Energy Efficiency Retrofits for Commercial and Public Buildings
Office, Educational, Retail, and other Key Segments and the Effects of Performance Contracting, ESCOs, LEED, and Energy Star
The energy efficiency retrofit market recently received a major boost from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which will provide substantial funding for renovations to institutional buildings, especially federal buildings. The institutional market is booming now, and activity initiated in the next few years will continue through 2013 and beyond. However, federal non-industrial buildings represent a small fraction of all existing commercial building space. The largest potential for long term, sustained growth in commercial building retrofits lies in the private commercial space. Although relatively small at present, this market will experience strong growth through 2013 and for many years beyond. Compared to conventional space, high-performance green building space is vacant less often and commands premium prices, leading commercial building owners to adopt green retrofits as a market differentiator. Unlike government policies that come and go, this market driver will fuel steady momentum until most commercial building space has been retrofitted for energy efficiency and also for other measures of building performance such as thermal comfort. ( )
Several substantial, durable drivers are expanding the potential market for energy efficiency retrofits. However, the actual market is small compared to its potential, due to an assortment of barriers within various niches. In order for marketing campaigns and public policies to promote energy efficiency products, services and programs successfully, the barriers within each target segment of the commercial real estate market must be addressed appropriately.
This report provides an overview of the market niches formed by questions such as ownership, occupant activity, and geographic location. We examine the primary market barriers and highlight the best practices that are addressing these barriers successfully today. The report features a comprehensive examination of several key vertical markets, including an assessment of drivers, barriers, and opportunities in each one. Based on projections of the timing for widespread barrier removal, we forecast the market growth of both enhanced operations & maintenance as well as major green renovations over the next five years.
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It is all too easy to complain about the litter on our high streets. Cigarette butts, crisp packets and take away wrappers are incredibly unsightly but when you consider how much rubbish is thrown away in Britain each day, it’s surprising there is not more of it.
There is over 30 million tonnes of rubbish produced in Britain each year and it is a perennial headache for local authorities and councils to keep the high streets clean. A huge army of people are employed in every borough in Britain, whose job it is to ensure that the high streets are free of litter and swept clean.
Nut when you consider the amount of rubbish that is discarded each day – enough to fill Trafalgar square to the top of Nelson’s Column – it’s no surprise if they can’t keep on top of it all. However, often much can be done to reduce the waste on our high streets by turning to the and waste bins we provide for the public to use.
In general, the public want to dispose of the litter responsibly but often the problem lies in the location, size and number of rubbish bins provided.
Often small changes in the type of bin we provide or the location we place them in can make huge differences in the level of littering on the high street. For instance, it is often an annoyance to people who live and work near take-away facilities that there is often large amounts of litter and yet quite often the council has provided a bin.
Often, not enough thought goes into the type of bin provided. A bin that is too small will just become buried in litter so by increasing the size of and waste bins in these areas will cut the amount of litter that ends up on the pavement.
It is also quite common for councils to place bins in low visibility areas. If a bin is not easily accessible and visible, it won’t get used and the pavement will become littered. Equally if there are not enough bins provided then litter will increase.
Richard N Williams is interested in waste bins and rubbish removal. Please visit us website if you are interested in or other .
Business intelligence and performance management focuses on providing the tools and processes to help you make better business decisions. In order to make better business decisions you first need to understand how your business is currently performing, you then need to understand why it’s working the way it is and this should lead you to be able to see where you need to take your business next. Business intelligence and performance management is all about making sure you’ve got the right tools and solutions to make these analyses accurately enough to derive better business decisions.
Performance management is the encompassing term that looks at both understanding the process of being able to pull in all the data within your business, then turning that data into useful information that can then be used with processes like budgeting and forecasting. Business intelligence is the specific process of taking that data and turning it into useful information that the people within your business can then use.
Performance management is particularly important if your business is growing because of the amount of data you have is always going to be growing and changing as the business grows, this means that the complexity of your processes, planning, budgeting and forecasting is also going to be increasing too. The tools you may be using already such as spreadsheets are going to quickly become overwhelmed and not suitable for the data they need to manage. A fully comprehensive performance management system will enable you to have greater control and add more cohesion to gathering and analyzing the data you need to ensure you are able to push your business forwards.
