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The Types of Staffing Services Explained

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Staffing companies help organizations with their manpower requirements. There are primarily three different types of staffing services offered by staffing firms:

Temporary Staffing Service

As the name suggests, temporary staffing meets the short-term needs of employing organizations. Temporary staffing helps companies fill in for positions made vacant by their absent employees or helps in supplementing the existing staff during times of high workload. Temporary staffing enables organizations to meet their working challenges with minimum human resource overheads and avoiding lengthy recruiting and assessment processes. The huge cost savings involved make temporary staffing an attractive alternative to permanent employment.

Long-term Staffing / Project Staffing Service

Long-term staffing services involve placing employees in long-term assignment, where there's no definite period of time involved. This type of staffing requirement is common in the professional and technical sectors, where people are required on a project-to-project basis. It makes more sense for these organizations to hire on a project basis than on a permanent basis, so as to avoid idling of human resources.

Temp-to-Perm / Contract-to-Hire Staffing Service

This type of staffing service is a combination of temporary staffing and permanent employment. The temp-to-perm staffing service allows a company to take an employee on a temporary basis for purpose of evaluation and should the employee meet their satisfactory requirements, the company may then take the employee onto their payrolls. This type of staffing service gives the company a safe alternative to permanent hiring and allows the company to critically evaluate the capabilities and managerial skills of the employee in concern.

Most staffing companies offer all these types of staffing services. You will also find specialist agencies that offer industry -specific staffing services.

Business Cash Management

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Working capital is a highly effective barometer of a company's operational and financial efficiency and effectiveness. The better its condition, the better placed the company is to focus on developing its core business.

The early, primitive attempts at maximizing cash management can be traced back to the late 1970s. Unbelievably, there are still some companies who haven't yet understood that putting cash trapped in the balance sheet to better use can give them a competitive edge over their rivals.

A most recent report shows a further reduction of working capital in companies in the US and Europe compared with the previous year, of between 3 per cent and 5 per cent. This demonstrates the continuing increase in the importance of working capital management to help companies achieve their strategic objectives.

How to do It

There is more to working capital management than simply telling a company to collect its debtors as quickly as possible, to delay paying its suppliers as long as possible, and to keep stock levels as low as possible. A properly conceived and executed improvement program will certainly focus on optimizing each of these components, but will deliver additional benefits that extend far beyond the merely operational. It will demonstrate the need for ambitious corporates to integrate working capital management into their strategic and tactical thinking, rather than view it as an optional bolt-on extra.

There are a number of dos and don'ts to help guide corporate thinking. Firstly, do think of working capital management as a strategic objective that can enable your corporation's goals. We cannot over-emphasize this opening point. The same factors that drive a company's working capital also drive its operating costs and customer service performance. Therefore, by addressing the drivers of working capital a company will also experience significant improvement in operating costs and customer service.

For example, a company's working capital is deteriorating due to an increase in past due accounts receivable (AR). A review of the overdue AR illustrates a high level of customer disputes. The disputes are taking on average 30 days to resolve and consuming significant amounts of sales, order entry, and cash collectors' time. By tackling the root cause of the disputes, in this case poor adherence to pricing policies, the company can eliminate the disputes, thereby improving customer service.

This will free up the time of staff in sales, order entry and cash collections, enabling them to be more effective at their designated roles. This in turn increases productivity, reduces operating costs, and potentially increases sales. Working capital will improve, as customers will have fewer reasons to hold payment. This example illustrates how working capital is one of the best indicators of underlying inefficiency within an organization.

Consider Another Perspective

Don't think of things only from your own company's perspective. If you can help your own customers plan their inventory requirements more efficiently, for instance, you can match your production to their consumption, efficiently and cost-effectively, and do the same with your own suppliers. The potential implications for inventory levels are huge. By aligning ordering production and distribution processes, you increase inherent efficiency and achieve direct cost savings almost instantly, as a by-product. And then you discuss the best way to bill or to pay.

