Ways

8 Ways Business Intelligence Software Improves the Bottom Line

By Carlo Castille 2 months ago

Can business intelligence (BI) solutions, software that helps organizations mine and analyze big data and small, help your company improve its bottom line? To find out, CIO.com asked dozens of BI experts and IT executives. Here are their eight top suggestions regarding how you can get a positive return on your BI software investment.

BI, business intelligence

1. Get fast answers to critical business questions. “Business intelligence provides data at the moment of value to a company,” says Jason Cook, chief architect & CTO, U.S. & Canada and Consumer Packaged Goods, BT Global Services. “With a [BI solution] in place, companies can extract crucial facts from a large amount of data at a rapid speed.”

“With quick access to your internal data, you can more efficiently use your time to analyze internal information and make decisions,” says Ryan Mulholland, president, Connotate, a provider of Web data monitoring and extraction solutions. For example, “as

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6 Ways to Grow Your Business By Focusing on Personal Health

By Carlo Castille 3 months ago


5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.


In 2018, Elon Musk famously said that people need to work “80 to 100 hours per week” if they want to change the world. His comments are a reflection of the view that it is not enough to work smart — you have to work hard, too. 

Unfortunately for Mr. Musk, while working those kinds of hours helped him create successful businesses, they may take a terrible toll on his health and future ventures. Working 80-plus-hour weeks is not sustainable for most and leads to poor concentration and high levels of unsustainable stress. 

From a health perspective, therefore, Musk is not a model for entrepreneurs to follow, and even he admits that. Entrepreneurs need to guard against personal health issues so that they can guide their businesses through tough times. Working long hours is not out

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5 Ways to Finance a Second Location For Your Store Business

By Carlo Castille 3 months ago

Opinions expressed by CandyBar contributors are their own; this guestpost is contributed by Fundera. 

Opening up a second location for your small business is an exciting but daunting task. And while your second location is an indicator of your store’s burgeoning success, it also involves a slew of logistics and upfront costs. 

With a little help and a few smart financing decisions, however, you can turn opening your second location into a process that’s far more exciting than it is stressful. 

Beyond traditional small business loans, financing options for your second store location come in many different shapes and sizes. To help you figure out the best way to go about accessing financial resources for your second store location, we’ve compiled this guide to the top financing options. 

Here is your ultimate guide to financing your store’s expansion:

What are the Costs for a Second Store Location?

    • Rental /
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6 ways governments can encourage entrepreneurship

By Carlo Castille 3 months ago

The final communique of the 2014 G20 Leaders’ Summit called for enhanced economic growth that could be achieved by the “promotion of competition, entrepreneurship and innovation”. There was also a call for strategies to reduce unemployment, particularly amongst youth, through the “encouragement of entrepreneurship”.

This desire to stimulate economic and job growth via the application of entrepreneurship and innovation has been a common theme in government policy since at least the 1970s. The origins of this interest can be traced back to the report produced by Professor David Birch of MIT “The Job Generation Process” that was published in 1979.

A key finding from this work was that job creation in the United States was not coming from large companies, but small independently owned businesses. It recommended that government policy should target indirect rather than direct strategies with a greater focus on the role of small firms.

Fostering the growth

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5 Ways to Protect Your Business and Personal Credit Scores During a Crisis

By Carlo Castille 4 months ago


5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.


Between uncertain cash flow and concern over how to meet financial obligations such as payroll and bills, it’s a stressful time to be a small-business owner. Many entrepreneurs are experiencing the same anxieties over unemployment, debt and financial sustainability. Your personal and business credit scores could take a hit if you have to miss payments due to a cash shortfall. 

