Month: May 2023

Digital or Business Transformation

Digital transformation refers to the changes associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society. Digital transformation may be thought as the third stage of embracing digital technologies: digital competence → digital literacy → digital transformation. The latter stage means that digital usages inherently enable new types of innovation and creativity in a particular domain, rather than simply enhance and support the traditional methods.

– Wikipedia

It has been more than 30 years since computers had been introduced into business world. With the help of, powerful mobile devices and high connectivity, now we are living in a momentary world that is evolving so fast towards digital that now digital transformation is inevitable.

Most of the C-Levels in corporations started to pay more and more attention to Digital Transformation. They believe, without this transformation, even a long-established company may extinct. It is the Kodak example they are afraid of. To be honest, the risk is there, however is ‘Digital Transformation’ just enough?

Marketing, sales, manufacturing, finance processes should all be digitised in order to fulfil the transformation. It includes working anywhere anytime, broader and faster communication, enterprise integration that would enable performance & efficiency improvements.

That is all well planned and should be executed step by step. Yet can you imagine any change to be internalised without a holistic approach? Without embarking every team member, adjusting / improving their competencies, engaging them all around the same evolving mindset…

That’s why, we believe this topic should be handled with a broader scope and it is the reason behind we like to call it a “Business Transformation’ rather than a Digital Transformation.

In other words Business Transformation shall handles the topic more broadly including mindset and organisations, leadership and entrepreneurial mindset, education and pragmatic planning.

Your Business Transformation journey is unique

Every company has its own inner dynamics and every category has its own realities hence your journey should be tailor made to your business. When there is so much at stake, it is not an easy task to move the rocks around, without rigor planning, sufficient on-boarding, kicking off the new mindset with an adjusted organisational structure.

The internal impact – Mindset & Organisation

Any change in a company first impacts its own resources, starting from human. Top-down transformation approaches tend to stay at the top level with Digital Transformation Teams, causing manager level (or further) to think it is not their business. The only way to beat the resistance to change is to embark the resistors ASAP.

Corporate and entrepreneurial mindsets are two far ends thus moving from one to other is not given. However, with the power of a corporate company, an entrepreneur mindset can achieve higher goals sooner. That’s why, we should keep on increasing skills of the individuals in our organisation, empowering them to move forward within the team.

The Impact on Consumer Experience

Digital transformation for the consumer end includes an architecture of your digital ecosystem to be able to do better listening, segmentation and tracking, enabling you to increase your digital media investments efficiency, letting you to fish where the fishes are. All these changes will definitely have a positive impact on your consumer engagement and thanks to the new tools, we will be able to measure the ROI of your campaigns / activities.

Step by Step Approach

As said, digital transformation is a key stage throughout this journey. All your existing processes should be analysed with expert analysts according to the dynamics of your company and industry. Only after then, a solution can be determined and tailored to your needs. The gains here are not necessarily immediate, therefore long term investments should be planned with an entrepreneur mindset.

All in all, Digital Transformation is inevitable in this era, we just need think it as broad as it requires to land it well in your organisation. As Portera we are committed to understand, analyse together and help you build the right organisation to reach this new mindset fully.

Buy and Sell Crude Oil – Most Profitable Way to Do It

There is a profitable way to buy and sell petroleum. There are four major things you will need in order to succeed from this business. They are namely:

1. Funds: you will need funds to buy petroleum. You will need a minimum of $100,000,000 US. The amount of money can get you up to 2 million barrels of petroleum. You will also need about 5 to 10 million USD for expenses.

2. Petroleum seller: you will need a crude oil seller or supplier where you can purchase the petroleum from. This one is not a major problem as long as you have the funds.

3. Tanker: you will need a tank where you will be able to store the crude oil. If you want to build a petroleum storage tank, then you may as well rent one. This one is going to be costly, so it is better for you to build your own tank and save cost.

4. Petroleum buyer: this one is also not a major problem. The reason is because they are many buyers of crude oil aggressively searching for available crude oil to buy mainly in USA and Europe. As long as cars and factories are concerned, crude oil will always be in high demand.

