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Ask any entrepreneur what’s their secret in being productive and you’ll get an answer that says “plan ahead”. But how do we plan for the next activity or the next day ahead of us?  Even in best times, you still need to be productive for a more profitable outcome. In down times, performance is doubled to balance sales and productivity. Here are 5 business strategies to keep your productivity on overdrive:

1. Plan Ahead. Plan. Plan. Plan. It’s better to plan ahead than be sorry. Planning is defining your direction, decision making on resources allocation of people and capital. Strategic Planning usually revolves around 3 questions.

a. What do we do?
b. For whom do we do it?
c. How do we excel? Or how do we beat competition?

In strategic planning, you will be able to identify what is working and not working in your field of operation policies and regulations, standards and projections; they are detailed in the following departments.

Long term planning is a useful tool for projections in productivity, such as:

1. Sales and Marketing
2. Management Systems
3. Operations
4. Products
5. Finances
6. R & D
7. Costs
8. System Organization

2. Management of Your Time. Prioritize your day by concentrating on the business you want to work on first by making a schedule and adhering to it. Avoiding procrastination and distractions in your work will save you a lot of time. There is such a thing as scheduled distractions; do it and ignore it for the rest of the day. You’ll get more peace and quiet. Planning your exit at the end of the day will help you resolve time issues and have ample time for minor planning for tomorrow.

3. Get enough Sleep. “Sleep is mending the sleep of care”, William Shakespeare. You got that right. You will never function to your highest level when you are deprived of sleep. Defining working hours to get enough sleep is the way to stay at your peak and boost your productivity.

4. Pose challenges and set that goal. Ever heard of a company motto that says “Better your Best”. This is one of the best mottos of all time in improving and keeping productivity on overdrive. I know because I used to work in one of the top companies in the country. Proper motivations and goal setting from the management down to the rank and file employees did the job. Production efficiency shot up, Total preventive maintenance is on the roll, Sales and Marketing forecasts reached and overall productivity is heaven. Goals reached and rose up to the challenge.

Entrepreneurs set milestones to motivate themselves on a task; this ensures the necessity of progress attained by staying focused. Avoid the” I quit “mentality when you are up to it.

5. Stay on track. It’s not always easy to do this; temptations to deviate from your path looms throughout the day and swaying away could be costly. Deadlines are set  and keeping up with demands could be tough;  with hard work and discipline

Keeping up with your plans and its implementation will be easier to follow and get things done. Goals reached, demands met, projections in place and everything in pace.  At the end of each day, you can stand up and say “I did it”.

What is LinkedIn and can you use it to gain leads in your online business? The answer is yes but it is not an easy social networking platform to use like Facebook or twitter.

LinkedIn is a community of business and corporate professionals interacting in a more organized. adept way. You need to have a special knowledge base or mindset in order to be able to speak with these people on their terms. When I first heard of LinkedIn and how my mentors were getting 15+ leads per day, I needed to begin using this strategy as well. It wasn’t as easy as I thought. Sign up, add friends and contacts and start networking…right? Wrong!

As a member of LinkedIn you have to some how be affiliated with the people to be able to add them to your network. Based on my hit and miss experience I have narrowed it down to what I believe are a few easy points to help you Linkin.

The first point you need to consider is building a profile that looks authoritative.

By that I mean you should have a quality picture of yourself and a background that looks proficient.
Your profile needs to look skillful, like you are applying for a regular position/job, it should be done with as much quality as a resume. Do Not Use under any circumstances cartoons pics, or cuddly little animals or funny jokes, sayings. Remember these people are pro’s.

The second point would be to brand yourself as an authority. List your educational qualities, and your professional background. You are seeking other marketers to join your business, so I would stay away from including all the online companies you have worked with or work with currently. Remember the focus is on you as a proficient leader in your field, not on your business(s).

Now after setting yourself up with your experience, skills, and educational background your Gmail account connections that are relevant can and should be accessed or imported to join in your LinkedIn Network.

This is one of the easiest ways to begin connecting with your peers. LinkedIn will provide you with an option asking them to join. Then search on LinkedIn for individuals you already know and request to connect with them.

Last but not least, is to join Groups. LinkedIn is similar to other social sites in that you can create targeted searches for MLM or Network Marketing or a certain niche that you wish to use. You may also zero in on other companies, join those groups and become a regular participant of creating or replying to articles and discussions. You can also post in the job section for career changes if that would be a piece of your target audience.

Like many of the other networking platforms consistency is key with this strategy in order to see results. If one day you write an article and then don’t come back for an extended period of time, you will begin to lose any hard fought believability on LinkedIn.

So I highly advise that keep your profile, and all skills, experience, education and background on a proficient, authoritative level. Brand yourself, not your company and be a participant, regularly, and follow these easy points, as you build your connections to stay LinkedIn.

