Are you wondering if there are times that your company should be giving tokens of appreciation to employees, referral sources or customers? If the thought has crossed your mind, chances are that implementing corporate gift giving is something that you probably should do. After all, if you didn’t have relationships with individuals that are valuable enough to express formal appreciation, you wouldn’t have even started wondering about the potential to need to give appreciation gifts.
Occasions for Corporate Gift-Giving
There are many occasions where sending gifts on behalf of your company might be a good idea. Examples include:
Anniversary of employment
Employee promotions
Employee experiencing major life event
Customer contract renewal
Customer business relationship anniversary
Customer celebration of “x” years in business
Customer opening a new location
Appreciation for referral of a new client
Holidays
Types of Gifts to Consider
Once you decide when to send corporate gifts, you’ll need to decide what to send. For some occasions, flowers or nice gift baskets for women or men might be good choices. For others, others, high end company promotional items such as plaques, briefcases, nice pens, watches or trophies may be appropriate. Consider the needs and preferences of the person who will receive the gift when making your selection to be certain that the gift you choose will be appreciated and that it sends an appropriate message about the nature of the relationship.
Are you looking for ways to boost your productivity as a small business owner? Here are a few tools that you may find to be useful.
Three Technology-Based Productivity Tools for Small Business
Google Docs – Are you tired of sending edited documents back and forth to your business partners, employees and customers? If keeping up with version revisions is wearing you out, consider using Google Docs when you need to share documents with other people to review. This free collaboration tool provides a great way to take the stress out of document sharing. Just go to Docs.Google.com to get started.
USB Power Bank - After spending a busy day providing service to you clients, do you find that your cell phone battery just can’t quite keep up with your needs? Investing in a USB Power Bank is a low-cost way to help make sure that your phone’s battery can keep up with you.
Toggl.com – Do you find it difficult to keep up with billable hours for the various projects you are working on for your clients? If so, consider opening an account with Toggl.com. This easy-to-use productivity application comes in a free version and you can use it to track time by project from your smartphone or computer.
This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of CDW for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
In the modern world, our businesses are quite dependent on technology – we rely on computer equipment, network systems, websites, mobile applications, cloud storage and more to run our companies and do business with customers. While technology is certainly essential to 21st Century business operations, it is certainly not without risk. When you rely on technology to keep your business flowing, internal and external security have to be an important factor that enters into your decision-making process.
Making sure that you have the latest and greatest equipment isn’t what it takes to keep your business secure. While equipment quality is important, it’s a fact that security is a critical consideration. It’s critical for small business owners to seek assistance and expertise from service providers like CDW, who really know what it takes to ensure that your computer system, equipment and data are protected at all time.
As a small business owner, it’s critical to implement a strategy for data loss prevention, also referred to as data leakage protection. This means taking steps to protect customer information, as well as information that is proprietary to the operation of your business. You may be surprised to learn that many systems have security weaknesses in several areas – including as it relates to their internet presence, their internal network, their operational framework and, of course, the risk of security breaches. This makes it abundantly clear that, contrary to popular belief, virus protection software alone isn’t enough to sufficiently reduce your risk of exposure to the common four fatal gaps in security systems.
You have to focus on the eliminating 4 fatal gaps (listed below) to ensure that your critical information infrastructure is protected.
Threat Management – You've got to constantly be aware of potential threats – and new threats are being introduced all the time. No matter how secure you think your system is, a new threat could emerge at any time.
Mobility & Always-On Security – Mobile devices may make work easier and more portable, but they pose security risks. These devices are lost or stolen frequently – and without proper security measures, critical business information could fall into the wrong hands.
Data Loss Prevention – There are many ways that data can be compromised – from complete system breaches to unauthorized sharing among individuals and applications. Your system needs protections in place to reduce the risk of such problems.
Securing the Cloud – Cloud computing is increasing in popularity quite rapidly. It certainly provides a convenient solution, but it also poses risks. I was most surprised to learn just how important encryption is to cloud-based computing and business practices out of the four threats.
Visit the video at the link provided here to receive a free special repot related to the four biggest internal threats to computer security and learn what you need to know to keep critical data from leaking out of your organization. Learning about the 4 Fatal Gaps – and taking action – now will help you prevent problems in the future.
Are you getting close to completing your degree in the field of study that you’ve chosen to pursue? Are you thinking about opening your own professional practice rather than going to work for someone else’s company? If you like the idea of being your own boss while putting your education and skills to good use, setting up shop on your own just might be a great option for you.
Of course, setting up your own professional practice requires hard work, dedication, business savvy and financial resources. It’s possible to set up a practice entirely on your own, but you may find it to be more practical to purchase an existing practice rather than starting from nothing. If you like the idea of purchasing an existing practice, you’ll need to work with a professional business broker. That’s typically the best way to find out about practices that are for sale.
Whether you’re an accountant looking to set up your own professional accountancy firm or if you are a dentist who is searching for a dental practice for sale or a physiotherapist who would like to find a physiotherapy practice for sale, a broker can help you find what you are looking for and provide assistance as you attempt to determine whether or not going through with a particular purchase is in your best interest.
Without a professional broker, it just might be difficult to find dental practices for sale or other professional service organizations that are on the market. Increase your chances of finding what you want by working with a qualified professional who is in-the-know.
Britain has recently faced the possibility of a strike by the drivers of petrol tankers, which could have led to catastrophic fuel shortages throughout the UK. This led to many people choosing to try and stock up on fuel in anticipation of such a strike – acting on the advice of the UK government – while the government itself looked at ways of circumventing the problems that would be caused by any such strike action. One issue that was raised as a result of the threatened fuel strikes was the possibility of increases in insurance premiums for HGVs.
HGV stands for Heavy Goods Vehicle, an umbrella term which can refer to any vehicle which carries large quantities from one place to another – with one of the vehicles which would come under this term being the petrol tankers driven by the drivers at the centre of the fuel dispute. HGV insurance is offered by a number of specialist companies, including Staveley Head, whose website can be found at http://www.staveleyhead.co.uk and works on the same principle as other types of vehicle insurance; with the rate of the premiums being determined by the level of risk that those driving the vehicles present. Therefore a fuel strike in itself would not be enough to automatically lead to an increase in the rate of insurance premiums for HGVs.
What may lead to such an increase is the possibility, in the event of such a strike, that alternative and comparatively untrained drivers were brought in to replace those who were on strike. Indeed this was one course of action that the government were considering, with suggestions that soldiers would be employed as emergency fuel tanker drivers. This could have led to insurance premium increases for those HGVs, because the untrained drivers would have represented a higher insurance risk, but this would not have been reflected in general HGV insurance premium levels.
