Ten Cowardly Things Only Weak Managers Do |Forbes

December 7, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Now that we have more or less adjusted to life in the new millennium, we are beginning to see our institutions through new eyes.

We see how the Godzilla edifice of hierarchy, rules and control mechanisms in place in nearly every medium-sized and large employer has hurt working people and customers alike. Smart businesses are nimble and responsive — everything a bureaucracy-choked organization cannot be.

Smart organizations prize and praise their team members. Old-school, top-down bureaucratic organizations don’t dare to value employees, because that might send the message that every employee is not an easily replaceable cog in the machine. Employees might start to feel significant

5 Steps to Improving Customer Retention | AllBusiness.com

December 5, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When your business is just starting out, acquiring new customers has to be your primary concern. But once you get beyond the initial stages, the key to real growth is not so much getting new customers, but customer retention.

Many small businesses are falling short when it comes to customer retention. More than seven out of 10 small business owners in a recent survey (72 percent) say most of their marketing budget goes to acquiring new customers. Just 28 percent spend the bulk of their marketing budgets on customer retention.

The 20 Most Viral Ads of 2016 | Adweek

December 5, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Christmas, the Olympics/Paralympics and OK Go.

Those are three reliable buckets for great advertising, and they all show up in Unruly’s new list of the most shared ads of 2016. The top spot on this year’s list goes to a Christmas spot; No. 2 was made for the Paralympics; and OK Go put two videos on the list, including one at No. 5.

Ads from 10 different countries appearing on this list, Unruly says—the U.K., U.S., Denmark, Egypt, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Norway, the Philippines and Indonesia. The average runtime for the top 20 videos is 2:49

The Pros And Cons of An Open-plan Office | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

December 5, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The open plan office has become a fixture of the modern workplace. Private offices and cube farms have been replaced by flexible workspaces with little or no partitions. 60% of companies have now adopted open plan layouts, with more than a third having changed from closed to open layout within the past five years.

The trend is particularly prevalent in London, where a rise in flexible serviced offices has contributed to the layout’s increasing popularity. A Deloitte report on office occupation in central London found that floor space dedicated to serviced offices has increased by 67% since 2004.

6 million borrowers are 90 days late on their car loans | Money Cnn

December 2, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Roughly six million auto borrowers with shoddy credit scores are at least 90 days late on making their loan payments, according to new figures released by the New York Federal Reserve. The percentage of delinquent subprime auto loans has raced to the highest level since 2010.

Since the end of the Great Recession, there’s been an explosion of auto loans, growing to more than $1.1 trillion. That, along with a far stronger economy, has helped fuel a boom in U.S. auto sales.

While Detroit’s sales slowed down earlier this year due to rising prices, General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) on Thursday said sales accelerated in November. The industry is now back on track for record sales in 2016. It could be the eighth-straight year of increases.

But part of those sales may have been fueled by easy availability of credit for borrowers with poor credit, who are evidently now struggling to pay off those loans.

The Advantages Of Bus Stop Advertising | The Startup Magazine

December 2, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When we’re trying to get the most out of our promotional budgets, we love to find a format that delivers effective low-cost advertising. But we love getting to play with the latest and greatest ad technology, too. Although many people overlook it today, the bus stop advert actually offers a great compromise between these two desirable values.

Here are a few of the reasons bus stop ads are well worth consideration for any brand that’s looking to increase its exposure.

Bus shelter advertising is highly scalable. The format delivers a low cost of entry that is friendly to local groups and small businesses, but the sheer breadth of exposure makes these ads attractive to large brands as well.

Smart Strategies to Stretch Your Startup Dollars | Business News Daily

December 2, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Initial startup costs are some of the biggest expenses a new business owner will have to encounter. Before you turn a profit, there are many parts of the business that need to be covered up front, and entrepreneurs don’t always anticipate some of these expenses.

To reduce your startup costs and stretch your dollars a little farther, follow these tips.

Have a budget, and stick to it

A simple way to save money as a new business owner is to set spending and expense limits. However, a surprising number of business owners don’t have a formal budget, said Carissa Reiniger, founder of small business support community.

Here’s everything AWS will announce today | TechCrunch

December 1, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Amazon is hosting the second of two major keynotes at its re:Invent developer conference in Las Vegas today. TechCrunch has received detailed notes on the contents of today’s keynote, which will be delivered by Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels. We already knew he was going to talk about DevOps and containers today, but here are a few more details of what to expect. The keynote is scheduled to start at 8:30am PT.

AWS Personal Health Dashboard

AWS Personal Health Dashboard will give developers data on the health of the infrastructure that is running their applications. This is the kind of operational data that companies are used to having on their applications — and should make DevOps teams feel a lot more comfortable using AWS to launch their cloud applications.

Nokia Android phones are coming early next year | Mashable

December 1, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Fallen mobile phone giant Nokia is about to (attempt to) rise again next year with new phones — this time based on Android.

The plan has been known for a while, but it’s now official, as the company itself confirmed it in a press release Thursday.

The new Nokias will be manufactured by Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile and sold by a Finnish company called HMD Global, which will have an exclusive global license for the Nokia brand for the next ten years. This means another Android player has emerged in the overcrowded market, albeit one with a familiar brand name.

The story of the new, new Nokia is somewhat complex, so here’s a little background: Microsoft bought Nokia’s struggling mobile phone division in 2013 for $7.2 billion but it ditched the Nokia brand the following year, instead calling its mobile phones Microsoft Lumia.

New Overtime Rules Suspended for Now | Payroll link

December 1, 2016December 1, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Many employers have been wrestling with plans to comply with new U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) overtime rules since last May. That’s when the rules were finalized, with a December 1 compliance deadline. Those new rules included raising the minimum salary overtime exemption to $913 per week from $455. A little more than a week before the deadline for the rules was to take effect, a federal court has issued an injunction, at least temporarily blocking implementation of the changes.

In its decision, the court stated it believes the DOL exceeded its authority in promulgating the rule. In addition, the court said the DOL failed to follow Congress’s intent, which was to reexamine the duties test of the overtime rules, and not to focus solely on the salary level, as the final rules do.

The DOL’s initial response was to state that it “strongly disagrees” with the ruling, and is “currently considering all of our legal options.” A couple of short-term legal scenarios remain possible: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which issued the ruling, could drop its temporary injunction.