I was a retail management corporate lifer until my position was eliminated through realignment. I had no recourse as was not even allowed to speak or argue for my position. This was from a company that was not effected by the economic downturn and the largest retailer in the world. I am currently running a su

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How is your business doing? Is your business as profitable as you would like to be? How do you measure alongside your competition? If you are like many small business owners; your business is doing ok, or it is struggling just to get by, particularly in this sluggish economy.

What would it take for you to elevate your business to a new level… to break away from just getting by to becoming a thriving business that continues to grow year after year?

We all know the answer is money. But we are trapped into that age old paradox “You need money to make money”.

Think of what you could do with a lump sum of working capital that you could inject into your business. How would you spend it? Here are some ideas:

Expand your location
Open a new location
Refurbish your current location
Buy out your business partner
Hire new employees
Enhance your marketing campaign

Would these things help? They would absolutely help most businesses.

Every business is unique. I can’t know what strategy would work best for your business. I’ll leave that to the business owner. What I can do is offer my perspective. Hopefully it will help some of you.

Ok, it is obvious that if you had more money to inject into your business, it could make it much more profitable in the long run. But how do we get the money?

The first choice for many business owners is a small business loan from the bank. They offer relatively low interest rates and give you a reasonable amount of time to pay it back. If your business is strong and your credit is good, this would be my top choice.

The problem with many struggling businesses is that their credit has taken a hit – especially in the current financial climate.

On top of that; many banks aren’t offering loans as easily as they have in the past. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get loan these days, particularly if your credit is less than perfect.

How does a small business get working capital in this economic downturn?

Have you ever heard the term “Credit Card Factoring”? Sometimes called merchant loans or business cash advances, credit card factoring is when a factor (lender) gives your company working capital upfront based on your future credit card sales. They don’t require collateral and your credit score isn’t the main determining factor for obtaining the cash. Some of the other benefits include:

Quick funding: You are funded in about 7 days in most cases.
Flexible Payback: They use a percentage of your credit card sales to pay back the advance rather than a static amount each month. This creates a flexible payback schedule that promotes a successful outcome.
No UCC-1 filing: This gives you the ability to use the merchant loan in conjunction with a bank loan giving you more financial flexibility.
No collateral: As I have stated, merchant loan providers don’t require collateral for the cash advance.
No restrictions: Unlike many bank loans, you are free to spend the money any way you see fit. Most providers understand that nobody knows your business the way you do.

It is important to note that merchant loans are generally more expensive than bank loans. That said; if used wisely, it can really make a difference in your businesses long-term financial strategy.

Follow this link of you would like to learn more about merchant loans.

A good social intelligence strategy is considered as among the best business strategies nowadays. This type of strategy doesn’t stop in just being “social” online, not even when you create a social networking website for your company but not optimizing the site to your company’s advantage. The strategy requires that you spend time in not just monitoring your social activities but also in collecting and analyzing all your social data so that you can translate them into profitable business decisions. Thus, for you to really “interact” through social networking, you have to make sense of the different data in your site – from the comments, to the posts and even the so-called tweets.

If you are among those businesspeople who have overcome their hesitance to really welcome social networking in to your business agenda and acknowledge its relevance to your business then you are but ready to create a social networking website of your own and apply a good social intelligence to it.

You will need to create and carry out this strategy so that it will encompass branding, control initiation, high quality products and services as well as consumer insights and opinions. You will definitely achieve limitless benefits if you use this strategy properly as it will aid you in targeting your consumers among other things.

Thus, even before you create a social networking website for your company, you need to have a careful planning first. You’ll have to make sure you’ll be able to monitor closely all the social data that you need. If you create a successful website, you may find it hard to keep up with the large amount of social data that will come your way and so it is important that you know how to monitor and organize these data.

You should also have a good plan on how you will analyze the data and use the analysis in formulating business strategies. And so, it is important that you don’t only listen and learn, you also need to respond accordingly. This is where social intelligence comes in and so you’ll need to have a big dose of this intellect.

Business opportunities in Mainland China a huge market demand for LED. Opto Taiwan New Century Xu Shihong, general manager, said the mainland of China in recent years, rapid development of LED industry, mainly because many Taiwan people and resources in technology continues to enter the mainland, plus LED into the threshold is not high, China’s mainland as a key to the development of LED industry , from upstream to downstream of the patented technology materials and products to plan their production and fast. Current practitioners in Taiwan LED industry chain and main advantage is the integrity of process technology, must adjust their mentality and strategy pattern, compared to the mainland China market in response to the recent change in the situation.

Taiwan LED chip factory in the new century listed Optoelectronics, the main products of blue, green LED, recent billboards in China mainland market have to finish, and will become a major supplier of Hangzhou Silan, to the end of the third quarter of this year, Average gross margins were maintained at 40%. The company is also optimistic for the fourth quarter, due in October sales are still high, so although we think that revenue will decline from November to December, but the fourth quarter revenue is expected to decline in the overall rate is still less than the same industry who will be expected to decrease less than 10%.