The idea to make lots of money from buying and selling crude oil is to buy crude when it is very cheap and sell it when it is expensive. That is you will buy it when the price is low and sell it when the price is high. You will need to buy a piece of land and build the crude oil storage tank that can be able to store as much crude oil as you want. The crude oil storage tank could be an underground tank or surface tank.

Once you have finished building a storage tank, the next step is to buy petroleum. If you have funds at hand building storage tanks that can store up to 2 million barrels of petroleum or as much as you want will not take more than 2 months. The next step is to find petroleum available for sale. This will be an easy process if you know where to look. You can start to source for crude oil available for purchase at oil producing countries. You will be able to buy them through this means for cheap rather than when you do so through resellers.

There are two ways to get petroleum from Nigeria. One is through getting oil allocation from NNPC. NNPC fully means Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation. It is a government agency responsible for selling and buying of crude oil. You will need:

1. Proof of up to $100,000,000

2. Performance bond of up to $1,000,000

3. You will be required to own a local oil refinery, international refinery and a major oil trader.

If you are not ready for these conditions, then you can buy from persons who have already gotten oil allocation. People who have got oil allocation from NNPC must always end up selling the petroleum they have purchased. You can buy from this set of people. Example of this type of oil trader to buy your crude oil from is Yamal Gas Progress etc.

Once you have found a seller, the next step is to negotiate and close a deal. There are four ways used for selling petroleum. They are namely FOB, TTT, TTO, and CIF. CIF means cost, insurance and freight. It is a method of selling petroleum where the seller does everything from loading and sending the crude oil to the place the buyer wants. This kind of method is usually hard to fit and most sellers do not like dealing this way. FOB fully means freight on board.

The most widely method used method for selling oil is TTO and TTT. TTO simply means tanker take over. In this method, the buyer takes over the vessel to his destination, offloads the crude oil and brings it back.

TTT simply means tanker to tanker. It requires the buyer to come with a tank while the oil is transshipped and everything is settled.

Payment for the product is usually through swift or wire transfer. This can either be done through bank to bank by means of MT799. Irrevocable of letter of credit may also be used for payment etc.

Once you have bought the product, transfer the crude to your storage tank and relax. Continue to monitor the price of oil to see when it will increase. Conflicts between Iran and USA, and USA and Iran, and the one between South Korea and North Korea, and North Korea and the rest of other countries can cause the price of petroleum to increase. Conflicts in Niger Delta of Nigeria and Middle East as a whole can also cause the price of crude to skyrocket. Disasters like Hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding cities in USA along the gulf may also increase the price of oil.

Once the price of crude increases, it is time to sell it off. If the price of a barrel of crude was at $78 and it increased to $100 or more, I believe you know how much you would have gained. Let say all the expenses you made and the price of a barrel of petroleum stands at $70 per barrel, then crude oil increases to $100 and you sell it off. The amount you will gain becomes $30 times 2,000,000 which will give you $60,000,000. This is cool bucks to make in a day. The way to find buyers for your petroleum is to write a letter with your company letterhead and POP (proof of product) to oil refineries. State the price you want to sell per barrel and anything to convince the oil refineries to buy your petroleum. This is tested and proven to deliver profitable type of oil trading.

Printed Business Stationery a Propaganda Tool

In times of pandemic and frequent lock downs businesses deem fit to reduce or halt completely discretionary expenses. These are thought to be as avoidable with no strategic implications. But reducing marketing communications or propaganda tools is a sure shot strategic failure the impact of which may not be immediate but would be realized as a negative move much later.

For expenses and investments in marketing communications and advertisement have a long term implications the results if executed correctly and persistently can increase tremendous profitability due to customer engagement, earned digital reputation and consumer awareness. There are many cheap ways of company propaganda one of which is the subject of discussion here.

Absence of propaganda even for a brief period can create a void among the brand loyal customers or clients who seek regular services. Absence of marketing communications in any form for a long duration would invite negative impressions about the company and the brands. This can even reduce the market share and trust in a brand. Hence propaganda should never be curtailed. Thus sending the right messages using the right medium should never experience disruptions.

Printed business stationery is cost effective and right medium for propaganda. Businesses should always be focused on the customers and partners. Since long printed stationery has proven to be an effective marketing tool that promotes business if the campaign is careful planned and executed.

