In the report, a small business is defined as an enterprise which employs fewer than 50 people. Statistics on medium (50-249 persons) and large enterprises (250 or more people) are included for comparison.

Highlights of the report are:

Industry: Production and employment dominated by medium and large enterprises

* In 2005, four of the five industrial companies (81%) were small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. This company employs 50,000 people, slightly more than one fifth of total industrial employment. * The larger companies (50 or more persons) employed 181,100 people in 2005 and generated 93% of the total turnover in the industry. * The vast majority of small industrial firms were Irish owned (95%). Nearly 42% of larger companies are foreign-owned.

Services: More than 380,000 employees of small businesses in the service sector

* In the service sector, almost all companies (98%) were small. There were 82,100 small businesses, employing over 380,000 people in the service sector in 2005. That was more than half of total employment in this sector. * Small businesses account for nearly half (49%) of total turnover in the services sector, and generates a turnover of nearly ? 81.6bn in 2005. * Nearly half of small businesses in the service sector are the property of the family (47%). The vast majority of these family businesses employed fewer than 10 people.

Construction: Small businesses occupied two thirds of all people who work in construction

* According to the Quarterly National Household Survey, there were 253,200 employed in construction in the fourth quarter of 2005. Of these, 211,000 have indicated that they worked in small businesses (fewer than 50 employees), while 24,500 have indicated that they worked in large enterprises (50 or more employees). A further 17,600 not specify the number of employees to their jobs.

* Among the 253,200 people employed in the construction industry, more than 65% worked for very small concerns employing less tha ten people.

Salaries and wages: 54% of private sector employees in small firms earned between ? 10 – ? 20 per hour in 2006

* The average hourly wage in small businesses were ? 15.22 in 2006 compared to ? 19.38 in companies with 50 or more workers in 2006.

* The average annual salary for employees in a small business amounted to ? 32,453 in 2006. The average wage in large enterprises was ? 44,794 per year.

Knowledge-based economy: the larger companies have shown higher levels of e-government activities

* Small businesses generally not more modern information and communication technology than larger companies.

* Almost all companies with 10 or more employees were connected to the Internet that two-thirds of businesses with fewer than 10 employees to use the Internet.

Size of work: almost 56% of employment in small workplaces

* In all areas, 56% of jobs in workplaces where fewer than 50 persons were employed in the second quarter of 2007. A total of 1175800 people worked in small workplaces. Of these, 839,300 were employees, 216,600 are self-employed and 107,900 are self-employed with employees. These figures include agriculture and the public sector and the economy.

* Among the 316,300 non-Irish nationals in employment in the second quarter of 2007, less than half (47%) worked in small workplaces.

EU comparison, the value added in small construction firms in Ireland was three times the EU average in 2005

* Almost three-quarters of production in Ireland turnover was generated by large companies, while the EU average was 60%.

* In 2005, Ireland is recorded but the gross value added per employee of ? 51,600 in the distribution of services. The EU average was ? 33,000 per employee. * The gross value added per employee in the construction industry in Ireland was significantly higher than the EU average for all types of employment dimension.

1. Set monthly targets for achievements

To achieve web marketing business growth, it is important that you’ve achievable targets & work towards accomplishing them. In the digital world, smart work is often the key  than hard work. Raising the bar at regular intervals & identifying the means to reach the new aim post are important.

2. Search more customers or more smart business

When the foundation has been laid, & you’re confident that it can take the load, that is the time to plan for growth in your online business. For every business, it is important that potential customers know about the product. Advertising online business fortunately is easy & your cost per ‘eye pair’ is nominal when you diligently use the available medium. You should continuously work towards adding customers or adding volumes from existing customers.

3. Focus on your strengths

Focusing on your strengths & allowing other experts to help your business is another key factor for web business growth. If you’re an expert in affiliate marketing & your web-site needs optimization, let an expert handle that. Some people take time off their business & go back to school trying to learn fresh lessons for their business. With expert help, you’re bound to make more profits than make any loss.

More tips and ideas for online business and Start Now! need make money fast and online.

If you are an African American, you can easily contact the local business groups in your state for inquiring about federal grants options. As a matter of fact, they are offered by specialized business groups within the boundaries of their city.

These grants are not just given to promote any regular business. Rather, they are even used to encourage cultural businesses. Every year, the government gives millions of dollars in the form of grants to Native Americans for different purposes.

