company name] places a premium on excellence of service. We clearly appreciate and respect today’s market forces that mandate delivery of quality services and products. We know that our survival as a company depends on providing the highest quality of service on every engagement.” This quality policy, while apparently customer-focused, still does not cover a framework for establishing and reviewing quality objectives and commitment to review it for continuing suitability.

I did not select these examples because they did not comply with the standard. I picked them from the top of the search results, just to show that most quality policies were not written to meet requirements of the standard. If you think these examples are bad, wait a moment. One of my clients came up with a quality policy that won my The Worst Quality Policy Prize. They simply said: “I improve the Quality of Patient Care and all things [Company name]” No! I am not kidding and I did not misspelled or took any words out of this regretful quote!

An Introduction To The Lean Manufacturing Strategy

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In order to understand what the lean manufacturing strategy works, we must first describe it.

Lean manufacturing is a combination of approaches that, when put together, aims to eliminate the all the common practices that are seen as wholly unnecessary and time-consuming. Such are called wastes, like overproduction, long waiting times, transportation and constant motion, which not only eat up precious time but are also a drag on resources, energy and expenses.

Lean manufacturing: does it really work?

Simply put, implementing lean manufacturing has the reduction of costs in mind. And this is done, ironically, by first making sacrifices on the strategies that have been in effect in many companies for decades now.

Sound like a dangerous plan? Some companies believe it is, but when you really look at its long term benefits, you will find that implementing lean manufacturing will bring greater value to your company than the processes that have already been ingrained. After all, change is often for the better. You just have to open your eyes and welcome it.

Where can we apply lean manufacturing?

Implementing the lean manufacturing program is best for companies that have output and production as their primary source of revenue. Such companies place a prime on maximizing all their human and tool resources in order to achieve their target output levels without having to spend too much.

This is why lean manufacturing is so beneficial for most companies.

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