Design and colors are weapons of attraction and to add to it a message that portrays the company in good light is a powerful way to garner reputation bring products and services in bright light and create an everlasting trust that add business year on year.

Printed stationery is making businesses more and more empowered thanks to constant innovation in design and technology development in printing. The medium be it a paper, plastic or boards the effect of modern printing is spectacular. The channel could be any even a small business card can yield wonders and the use of appealing letterhead is not an old method of communication any more. The artistic representations, fonts and the actual subject matter make a difference.

It is not only the business stationery suppliers that matter to a company. It is those innovators, designers and copy writers that matter too. Attention has to be paid towards professionalism in designing printing and sloganeering on stationery items that are used for promotional purpose. If taken seriously this marketing communication and propaganda tool can enrich the company’s fund.

Identity Theft and Your Tax ID Number

Truth to be told, a business even has its own particular Social Security number that can be stolen by an identity theft criminal, and make things hopeless for an entrepreneur.

Corporate identity fraud (or business data fraud) can close your business’ entryways and even returned if your business isn’t organized to shield you from that danger.

The Tempting Target

There are numerous reasons an identity theft criminal may focus on a business. A bigger organization may have a few Visas on a solitary record, and not try looking over the separated rundown of charges before they pay the bill. Indeed, even little organizations have a tendency to have liberal credit terms and not checked clearly by the bank.

A personality cheat additionally knows that it is so natural to get data about your business. For instance, most organizations show their business permit in the anteroom, now and again on the grounds that they are required by law to do as such.

Obviously, different organizations are avid to expand your organization credit since it implies more business for them. Actually, the procedure to get a credit extension with another organization might be excessively straightforward; at times all it takes is a solicitation on your organization’s letterhead (likewise simple to get,) that incorporates the business permit number and expense ID. To keep your information and other data in a safe hand, you can check LifeLock reviews.

No One’s Talking

Looking on the Internet (i.e. doing a Google hunt) will raise a few hits about business fraud, yet when you look through the connections that surface a large portion of them manage expressly securing yourself, the incidental state law, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), FACTA and such. The examinations about how an organization can be straightforwardly influenced by corporate data fraud are not too many. Most organizations are not in any case mindful these sorts of things can happen… until it happens.

That is the point at which they discover that their protection, holding, permitting powers and other expert associations are of little assistance. Like Valley View, they can undoubtedly wind up attempting to stay above water.

The reason no one is talking is straightforward: no one can make sense of how to stop it. A decent arrangement of business fraud is conferred by people or associations that are outside of the United States’ purview. The issue moves from a budgetary field to the business world, and traverses to wind up a legitimate issue. In any case, once it goes global, legislative issues become possibly the most important factor too.

Find a Great Career As a Print Broker

Good print brokers are more important than ever in the printing industry. Although it may seem as if companies have focused entirely on their web presence, e-mail, and online marketing, printed materials are still critical to the success of any business. Whether they are ordering business cards, fliers, brochures, or pamphlets, successful marketers know that professional print material can add a unique touch to your information and branding. That’s where a knowledgeable, reliable print broker comes into the picture.

An organization may choose to deal directly with a printer for these jobs; however, a printing broker effectively uses their knowledge base, sales and marketing skills in order to produce the printed material in a cost effective way. The broker makes a profit by marking up the printers costs. Many brokers open their own companies after years in the printing business, as industry knowledge is crucial to the individual’s expertise. If you have decided to work in the wholesale printing field, there are several steps you must take.

Find Your Niche

The wholesale printing industry is huge, so you may want to find an area of specialization for your brokerage. You may decide to print business cards, labels, envelopes, letterhead, and other office supplies that are used by almost any company. You may even want to expand into brokering printed packaging for company’s products in order to round out your business offerings.

Build Your Printer List

A broker soon learns that depending on a single company for printing may be a bad business choice. Find companies in your area with good reputations for service, quality, and price. Ask to see work samples of the products you will need, in addition to paper and print samples. Ask for lists of their equipment and find out how their services are different from their competitors. Lead times are also important for any job. Once you have contacted several printers, compare their prices and estimated lead times to find several printers with which you will work. Working with the best, more reliable companies will help your customer list continue to grow, and that’s something no broker can do without.

