Simply Junior

We all know that establishing a solid credit history for ourselves is important.

Business alliances are often overlooked or not given much consideration by small businesses, yet they can be vital in helping a company grow and prosper. All too often, small businesses think alliances are just for big businesses; as a result, they neither explore nor pursue them. However, they can be just as beneficial for small businesses as they are for large corporations. If a small business is serious about gaining access to new markets, capitalizing on technology, growing profits using shared resources, they should consider a business alliance.

It’s no secret, businesses that share resources can create greater efficiencies and become more profitable. Business alliances can increase synergies and mitigate potential risk, while allowing companies to work together toward common goals as they maintain their individuality. There are several types of business alliances, each with its unique attributes.

Now is the time to assess what your business brings to the table. What assets, either tangible or intangible, does your business possess that when leveraged with another company can unlock greater potential for each business?

Alliance opportunities can be developed with suppliers, customers, investors, complementary businesses and friendly competitors. Some alliances are natural matches, while others require some creative thinking. I’ve listed the different types of alliances below, along with a description and example of each. When reading through them, think about how your business can create the benefits of a win-win proposition with another company.

JOINT VENTURE

A joint venture is a contractual arrangement whereby a separate entity is created to carry on a trade or business on its own, separate from the core business of the participating companies. Businesses often come together to share knowledge, markets, funds and profits. In some cases, a large company can decide to form a joint venture with a smaller business in order to quickly acquire critical intellectual property, technology, or resources otherwise hard to obtain. Companies with identical products and services can also join forces to penetrate markets they wouldn’t or couldn’t consider without investing a tremendous amount of resources. Separation is often inevitable because JVs generally have a limited life and purpose.

Example: You’ve developed a product but have a limited distribution base. Another company has the distribution system in place with a sizable market and wants to expand its company’s product offerings. You form a joint venture with the other company to jointly promote the product. It’s a win-win because you don’t have to fund the costs of reaching the potential customers and the other company expands its value and product offering to its current distribution base without having to fund the research and development costs of a new product. A contract would be signed detailing the aspects of the agreement.

STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

A strategic alliance is generally an arrangement whereby a separate entity is not created. Participants engage in joint activities but do not create an entity that would carry on trade or business on its own. The strategic alliance partners may provide resources such as products, distribution channels, manufacturing capabilities, capital equipment, knowledge, expertise, or intellectual property. Each party in the alliance maintains autonomy.

Example: A business management consultant wants to expand his services. He currently offers coaching, marketing, financial and operational consulting. He has noticed an increase demand for HR and diversity consulting from his clientele. He currently has no desire to hire additional personnel with the degrees and certifications required to offer these services. He seeks a strategic alliance with a HR and diversity consulting firm. The new firm agrees to work with his firm when opportunities arise for their services and a percentage of the revenue generated from the services provided will be returned to his firm.

PARTNERSHIP

A partnership is a legal agreement between two parties wherein both the parties agree to share profits and losses of a common business with no anticipated end date.

Example: A company whose primary function is to sell ads and produce unique coupon circulars to promote a variety of small businesses to the residential community had a substantial printing bill monthly. The company sought a partnership with a small printing company. The printing company had the expertise but limited printing volume. It required purchasing equipment that the printer didn’t have but saw a need for. A contract was signed establishing the new company; cost of the equipment was split between the two entities. The coupon circular producer sent all its business to the new venture at a substantial discount. The profits from the new venture were divided among the coupon circular company and the printing company. Each kept their original businesses separate from the new business.

MARKETING ALLIANCE

A marketing alliance is an agreement involving two or more companies to share cost and resources to promote each of the companies within the group. The target markets of the companies within the alliance usually share similar characteristics. The alliance can be a formal or an informal agreement.

Example: A group of locally owned and operated restaurants band together to form a marketing alliance. The alliance, similar to groups throughout the nation, promotes the uniqueness of their cuisines in an effort to stand out against the national chains. The group pools their resources to run ads and produce a direct mail guide to promote their menus, while offering discounts. They pay an upfront fee and then contribute several hundred dollars in gift certificates every quarter. Those certificates are sold online at a discount to help fund their marketing efforts. Donating gift certificates help keep the cost down for the participating restaurateurs.

COLLABORATION

A collaboration is when two or more businesses come together to share resources to create greater efficiencies such as the sharing of employees, equipment, shipping cost, rent, products and etc. Collaborations are generally for specific time periods and resources.

Example: As a small business you may have a difficult time throwing a first class holiday party for your employees. You want to show them just how much they are appreciated but the economy is tight and company funds are even tighter. Pooling your resources to have a party with a complementary company, saves money for both companies and could potentially pay off in new business opportunities and networking.

Managing the Alliances

Each company should bring a balance set of strengths to the alliance but there are other considerations as well. You must manage the alliance to ensure it contributes to the success of each company. Listed below are few of the things you should consider to produce a successful alliance:

1. Alliances should be made with the decision maker. You must have the support and commitment from the business owner and not just a manager.

2. Communication is a key ingredient. Clearly communicate the goals and objectives of the alliance in the beginning.

3. Develop the metrics the alliance will be measured against. Determine how the performance of each of the companies will be measured.

4. Allocate proper resources to the alliance. Don’t get half way through the project before you determine the proper resources were not allocated to the venture.

5. Ensure that all participating employees are committed to the success of the alliance. You need buy-in from everyone involved, not just a few select people.

6. Detail the responsibilities of each of the participating companies. Be explicit in what the expectations are for each of the companies in the alliance.

