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The ABC of Magazine Printing
Publications come in so many different forms. They are designed to meet the different interests of the people. And one of the most popular types of publications is the magazines. Generally, the magazine is classified into four types: trade magazines, scholarly magazines, sensational magazines and popular magazines.Let’s analyze the essence of the magazines and why are they important in the society. Magazines serve as the basic source of the latest information about anything under the sun. These publications offer vast information that talk about any kind of subject. Most of them are designed for fun while others are research-based.Basically if you’re a first-time magazine publisher, there are some things that you must consider. You should create a design for your magazine that will turn your magazine into a best-seller. How will you do it? Well just follow these simple tips.1. Get some ideas. It helps if you purchase some magazines and analyze them to get some ideas on how you will come up with your own publication. See what catches your attention in buying those magazines. What’s in them that caught your attention. Is it because of the photos or the layout? Is the topic of the magazine eye-catching? After deliberating on these things, you can use the things that you like in those magazines to create your own magazine print.2. Create a well thought-out masthead. In simpler terms, the masthead pertains to the logo of your magazine. Usually you can find the masthead at the top section of the magazine cover. It is very important that the masthead sh

ion? Another key is to be familiar with the kinds of qualitative and quantitative analyses that can reliably make those comparisons for you. The following sections provide some examples of how these keys can be used to design information to answer the generic types of business questions above. HAVE WE ACHIEVED OUR TARGET?

This is basically a comparison between actual performance and targeted performance. But it's not quite as simple as that. Because business results are constantly affected day in, day out, as time goes by, this comparison can only be really valid if it takes into account the natural variation in results over time. This means that a simple comparison of actual performance for the year (such as the average number of orders per customer per month, rolled up into an annual statistic) compared to the target (of 20 orders per customer per month) is too simplistic. It doesn't take into account the very likely event that improvements may have happened within the last year, so it underestimates actual performance. A better analysis would be a run chart (1) that shows the real changes in the overall average as time goes by, and compares that latest overall average (the mean line in the run chart) with the targeted level.

ARE WE PROGRESSING TOWARD OUR TARGET?

This question requires a comparison quite similar to the question above: actual performance compared to targeted performance. But it's not just the comparison between the mean line and the target level that matters here, it's also a comparison of how the actual overall level (the mean line) is moving as time goes by. Is it moving closer to the target level, fast enough? If you relied just on monthly comparisons to target, you'd be mislead by the natural variation that happens from month to month. You need to see the big picture pattern or trend over time.

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Learning Spanish Can Make A Difference To Your Bottom Line
From Bank of America to your local Corner Store, taping in to the growing Hispanic market is becoming more important every day to improve their Bottom Line. With the rapid growth of the Hispanic population, (Hispanics accounted for about half the growth in the U.S. population since 2000), NOT knowing Spanish can actually be a liability to your business.In the past, the only reason to learn Spanish was to get “Comida” and a “Cerveza” during a trip to Mexico or to show off while ordering food at a Mexican Restaurant, but that has changed drastically. In some cities in the US, the Hispanic population is so big, that you regularly see signs at stores that say “English Spoken”.The growth of the U.S. Hispanic population, now numbers 40 million - 13.7 percent of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census. Demographers forecast that figure will at least triple by 2060. Jupiter Research predicts 8 million Hispanic households will be online by 2007, almost twice as many as in 2001. The group's buying power is expected to top $926 billion by 2007.With numbers like that, even if you currently don’t sell to the Hispanic Market, learning Spanish could make a big difference to your bottom line. Yankelovich Inc., a leading marketing research and consulting firm, states in its 2006 predictions that the Hispanic market is "a main driving force" and "catalyst for growth" in the American economy, and that it will receive greater attention from marketers this year and beyond.A strategic advantage you can gain against other companies, who are targeting the Hispanic market, i

You can't make informed decisions if the information you're using can't answer your questions.

INTRODUCTION

The report design working group sat around the table, sifting through the draft strategic performance report to suggest how to make it more useful. Measure by measure they chatted and suggested and critiqued and debated: "this one would look better if it was a bar chart", "yeah, I like the three-dimensional bar charts", "we should add another line to this chart because it would be interesting to show", "it's pretty easy to get Excel to turn this one into a stacked bar chart, that way we could get more information onto it". Then someone asked: "hang on, what questions are we trying to answer with these measures anyway?", and there was dead silence.

ARE YOU USING THIS KIND OF PERFORMANCE INFORMATION?