Find Your Clients

Do you have some potential clients in mind? It’s always a good idea to start a brokerage if you have a few people you can rely upon to help you get started. Even if they’re a family member, their work can be added to your portfolio. There are several steps you should take for any client. When visiting a potential customer, you must learn about their business needs and what they will expect of your company. Find out the pros and cons of their current print suppliers. The best way to find a new client is to find a company that is unhappy with their current printing suppliers. Let’s say that Perky Printers, Inc. is charging too much for a company’s corporate brochures, but you know that your source can provide an equal or better product for a lower price. This gives you the information and ability to solve the customer’s problem, and that’s what a printing broker’s job is all about. People who work in this profession aren’t just looking to make money; they really want to help people get the best products their money can buy!

Keep Track of Your Production

Another important trait to a print broker is the willingness to track your product. If you want to just drop off an order and forget about it until the day it’s due, this may not be the field for you. Once you receive a company’s order, choose your wholesale printing company to fulfill the order. Be sure to monitor the job’s progress using the printer’s projected deadline. If you check periodically on your job, you can alert the customer if any issues or delays occur. Attention to detail is the hallmark of a great broker.

Deliver Quality, Timely Products

Print brokers go into every job with the knowledge that they were probably given the contract because the company was unhappy with their former printing company. You don’t want to be thought of as “That Company,” so make sure your products is up to their expectations and delivered on time. To be successful in the printing broker business, you must be reliable, above all else.

Scout New Suppliers

You must be willing to go out and find new suppliers on a regular basis. Printing technologies, capabilities, and requirements are constantly changing, which means you should constantly explore new printing suppliers. Keep up with a few industry trade journals and take the time to visit some trade shows. If you are looking for new suppliers or specialty producers, conduct some online research to find the companies that fit all your printing needs. New businesses are always popping up, and a printing broker needs to take advantage of the best of the best.

Scout New Business

A broker in the printing industry must excel at recruiting new clients, so that means you must be ready for sales plans and cold calling. Practice your sales technique on friends and family members, and take their constructive criticism in order to perfect your spiel.

Once your sales have improved, you’ll be able to delegate some of the hard work. You will hopefully be able to hire an assistant who can answer phones, monitor your jobs, prepare quotes, and cover customer service. Your long-term success depends on continuously finding new clients and making contacts to help your company grow and thrive.

When you decide to start your own print a brokerage business, you are dedicating yourself to finding your customers great deals on quality products. If you are reliable, love sales, and have great communication skills, you can be a success story in the wholesale printing industry.

The IRS Wants to Know, Are You Running a Business or a Hobby?

Being a small business owner brings with it a whole host of challenges. Not only are you concerned with taking care of your client’s needs, getting paid and paying your vendors. You also have to be concerned with staying compliant with federal and state laws as well as local guidelines. Small business owners, especially sole proprietors, are at an increased risk of audit. The federal government believes that self-employed people are grossly under-reporting their income and over-reporting their expenses. According to the website Tax Help Online, “You might be shocked to learn that 20% of all small business audits involve disallowing deductions because the IRS reclassifies the small business as a hobby under the so-called ‘hobby loss’ rule.” Internal Revenue Code Section 183 (Activities Not Engaged in For Profit) limits deductions that can be claimed when an activity is not engaged in for profit. IRC 183 is sometimes referred to as the “hobby loss rule”. As a small business owner, it is your responsibility to make sure your business is viewed as a legitimate business in the eyes of the IRS and not a hobby.

Below, I have listed some smart business practices that will not only help you define and grow your business, but will also help you document that you are running a real business and not just performing a hobby.

1) Write a business plan. There are lots of local small business support centers that can help you to put your plan in writing. For example, the Small Business Administration has both local and online resources to assist you.

2) Determine your legal structure (LLC, Partnership, C-Corporation, S-Corporation, Sole-Proprietor).

3) Obtain an Employee Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS.

4) Open a separate bank account for all of your business transactions (deposits and expenses). You need to keep your personal and business transactions separate.

5) Establish a separate line of credit or credit card to use with your business. Put personal expenses on a personal card and put business expenses on a business card.

6) Keep your business documents organized. The National Federation of Independent Business recommends keeping business records and receipts for at least seven years.

