Case Studies are Critical for Succeeding in Business Studies

Business studies theory incorporates an incredible variety of topics. Broadly divided into marketing, finance, human relations, strategy, operations, and environment, business studies theory is often difficult to master. Whether you're delving into a broad topic like marketing theory or a highly specialised field like stock valuation and depreciation, it's helpful to examine case studies. In looking at how actual businesses tackled a problem, you can more quickly learn how business studies theory applies to the real world. This can help you enormously when you are sitting for your Business Studies GCSEs, AS or A Levels.

Here are three examples of actual case studies that are available on the Web as a free educational resource:

1. Embracing Change

To illustrate the need for organisations to adapt to shifts in the business environment, one case study examines Aegon, a global insurance and pensions company. Aegon needed to combine its own strengths with those of its subsidiary brands in order to increase its visibility within the UK. By examining the external factors influencing change, the reasons for change, the process of creating a new organisational culture, and the steps needed to implement change, this case study illustrates the complete cycle involved in one company's quest to achieve a greater market presence.

2. Corporate Social Responsibility

Consumers are increasingly choosing to patronize companies that demonstrate a high degree of social responsibility through improving the lives of their workers, their communities, and ultimately, the world. Among the case studies offered as a free educational resource is a case study on Amway, a worldwide direct sales organization, and the way the company partnered with UNICEF, the global advocate for children. The case study looks at the issue of corporate growth and responsibility, how Amway developed a strategy for implementing a programme, the process of identifying stakeholders, and the elements involved in ensuring that the corporate social responsibility strategy was in alignment with the company's business objectives. In the process, the company was able to strengthen its already sterling reputation.

3. Flexible Working Patterns

The changing face of the workforce means that today's organisations need to adapt to the needs of their employees. A case study of the Audit Commission illustrates how developing flexible work practices can both improve a company's services and meet the needs of its staff. A review of it business activity identified three groups of jobs within the organisation, as well as the types of workers they employed. It then outlines the three types of flexibility needed to optimise the productivity of their workforce, and covers the benefits and challenges of managing a flexible workforce. The process of examining a workforce and workforce practices via a case study is an excellent way to understand business studies theory.

There are many other types of case studies that support business studies theory, such as those involving the creation of quality standards, the role of market research, how deregulation can support the growth of a company, and how business planning can support key performance indicators as measures of success. Best of all, they're all available as a free educational resource.

Critical Business Procedure - Keep All Email Communications

Businesses routinely maintain copies of correspondence and memos. Far to often, however, they do not extend this practice to email correspondence. Email correspondence is no different then your normal paperwork. You must keep copies of all of it to protect your business in any litigation.

Currently, only banks and broker-dealers are obliged to retain e-mail and instant messaging documents for three years under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules. Beginning July 2006, all public companies will also be required to do so under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Notwithstanding these laws, your custom and practice should be to maintain copies of all email correspondence. Email is considered evidence and courts are hammering businesses that do not maintain email records. Judges are often ruling that the failure to maintain and produce email records means the business in question is hiding key evidence.

In the recent Perelman v. Morgan Stanley litigation, a judge’s ruling on the failure of Morgan Stanley to produce email was key factor in the issuance of a $1.45 billion verdict. Based on the failure to produce email records, Judge Elizabeth Maass issued a pretrial ruling that effectively found Morgan Stanley conspired to defraud Perelman in a 1998 deal. Morgan Stanley is not the only business defendant to have this problem.

In the summer of 2004, UBS bank was found by a judge to have “willfully destroyed” email evidence in a discrimination case. UBS was ordered to pay costs and a jury returned a $29 million verdict.

Email Policy

To protect your business, you must have a procedure in place to maintain email communications generated through the business. Failure to keep these records can lead to rulings in litigation that your business willfully destroyed evidence. If this occurs, the judge may issue significant monetary sanctions, automatically find you liable or take other harsh steps that assure a victory for the Plaintiff. As if such developments are not bad enough, there exists a second risk associated with email communications.

Maintaining email communications, however, can have a downside. The problem arises, of course, when a communication contains statements that are damaging to your business. Yes, the proverbial catch-22 situation.

To avoid such disasters, your business must develop a clear policy on email communications and train all employees to comply with that policy. Employees must understand the business environment is not one in which jokes, flippant remarks and so on should be made in email communications.

7 Critical Business Financing Mistakes

Avoiding the top 7 business financing mistakes is a key component in business survival.

If you start committing these business financing mistakes too often, you will greatly reduce any chance you have for longer term business success.

The key is to understand the causes and significance of each so that you're in a position to make better decisions.

>>> Business Financing Mistakes (1) - No Monthly Bookkeeping.

Regardless of the size of your business, inaccurate record keeping creates all sorts of issues relating to cash flow, planning, and business decision making.

While everything has a cost, bookkeeping services are dirt cheap compared to most other costs a business will incur.

And once a bookkeeping process gets established, the cost usually goes down or becomes more cost effective as there is no wasted effort in recording all the business activity.

By itself, this one mistake tends to lead to all the others in one way or another and should be avoided at all costs.

>>> Business Financing Mistakes (2) - No Projected Cash Flow.

No meaningful bookkeeping creates a lack of knowing where you've been. No projected cash flow creates a lack of knowing where you're going.

Without keeping score, businesses tend to stray further and further away from their targets and wait for a crisis that forces a change in monthly spending habits.

Even if you have a projected cash flow, it needs to be realistic.