The grants are not just provided to start up or expand a small business. Instead, they are even provided to go to a college or build a home. Indeed, education grants are very popular among Native Americans, giving them an opportunity to complete their education with the help of financial funding by the government.

Where to look for the grants?

Start-business government grants are available for Native Americans on a state by state basis. While searching for these business grants, it is wise to search for local sites as they might prove to be helpful. Indeed, they can give information about availing specific grants that you might be interested in.

What is needed for a successful application?

To receive business or college grants, you will typically require a certificate highlighting that you are indeed a Native American and belong to one of the federally recognized belt of tribes.

It is imperative to apply for grants to aid your business programs and help you expand it. You can even do the keyword search in order to see the listings of the agencies from which you can receive this helping hand.

What are the great benefits of grants?

In short, grants serve to be a nice medium of assistance or aid for Native Americans since they must not be repaid, unlike bank loans. You can get the grant application forms on the Internet. Find out, if you are eligible for this financial aid and also the details you need to include in the grants applications

It is important to remember that one can apply for more than one grant. This will help in increasing your chances of receiving the grant for your small business.

In this context, you should know that the application form should be filled out carefully to ensure accuracy. In case that there is a requirement for a grant proposal, this too should be worded carefully. Briefly, the application examiner should be able to easily go through your papers without any problems.

So, do not wait longer and apply for your grant right now! Look up the benefits of small grants for Native Americans in your city or state and apply immediately.

Instead of tearing your hair out looking for a <a title=Small business loan at Innuity funding! rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=http://www.innuityfunding.com/page/1ny5i/Resources/Small_Business_Loans.html>small business loan</a> and thinking there is no other way, broaden your horizons. There are several smaller funding sources out there that may be small in size but not in funds. Smaller investment companies that are not owned by a corporation can be the perfect resource for small and medium sized businesses. These companies are often made up of entrepreneurs themselves and so they know exactly what small and medium sized businesses are looking for. These smaller investment firms understand the need for excess capital is a time sensitive issue- where any delay may be crucial to the continued operations of your business; which is something that banks are not often aware of, nor take into consideration.

Whether you need a small loan or a larger loan, if you are able to present a business plan, your projected financial growth and qualifying credit, it shouldn’t be much more than a couple phone calls and emails to get the capitol you need.

Besides expanding your business, there are several reasons to look into <a title=Small business loan at Innuity funding! rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=http://www.innuityfunding.com/page/1ny5i/Resources/Small_Business_Loans.html>small business loan</a>. For example:

• Piece of mind having extra capitol incase of emergencies
• Upgrade computer equipment or office chairs/cubicles
• Temporary assistance in payroll
• Launch a marketing plan

Even in these tough economic times, there are silver linings even in the darkest clouds. Look to local investors and self -owned funding companies to help you get the funds you needed yesterday today.

By: Godwin C. Nwaogwugwu

(E-Business Consultant)

(http://www.imoonline.org/gcforum.htm)

Published March 7, 2007

In simple terms, E-business (doing business on the Internet) can enable small scale businesses in emerging markets gain greater bargaining power in the global economic exchange despite their limited capital, and mobility. The world economy is moving online. Today people are meeting online and eventually getting married, people who do not have the capital to establish physical stores are getting rich maintaining only online shops, small musicians who find it difficult getting producers are uploading their tracks on ‘Napster’ (http://www.napster.com/choose/index.html) to be downloaded by millions of people around the world, even politicians are using video-sharing tools like ‘Youtube’ (http://www.youtube.com/) to reach potential voters, etc. Therefore, the action or inaction of African businesses to take advantage of e-business will determine how much they grow in the coming years.

E-readiness Ranking

Every year Economist come up with a table of e-readiness ranking from a selected number of countries. It is not surprising that African countries often rank lowest in most e-readiness reports. That is not very promising considering that most investors today will be interested not only on the investment climate and infrastructure in a country but also on e-readiness indices such as national connectivity, e-leadership, information security, human capital, and e-business climate.

Interpreting E-readiness Indices

There are many indices used to measure e-readiness. The most common ones are:

• Connectivity: Addresses the ability to exchange information, goods and services with the rest of the world.

• E-leadership: Addresses the commitment of a national government to partner with industry leaders to create conditions favorable to electronic transactions.

• Information security: Addresses issues concerning the protection of personal data, intellectual property, and effective privacy laws.

• Human Capital: Emphasis on developing competent manpower including IT managers who can manage complex technology tasks, policy analysts who can make informed inputs on government policies and regulations that are capable of stifling technology growth; local content creators who can either customize or adapt global technologies to the specific business needs in the country, software and hardware engineers.