7) File completed tax returns on time. This would include all required schedules and signatures. Depending on the type of organization you have, you or your CPA will be filling out forms like 1020, 1065, 1040 Schedule C, 1096, 1099, 940 along with calculating your self-employed tax. I highly recommend finding a local Certified Public Accountant (CPA) that is familiar with your industry to help you determine which forms you will be required to file and making sure they are submitted on time and to the right government office.

8) Hire a support team: A lawyer can help you with your legal structure and a Certified Public Accountant can help you keep your finances in order as well as keeping you compliant with local, state and federal government.

9) Create industry standard business documents and forms to include: logo, letterhead, business cards, and website.

10) Advertise in your local media along with appropriate trade periodicals.

According to IRS document, FS-2008-23, below are some of the questions that the IRS may ask when determining if your business is engaged in for-profit activity. You will need to be prepared to answer these questions and provide documentation.

1) How many hours a week do you work in the business?

2) Do you depend on income from this activity to pay your bills?

3) Do you have the knowledge needed to carry on the activity as a successful business?

4) Have you made profit in similar activities in the past?

5) Does the activity make profit in some years?

6) Do you expect the activity to make a profit in the future?

7) Are there elements of personal pleasure or recreation?

8) Has your business made a profit in 3 of the last 5 years?

According to IRC 183, “If your business activity is not carried on for profit, allowable deductions cannot exceed the gross receipts for the activity.” The result is that your business deductions will now become itemized deductions and be limited to your hobby income.

For more information and assistance in helping your company maintain their position as a legitimate business, please contact a local CPA. Each state has its own independent licensing board. If you are located in North Carolina, you can contact the NC CPA Board website and click on their “Licensee search” button to locate a CPA near you. All licensed and active CPAs in North Carolina will be found on this website.

For an Effective Online Marketing, Do Social Media Marketing

Every website owner desires to be visible on the search results web page in search engines. When they want to be on the race towards online presence, they need to have techniques or strategies. Marketing strategies, for example, search engine optimization, website design, social media marketing, pay-per-click management and printing are currently the most effective methods toward driving higher quantity of people to one’s internet site.

Search Engine Optimization. The optimization of the site is the most certain means of getting visitors or traffic and achieving greater ranking from engines. It is because of this that advanced methods of search engine optimization such as keyword research, backlinks building, article marketing, and refining a website as well as other strategies are ought to be done to help make a website stand above others.

Web Design Project. In web development strategies, models that are innovative, user-friendly and also useful are supposed to be created. One can make use of the website CMS (Content Management Systems) that allows him or her to have full charge of the actual website’s content. Specific top features of CMS include plug-ins, user supervision, E-Commerce functionality, textual content enhancing, sub-page development, picture modifying and banner supervision.

Print Layout. In order that the online reputation as well as exposure of a web site is best, you need imaginative style to do these. Personalized packages include emblem, business card, quote, sales receipt, letterhead as well as account models, making pamphlets, booklet, flyers and cards that will captivate each and every customer’s curiosity.

Social Media Marketing. Using the growth associated with social networks these days, one can make use of sites for example Facebook or Twitter to improve the particular visibility of his services to be able to millions of internet surfers. Efficient strategies including establishing social media marketing accounts, creating these to stand above the fall behind MySpace pages/Twitter pages, creating tournaments and also special gifts, getting visitors to some web page utilizing Facebook marketing, participating followers by asking questions, carrying out polls, tests as well as blessed attracts as well as computing just what proved helpful and exactly what didn’t can easily definitely assist a single drive traffic to their website within a couple of hours.

Pay-per-click Management. If a person likes his merchandise to be elevated in major search engines by paying advertisements, what he needs is pay-per-click supervision. He will acquire more visitors using PPC supervision methods. Staff who were educated from the unique Yahoo Ad Phrases team can easily optimize and take away unproductive advertising campaigns, observe and keep track results, discover new markets, uncover new clients which rivals have not reached yet.

Build Your Startup Business Infrastructure on a Budget

There are quite a few steps to take when building a business from the ground up. This article assumes you have already gained a basic knowledge of these steps and are at a point where you have some funding and you are ready to put the building blocks of your business in place. If you are not familiar with the basic steps to build a business, I encourage you to go check out the multitude of publications you can find on the web and then come back and revisit this article.