It’s not just growing businesses that could benefit from performance management systems, any organization from commercial to not for profit to public sector of any size can benefit from performance management because it’s about the data coming in and using it to power the business. It’s not just internal information and data that needs to be analyzed and assessed, no business can afford to be slack when it comes to keeping up with their industry and what their competitors are doing, by analyzing this information you are able to decide which direction you want to focus your business on. When it comes to critical business applications, like the general ledger, it’s often the finance department that’s in charge and responsible for running processes like the annual planning exercise, the budgeting or forecasting exercises. However, in order to gain real value from performance management you need to ensure it encompasses all departments within your organization like sales, HR, marketing etc. For example, by understanding the data from the sales department, the marketing department will be able to ensure campaigns are targeted in the areas that have proven to be successful. This means the finance department then acts like a central hub and gathers all the information from the different departments and can use it to the generate projections and outcomes for the overall business.
Once you’ve implemented an effective performance management system, you should start to see improved business performance which will give you the ability to make better business decisions faster. You’ll be able to identify any risks facing your business at a glance and mitigate them before they become a real threat as well as being able to identify opportunities and action plans to act on them. Performance management also means you’ll be able to have confidence that the data you’re working from is accurate and up to date which means time management should also improve too as no one is going to be arguing over whose numbers are correct.
IT Performs are , their primary objective is to help organizations get the most value from their data in the most effective way possible. IT Performs not only offer a full range of software solutions, but also consultative advice and too.
In the United Kingdom, public health services are managed by the National Health Service (NHS). Unlike other countries like the United States, health in the UK is provided under a national health care system. This scheme is funded by the government through taxes and is also operated by the government. This kind of system is founded on the belief that all citizens in the United Kingdom are entitled to medical services. This goes a long way in ensuring that all the necessary medical services are available to consumers at their point of need. The National health care system is also advantageous in that it can provide long term services to those in need of them. The NHS was established with the intention of providing health care for all who needed it at the point of delivery because in the past, health care was not available to all who needed it. Consequently, there was a need to make sure that health care services were more coordinated in the region. There are numerous organisational changes that the NHS has undergone. First of all, it created an internal markets idea where health authorities and doctors were given funding from the government and they could use this to purchase health care from different groups like acute hospitals. However, with time, this scheme was not very effective as there was too much bureaucracy. Consequently, there was a need to bring in reforms in order to reduce inefficiencies and the current system was born; the use of primary care trusts. (Department of Health, 2006)
The Health care system in the United Kingdom is operated by a national budget made by the government. This budget normally includes all the issues that will affect the effectiveness of service provision such as; capital outlays, operating expenses and medical training. Specific health care providers normally operate on set budgets made on a yearly basis.
Despite all these benefits, one must not underestimate all the disadvantages that come with provision of health services under such a scheme. First of all, the total available resources will always and have always been less than the demand for health care. Consequently, there is a need to prioritise issues and allocate finances for the neediest groups. Groups such as the elderly are maintained at a pre-set fee and must therefore be denied certain medical procedures such as kidney dialysis; this procedure is only allowed for those who are fifty five years and below. There are many patients in the UK who have still not reaped the full benefits of a national health care system. Another challenge facing the health care system in the UK is the fact that there is little room for technology within service provision. All these challenges will be examined in detail in the subsequent portions of the essay.
Overview of the health care system in the UK
There are a number of stakeholders that are involved in provision of health services within the United Kingdom. The first being the Department of Health; their main objective is to ensure the well being and health of its citizens. Additionally, there is the National Health Service whose objectives are not clearly laid out. There are also Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) that have been commissioned with the process of selecting a number of health services for their local population in order to ensure the well being and health of the population. PCTs have the option of choosing health care services from any of the following groups (Department of Health, 2005)
social services voluntary services private clinics private hospitals NHS
In light of these alternatives, there is a variety of health care providers to choose from and these health care service providers need to market themselves in order to ensure that they get commissioned by the NHS trust care. Some of the issues that need to be given top priority during marketing include availability of suitable equipment and employment of new technologies in provision, Possession of well trained staff among other issues. Because of all these differences in priority issues, there is competition among health care service providers.
It should be noted that the government currently has moved towards incorporation of marketing strategies in the process of health care provision. The government has indicated their commitment towards marketing strategies because it uses private providers in the process of reducing the amount of time people spend waiting for services provided by the NHS. The government has also included independent centres in the process of treatment and diagnosis. Additionally, patients have been given choices between the NHS and private care providers with regard to elective services. The Department if Health (2006) asserts that whenever commissioning if health services is done, there should be utmost consideration of contestability. The latter trait is also applicable to medical services provided outside the hospital scenario such as carer services.
