The effects of the 2008 recession are being felt worldwide and to protect an internet based business, we as internet marketers need to ensure we have a recession proof marketing strategy in place.

Just because a world-wide recession has struck does not mean that it is a bad time to make an income online with an internet based business.

We all react in different ways when a recession sets in. How we react all depends on our own unique situation. Some cut back totally on luxuries, others opt for a cheaper version, but we don’t stop purchasing goods. Some products even experience record highs during a recession. In order to respond to the new situation, it is just a matter of altering course and mapping out a recession marketing strategy.

Understanding what people are interested in buying and why they need or want to buy it is what an online recession marketing strategy would then involve. This is the key to ensuring that you have a recession proof internet based business and is even more important during a recession than in a boom.

People feel good during a boom. As people are assured that their jobs are safe and so is their next pay check, they feel rich and confident and don’t mind spending because they have money available. It is during these times that most people can make money from their own internet based business.

However, it is a different story during a recession. A great many people cut back and no longer buy luxuries as they are worried about their financial situation. The idea of purchasing luxury items such as large appliances or new cars are put on hold and people tend to make do with what they have got and tend to repair rather than buy new items.

During these times of financial uncertainty people search for cheaper alternatives in the form of used goods, spare parts, DIY solutions, cheaper food sources, they eat at home rather than dine out and any other products that can help reduce their monthly expenditure.

This change in shopping behavior offers internet based businesses some clear recession marketing opportunities, some examples being:

1. Financial Counseling and Basic Financial Advice: You’ll be surprised how many people spend like crazy with a credit card but actually have no idea of how to manage credit card debt. Others have no idea how to prepare a household budget. Many more will require financial counseling during the recession as these people are in desperate need of help right now.

2. Informative How-To eBooks: Something that will be very popular during a recession is cheap information products that teach people practical skills that they can use to save or even make money or explain in detail how to survive during a recession. This gives you the opportunity to either write your own ebook or search for high quality packages that offer rebranding rights so that you can offer them as your own.

3. Don’t forget about eBay: As people look to raise money by selling off things they no longer require and others look for bargains or second-hand goods to save money, it is very likely that eBay will experience growth during the recession. The opportunity to start your own full-time internet based business awaits you at eBay.

This gives internet marketers the opportunity to promote eBay related affiliate programs or offer eBay advice and business solutions.

4. There are those that are so keen to start their own internet based business but feel that they just cannot afford the expense. There is a great opportunity for you to reach out and offer advice on how to make an income online on a shoestring budget. They will be excited to learn that the start-up costs of an internet business are minimal and will be keen to know more about free blogs, free affiliate programs, free article marketing strategies and free traffic exchanges.

When you see the opportunity that a recession presents, it is possible to build a recession proof internet based business and make an online income out of recession proof marketing.

Cynthia Minnaar
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/marketing-strategies-to-recession-proof-an-internet-based-business-690653.html

Manufacturing Journalist TR Cutler profiled the development of .net solutions in the current issue of Accounting Software 411. the complete feature can be read at http://www.accountingsoftware411.com/Press/PressDocView.aspx?docid=8264.

Nexgen Technologies is an emerging leader in the manufacture of unique capital equipment designed for the semiconductor industry. Based in Santa Clara, CA Nexgen, leverages outsourcing of major components allowing their organization to focus on engineering, product development and testing. As a highly engineering focused manufacturer their business model is simple: be the best at delivering one-of-a-kind capital equipment. Nexgen required a solution that would give them the controls and effective technology in combination with comprehensive functionality for their complex manufacturing requirements. After many months of evaluation of ERP systems Nexgen selected VISIBILITY.net ERP. According to Naylor, “This ERP solution is exactly what we were looking for and is oriented on our type of one-of-a-kind manufacturing business. They understand our business demands and have 20 plus years of experience implementing their solution effectively. What we liked most was the comprehensiveness of the software and how it will enable us to optimize all areas of our business. From quotes, to costing, financial compliance, projects, business process improvements through workflow and will accommodate our growth with multi-entity and multi-lingual. Additionally, it was designed from the onset using Microsoft’s .net which gives us a contemporary business platform to grow our business on. “

With the recent advent of .NET technology, the problems encountered by Nexgen’s previous system limitations were erased with the ERP solution chosen. 100% written in .NET-managed code, the new ERP system was developed to support multi-site ETO/MTO manufacturers.

The benefits of a true multi-site ETO/MTO solution:

1. The .NET architecture eliminates the need for Citrix or other remote access applications. Instead, users can access the .net solution from anywhere in the world as long as they have a browser, like Internet Explorer, and an Internet connection. This also eliminates the need for multiple costly Unix or Citrix servers, lowering the total cost of ownership and IT maintenance requirements.