Beyond the indices, e-business also requires a larger population of end-users or consumers who don’t have to understand how the technology works, but can use the technology.

How Small Businesses In Africa Can Benefit From E-business:

Individual Action:

Even in challenging environments such as Africa, small businesses can still benefit from e-business. Simple information websites with product and contact information, as a first step can open new doors for small businesses locally and internationally. Hospitality industries stand to gain more exposure and market through e-business. Tourists and people in the Diaspora are excellent target customers for hotel and tourism information for online reservations.

Group Action:

Business associations, Chambers Of Commerce, Cooperative societies, and NGOs in Africa can bridge the economy of scale on the technology required for e-business by setting up online malls showcasing a pool of their members’ sites, products and services. Through the online mall people in the Diaspora may order local goods for friends or family. These associations can also help to guarantee the quality of products advertised on the site, as well as the credibility of its members to ensure fraudulent people do not seize the opportunity. Only certified members and certified products will make it on the site. ‘Ghana Mall’, for instance, sells goods made by Ghanaian artisans internationally. It also rakes in some $500 million a year in goods and cash that are sent to the country from abroad. Funds to develop such malls can be sort as grants from multilateral agencies as the World Bank Group’s Small and Medium Enterprise Department (http://www.ifc.org/sme)

Payment:

No doubt, credit card acceptance is the heart of e-commerce, but technological hindrances and doing business in local currency can drive up transaction costs. There are rules and protocols to gain access to international card association systems, which currently do not favor African countries. The amounts of online transactions originating from most African countries hardly meet the rules required by the international card associations. So there must be a way around it. Therefore, banks in Africa need to establish special ‘Merchant Accounts’ for small businesses to enable them accept secured payments in foreign currencies processed in the same way as credit cards. Online payments will still have to go through SWIFT, encryptions, or other secured sites, as PayPal to ensure adequate security.

Shipping:

Most national and international courier services are currently equipped to handle shipping to any location in the world. Business organizations can enter into partnership agreements with these postal and shipping agencies to either enjoy special shipping rates or develop more efficient shipping methods that can guarantee delivery. In addition, the Customs department should make available list of prohibited items, duties and fees to the business organizations. One workable model is to post their personnel at the post offices to facilitate the inspection of goods.

Government’s Role

As a private-sector crusader, I dislike prescribing any solution that will depend on governments. But E-commerce requires vendor credibility. Apart from technology, the greatest impediment African businesses face in embracing e-business is fraud. This is where the governments should play important role. Law-makers should strengthen existing laws to stem out corruption in their countries. People who thrive on advance fee fraud should be put out of business. It is possible! Anything that works through technology can be stopped through technology. It’s simply a digital war amongst programmers (it’s like the virus and anti-virus battle among programmers). Moreover, the world wants to see trials, prosecutions and convictions to believe that African countries are serious in their war against corruption.

How This Will Work

For this to work it must exist as one bundle. A customer does not want to be bothered by the backend technology and how it works. They want an easy-to-use, time-saving, front-end screen. As for now, cross-continental partnerships will play a major role in helping businesses in Africa cross the e-commerce threshold, as African businesses will still need international partnerships to help complete orders. PeopLink (http://www.peoplink.org/EN/) offers such a partnership. They have developed free, downloadable tools to help small businesses build virtual product catalogs, which they then upload to a searchable catalog on their database, thereby offering small businesses the opportunity to benefit from collective marketing power.

One Stop Tech Support Centers:

Technology investors should also consider going into one-stop tech support centers. For instance, in Ghana BusyInternet (http://www.busyinternet.com/) is such a one-stop IT center with a cyber café, call booths, video conferencing services, document services, web hosting, space rental and other tech support for e-businesses.

Exploring E-business will help small businesses in Africa increase their market share in the global marketplace? There should be a concerted effort to make this happen. The World Bank developed a collection of free tools called ‘SMEToolkit’ to help small business develop such potentials. This can be found at: http://www.smetoolkit.org/

You can read more articles by this writer at:

http://www.imoonline.org

http://www.exposureworld.net

The Chartered Financial Officer handles all aspects of a business related to finance. He not only takes care of the current business but implements strategies and policies to tackle every conditionthe business would meet in the future. The CFO in other words is the brain of the business. Every decision taken, is taken by him after due consideration on the pro’s and con’s. CFO for hire would give you the services of a CFO on an hourly basis or a weekly basis depending on your requirements. This way you cannot only get the services of a CFO you don’t have to pay as much as you would have to for it.