In most cases, it is paramount to build your business in steps, being very careful how you spend the precious funds that are available to you, regardless of the source of your capital. By now you should have a list of components that need to be put in place, such as the IT infrastructure, including but not limited to email accounts, a website, internal software systems (both “canned” packages as well as custom software) and more. On the creative side, you will need to decide on your branding (logo and color theme). Then most likely you will need business cards, brochures, letterhead, fliers, signage and the like.

Building a business in steps (or increments) can be done, but you need to look for the right talent. At the beginning, you will be much better off finding individuals that are competent in several different areas. The less resources you have to employ, in most cases, the lower your spending outlay will be. If one individual can perform the duties of six or eight people, your budgetary savings should be significant. Later on, when things are taking off, you can replace these multi-talented individuals with dedicated resources, as each duty will likely become a full-time job. Over-staffing too soon can put you out of business in a hurry or put undue pressure on your business to perform sooner than it is capable of.

Let’s turn the clock forward and assume your business is gaining traction. Let’s say your multi-talented individuals just helped you get your business off the ground and now you are going to replace them with employees dedicated to specific business segments, or departments. It will be painless to replace them because they will be expecting it. Why? Because you brought them in as contractors. You have a lot of flexibility with contractors. If it’s in your interest, and the contractor’s interest, you can propose a contract to hire arrangement. Then if things work out well, you could bring them in as part of your senior staff since they will have such a good understanding of your business. Or, they could simply move on. There are many advantages to using contractors in a case like this. If things are not moving as fast as you hoped, you can reduce the contractor’s hours to stay within your budget. You can cut them loose if they are not performing as expected. You will also save money because you will not be providing benefits, and in many cases, not providing a work-space for them.

Another smart move may be to secure certain essential services on an outsourced basis. These days, you can even outsource your human resource department. Outside services are becoming more popular these days. Such services take the worry out of keeping up with ever-changing legal requirements, minimizing the exposure to your brand new, fragile business. The cost is normally a lot less than in-house staffing for comparable services. A good service company will come with a guarantee (they will have an insurance policy) that protects your company should the service company fail to keep up with current legal requirements, unintentionally creating a liability for your company. It is not practical for in-house personnel to make such a guarantee. In that case your business is assuming the risks for your hired employees.

Home Typing Services and Secretarial Services – How to Choose a Name

Choosing a name for your secretarial services or typing business is important. Select it carefully.

Be sure the name fits these criteria:

o Indicate you are providing secretarial, transcription, VA, data entry or typing services.

o Easy to remember.

o Distinctive – stand out from your competition.

o Catch the client’s attention.

o Create a professional image.

o Inspire clients to buy from you.

Which of these has more appeal? HyperTyper or Judy’s Word Processing? “HyperTyper” tells what Gloria does. She provides typing services and she types fast. Many people have commented they choose Gloria’s typing services because of her business name.

Choose a simple name your clients will be able to remember, pronounce, and spell. They have to remember your business name to look you up in the phone book or call information when they lost your phone number.

List Characteristics

List all the characteristics of your business. Find synonyms. Check several categories in the Yellow Pages and look for existing names you like. Play with combinations and variations of all of the above.

Send a short survey to your friends and business associates. Have them vote from 1-10.

If you offer secretarial services, try using any of these descriptions in a name: Word Processing, Data Entry, Secretarial Services, Transcription, Medical Transcription, Legal Transcription, Office Support, Desktop Publishing, and Graphic Design.

Should You Use Your Own Name?

Using your name, followed by the type of service works well if you have a reputation in your specialty. An example is “Michelle Smith’s Medical Transcription” or “Ann Johnson’s Legal Transcription.” Looking like a one-person organization makes your business more personalized. People like to deal with the same person rather than with different people each time. Try your own name in combination with any of the above. Add words such as Professional, Excellent, Reliable/Dependable, Fast, Express, and Creative.

Test Your Name

Once you have chosen a few names, test them out on friends and family, potential clients and everyone you know. Ask them what kind of service they think you provide and what feeling they get about the name.

After selecting your business name, you can now start creating your logo, letterhead, envelopes, and business cards.

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