Do educate your organization to consider the trade-offs between different working capital assets when negotiating with customers and suppliers. Depending on the usage pattern of a raw material, there may be more to gain from negotiating consignment stock with a supplier versus pushing for extended terms. This could apply particularly in cases of long lead-time items, or those that require high minimum order quantities.

Agree Formal Terms

Do agree formal terms with suppliers and customers and document those terms carefully. Keep them up to date, and communicate those payment terms to employees throughout your business, particularly those involved in the customer to cash and purchase to pay processes, including your sales organization.

Don't allow prolific new product introduction without a clear product range management strategy. Poor product range management creates inefficiency in the supply chain, as companies are required to support old products with inventory and manufacturing capability. This increases operating costs and exposes the company to an obsolete inventory that may have to be disposed of.

Collect your Cash

Don't forget to collect your cash. Many businesses fail to implement effective ongoing collection procedures to prevent excess overdue funds or build-up of old debtors. Ask customers if invoices have been received and are clear to pay. If not, identify the problems that are preventing timely payment.

Confirm and reconfirm the credit terms agreed upon with the customer. Often, credit terms get lost in the translation of general payment terms and what's on the payables ledger in front of the payables clerk. Do devote the requisite amount of time and attention to the critical issue of dispute management.

Don't set top-down targets uniformly across the business. For instance, too many companies impose a 10 per cent reduction in working capital for each division. This fails to take into account the potential opportunity within a division and can result in setting an impossible target that acts to de-motivate. Instead, balance top-down with bottom-up intelligence when setting targets.

Targets Drive Behaviour

Do set targets that drive the desired behaviour. Many companies will incentivise collections staff to minimize the aged AR over 60 days. Does this mean that customers who pay one to 60 days late are good payers? No, aged AR over 60 days will result in increased costs and time it takes to collect the debt. By incentivising staff to lower the amount over 60 days, you keep your costs down. Do educate staff, customers and suppliers that cash and cash management are important, and are an integral part of a successful business relationship.

Look Within Yourself

Don't assume that all the answers are to be found externally. Before approaching existing customers and suppliers to discuss cash management goals, fully understand your own process gaps so you can credibly discuss poor payment processes.

Do treat suppliers as you would like your customers to treat you. Far greater cash flow benefits can be realized by strategically leveraging the relationship you have with suppliers and customers. In addition, a supplier is more likely to support you in an emergency if you have treated them fairly.

Don't however, treat everyone the same. Use segmentation tactics to split your customer supplier into similar groups. This may be based on a basket of criteria including profitability, sales, AR size, past due debt, average order size and frequency. Define strategies for each segment based around the criteria and your strategic goals.
Do celebrate success in hitting targets. Emphasise the actions that helped you get there.

Conclusion

To summarise briefly, following the dos and don'ts will enable you to optimize cash and to highlight inefficiencies in your processes that must be remedied to better serve customers. It will enable you to build stronger partnerships with your suppliers across the total working capital value chain. This translates ultimately into improvement in bottom-line results, often a good deal quicker than you might expect, and helps clarify the senior management focus on strategic imperatives.and Win Loss Research Business Competitions

Win Loss Research Business Competitors

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Frequently I am asked "how do you get information about the competition?" Most people are surprised when I tell them that getting useful competitive intelligence is actually the easiest part of managing successful business competition. One of the best methods to gain valuable competitive intelligence is so simple, straightforward, and productive that I have put it on my list of Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research.

The benefits that Win Loss Research routinely delivers include:

Increasing your rate of successful wins in competitive sales situations
Enhancing your product management and development initiatives
Reducing the level of uncertainty involved in sales forecasting
Strengthening top and bottom line results for your business
Improving the efficiency of your sales cycle process
Setting the stage for future business growth

Win Loss Research is a succinct, guided discussion with decision makers and influencers who have been involved in your recent win and loss sales decisions. The goal is to learn what key distinctions they saw between you and your competitors, the importance of those distinctions and the value they assigned to each competitor. While the focus of this research is on gaining insight into how your competitors operate and how you fare in comparison, it is inevitable that you also gain valuable customer information in the process.