The reasons why you would need a CFO are far too many to count but to name a few you would require a CFO to predict the cycle your business to running in, analyzing and projecting your business and cash flow needs, telling you how much cash you should keep in hand and how much to invest and where, work aggressively to reduce cost expense and sorting out for tax and other issue’s. They would review the financial statements and check what actions need to be taken, help in the process of hiring and firing employees. They would closely monitorthe business and make recommendations to improve it. The models used in financial planning are often so complex that no one except the experts understand them, CFO’s use them forthe business giving it the professional touch you business would lack.

The small and medium scale enterprises are normally working on very tight margins and to employ a CFO would ruin them. CFO for Hire would be an option where they can avail professional counseling and that too with very little expense.

Caution must be maintained however on whom you hire since you don’t want anyone but the best for your business. You should conduct rounds of interviews, get necessary reference checks, conduct pre employment checks and then hire the suitable candidate. The tests range from ability tests, behavior tests, character tests to productivity tests.

There are plenty of agencies that offer the services of CFO for hire and help you make the right decision for your business needs.

There are some basic tenets that a small enterprise should follow while developing an effective customer communications programme. To begin with, the company should determine its objectives for customer communications programme and establish a framework for its effective implementation. This includes setting up control and test groups that monitor the impact of the company’s communication strategy on sales. These groups can also carry out surveys to assess customers’ awareness, recall and purchase intent from time to time.

The company should decide on the format of communications that would be most apt for its target market. For example, if an IT company enters a new market and wants to provide in-depth information about its area of expertise to its purchasing agents, it would be best for this firm to use the medium of Internet. Usage of Internet will help it send across relevant information about its services to its web-savvy audience.

For the communication to be effective, it is important for the content to reflect the value that you ascribe to your relation with the customer. Using the appropriate tone in yourcommunications is the key here, bringing a subtle but crucial difference in your approach towards the customer. The content of the communication should be devised to pull in potential customers rather than pushing the product or service.

Focusing on the benefits of the information that you are providing would also help in increasing your communication’s readership. Communicating on a one-to-one level by personalising the content with the use of digital technology also makes a huge difference. To boost sales, you can include a fax-on-demand menu or a business-reply card at the end of the mail. This would also help in measuring the effectiveness of the communication.

With the growing complexity and instability of the business environment, it is imperative for business houses, both big and small, to develop an effective customercommunications programme to retain their most important asset – customers.

All you have to do is to get out and do some work. Most entrepreneurs start out without a clue; a hundred thousand questions and clueless ness. A knock on your head can just be the thing that might push you to jump-start your business. Here are some quick tips that can jump start your business:

Sell First, Advertise later: Most entrepreneurs still follow the herd, don’t they? They look to advertise. I have nothing against advertising; it works for me sometimes. But to get that jump-start and to see cash flowing in relentlessly, it is safest, cheapest and most effective to hard-knock doors and get your business.

Later, you can move on for advertising in your local B2B/B2C directory and the local search engines. Advertising in the right place through the right medium also attracts the right kind of customers.

Have a customized web page and email id: Having a free email id does not leave a good impression on your visiting card is not even close to being professional. Since most of the communication and business happens over the internet, having a webpage of your company that describes what your business is all about and having a customized email will pay you in leaps and bounds.

Go creative: Think of new ways to get business. Corporate Tie-ups, strategic joint ventures, events and exhibitions are just the tip of the iceberg. What are youthinking about ? Make the right clients contact you by tapping the correct market potential. Do not limit yourself to advertising in the local newspaper or in the local directories.

Advertising on radios and on the internet through banner ads and Google ad words is fast catching up.

Build channels – one example of a channel can be a fully automated with expert content, search engine marketing driven and sales oriented e-commerce site; develop a sales force and train them well – channel number 2; tie-ups and joint-ventures can be channel 3; and so on.

Let your customers do the talking: Dedicate a portion of your website to reviews given by satisfied customers about the service you have provided to them. Give out references to new clients about your extremely satisfied customers. This actually builds your image and your customers do themarketing for you. So treat your customer with undivided attention and care.

Networking: Networking is the key to build on any business. Join online communities, forums and featured group that are in the same line of business as yours – linked in is a good start. You could consider joining others like Ryze too. Exchanging of views may throw up new ideas that you would wan to experiment in your business.