Performance reports are most commonly filled with a combination of information like the following:

- tables of comparisons of this month with last month, this month with the same month last year, year to date with target
- the default bar charts that Microsoft Excel formats for you
- fancy three-dimensional, stacked bar charts
- other charts that are crowded with information that looks visually exciting and at best, might be interesting
- occasionally some short term trends, consisting only of 5 or 6 or barely a few more points of data
- commentary about project or initiative progress or milestone completion

How many of these kinds of information are in your performance reports? How much of that information is read, valued, validly interpreted, understood and applied to inform decisions? How aligned to your organisation's strategic, tactical or operational priorities is this information?

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS KIND OF PERFORMANCE INFORMATION?

If you answered these three questions with "quite a lot", "not very much of it" and "not very well", then you'd be fairly normal. Most organisations' performance reports are created with only a basic awareness of good business statistics and even less of an awareness of the business questions the report should answer.

Most of the information provided in these reports is in the form of "limited comparisons", to borrow a phrase from Donald Wheeler (1). Limited comparisons can't really answer any business question, because they are not a representative picture of the performance results they monitor. This is due to the fact that there is always natural variation from month to month, week to week, day to day, and 2 points of data can never tell you what amount of variation is normal versus abnormal.

What makes matters worse, is that often it seems this information is designed this way purely because it always has been. Rarely is the design of the information questioned or challenged. And rarer still, is the design of the information reviewed in the context of the business questions it must answer. Information design, particularly the visual design of quantitative information (Edward Tufte has written some amazing books on this very topic - see references 2, 3 and 4), is a real body of knowledge, linking statistical theory with cognitive theory to provide insights into how we can make information more useful and usable in decision making.

WHAT ARE THE RIGHT BUSINESS QUESTIONS TO ANSWER?

What is business performance management really about? Ultimately it's about business success, and providing the information to make the decisions that increase that success, now and into the future. Performance management is about three specific things. Firstly, it's about monitoring your business' actual progress toward the outcomes (and targets) implied by your business strategy. If one of those outcomes is to increase customer loyalty, then it's about monitoring how much customer loyalty you have as time goes by (such as the average number of orders per customer per quarter), and comparing this actual level of customer loyalty with the targeted level (say 20 orders per customer per quarter).

Secondly, business performance management is about knowing which of your initiatives or projects are working and not working in making those outcomes happen. If you have an initiative around developing a customer relationship management system to improve customer loyalty, then you would expect to see that customer loyalty increases the more the customer relationship management system is implemented and used. If you don't see a change in customer loyalty despite implement customer relationship management, then how can you say the system was working? You can't.

Thirdly, business performance management is about knowing why those things are working or not working so you can choose better things to do, or fix the things you are doing. Perhaps the customer relationship management system isn't impacting customer loyalty because customers are already happy with their relationships with you, but just feel your products or services aren't as relevant as they expected.

This description of business performance management suggests several specific questions are important in managing a business so it's success improves.

Have we achieved our target?
We monitor business performance so we can know when we are actually performing at the level we need to, or want to, perform at. Targets are the description of the "need to" or "want to".

Are we progressing toward our target?
Rather than just waiting to the end of the year, or the date we wanted to achieve the target by, monitoring continuously throughout that timeframe gives us more power to influence the end result.

Are their any unintended consequences of our actions?
Chaos theory, the butterfly effect, and system thinking all tell us that there will always be some kind of flow-on effect from our actions. These flow-on effects can be anywhere from small and insignificant, to shockingly dramatic.

Why are we getting the results we are getting?
This is a question that is seeking information about reasons. Of all the possible reasons that you are getting a particular performance result, which reasons are the main ones, those that have most of the impact? If you are getting a good result, then knowing these reasons helps you confirm what to celebrate and keep doing more of. If you are getting a bad result, then knowing these reasons helps you modify your course of action to turn the result around.

What is likely to happen in the future?
Predictive information is some of the most valuable information in business. While no information can really do the crystal ball thing, a really good understanding of drivers (or lead indicators) can certainly give some great clues about likely future results. Thus, you can prepare for the most likely outcomes, before they happen.

DESIGN YOUR INFORMATION TO ANSWER YOUR BUSINESS QUESTIONS

The types of information needed to answer these business questions are different for each question. And unless that information is designed with the question in mind, it's likely that you won't be able to answer the question, or if you do, it will suffer the risks of misjudgment.

One of the keys to designing the kinds of information that will support your judgment in answering these question is to start with identifying the type of comparison you are trying to make. What do you need to compare with what, in order to answer the question? Another key is to be familiar with the kinds of qualitative and quantitative analyses that can reliably make those comparisons for you. The following sections provide some examples of how these keys can be used to design information to answer the generic types of business questions above. HAVE WE ACHIEVED OUR TARGET?

ARE WE PROGRESSING TOWARD OUR TARGET?

