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Business Tools Blog

Virtual Meetings

July 3, 2010 – 8:16 pm

Most businesses are spread across multiple geographies.  Rather than meeting in person, we typically meet via a Conference/Video Calling for Business solution.  This isn’t just for cost savings, it saves time.  Virtual meetings can be extremely effective if we use the right tools.

Online meetings - A picture is worth a thousand words.  When we host online meetings, we can share information, real time.  If someone has a question, they can share what they are looking at with others in the meeting.  They can even turn over their mouse to someone in another city and let them drive the presentation.

Video Conferencing - It’s as if everyone is in the same room.  With the cost of a tiny video camera, you can meet colleagues and clients via video.

Chat - The chat feature is great if your team would rather collaborate through white boarding and instant messaging.

Audience feedback - When conducting meetings with large groups, you can get instant feedback with polls and surveys.  You can check to see if your messages are being heard and understood.   We’ve used a function that let’s the audience provide feedback to the speaker using red and green buttons.  Red means slow down and cover in more detail.  Green means, speed up … we get it already.

Call Recording - What if everyone can’t make the call?  Call recording is a great feature so that your team can replay the call at their convenience.

Sandi Mays | Meetings | Comments (0)

I am outraged by the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf

June 23, 2010 – 5:52 pm

Typically when I see a Dilbert cartoon, I laugh.  This one didn’t make me laugh.  Does it remind you of anything going on in the news right now?

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We’ve allowed companies to drill without making it mandatory that there be a workable plan or staff training in place in case of a catastrophe.  Could no one have predicted that something like this might happen?  The financial and environmental impact of the disaster will not be known for years, but one thing is clear, BP failed to assess and act on readily available information about the impact of a potential disaster.  Would the $500,000 for an acoustic trigger remote shut off valve have been justified if they’d accurately assessed the cost?

The BP response plan is an impressive 583 pages, and has a 117-page “quick guide” (sc).  I have to assume that BP’s senior team saw the size of the plan and gave a perfunctory thumbs up … because the well thought out diagrams and decision trees end in case-by-case approval. Do we really need a flow chart for that? Would this qualify as a workable plan?

I think it boils down to business ethics.

BP held a conference on Feb 11, 2003 called “Raising the bar: business ethics in practice” where Stewart Broome, Director of Business Ethics, BP p.l.c summed up his speech by saying:

… the acceptable behavioural standards for businesses will continue to be raised. The response needs to be practical with a progressive set of tool and techniques. In the end, if we can demonstrate consistent clarity, accountability, honesty and respect for people wherever we operate, business will prosper, opportunities for growth will increase, and all involved will experience the satisfaction of having contributed to human progress.

Do those words warm your heart? Words like “acceptable”, “practical”, “consistent” are being used in place of words like, “we will always exhibit ethical behavior. We know that deep water drilling may endanger the environment and we take this responsibility very seriously. It is our top priority to have plans in place to quickly and efficiently solve for any event that might endanger the environment in which we drill.”

Sandi Mays | Ethics | Comments (0)

Pivot Tables in 2007 - How to Stack Values vs. Displaying Side by Side

June 23, 2010 – 12:50 am

Thanks to Rachelle for helping me figure this one out.  In Excel 2007, pivot tables have a lot of new options, but some of the old functions seem to be missing.

For example, In the below table …  I wanted to change the format so that the MRR and Term Values are stacked in the Pivot Table vs. being displayed side by side.  In 2003, you could accomplish this by dragging and dropping the titles. In 2007, dragging and dropping fields no longer works.

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In Excel 2007 right click “Values” >select “Move Values to”>select “Move Values to Rows”

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Your values will now be stacked like this:

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Another option is to use the Field List and drag the values from Columns to Rows:

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Sandi Mays | Excel | Comments (1)

Politics of Taxation

June 17, 2010 – 4:00 pm

The politics of taxation and dealing with a financial crisis is crazy in the US, but nothing like what they are dealing with in the UK.  In the US, our top income tax bracket is 35% (steep to be sure), but not even close to the UK’s top income tax of 50%.

If you’ve been following the UK news, you’ll see the age old battle over whether or not they should raise capital gains tax. In a Taxation briefing, Chartered Accountants report, “Given the discrepancy between the current  Capital Gains Tax (CGT) rate of 18% and the top Income Tax rate of 50% it is no surprise that an increase for non-business or investment assets is proposed. The new rates will be “similar or the same as those applied to income”, which could be as high as 50%.”

General secretary Brendan Barber said: “The vast majority of taxpayers never come into contact with capital gains tax as they are simply not wealthy enough to buy and sell the assets that bring capital gains. But most will find it incomprehensible that they pay more tax on the wages they earn from putting in a full day’s work than the wealthy do from sitting back and watching their assets increase in value.”

I think most people would agree with Barber, but having a majority opinion doesn’t make it right. Professor Paul D. Evans of Ohio State University, completed a study, The Relationship Between Realized Capital Gains and Their Marginal Rate of Taxation, 1976-2004. He found that there was an inverse relationship between the Capital Gains Tax Rate and the amount of Taxable Revenue Received.  The Adams Smith Institute reports, The Effect of Capital Gains Tax Rises on Revenue:

Evans found that taxpayers continue to exhibit significant sensitivity to the tax rate on capital gains in deciding how much of their gains to realize over time and would report fewer gains if the rate were raised. He found that at current US tax rates, a 1 percentage point reduction in the marginal tax rates on capital gains might trigger a 10.32 percent increase in realized capital gains. Behavior in recent years is broadly similar to that found in earlier studies.

