February 28th, 2009 by hanun
When different people are using the phrase ‘small business’, do they refer to a common set of definitions? Like, how many employees are listed in the payroll? Or, the number of years it’s operative? A literature review of 23 papers, which have been published from 1958 to 2002, tries to shed light on this issue. The review revealed an inconsistency regarding both characterization and definition of small business. The variety of definition used in these papers unable to set an agreeable format for small business definition. Mayer and Goldstein (1961) define small business as an employer of less then 200 employees. Potts (1977) set the barrier on 20 employees in addition to a minimum eight years that the business is operative. Robinson (1982) define firm as small if the number of employees is less then 50, the annual sales is under three million dollars and it’s operate as sole ownership. Covin and Slevin (1989) define small business according to number of employees – more then five or less then 500, as well as a minimum of five years that the business is operative. Rue and Ibrahim (1998) define small firm as an employer of more then 15 employees. Perry (2001) set an upper limit of 500 employees as a sole identifier for business to be regard as small. The review clarify that the ambiguity is stable over time. The lack of uniform definition in the sixtieth continued throughout the decades into the millennium. The industries targeted by the different scholars do have one common base; the focus was on industries with low to average economic growth such as manufacturing, trade (retail, wholesale) and service.
Scholars have addressed the problematicalness regarding the inconsistency of small business definition for quite time, Golde (1964) which examine small manufacturing employers with less then 500 employees, argue that it’s an arbitrarily definition which can adequately feet non manufacturing firms. Welsh and White (1981) claims that small business tend to group in certain industries, such as – wholesalers, retailers, service and manufacturing. Peterson et al., (1986) note that the most common definition is the one that used by the Small Business Administration (SBA), in part, that definition state that small business can be define as one if both its ownership and operation conducted independently, and it’s not dominant at the industry which is operate in. D’amboise and Muldowney (1988) write about the complexity of small business definition, which can be a result of the variety and different types of firms this phrase try to encompass. Pickle and Abrahamson (1990) address the question, what is a small business? There answer is that some will regard small business as such if it’s employ certain number of employees, others will claim that small business is one that limits his operation to local market, and part will classify business as small according to it’s nature (e.g., local pharmacy, clothing store, jewelry store).
February 27th, 2009 by hanun
Usually people don’t choose financial advisors; they simply get in touch with them. Many a times in some private banks you will find a super consultant or super advisors who will sell you everything like insurance, credit card, and even mutual funds. Banks are distributor of mutual fund and not the advisors.
Mind it; if you are investing advice from any bank you actually take advice from a distributor and it that case it is not necessary that you get a fair and quality advice.
An adviser should be one who can provide his customers with real value based advice rather than simply pushing sales in order to earn a better commission. Advisor’s role assumes significant importance in an exuberant scenario like the present one, when it is easy for investors to lose track of their objectives and make wrong investment decisions. Conversely, an association with the wrong investment advisor can spell disaster for investors. We present a few pointers which will help investors gauge if they are with the wrong investment advisor.
If the Advisor is offering rewards in terms of payback.
Select an advisor for his ability to recommend the right investment avenues and manage your investments rather than his willingness to refund commission. By offering payback the advisor is not doing justice to his to his work as he is luring you towards doing that investment. This specifies that an advisor is putting your money at risk by giving you commission.
This practice (widely prevalent despite being explicitly prohibited) among investment advisors is to rebate a part of commission earned, back to investors i.e. the investor is ‘rewarded’ for getting invested. What investors fail to realize is that the commission offered by the advisor is actually reward for taking more risk. Wealth creation for investors should come from the investments made and not commissions. Select an advisor for his ability to recommend the right investment avenues and manage your investments rather than his willingness to refund commission.
The advisor only advices top few funds most of the time.
Most of the time an advisor will suggest you some fund and will show you its annual returns. Most of the top ranking funds are sectoral funds and they carry a certain amount of risk. Usually sector funds being a fund with major allocation to specific sectors they are high risk funds. Many times in order to generate large funds from the market the fund houses have fallen prey to herd mentality and launched similar offerings in quick succession. The banks and investment advisors have played their part by indiscreetly pushing these products since they get better commission.
Think again before you take suggestion from such advisors.
If the advisor always have an NFO to pitch for.
Investment advisors have earned well through the mutual fund New Fund Offer’s by convincing investors that it is cheaper to invest during the NFO stage. But be careful this is not the truth. Mutual fund distributors and advisors mostly take benefit of the lack of knowledge on investor’s part by pitching the mutual fund NFOs as stock IPOs, distributors have only discredited themselves by not being true to their investors. Advisor should only recommend a new fund if it add value to the investor’s portfolio or is a unique investment proposition. Any advisor who is true to the profession will pitch for an existing scheme which has a good track record and proven rather than a similar scheme in its IPO stage.
If Advisor’s role is restricted to delivery and pick up of forms.
Investment advisor’s primary role includes creating a portfolio for the investor based on his needs, risk profile and successfully managing the same. While maintaining high service standards is pertinent, it shouldn’t gain precedence over the advice part. Most of the advisors I have seen are usually working for big distributors such as banks, big brokerage houses. The main work for them is meeting the targets rather than provide value base advisory service. Independent individual Investment advisors prefer to make their work simpler by showing them selves only when they had to collect the form.
February 27th, 2009 by hanun
Writing Business Letters Checker was designed to assist us on improving our basic grammar writing assignments. Due to the fact that most communication today is done by writing, we easily notice the increasing use of advanced language writing, editing and processing tools. The following article will show you how by using a software solution you will be able to improve your writing skills.
Getting some basics
Writing Business Letters Checker provides grammatical proofreading ability by automatically identifying any writing problems. It enables you to edit and correct your writing for any grammar, punctuation or spelling errors. Most of these advanced language processing tools carefully scan and analyze your text and then correct it based on an internal ‘proper writing’ database. Advanced grammar editing program enable the following: suggesting corrections for common grammar and punctuation problems, spell checking, and text enrichment.
What is in it for us?
There are many advantages for using this kind of solution; here are the most important ones:
Helping us to avoid embarrassing grammar mistakes. Providing extra capabilities which do not exist in conventional word processors. Automatically identify sentences construction problems that may have been missed during a manual proofreading.
If we examine it closer we would probably find additional benefits that were not mentioned in this review, as this advanced tool constantly changes, bringing us new ideas and additional solutions that help us on improving our English writing and editing skills.
Final words
Writing Business Letters Checker becomes necessary for effective written communication. One of the most important benefits provided by this technology is that it enables us to learn from our own writing mistakes, so we won’t repeat them in our next writing assignments. Although it brings many challenges to software developers, we can expect this advanced tool to further develop itself, simply because writing is among the most significant tools that help us with almost any aspect in life.