Win Loss Research drills down beyond standard pricing issues and gets into territories such as: decision process, sales team approach and professionalism, company reputation, product attributes, service issues, and handling of proposals. Although pricing information is involved, it should not be the centerpiece of the research unless it becomes apparent that it really was the key issue that drove the decision. The goal of Win Loss Research is to provide you with competitive insight you can act upon - actionable competitive intelligence - for sales process improvement and better results.

Typically this research is conducted either over the telephone or in a face-to-face interview. The latter is more common in places and cultures where that is the preferred communication modality. Getting the results that you want out of Win Loss Research is a combination of art and science; art being the skill of the researcher in eliciting the intelligence that you need; science being the development of a research guide that facilitates the discovery of actionable competitive intelligence.

As with almost anything worth doing, focusing on Critical Success Factors (CSFs) increases the likelihood that you will get what you need. For Win Loss Research, focusing on the following CSFs will greatly increase your likelihood of obtaining productive competitor intelligence:

1) Use professional competitive researchers who are skilled in drawing out actionable competitive intelligence. They will also be perceived as unbiased, thereby ensuring candor.

2) Selecting the optimal mix of win and loss opportunities to research is a reasonably complex task which must be done correctly to ensure that you are gaining insight from the target markets that matter most.

3) Development of a stimulating research survey that operates as a guide rather than a questionnaire is the backbone to outstanding results.

Surprisingly, the tone and quality of the initial research request can make or break your ability to get robust participation.

A common pitfall among companies that report doing Win Loss Research is that they have their employees, typically the sales representatives, perform the research. You do need to have your sales people find out what happened. This should precede Win Loss Research which goes beyond the limited conversation from your sales reps' debriefing. Also, it defies human behavior to think that the customer will feel comfortable being candid with a sales rep who has not met their expectations or that the sales rep will be candid in passing along information that may be construed as unfavorable to them.

An extraordinary thing about Win Loss Research is that any size or category of company should be able to implement this as an ongoing business practice and see steady gains in their customer acquisition and sales. This form of research is not particularly costly or difficult to do, yet it does take a certain willingness to expose yourself to news that may make you uncomfortable at times.

One of the most frequent comments our researchers hear is a compliment to our clients for taking the time to learn and improve from their experience. Once you establish a practice of doing Win Loss Research routinely and take action on the results, your company will realize the benefits of implementing this business competition best practice.Why A Family Owned Business can Fails?

Why a family-owned business can fail?

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It so happens that a very large percentage of automotive dealerships around the world happen to be family-owned businesses. Having said that, there are a great many issues concerning family-owned companies, mainly regarding succession and management, which must be dealt with so that the company can accomplish the goals that the family sets.

Autologica presents a series of articles titled "Common Problems in Family-owned Businesses" based on an interview between J.C. Aimetta, an expert and coach who specializes in family-owned companies, and Al McClymont, CEO of Autologica Dealer Management Systems (www.autologica.net).

J.C. Aimetta is 46 years old and has dedicated the past 15 to helping owners and directors of over 65 family-owned small and medium-sized businesses manage growth, professionalize their management and prevent problems with succession. He has been a negotiator in family conflicts and in the sale of family-owned businesses. Mr. Aimetta teaches the subject in graduate and post-graduate courses in 3 Argentine universities, and has given conferences in Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Here are some thoughts that emerged from the interview.

Al McClymont: I know this is a broad subject to be treated in such a short time, but I hope we can go through some of the main points. The first thing I would like to ask you is: What do you think are the main reasons a family-owned business can fail?
J.C. Aimetta: Well, the main reason is that the owner and manager roles get mixed up. Thus, an endless number of confusions occur as regards to who is the owner and who is the manager, the administrator.

For most family businesses the role is only one. Therefore, whenever you ask someone, Why do you run this business?, the answer is: Because it is mine. And what empowers you to run the business? The fact that it is mine.

Al McClymont: It's also important to analyze this from a management and operational point of view side, for example, when the sons and daughters of the owners reach an age appropriate for them to work in the company.