He reviewed the many studies that seek to estimate the revenue-maximising rate, i.e. the answer to the question “What tax rate on capital gains would raise the most capital gains revenue for the government?” (The revenue maximizing rate is not of course the optimal tax rate for the economy). He found that based on 2004 data the revenue maximizing tax rate is just under 10% – 9.69% to be precise. He found that raising the US capital gains tax rate from the current 15% would reduce federal capital gains tax revenue and that additional revenue would be lost from other parts of the income tax and from other federal taxes due to reduced investment, employment, and income. He found that the optimal capital gains tax rate to maximize public welfare, and to help the federal budget, is closer to if not zero.

Hopefully the coalition Government will look to the US experience, and not try to reinvent the wheel.  In this case ignoring history could be a very costly mistake.

Sandi Mays | Economics | Comments (0)

Inexact searches in Excel, Word or PowerPoint

June 16, 2010 – 12:11 am

Have you ever needed to find something in a document or spreadsheet and not known eactly how that item is spelled?  Ex. Corporation, Corp., Corp or any 3 digit number that starts with 25

Microsoft uses wildcards to search when you aren’t certain of the exact spelling or number.

  1. * is used to match any number of characters
  2. ? is used to match a single character

Example -

  • Type (Ctrl+F) to bring up the Find and Replace menu
  • Type Corp* to find any data that starts with “Corp”.  This search would find Corp, Corporation, Corp.

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Example -

  • Type (Ctrl+F) to bring up the Find and Replace menu
  • Type 25? to find any data that starts with 25 and has 1 more digit.  This search would find 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259
  • or type 2?5 to find any data that starts with 2 and ends with 5 and has one digit between the 2 and the 5.  This search would find 205, 215, 225, etc.
  • or type 2??5 to find any data that starts with 2 and ends with 5 and has two digits between the 2 and the 5.  This search would find 2005, 2105, 2325, etc.

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Sandi Mays | Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word | Comments (0)

Leaders In London - Behind the scenes

June 12, 2010 – 9:28 am

Some events are covered widely by the press and some aren’t. Why? I was thinking about this the other day and I came across a case study for Leaders In London conference.

The Institute for International Research hired one of the best PR agencies in Europe. Having big names like Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev in attendance would create a buzz in the press (positive or negative) irrespective of PR, but the following is what a well executed PR campaign was able to accomplish:

  • The event was covered 100+ times across TV, radio, print, online and global media.
  • Positive television press including CNN, ITN, CNBC, BBC 2 and BBC News 24.
  • Positive front page story with The Daily Telegraph
  • Global media coverage of Mikhail Gorbachev at the conference
  • Tons of traffic driven to International Research’s website
How was this accomplished?
  • Surveys were used to create early news coverage, seeding the event with business and political journalists.
  • Exclusive pre-event interview opportunities were offered to some of the elite press.
  • A media day was arranged prior to the event
  • Business and political journalists and photographers were invited along to the event for media opportunities with the majority of speakers
  • The PR team managed a rigorous schedule making sure that photographers and reporters had access to the speakers for the interviews that mattered
When events go really well, you think that they it happened.  But what’s really happening is behind the scenes is a team of experts is executing against a well orchestrated plan.
Sandi Mays | PR | Comments (0)

How to add an email to your safe recipients list in Outlook

June 11, 2010 – 8:52 am

IMO SPAM filters are crazy and unpredictable. At least once a week an important email will land in my junk mail, even though most emails from the same sender make it to my inbox.

Our IT department just gave me a quick fix. Fingers crossed that it will work!

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Preferences tab, under E-mail, click Junk E-mail.
3. Click the Safe Senders or Safe Recipients tab.
4. Click Add.
5. In the Enter an e-mail address or Internet domain name to be added to the list box, enter the name or address you want added, and then click OK.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each name or address that you want to add

Sandi Mays | Outlook | Comments (0)

Way to Go Blackhawks!!

June 10, 2010 – 7:12 am

Sandi Mays | Financial Management | Comments (0)

Fed Up with Facebook

May 27, 2010 – 3:39 pm

I was waiting for an airplane and I overheard a conversation about Social Networks. The group that was chatting (rather loudly) was in their early 20s.

A woman was talking about how much time she spent on Facebook and MySpace. She said that she never intends to spend more than a few minutes checking her friends’ status or updating her own … but inevitably ends up spending hours in front of her computer and not really accomplishing anything. The other 20 somethings agreed. “You just keep clicking and clicking and before you know it, half your day is gone.” The conversation ended with a resolve. “From now on, I am only going to check Facebook once a week and I am closing my MySpace account.”

This may be an isolated case, or maybe GenY is getting fed up with a culture that doesn’t interact except via computer.

Sandi Mays | Facebook | Comments (0)

I heard a great quote today

May 21, 2010 – 1:46 pm

I heard a great quote today and thought I’d share.

Ted Kennedy once told his staff: “Don’t worry too much about the credit. If the project is successful, there will be plenty of credit to go around. If it fails, you don’t want the credit anyway”.

Sandi Mays | Financial Management | Comments (0)