2. A true multi-site ERP system eliminates the need to maintain multiple databases. Each site can be set-up as a separate manufacturing entity within a single database. This allows a single listing of part numbers to be shared across all entities. Moreover, the part costs, pricing, and MRP planning parameters can be unique by entity. Custom solutions are not necessary to handle inventory transfers between sites.

3. Powerful security features allow each and every field within the application to be controlled. Field level control, by user, may be set to Active, Inactive, or Read Only. This feature allows full control over which users have access to costing data yielding substantial compliance benefits.

According to Stephen Carson, executive vice-president of Visibility, “Our .net ERP solution reduces hardware and maintenance costs for one-of-a-kind (ETO/MTO) manufacturers. With only a single database to manage, the inherent complexities of maintaining separate databases are eliminated, thereby increasing the accuracy of tracking costs. “

Visibility Corporation (www.visibility.com) is a leading developer and supplier of business software solutions designed for the unique needs of project-based, engineer-to-order and to-order manufacturers. Visibility’s Enterprise Application solutions help midsize manufacturers of complex products operate their businesses effectively. Visibility has an extensive customer base throughout North America and Europe and has the strongest representation of ERP among complex manufacturers.

VISIBILITY.net is an integrated ERP solution and more. Offering unparalleled functionality and integrated workflow, this browser-based solution cost effectively delivers the power of .NET-based Web services for use with either a Microsoft SQL Server™ or Oracle® database. Conducting business any place, any time, any where is a reality, deployable with unprecedented flexibility.

Thomas Cutler
http://www.articlesbase.com/technology-articles/thriving-in-oneofakind-manufacturing-through-net-solutions-profiled-by-manufacturing-journalist-tr-cutler-88316.html

Your business day has just begun and you quickly whip out your clearly written plans. Pardon? Did you say you don’t have a written business plan? Then join the club, ‘Business Owners Without Plans’. The main problem this club faces is that the majority of it members’ businesses are likely to fail. Business failure rate is high and a crucial reason for this is lack of planning.

If you belong to this group and I did once, you’re probably an entrepreneur or a creative person. The idea of planning feels boring to you, seems unnecessary and involves a lot of detail. And you’d rather be doing other more interesting things. Your way of working is probably a lot more spontaneous, exciting and in the flow so you don’t want to be restricted with plans. However, without plans you can to easily end up very unfocused, not achieving the results you desire and ultimately face the failure of your business.

So, what’s your reason for not having business plans? Besides the usual reasons, like not having sufficient time to plan, not knowing how to do it or where to begin, perhaps you think that planning doesn’t fit in with your entrepreneurial and creative spirit. After all, this is who you are and you don’t want to lose this. Now fear begins to surface; fear that you many need to change personally or fear of failure. While plans stay in your head, it’s not so frightening and real. Putting them in writing, brings them closer to fruition and although you may say this is what you want, is it really if you’re not willing to commit them to paper. Planning your business takes it from being a hobby to a fully-fledged business. Although a lot of people would say that they operate their business as a business, in reality most operate them as hobbies and don’t take them seriously. Then they wonder why they’re not being very successful and getting results.

I feel one of the problems for creative and entrepreneurial people is that when they consider business plans the picture that spring to mind is of hours pouring over enormous pages of details. That’s enough to turn them straight off. However, it doesn’t need to be that way. There is a way to develop plans for your business, and to be creative and entrepreneurial at the same time. These informal business plans are ones that you’ll use yourself. If you need a business plan for outsiders, such as your bank or investors then this approach might not be for you. It could however be a good process to get your formal business plan started.

Instead of thinking that you need to commit hours to working on your business plans, I invite you to start with just five minutes. Now, without any thought of the appropriate way to do it, just write down the things that first come into your head for your business. Simply capture any goals, strategies, problems, your current situation and positioning. Writing down your plans, clarifies, organises and prioritises them, and clears vital space in your head.

The next step is to tap into your strengths as an entrepreneur or creative person. You’re probably fantastic at coming up with ideas and solutions, and may well be intuitive. So, you’ll tap into all of these using the power of questions. You’ll use questions to come up with answers and solutions that you’ll put into your business plan. Your business plan need only be a straightforward review of your present situation, your strategies, resources and goals. Nothing complicated or too detailed.

Here are some questions to obtain you started:

What is the current business situation?

What goals do you have for your business?

What problems and challenges is your business currently facing?

What strategies are you using?

What strategies do you need to use?

What resources and opportunities do you have available?