Related: The Zero-Sum Mindset: How to Avoid Toxic Thinking in Moments of Crisis

Implement these strategies to help protect your credit score while we wait for the pandemic to pass:

1. Regularly review bank accounts for any suspicious activity.

Unfortunately, crises and the financial relief that often follows seem to bring out fraudsters and criminals. That’s certainly true in the current crisis with the CARES Act, which has already prompted its share of scams targeting your

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Ways to Master Business Improvement

By Carlo Castille 4 months ago

Business Intelligence Process: Ways to Master Business Improvement

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Whoever tries the most stuff usually wins. Does your business put a priority on its business intelligence process? Does it monitor your competitive analysis, marketplace trends and its understanding of market change? And most importantly, does it put a priority on making changes as a result of insights from this analysis?
business intelligence process
You need a business intelligence process.
This is a four-part series on critical elements of business intelligence. This first part discusses an overview of business intelligence and the three types of business intelligence that are most critical to the average business.
Here are links to all parts of this series:
The Business Intelligence Process Part 2 Market Analysis
The Business Intelligence Process Part 3 Competitive Analysis
The Business Intelligence Process Part 4 SWOT Analysis

What is the meaning of business intelligence?

Business intelligence
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4 Ways to Turn Uncertainty into Strength for Your Business

By Carlo Castille 4 months ago

How to find the silver lining in this situation and put your business in the best possible position.


7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.


It’s a tough time for all of us. Beyond making my kitchen table my new “office,” I found out last week that my kids will continue homeschooling until at least May 15. We’re navigating uncharted waters both personally and professionally. But as someone who started her first business in 2008 — sitting at the aforementioned kitchen table with the same kids at home — I’d be remiss not to share the silver lining. Yes, it’s challenging, particularly as the global economy plunges, but surviving and growing as a business can be done. I’m here to prove that again.

Some of you may not know that business ownership among female entrepreneurs grew dramatically during the Great Recession and afterwards.

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3 ways business intelligence can hurt your projects

By Carlo Castille 4 months ago

Business intelligence can help companies gain insight into past performance for future improvement, though there are potential drawbacks to using BI tools for projects.

projectteamistock84272855jacob-ammentorp-lund.jpg

Image: iStock/Jacob Ammentorp Lund

Business intelligence (BI) tools help companies gather, analyze, and report important information. The potential benefits to using BI tools include:

  • Improved data quality; 

  • Faster and better decision making;

  • Increased confidence; and

  • More reliable reporting and results.

And yet, some companies may achieve less than optimal or even dismal results from their business intelligence tools. Why? Here are three ways that business intelligence can negatively impact your project.

SEE: Project failure: 10 excuses your boss doesn’t want to hear (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Project teams’ insufficient understanding of business intelligence tools

By using business intelligence tools, project managers can learn essential information that helps their companies gain a competitive advantage. This does rely on a team’s ability to effectively leverage business intelligence tools. 

The

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10 Ways to Market Your Small Business on a Shoestring Budget

By Carlo Castille 4 months ago

When budgets are tight, online marketing might be the first expense you look to cut.

Let me stop you right there.

While traditional advertising methods are costly and hard to measure, small businesses have never had greater access to cost-effective, trackable marketing tools.

But with so many digital tools available, how do you know where to start?

Email marketing is the tried and true digital marketing channel with an average return of $38 for every $1 spent.

TIP: Looking for help navigating your small business through the COVID-19 crisis? We’ve got you covered. We just released our Small Business Support Kits in response to this crisis. Check them out for the tools and guidance you need to get through this challenging situation.

Small business marketing services are just the start. Here are ten marketing strategies that can help you market your small business on a shoestring budget.

1. Craft

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Cheap Ways To Promote Your Business As An Entrepreneur

By Carlo Castille 4 months ago

Cheap Ways To Promote Your Business

At the early stages of a business, the goal should be to increase revenue, minimise cost and maximise profit. Therefore, you have to find creative cheap ways to promote your business. There are so many ways you can do that as an entrepreneur, and I’m going to hold your hand and show you the way.

Cheap Ways To Promote Your Business

Maximise Your Social Media Presence

There are more than 2.23 billion users on Facebook, 1 billion users on Instagram and 335 million users on Twitter. This means your customers are hanging out on social media.

It’s increasingly becoming impossible to grow your sales and customer base without a social media presence. Today’s businesses need to be savvy on social media because that’s where their customers are. A strong social media presence is one of the cheap ways to promote your business as an entrepreneur.

It’s no longer enough to

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