J.C. Aimetta: Well, what happens is that the new generations evolve and the children inherit the same notion, and believe that they can manage the business simply because they own it. As the children are generally more, two, three, four... a company cannot have four managers. And it is at this moment that most confusions arise.

Another thing to bear in mind is that in the long run the family always grows more than the company. In other words, there are more people intending to live from a business that is not growing as fast as the family. If we also consider the in-laws that sometimes, not always, want to work in the family business, conflicts may arise.

Furthermore, we have to bear in mind that job evaluations are done under emotional parameters. That is to say, whenever a relative is hired, it is very difficult to punish lackluster performance, a poor job. Because an emotional cost is paid, a "happiness" cost.

In a nutshell, a family-owned business maintains a delicate balance between happiness and efficiency, profitability and affection. As the business grows, its owners must try to gently tip the balance to one side. Because it is impossible to simultaneously achieve maximum profitability and maximum happiness, and make the growing family's entire happiness depend on one particular business.

In the next part of this interview, we'll talk about problems that may arise in a family-owned business when one family member wants to sell their share of the company. Outbound Training in India-a Growing Trends!

Outbound Training in India-growing trend

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In this hectic world of business, team management, team composition and team building is very important. A good team makes a good company and to keep a team gelled , team- building exercises became a part of every major company's agenda.

Earlier training used to be held in the stiff office board rooms within four enclosed walls and even though it seemed like a great idea, it usually turned into groupism, with members divided into small groups instead of a team and was not all that management wanted. Other plans like team sports and office picnics also fell by the way, because not every member was interested.

Outbound Training (OBT) is a new concept where it was neither a picnic nor a team exercise held within the four walls of the office. It was a combination of both and was a new venture .It focused more on team achievement and team centered goals, Individual achievements did not matter if the team did not do good. This was both good for the team and the individuals too as their focus was more on the team spirit than individual glory.

Outbound Training (OBT) are usually held in camps in a secluded jungle or hill regions and consists of a wide variety of activities, both physically and mentally challenging. Involving physical activities like trekking, Rappelling, treasure hunts and sometimes even more adventure sports like rafting and rock climbing. Team dynamics like communication, problem solving, decision-making and managing change come into focus during these periods.

The most prominent benefit of this kind of training is team bonding and self confidence building of individuals. These activities help develop, sharpen and fine-tune the behavioral skills and qualities of an individual and also mutual trust and understanding between members of a group. The training helps to generate fresh ideas and better attitudes, and acts as a trigger to reconsider existing work related attitudes. It helps them venture out of the comfort zone all the while boosting the team spirit. There are no employers and co-workers here, just individuals working for the betterment of the team. This achieves the goal of outbound training as each member to work together towards the fulfillment of a larger objective to achieve the organisation's mission.Convert Visitors into Repeat Buyers

Convert Visitors Repeat Buyers

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I'm going to start this off with the most essential mindset; I believe this to be the number one business-saving, money-generating rule. I call this the SGT method.

SGT Method

Sgt. Common Sense wants YOU ... to Stop your Greedy Tactics! With your own personal gain in mind for business decisions you'll get nowhere but a deceiving sense of success. Here's a small example for you to consider ...

A business owner starts an online website hosting company. He spends $1000 USD/month in advertising to the general public through Google AdWords. His first month he gains 200 paid clients at $24.95 USD/month revenue. With these new clients, he's gaining $4990 a month in revenue, $3990 in pure profit! Amazing!

He continues with his business plan, but decides to upgrade a few of his services. His advisor tells him that he needs to put funding into support services for his clients; this will cost $500 a month and should support 1000 clients. Ignoring his advisor, he throws another $2000 into monthly advertising with Google.

Now here comes the part where you should pay attention ... The business owner is looking at short term when he should be looking long term.

Month Two:
Advertising Costs : $3000 USD
Tech Support Costs : $0 USD (NO SUPPORT)
Clients (end of month) : 750 (200 + 550 for new month)

Business Owner: "We're doing GREAT! LOOK at the GROWTH!"

