photo credit: maistora

It’s great to see how technology has improved the way businesses operate today. I think one of the best examples of this is how some of the big retailers here in the Isle of Man replenish their stock overnight. It’s all down to stock control software that keep track of whatever is sold in store, helps shop planners to decide what new items they want to stock the store with, and then work out what needs to be shipped to the store. The items arrive on the next delivery and voila, the shop is filled again.

It it weren’t for stock control systems, then replenishing a store would be much harder. Not only that, but there would be lots of wastage, especially food which could have spoiled if it wasn’t sold in time.

Looking for comments from people out there. If you have a retail business, could you operate without a stock control?

This represents a major milestone for our company. I am pleased to have completed this transaction, as it enables us to broaden our investor base and create a liquid market for our stock. As a publicly-traded company, we believe that we will be in a better position to take advantage of the growing opportunities emerging in our industry.

Read the complete announcement here.

Here’s what they look like:

It’s a cool idea, and if you keep leaving things behind and losing them, then it’s something you should look into. It costs around a fiver for a single item, or £12 for 3 items. They also have a “comprehensive” service that even pays to ship the items back to you, no matter where in the world you lose them. Your details are kept confidential, with the finder reporting directly to TagBak, so your privacy is assured.

Get TagBak Now!

I came across a website of the house removals company, a website that lets you key in your requirements for a moving company in the UK. You key in your details once, click on “Get Quotes” and get quotes from up to 6 different companies who will be able to help you out. That’s much better than having to look up different companies in the yellow pages and phone around trying to get comparative quotes. They seem to cover the whole of the UK and can even help you if you’re planning to make an International Move.

Check them out if you’re about to make a move.

And this is where you might want to have a look at AffinityClick ads for blogs. It works by matching appropriate advertising to the content of your blog to help target your readers with offers they might be interested in. It works around the fact that more traditional forms of advertisement do not generate the business that advertisers want. Text link ads aren’t intelligent enough and AdSense just isn’t attractive enough.

I’ve actually signed up for the service and will be running it on AskOwen, my Q&A blog. I have been running Amaon ads, but the main problem is that if I use ads from the UK site, then clicks that redirect to the US site aren’t credited and vice versa. AffinityClick matches the advertising to the user on the blog, so you’re guaranteed the best possible return.

Check it out.

The email advised me that Sprout had closed off the ability to produce free Sprouts and launched tiered pricing ranging from $140 a year to $3000 a year, depending on the number of projects, storage and support options people require. The Basic service lets you produce up to 3 Sprouts but is only available to current users.

Now, I’ll be the first to insist that a company has a pricing strategy which can guarantee growth and sustainability, especially in today’s harsh climate. However, it’s always worth bearing in mind that free advertising can be valuable, as it taps into hobbyists and people experimenting with the medium. I have a friend who’s heavily into sports attire and I’m sure he’s geeky enough to try and put together a Sprout about NFL jerseys if he had the time and knew about the service.

I believe Sprout are making a mistake but not allowing a free aspect to their service. Even if it’s time-bound, it allows people to play with their technology, evangelise about their services and draw in more paying customers.

What do you think?

I came across a great white paper entitled The Business Impact of Social Networking on AT&T’s website. Here’s the blurb:

Social networking fosters collective intelligence, collaborative work and support communities. Tools and behaviors from the consumer world are now making the transition to the corporate world, with diverse implications for changing the way businesses operate. This paper explores 10 opportunities presented by social networking, along with 10 associated challenges.

I found the predictions for the future particularly interesting. Some are intuitive, but some may not necessarily spring off the page at you. Here’s what the paper predicts organisations will do as a result of the proliferation of Social Networking:

• Corporations will change the way they communicate
• Corporations will change their vision
• Corporations will change their organisation
• Collective Intelligence and Customer Experience will lead Innovation
• Networking will be key to Employee Excellence
• Employee mobility will increase
• Corporations will adapt their Motivation and Career Path Systems
• IT/Telecoms Applications will mutate
• Corporate Adoption will happen at different speeds
• Social Networking may allow Increased Revenue

It’s a good read, particularly if you’re interested or work in social networking. I must say, I do find the subject fascinating and now that I’ve finished my MBA, if I do decide to further my studies, this might be an interesting avenue to explore.

Speculation is rife as to why Microsoft has decided to purchase GreenField Online, on online research company. The answer seems to be it that it was really after Ciao, a leading European shopping comparison website that has a large community of follower who shop and leave reviews on the site. This is due to the fact that Microsoft is really planning on selling off the Online Survey division (which incidentally contributes pretty much most of the revenue Greenfield makes) while retaining control of GreenField. They managed to beat another potential buyer (Quadrange) who also had their eye on GreenField.

This may seem strange, however when you consider that Microsoft is sitting on a massive cash mountain you can start to factor in that eyeballs are more important to them than cash. This acquisition gives them access to a European consumer market which they have struggled to penetrate. We’ll see how it pans out; some say that Microsoft will try and push their own products using Ciao, but I think they’re more interested in the audience than in promoting their wares. I would guess their first step would be to integrate Passport with Ciao to consolidate user identities across the two platforms.

Great post on ReadWriteWeb entitled Startup, Inc – What You Need to Know Before Starting a Company. It talks about all the different vehicles you can use to set up a business entity from being a sole trader all the way to setting up a corporation. It then talks about the difference between shareholders, directors and management which is always an interesting point for the uninitiated.

The article then talks about the documentation that is required for a company and also legal and financial concerns. The interesting part then talks venture capital and how companies go through different rounds of financing.

I found the article pretty interesting, especially as a comparison between UK companies and US companies. Obviously, legislation and taxation would be different in the two jurisdictions, so it’s always worth getting expert advice before embarking down this road.

Great post on Ted Murphy’s blog about Change. Here’s a snippet:

I think there are 4 phases of change.
1. Recognizing that a change needs to be made.
2. Deciding what the change should be.
3. Making the change.
4. Embracing the new direction.

In my opinion phases 2-3 are by far the hardest, but where many people actually fail is phase 4 because of “what if”. What if I made the wrong change? What if I waited longer? What if it doesn’t work out? These are all natural questions, but you can’t let them get the best of you. They can be paralyzing and force you to always be looking back on your change instead of pushing forward.

Once a change has been made you need to commit. There will be many changes in the future, there is no need to fixate on the past.

Read it all here