LED market for the mainland of China, Xu Shihong, said there are several unique phenomenon, first, as long as the LED market niche, such as the formal side pieces, the big picture, pearl raw footage and so on. Second, market demand, television Third, price fluctuations on the 1st three cities. Application of high-end SideView Growth in China at present is relatively small, outdoor billboards, lighting and other applications are mainland China’s demand growth is relatively fast, and the demand for larger number of scale items. This LED brightness requirements demand not so high, relative stability and higher reliability requirements.

Xu Shihong, said mainland China’s LED industry is the recent development of very fast, because there are many years the manufacturers in Taiwan and human technical resources to enter the mainland China market. With LED technology industry itself, the threshold is not high, China’s mainland central government there are grants, local governments also take into LED industry to build high-tech industrial park, resulting in extension of today LED from upstream to downstream packaging scene that blossomed in China.

You example above, the present mainland of China Industrial Distribution LED chip industry, concentrated in the Bohai Sea, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Xiamen, Nanchang, Wuhan and so on areas. Bohai Bay, Dalian Road, which has the United States, Beijing Changdian Zhiyuan, Beijing Rui source, Shandong Huaguang, Hebei exchange energy, Lung, Qingdao, Beijing, San Kejia, Hebei Lide, Hebei Qing Rui, Jining blue. Pearl River Delta has the Shenzhen side, Hong Kong is Puguang, Guangzhou ceramics, high-hui Dongguan, Shenzhen Orient, Shenzhen Century Epitech, Hong Kong, Neo-Neon. Shanghai Yangtze River Delta region blue Sapphire Shanghai, Hangzhou Silan, Shanghai Yu body, Yangzhou, China, Zhenjiang, Ole, Hangzhou whale. Others also Jiang Xi Fuke, Jiangxi Lianchuang, Jiangxi crystal energy, Xiamen security, Xiamen dry trillion, Wuhan Di source, Ramada Chan, Xi’an Micro, Quanzhou crystal blue, Hunan by Xing pyroelectric so.

By: Don E. Sears, eweek

With the simultaneous pressures of cost savings and software-centric innovation, CIOs continue to look abroad for development projects and managed services.

A global CIO study from 2010 reveals that 90 percent of CIOs will be maintaining or increasing offshore outsourcing projects in 2010 and 2011. According to the UK-based IT staffing and managed services firm Harvey Nash, outsourcing has been greatly used during the recession and CIOs are inclined to continue using outsourced services.

In its 2010 Global CIO Survey, Nash surveyed 2,855 IT executives from around the world and found 62 percent outsource software-application development; 53 percent outsource software maintenance; and 53 percent outsource IT infrastructure services. Twenty-two percent outsource systems integration, 8 percent outsource BPO, 8 percent outsource HR BPO, and 6 percent outsource their entire IT department.

Thirty-six percent of CIOs are increasing their budgets in 2011 for offshore outsourcing activities.

The rising star for offshore outsourcing is Eastern Europe, but India is still a major player. Vietnam, the Philippines and China are also seeing increased IT activity. Says the Harvey Nash report:

“The role of India in offshore outsourced programmes remains dominant, but the dominance is waning and the rise of Eastern Europe as a preferred hub, especially for European-based CIOs, is undeniable. More than one in ten global CIOs now undertakes offshore activity in Eastern Europe. That figure is significantly higher within those European countries closest to the region.”

Nearly half of CIOs—48 percent—spend 10 percent of their IT budget on outsourcing.

Roughly a third of CIOs have their budgets cut for 2011; forty-three percent had declining budgets in 2010.

Key issues facing CIOs and the IT department include increasing operational efficiencies, cost savings, and improving business process. All three of these areas weighed heavily on the minds of CIOs, as more than 70 percent of them rated these highly. Other issues revealed by the survey include new-product development, entering new markets, improving price competitiveness, green IT and mobile commerce.

CIOs, according to this study, are looking for skills that lean heavily toward business acumen.

The top rated skill with the highest percentage of demand—44 percent—is business analysis, followed closely by project management (37 percent) and business relationship management (31 percent). Architecture (35 percent), IT strategy (28 percent), development (23 percent), testing (22 percent) and service management (21 percent) were eclipsed by skills that help the CIO work strategically with the business. The most surprising technology skill to fall in the bottom ring of demand in the study is security, at 16 percent.

Despite the cost savings, offshore outsourcing and hybrid models that mix onshore and offshore services come with their own set of issues. As the study points out, business culture and project expectations are not always on the same page. From the Harvey Nash report:

“For both CIOs and their outsourcing providers, the key statistic that continues to cause concern is a growing level of dissatisfaction with project management standards, despite the overall popularity of the offshore outsourcing model.”

 [Source] Software Outsourcing Blog Section: http://www.unisoftchina.com