What's he forgetting? COMMON SENSE! If you don't take care of your current clients, how could you possibly take care of future one's?

Month Three:

Advertising Costs : $6000 USD
Tech Support Costs : $0 USD (NO SUPPORT)
Clients (end of month) : 1000 (750 + 250 for new month)

Incoming clients are now down 300. Why? Because 300 of his current clients left due to lack of support. This does not account for his clients that signed up, couldn't transfer over and demanded refunds. This could also put a freeze on the business owner's merchant account, costing him even more money.

Lesson? Take care of the clients you DO have.

Here's why, and this may come as a shock to you but you may not have to pay another cent in advertising, ever again.

"Josh, what the heck are you talking about?" - Confused Reader

It's simple, word of mouth. Word of mouth is the most powerful, and most cost effective method of advertising that is on the planet Earth. What is a better way to advertise, you tell me:

1) You pay $1000 in Google AdWords and gain 200 clients.
2) You pay $0 and gain 100 clients

Good question, is it not? Hint: I would say 100 clients for $0 would take the cake out of those choices. 100 clients for free?!? Sign me up!

Now here's another question. What sounds better out of these two?

A web surfer looking for a website to visit that will assist him with home gardening goes to Google, and types in "home gardening". He looks at the links and has his attention caught by ... what ends up being hundreds of possible assisting sites. But have no fear! After all, we're sponsoring the keywords with Google AdWords, right?

Guess what ... the buyer most likely won't buy from a website that he/she has never heard of before. So he/she calls his friends asking if they have heard of your website with a do-it-yourself guide. He call's his friend John, who replies with,

"No, I haven't heard of that one ... but I know of a good guide that we used for our garden, it worked wonders. Jill said she would have bought two times over, and subscribed to their mailing list for future ideas and tips. Now they send us a new tip every week, it's great! The website address is www dot ... "

What just happened here happens daily to EDUCATED shoppers. These shoppers are the kinds of people you want to purchase from you / sign up for your information. They realize that if they get one good nugget of information from you or a great product, they can get more. This goes back to the term in the introduction, they become a repeat customer.

Here's the best part:

You don't pay more to get them back. Your advertising money went even FURTHER than one sale with this one!
Your .20 per click just generated $50, $100, $150 or even THOUSANDS in sales! This also doesn't count everyone that this one person talks to about your products.

Of course, there are a few drawbacks. You won't become an overnight millionaire with this method. It takes time for word of mouth to properly work. But when it does, boy is it a beauty!

Bottom line to create a FREE advertising empire ...

Treat your clients the best that you can. It's a NECESSITY!

Personally, I believe that two years worth of work that will create thousands a month in revenue is worth the time. Of course, if you're impatient, thousands in advertising costs work too...

The bottom line of the SGT method is that if you treat your clients well, it's the best advertising method you can get!

SGT Recap

When Used Properly, you have an advertising team that ...

+ Is Extremely Effective
+ Pays YOU to advertise YOUR products!
+ Will WANT to advertise YOUR products!
+ Spreads with VIRAL EFFECT when done right.
+ Does the work for you ... and you get paid for it.

Does that sound like something you want? A free advertising empire that wants to advertise for you, and pays you to do so. It certainly sounds like something I want for my products.

Now let's go over the methods to turn visitors into repeat clients. The first one I'm going to present to you is the ...

The Triple R Method

Ah, the Triple R Method. These can be the most effective method when utilized correctly. This helps turn your website from a information site into a money-generating machine.

Let's get to this Triple R method:

Readability
Reliability
Reusability

Common sense but most businesses do not employ this method to better their futures in the online market. If a business owner keeps these in mind when they create a business and the business's website/content, they will have a 75% better chance they're next business will be as successful or more successful at converting sales and keeping clients.

I'm going to put the Triple R method into plain English and explain each point. Hopefully you'll see the power in making you're contact points with these in mind.