A certain level of conservatism needs to be present, or it will become meaningless in very short order.

>>> Business Financing Mistakes (3) - Inadequate Working Capital

No amount of record keeping will help you if you don't have enough working capital to properly operate the business.

That's why its important to accurately create a cash flow forecast before you even start up, acquire, or expand a business.

Too often the working capital component is completely ignored with the primary focus going towards capital asset investments.

When this happens, the cash flow crunch is usually felt quickly as there is insufficient funds to properly manage through the normal sales cycle.

>>> Business Financing Mistakes (4) - Poor Payment Management.

Unless you have meaningful working capital, forecasting, and bookkeeping in place, you're likely going to have cash management problems.

The result is the need to stretch out and defer payments that have come due.

This can be the very edge of the slippery slope.

I mean, if you don't find out what's causing the cash flow problem in the first place, stretching out payments may only help you dig a deeper hole.

The primary targets are government remittances, trade payables, and credit card payments.


>>> Business Financing Mistakes (5) - Poor Credit Management

There can be severe credit consequences to deferring payments for both short periods of time and indefinite periods of time.

First, late payments of credit cards are probably the most common ways in which both businesses and individuals destroy their credit.

Second, NSF checks are also recorded through business credit reports and are another form of black mark.

Third, if you put off a payment too long, a creditor could file a judgement against you further damaging your credit.

Fourth, when you apply for future credit, being behind with government payments can result in an automatic turndown by many lenders.

It gets worse.

Each time you apply for credit, credit inquiries are listed on your credit report.

This can cause two additional problems.

First, multiple inquiries can reduce you overall credit rating or score.

Second, lenders tend to be less willing to grant credit to a business that has a multitude of inquiries on its credit report.

If you do get into situations where you're short cash for a finite period of time, make sure you proactively discuss the situation with your creditors and negotiate repayment arrangements that you can both live with and that won't jeopardize your credit.

>>> Business Financing Mistakes (6) - No Recorded Profitability

For startups, the most important thing you can do from a financing point of view is get profitable as fast as possible.

Most lenders must see at least one year of profitable financial statements before they will consider lending funds based on the strength of the business.

Before short term profitability is demonstrated, business financing is based primary on personal credit and net worth.

For existing businesses, historical results need to show profitability to acquire additional capital.

The measurement of this ability to repay is based on the net income recorded for the business by a third party accredited accountant.

In many cases, businesses work with their accountants to reduce business tax as much as possible but also destroy or restrict their ability to borrow in the process when the business net income is insufficient to service any additional debt.

>>> Business Financing Mistakes (7) - No Financing Strategy

A proper financing strategy creates 1) the financing required to support the present and future cash flows of the business, 2) the debt repayment schedule that the cash flow can service, and 3) the contingency funding necessary to address unplanned or unique business needs.

This sounds good in principle, but does not tend to be well practiced.

Why?

Because financing is largely an unplanned and after the fact event.

It seems once everything else is figured out, then a business will try to locate financing.

There are many reasons for this including: entrepreneurs are more marketing oriented, people believe financing is easy to secure when they need it, the short term impact of putting off financial issues are not as immediate as other things, and so on.

Regardless of the reason, the lack of a workable financing strategy is indeed a mistake.

However, a meaningful financing strategy is not likely to exist if one or more of the other 6 mistakes are present.

This reinforces the point that all mistakes listed are intertwined and when more than one is made, the effect of the negative result can become compounded.

Blogging – A Critical Part of Your Web Business Strategy

The methods by which we use to contact each other, especially in internet marketing activities continue to undergo dramatic transformation. In the not to distant past (only a couple of years ago!) we kept in touch with customers – existing or potential new ones, using the telephone, fax machines, direct mail marketing and even in-person meetings. Today, people expect more frequent updates, new information, and the latest of everything. So much so that it is literally impossible to keep up with this dizzying pace and certainly not on a continuing or ongoing basis with any consistency. Thankfully, blogging has come to the rescue. Setting up a blog on your web site - and having an associated RSS feed - means you can keep in constant touch with your clients and potential customers. Plus you don't have to email them and they can get your latest news without having to visit your web site.

So how does this all work? A blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated regularly. It's nothing special. There are several methods of writing 'blogs', but they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page. Far and away the easiest way to start a blog is with a popular blog website. One example is called blogger.com.

However, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What this means is that your blog can be automatically delivered to people who want to read it - you don't have to send it to them and neither do they have to come and collect it. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the job for them. There are several RSS readers available and new web browsers incorporate the ability to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.

Whenever you add new content to your blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone's Reader program or web browser. That means you are guaranteed to be able to keep in touch with clients and prospects. You don't have to do anything other than produce the content. Equally, you don't face the problems of email filters and anti-spam programs blocking your email. Furthermore, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them whereas they tend to ignore non urgent emails.

After a small amount of basic research and reading, you will quickly see, there are numerous advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. One of the biggest reasons is that search engines love them. This is because blogs provide fresh and new content - precisely the thing that searchers are looking for. Hence the search engines are actively pushing blogs higher up the search engine ranking. What this means to internet marketers is that if you don't have a blog for your business, you are potentially reducing your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.

For all the reasons mentioned above (and many, many more), blogging is essential. Not only does it improve your web presence, it also means you can keep in touch with clients and prospects more easily. All the marketing research you can find will tell you that regular contact with your customers is a vital component in retaining existing clients, as well as gaining new business. Don’t put it off any longer; it is time to get your blog going---today!