7. Just like all things, nothing is perfect. Be prepared to make changes if something is not working.

8. Stay committed and focused on the benefits of the alliance rather than the inconveniences the alliance may cause.

Each party must benefit from the alliance for it to be successful. Otherwise, like a marriage, the relationship will go from honeymoon to divorce court quickly and all parties will suffer.

When it comes to saving money, every penny counts. So many people simply assume that small amounts of money aren’t worth the bother of saving. But little things add up.

Have you ever broken a large bill, such as a fifty, to only be surprised that it disappeared so quickly. Little amounts of money will just flow out of your hands. So it is logical to assume that little amounts can add up just as quickly.

However, you can’t just assume that spending and saving is equal. Saving $15 a week is not the same as spending $15 dollars a week. You have to factor in compounding interest on saving and borrowing.

Let’s look at $15 dollars a week in three different scenarios: spending, saving and borrowing.

When you spend $15 dollars a week in cash or from your checking account, you are spending $780 a year. That doesn’t seem like to much. After all, it is only a little over $2 a day. But over five years, that $15 adds up to $3900.

If you are able to save that $15 a week and put it aside in a savings account that earns 3% interest, you could end up with approximately $4,202. By saving your money, you made around $300 dollars.

This isn’t taking into account that there are much better saving options out there. After saving for a year, you could put the money over into a CD, starting a ladder of sorts. CDs usually have higher interest rates, yet are still a safe investment for your money. Remember that you may have to pay taxes on any interest your accounts make.

But if you borrow the money, say you find that you are short $15 dollars a week, or $65 a month, and you charge it on your credit card to make up for the shortcoming. Over five years at a 18% interest rate, you will end up with $6000 in credit card debt. That is $2000 more in debt that you could have saved.

With a little over a $2 a day investment, you can have a nice amount of money in five years. And remember that with compounding interest, the more time you give your money, the faster it will grow. Think about it.

I find that this is also a good option for kids to learn how to save for a large item. When your child is twelve, give them the option of saving $15 a week. They can work for you for this money or it can come from their allowance. Do the math and let them see that by saving this small amount of money, they can have enough for a car in five years. There are plenty of financial lessons to be learned around the purchase of a teen’s first car.

Small amounts can have a large impact on your personal finances. There are plenty of ways to find extra money to save. You can simply dump all of your dollar bills and change in a jar each night. You can use coupons and put the money saved in your jar. You can decide not to buy something you don’t need and put the money in your jar. Small amounts of money are worth the bother after all.

There are good and bad chat rooms to meet women. The best rooms are few and far between. This article is here to steer you in the right direction.

What you need to do is get yourself a membership at a big-name dating community that has a population in the millions. You can usually join these services for free and use most of their features (something not a lot of people know). Something else most people are unaware of is these sites have the biggest chatting rooms to meet women on the planet.

These sites have millions of members. At any one times they tend to have ten or hundreds of thousands of people online and inside their chatting rooms. And the rooms are diverse in nature. You have geographic rooms; ones based on fetishes; others that are for people of a certain sexual persuasion; and so on.

What separates these chatting environments from others you may have seen are all of the extra features. You can click a person’s name and view their profile, see their photo albums, watch their videos, and even send them private messages, emails, and chat to them on webcams.

The rooms offered by these popular dating services truly are the best way to meet women in a chatting environment. But you can do much more than just meet women. You can meet ladies who actually live close to you or share your interests or sexual proclivities. So many people ignore these places to chat because you have to make a profile to use them and sometimes pay a membership fee.

Given all these rooms offer, though, you will soon learn that they are the best place online for chatting to ladies.

Do you well and truly need a server allocated to your business, and to your business only, or could you get by with shared hosting? I think it’s safe to assume that if you’re reading this article, you’re already aware of the fact that most websites use what is known as ‘shared server hosting’.

In other words, they register a domain name, and then they pay a hosting provider to host their website. In order for a website to be hosted, a server is required. These are basically large ‘communications’ computers, and for the most part, one server is capable of hosting thousands of websites.

Now, if a single server can cope with so many websites, why an earth would you ever need your own dedicated server? The bottom line is; even though more than a million websites may be sharing a single server, the vast majority of them don’t receive any visitors at all, at least not on a regular day to day basis. Only a very small percentage of them receive more than 1,000 visitors per day, and even with some websites receiving that amount of visitors, a single shared server will still be able to cope.

Unfortunately however, if several of those websites start becoming popular, and they start getting thousands of visitors each day, the efficiency and the speed of the shared server will soon begin to deteriorate. This will inevitably mean the functionality of your own website will also be affected, and visitors to your site will find that it takes ages to load. In fact, if you have some audio and video files on your website, visitors may not even be able to access them during times when the server is experiencing a large volume of traffic.

Of course, if you only have a website for the fun of it, then you probably have no reason to be concerned, but if you depend on your website for your living, then you certainly don’t want visitors to leave your website simply because they cannot access it. After all, when you run an online business, every visitor is a potential client, and you want them to hang around for as long as possible in the hope that you will make a sale.

The busier your website is, and the more complex features it has, the greater your need becomes for a dedicated server. This is because you will then have a server devoted entirely to your website or to your business in general. Under no circumstances will you need to share the server with other website owners. Not only does this mean your website will no longer be at the mercy of others, but it also means you can enjoy a greater level of security. With a shared server, if a hacker manages to gain access to any one of the websites sharing the server, each and every one of the websites on that server will be at risk. Of course this is something you don’t need to worry about if you have your own server.

Just in case you’re wondering whether or not you can actually afford the luxury of having a dedicated server, you need to bear in mind that it’s not necessary to buy one outright. Sure, many big businesses to purchase their own servers, but unless you have plenty of cash available, you can lease your server as well, and if you’re unsure as to how you would go about managing it, you can even choose a ‘managed server’ option.