Readability

Your website, cover letter, or point of contact needs to be easy to read. It needs to contain simple English as well as easy to understand sentences. In general, it needs to have a good, basic, understandable format. If a user that knows nothing about your service or product reads your advertisement (or 'pitch') page and has no clue what you're talking about, how will you get the sale?

All of the content that you present to your potential clients or subscribers needs to be put in the simplest English possible. Let me put it this way: have someone that knows NOTHING about the subject check it for readability, understandability and coherence. If someone that has no clue what you're selling can have a general understanding of the product by the time they reach the order page, you have succeeded.

Reliability

Reliability is key. Your information that you sell must be consistent. The methods you give must be logical and easy to follow over and over. If you're a service-based company, the services you offer must be able to compete with the industry standard. For example, I'll use website hosting.

If you're a website host and you offer hosting, one of the main selling points that usually seals the deal is the uptime guarantee. The industry standard is around 99.5% or 99.9% uptime guarantee. If you can offer this, you'll gain a lot more sales from mission-critical clients. Mission-critical means one main thing, more money that consistently flows from the source month after month into your pocket.

If you have the choice between starting with a reseller from your 12 year old neighbor that's in school every day (and handles support himself) and another host that does the job full time, choose the full time. Will it be more expensive? Most likely. Will it handle more of the hassle itself? Yes. Remember, if you put a little more money in return for better quality it will give you less hassle. The company could practically run itself, with the exception of support, of course.

Reliability can either make or break a company. Great reliability will put the word of mouth method into full swing, and will gain you a lot more clients than you're paying in advertising costs. You wouldn't complain about getting clients for free, would you? I didn't think so.

Reusability

Reusability is the number one key to any project that you do. Unless it's a membership site, and possibly even if it is, it needs to be able to be re-used. Think about it in the following example regarding niche markets:

You have identified a niche market you want to start a business in. You launch your eBook site and subscription service around the niche, and impact the market hard. Now it's come to keep adding content and maintain the site. But now you stumble across yet another niche, which looks even more untapped and amazingly profitable. What will you do?

a) Design another website for it, code a site, etc...
b) Jump right in, your first niche site is a template and reusable!
c) Be sorry about not templating, and spend hours doing option A, once again.

Think about it! You spend an extra hour or two on the first site making it reusable and able to be duplicated, in return for hours saved on each and every website you launch after it. Imagine that you launch hundreds or thousands of websites ... that's how many hours unless it's templated? See the point?

Reusability will not only save you time, but if you do it right from the start it will also guarantee your success. If you spend hours looking into Search Engine Optimization and making the site comply with the backbone rules of success, you only have to do it once! There's software out there right now called SEOElite.com that's helped thousands of people achieve success over the titans throughout Google. Here's an example of what SEOElite.com can do.

Think of everyone out there that searches for the term "work from home" in Google. How many sites do you believe there are containing or even focusing in on that term? According to the testimonial from a loyal customer of SEOElite.com there were 468,000,000 at the time of his using the software. He obtained the #1 spot in Google for "work from home". Think of how much Return for his Investment he got from that software. One time payment of $176 USD, to return a flood of FREE DAILY TRAFFIC to his site to earn him more money. Wouldn't you say that's worth the investment?

HVP - High Value Products

Your products MUST have a perceived value. If it doesn't FEEL like it's worth anything, it won't be purchased. Think about it. If you sell a guide to making thousands of dollars for $5, why would people buy it? "It's a quick buck Josh, come on!" NO. If it were a proven method he would want a heck of a lot more than $5 for the guide.

If I gave you the choice right now between a $5 ticket to your local high school football game and a $75 dollar sixth-row ticket to your local NFL team's game, which would you choose? The key behind this is perceived value.

Have you ever heard the classic talk between a husband and wife on TV where the wife buys something and her reasoning is "for $xxx.xx it has to be good!". It's like open source software. Most companies won't use open source software because they think it has a problem. "If they're not charging for it, there has to be a problem with it." See the reasoning behind perceived value? what about Mortgage Broker Training?