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Get Your Foot In The Door: Having Trouble Getting An Employer To Give You A Chance?
Trying to get your foot in the door of a company is often the only thing preventing you from kick starting your career or finding your dream career.Have you ever applied for a job that you really wanted and thought to yourself “if only I could convince the hiring manager that I’m the right person for this job, I’d REALLY show them what I am capable of.”In other words, it sometimes seems that getting the job – getting your foot in the door – is the hardest part. You know that once you got the job though, you’d be fine!What can you do to get your foot in the door of a company you are interested to work for especially when you’re having trouble moving forward? Here are a few suggestions: 1. Depending on your financial situation, your level of experience and the nature of the job you are looking for, you could offer to work as an intern. Basically, you work for free for a period of time. The goal here is to at a minimum, gain experience in a company you are interested in. If the company doesn’t have the budget to hire someone, you might offer your time for free in exchange for them giving you some industry experience that you might parlay into a fulltime job if not at this company, somewhere else. This could be a good option if you are trying to switch industries and move to one you have no experience in.2. Don’t turn down temporary positions if you have no other job to go to at the time. When I finished university, I moved overseas and it took me a few months to find a job and when I finally found one, it was a temp position wit

stions with "quite a lot", "not very much of it" and "not very well", then you'd be fairly normal. Most organisations' performance reports are created with only a basic awareness of good business statistics and even less of an awareness of the business questions the report should answer.

WHAT ARE THE RIGHT BUSINESS QUESTIONS TO ANSWER?

This description of business performance management suggests several specific questions are important in managing a business so it's success improves.

DESIGN YOUR INFORMATION TO ANSWER YOUR BUSINESS QUESTIONS

ARE WE PROGRESSING TOWARD OUR TARGET?

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10 Questions to Ask Before Licensing Your Program
Once you have several products or services that are selling quite well, your customer will begin to ask if you will permit others to use your product as the basis for training that they are doing. Or, if you are doing training or consulting, you may be asked if you'll train others to be a trainer using your system.This is the perfect opportunity for you to consider licensing your content or program. You've only got so many hours in the day, and if you have others delivering your content and/or requiring the purchase of your materials, your business will grow exponentially as a result.Here are some issues to think about as you consider licensing your content to others:1. What will you charge for a licensing fee? Will it be a one-time fee or something that has to be renewed periodically, like on an annual basis? Or, do you base it on a percentage of sales?2. Will you charge a royalty for each product sold or per participant in a training session? What systems do you need to put into place to ensure that you are being compensated appropriately for each sale? Does the fee increase when the sales volume hits a certain level?3. Is the licensing exclusive, i.e. pertinent to a particular project only, or can it be used at the licensee's discretion?4. How will you ensure that your content is being delivered appropriately? Do you require each licensee to go through training? Is that an additional fee that you charge, or is that a part of the initial licensing package?5. What are the requirements for your licensees to purchase any materia

rategy. If one of those outcomes is to increase customer loyalty, then it's about monitoring how much customer loyalty you have as time goes by (such as the average number of orders per customer per quarter), and comparing this actual level of customer loyalty with the targeted level (say 20 orders per customer per quarter).

This description of business performance management suggests several specific questions are important in managing a business so it's success improves.

DESIGN YOUR INFORMATION TO ANSWER YOUR BUSINESS QUESTIONS

ARE WE PROGRESSING TOWARD OUR TARGET?

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Corporate Party Ideas
It is not easy to organize a successful party. Food, drinks and recorded music are fun, but since there are quite a lot of occasions to celebrate throughout the year, thrown repeatedly such parties soon get boring.Why not – at least once or twice in the year, as, for example, on the occasion of Christmas, New Year Day or corporate anniversary – have a party a bit different from an ordinary drinking spree, a party to be original and remembered long afterwards.So what makes a party successful? Is it possible to organize an unforgettable, smooth-running event on your own?The most important thing is the theme, the idea. But it is not always easy to invent a theme. And it is even more complicated to realize it. Usually, it requires much effort. When choosing a theme, it is advisable to pay attention to several criteria.First of all, you should have in mind that the aim of a corporate party is not only relaxation, but also getting to know one another better through interaction, revealing personal qualities, etc. That is, the point of a party is team building. Therefore, it is especially important that all the staff members could participate. Here “participate” means far more than remaining passive watchers because active participation is one of the keys of a successful party. The role of a watcher (if it can be called a role at all) is simply boring. Let your employees feel that they are important and strong as personalities by giving them a chance to express themselves or accomplish certain tasks. A theme party is an ideal time to do it.An inseparable part

that timeframe gives us more power to influence the end result.

DESIGN YOUR INFORMATION TO ANSWER YOUR BUSINESS QUESTIONS

ARE WE PROGRESSING TOWARD OUR TARGET?