Okay, so having spent five minutes on your business plans, I now invite you to make a commitment of five minutes each business day and continue working on your business plans. Once you’ve responded to the above questions, put on your creative and entrepreneurial hat, and come up with your own thought provoking questions to answer. Take your creative and entrepreneurial spirit, and use this to perfect plans for your business that keep you focused and producing the results you want. Once you start laying down some plans for your business and experience the benefits of doing this, you’ll find it easier to continue. The most important step is getting started.

As an entrepreneur or creative, what will it take for you to begin putting some of your business plans onto paper?

What planning for your business do you currently do?

What further planning do you need to do? ie. Sales, marketing, business development.

What will it take to start writing down your business plans?

Wendy Hearn
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/dread-planning-simple-business-planning-that-works-well-106912.html

To succeed in your job, you make decisions every day based on your grasp and outlook for your business. Here are some typical examples:

·         You are in charge of sales; a competitor is doing well and your management wants you to deal with the problem.

·         You are in charge of finance; the marketing department wants to spend money and you are asked to approve the request, based on your outlook for the company’s cash flow in the coming weeks.

·         You are a regional sales manager who needs to reassign sales territories between the reps. Before you do, you want to know what the impact of the change will be on revenue, commissions, and travel expenses based on past performance.

In today’s difficult economic climate, if something goes wrong, saying “I didn’t know” is not a good excuse. To maximize your success you need good visibility into your business.

There Must be a Better Way

How many times have you found yourself faced with a decision and looking desperately for data that will help you make your choice easier?

If you are the sales director who was called to deal with a new competitor, you will want to look at your team’s win/loss record against that competitor. You will also want to know what discounts your sales team offered in those deals. And you will want to look at public data on the competitor’s financial performance to see how they are doing relative to your company and to your industry.

You can access your CRM system and get a list of sales prospects where the competitor was involved, along with the status (win/loss) of the deal, the sales region, and the date.

This information is helpful, but not enough. Missing, for competitive wins, are the amount that was actually booked and the discount that was given. To get this information, you go to your accounting system. But your accounting system doesn’t record competitive data, so you can’t simply generate a report that only lists wins against the competitor. What you end up doing is generating a list of all recent deals from your accounting system. You then look at the deals one at a time and try to match the deals in the report from your CRM system with those that appear in the report from the accounting system. Adding to your challenge is the fact that company names that appear in your CRM system don’t always match those in the accounting system. One system might list deals with “Coca Cola” and “IBM,” while the other system lists deals with “The Coca Cola Company” and “International Business Machines.”

You then have to resort to cutting and pasting data in Excel once again to compare your private company’s revenue performance to that of your competitor and the industry. You get the data on your industry and your competitor (a public company) from an industry analyst web site. You then combine it manually with your own company’s revenue data in Excel.

What should have taken you minutes ends up taking hours. The process was so tedious and labor intensive that it’s hard to avoid mistakes. And, if you decide to repeat the analysis a few days later, you’ll have to start from scratch, you can’t simply “refresh” the data. Some companies refer to this as “Excel hell.” Does it sound familiar?

Say Goodbye to Cutting and Pasting

If you need quick access to your company’s data, along with other information from the Internet, you now have a simple and affordable alternative to “Excel hell.” New software as a service (SaaS) business intelligence solutions deliver the answers you need on-demand. After a quick set-up, all you need to do is connect to the web and view the business analytics you need to be successful.

The sales operations director who was trying to combine data on competitive wins and losses from the CRM and accounting systems can now access a single, dynamic report that combines the current and historical information needed. All competitive wins and losses, along with revenue forecasted, revenue booked (for wins), and discount rates can be displayed, along with the relevant sales region and date.

Bringing in external data from the web is just as easy. The sales director can view a single report that compares the company’s internal (and confidential) revenue data against public data on the competitor and the industry.

To answer most questions, the sales director opens one of the prebuilt sales analytics. If the question is new and a report is not available, the sales director can easily create a new one without any technical help from others. The dynamic web reports combine data from different business applications, in this case from your CRM and accounting systems. The data is “cleansed” automatically before appearing in the reports to address inconsistencies between the different data sources (such as the IBM vs. International Business Machines issue).

But quick and simple access to data is not the only advantage of the on-demand business intelligence approach. SaaS analytic solutions are also designed to be simple to set-up, since all you need to do is connect to the “on-demand” service on the web. And last, but not least, SaaS business intelligence applications are simple to buy and affordable. In comparison, if your employer had decided to address this problem by building an on-premise business intelligence reporting and analysis solution in house, the acquisition and maintenance cost for all the pieces would easily reach a million dollars.

Business Visibility:  Your Four Alternatives

Let’s review the alternatives that you have today to answer your business questions:

1.       You can ignore the data, and just guess:  You can ignore the unprecedented amount of transactional information that your company’s systems collect and just use your “gut” to guess what needs to be done. This is like keeping the lights off in your room and walking around in the dark. The data and business visibility is there for you if only you flip the switch on, but instead you can just choose to keep the lights out and ignore it.