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Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Transcriptions
Transcription may be linguistic, genetic or may even relate to music. Linguistic transcription means the transfer of a spoken conversation into written language. Genetic transcription is the process of replicating DNA to RNA by the enzyme called RNA polymerize (RNAP). Transcription of music means rewriting a piece of music or recopying it.Transcription comprises of three types, namely corporate transcriptions, legal transcriptions, and medical transcriptions. Corporate or business transcription providing services offer accurate business transcripts that are delivered on time. They also deliver it in the format required and at fairly competitive prices. Business transcription is a very tedious job, and overburdens the staff. A service providing company simplifies the work by organizing and re-arranging the data. This not only saves time, but also saves the company's money.Legal transcriptions are those that record depositions, court hearings, and tapes in any language preferred by the client. Many legal transcription service-providing companies also take up large and multipart translation projects that can be managed easily. Such services also help to transcript large and complex investigational projects. The wide range of expertise helps the service rendering firms to ease the problems.Professionals with a medical background do medical transcriptions. The firms that offer medical transcribing services specialize in writing medical reports or summarize medical theories. The writers here are professionals and are well versed even with the most complicated matters relat

ARE WE PROGRESSING TOWARD OUR TARGET?

ARE THEIR ANY UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ACTIONS?

A slightly more complex comparison is needed to answer this question. Answering this kind of business question means you need to have some idea of what kinds of unintended consequences you could have expected, and some information about the extent to which these consequences are occurring - before and after you take action to achieve the performance result you want.

When you have this information, it would ideally take a similar form to the information that answers the previous two questions: a run chart that shows real changes in the overall actual level as time goes by. You then can compare the patterns or trends over time of your performance result, with those of the unintended consequences, and if you see some kind of correlated pattern, there's a strong clue that by achieving your performance result, you are also getting some other kind of result as a consequence. This may be a good thing, but it also may be a bad thing. And by knowing, you can take action if it's needed.

WHY ARE WE GETTING THE RESULTS WE ARE GETTING?

The comparison type here is be able to see the relative size of impact of each of a range of possible reasons for the result you are getting. So step one is to have a good idea of what those reasons could be. The second step is to be able to source some data that lets you know how often, or to what extent, each reason has actually played out during the timeframe you monitored your performance result. A really useful analysis of such data is a Pareto chart. This shows the relative size of impact of each reason, from largest to smallest. It will highlight the 20% of reasons that are having 80% of the impact on your result. And viola, you have a place to start investigating further, to find how you can turn your result around.

WHAT IS LIKELY TO HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE?

The kind of comparison needed to answer questions like this is the comparison between or among a set of measures or factors or variables that you hypothesize have significant influence over the direction your performance result will head. These measures or factors or variables are your drivers, or lead indicators. You test these hypotheses through a scatter plot (entirely visual), correlation analysis (very visual, with a quantitative measure of strength of the relationship) or regression analysis (not visual, but with a quantitative model of the relationship) to determine the strongest of these lead indicators.

Then, using the run chart analysis described under previous questions, you can interpret the emerging trends in your lead indicators and estimate or calculate the impact this will have on your performance result.

DELIBERATELY DO TWO THINGS

Designing excellent information to inform decisions about business performance is not rocket science. But it usually does require some effort be applied to clearly articulating each business question that needs to be answered in order to understand and make the decisions, and applied to deliberately designing the kind of information that can adequately (even if not completely) answer those questions.

REFERENCES

(1) Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos, Donald Wheeler, SPC Press, Inc., 1993
(2) The Visual Design of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte, Graphics Press, 1983-1999
(3) Envisioning Information, Edward Tufte, Graphics Press, 1990
(4) Visual Explanations, Edward Tufte, Graphics Press, 1997

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Whether you're in a spacious corner office or a cramped cubicle, sometimes a workspace can seem bland and uninspiring. From a neutral palette to cookie-cutter furniture, many offices -- particularly those not open to the public or to clients -- are designed for function over form. The good news is that there are easy ways to brighten any office space. With a few simple touches, you can create a better environment in which to spend your 9 to 5.

Why would you need an exit strategy for a plan, a partnership on your relationship with a vendor? Because the consequences are TOO high for you not to. It doesn't make you a failure and you are not planning to fail. Instead, you are covering all of your bases in order to protect your interests. How so?

So you want to start a business. You have an idea. Lets say you want to be a carpenter. You print some brochures, some business cards, and take out an ad in the Yellow Pages. You pay $600 for a website and a domain name that tells everyone about your amazing credentials and experience. You distribute your fliers at a local grocery store. And then you wait. And wait. And wait...

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