2.       You can continue to cut and paste data: You can continue to export data manually from each of your business applications to Excel and then waste your time cutting and pasting the information to combine it as you try to make some sense of your business. This is like walking around the dark room while holding a candle. You can make out individual objects. If you spend enough time you can even get a general sense of what is in the room; but you don’t get the full picture all at once. And if you’re not careful and make a mistake, you might get burned.

3.       You can deploy an expensive BI solution:  You can have your company design, procure, and maintain in house a traditional business intelligence reporting and analysis solution, assuming your company can afford it. But this is like installing a full electric power plant in your house just to light up your room. A BI solution implemented in house to generate multi-data source reports with cleansed and consistent data would require the following components: data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) technology with connectors to your business applications, like Salesforce.com and Netsuite; data cleansing technology; a data warehouse stored in a database management system; OLAP analysis services; a query and reporting tool, like Business Objects or Cognos. Assembling all of the above, whether from proprietary or from open source software takes months to design and deploy and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and maintain.

4.       You can get business visibility on demand – You can access the data that you need to be successful via the Internet and a SaaS business intelligence solution, on demand. This is equivalent to flipping on the light switch in your room. There’s no power plant in the house, the power is supplied by an electric utility company.

Which approach do you think makes the most sense for the future?

Business intelligence on demand: Why now?

You might ask: If on-demand business intelligence is such a great approach, then why wasn’t it available before? Traditional business intelligence solutions were designed for use inside the “four walls” of a company: They were built with the assumption that all users are full-time employees who access the business intelligence system inside the company’s secure network. The solutions also assumed that all the data that the users needed to see came from databases and applications sitting inside the company’s network.

In the past decade, all these “building assumptions” of traditional BI solutions changed: Many users, data, and applications now sit outside the company’s four walls. Just look at your own business today: How many of your contractors, partners, or even customers might benefit from viewing some of your business reports? To analyze your business and your market, how oft en do you access external data from the Internet? And how many on-demand business applications such as Salesforce.com or NetSuite do you use?

Traditional BI solutions did not anticipate these changes and their architectures cannot easily adapt to these new business realities. To get faster, more affordable, and simpler access to the data they need, with a solution that fits the new ways of doing business, employees are now shifting to SaaS business intelligence solutions. As with “on premise” solutions, the data is secure and users only have access to the information that they are authorized to see.

There is little doubt that future generations will look back and wonder why companies ever tried to configure full and costly BI suites of soft ware in house. For now employees simply wonder why it is so difficult to access the business information about their company that they need to be successful.

But this about to change.

George Scifo
http://www.articlesbase.com/sales-articles/i-didnt-know-is-no-excuse-in-a-business-720054.html

Financial freedom was something that people could dream about few years ago. However, this goal has became reachable nowadays courtesy the Internet. There are a vriety of opportunities available on the Internet, though you need to pick only the best home business solutions to become financialy free.

1. Create multiple blogs and monetize them with Google Adsense. You can do this with a handful of high traffic blogs and make extremely good money.

Google pays you every month and there are ways to automate the content portion of your blog so you can enjoy your life as your income continues to grow. You can even outsource setting your blog up and hiring blog writers if you choose to.

High-traffic blogs will attract advertisers as well. Today corporations are looking for places to promote their products on the Internet. If you have a high-traffic blog you only need a small group of corporate advertisers to earn a six-figure income online even when you are not working.

Search engines love blogs, and so do readers, so you can view this as a long term income solution. Reaching financial freedom with quality blogs is something anyone can do regardless of where they live in the world.

2. Network marketing is a business model that allows you to develop a residual income whether you work or not. You truly can become financially free if you join the right network marketing program.

You can also develop a worldwide business very quickly thanks to the Internet. This makes it easier to enroll new distributors and to build your downline as well.

The Internet also makes it easy to retail products and setup your customers on auto ship. This way you get paid every month automatically without worrying about contacting your customers and taking their orders.

It is also possible to join multiple network marketing businesses and develop a walk away income in several of them. This is a good way to create multiple streams of income and become financially free in more ways than one.

3. Start your own affiliate program selling information products. An easy way to do this is to develop e-books and sell them on ClickBank.

This will give you access to thousands of affiliates right away without recruiting them yourself. Over time you can continue to get paid every time a book is sold even when you are no longer creating them.

This is several of the best home business solutions to reach financial freedom. Using the Internet makes it possible for you to become financially free in more than one way.

Mona Abdulla
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/best-home-business-solutions-to-reach-financial-freedom-1248959.html