The relationship between the National Health Service and its suppliers is not clearly defined. This is because the NHS has some inherent community values between the organisation and its partners, however, it also has to consider the fact that it has to be contestable and market driven. This presents some complexities in the supplier-organisation relationship. There is a need to make sure that both aspects are adhered to. Health care trusts; who serve as health care commissioners, usually establish a criterion that facilitates the structuring of the local market. They are also charged with the responsibility of choosing service providers that will deliver health services that fall within their strategic direction and those ones that will also demonstrate that the organisation have obtained a return on their investment. (Coast, 1996)
What people think about the service
It should be noted that not many patients/clients are satisfied with the level of service provision by the NHS and even other service providers. The organisation subjects most of its patients to long waiting periods. Besides that, there are limited resources hence the NHS has to prioritise which services are more vital. The overall effect of this is that some patients may miss out on vital health services. Other people think that the NHS has not given them adequate opportunities to choose different health car options. Consequently, most of them seem to lack the ability to get better health care even when they can afford to.
Problems and issues of the service
Market research is a vital part of any organisation that wishes to stay ahead of its competitors. There is a need to include the needs of the patient when trying to decide on which health service providers will be chosen for certain medical services. Private health care providers should be acceptable to patients. If the NHS simply chooses its own bidders without consulting the population, then there may be customer dissatisfaction.
Another major marketing issue affecting the health service system, in the UK is the issue of technology and innovation within service delivery; this falls under the ‘product’ portfolio of the 4 principles of marketing. Service innovation is one of the key marketing techniques that any organisation worth its salt needs to take advantage. Principles of marketing are founded on the belief that a product with more value will fetch greater demand from the market. Service providers who continuously embrace innovation will provide consumers with greater value for their investments and this will give them an edge over their competitors. The NHS has not fully embraced those options in its marketing strategy. Consequently, patients are not getting the best quality service from the organisation. Innovation could have been seen through provision of health care for patients in the privacy of their homes. The organisation also has the option of introducing outpatient follow ups. This will ensure that health care consumers receive ‘after sales service’. This could go a long way in reducing the long patient lists since potential health problems could be detected early enough and dealt with. The overall health of the population may improve and this will enhance consumer satisfaction. The organisation needs to embrace the fact that most of its consumers re not satisfied with their level of service provision because they have not been innovative. (Maynard, 1991)
In line with innovation, the NHS has not introduced numerous choices for the consumer. There is a lack of innovation during the process of designing product packages. Issues such as community service are not included in mainstream services offered by the NHS. The result of such an approach is that there is a sort of monopoly by the NHS trusts and general practitioners. The health organisation has not realised that consumers need to determine for themselves which services are more appropriate for them. By increasing choice for patients, there will be more responsiveness among health care providers and the NHS. This is an aspect that is lacking and needs to be embraced.
Innovation is not only applicable to the NHS; private health care providers need to embrace this too. In the past, they have not demonstrated their ability to incorporate new and creative ideas in health care provision. There is also a need to adopt technology in various aspects of their operations. Currently, most practitioners may be seen trying to outsource IT experts when dealing with medical records. This causes serious impediments to the delivery of services a it is too bureaucratic. Patients have complained about how most doctors they approach spend most of their time on the computer rather than on patients themselves. This means that there is a need to train medical professionals on how to deal with new technologies. In line with this, there is also a problem with the coordination of Information Technology systems. Complaints have brought forward by patients about how different health providers affiliated to the NHS have no coordinated health care records. Therefore, a patient who had done an x-ray in one health clinic and seeks treatment from another health clinic will be asked to carry his or her results manually to the second clinic. This need not be the case; all private health care providers affiliated to the NHS should coordinate their information systems to maximise efficiency and also to prevent undue waiting periods for their consumers. (Dopson, 2003)
The third marketing problem that the NHS has is the issue of consumer education. Most consumers who may opt to go for elective services do not have the knowledge of where they can find these practitioners. The main marketing issue here is promotion. Compared to other public health services like education, there are minimal cases of promotion in the health services sector. Consumers need to know the various health options available to in order to make use of them. The main promotional tactic that has been utilised by the NHS is public relations. Many NHS trusts usually establish community services with their local populations and this is the major route that they have concentrated on. However, there is very little implementation of advertising campaigns by the NHS and other private health care providers. Additionally, there is the use of sales personnel to market health products. The latter strategy could be adopted by private health care providers who offer elective services. They have not promoted their services to various individual in order to let them know what they can offer. (Hyde, 2004)
External forces affecting the problems
Political
The NHS and private service providers are faced with certain political issues. They need to make sure that decisions made are in line with current legislations. If this does not occur, then there may be challenges from the public. For example, an NHS trust in Derbyshire was faced with court battles from a patient after the primary trust made the decision to procure United Health Europe Limited as their private service provider. The case started in the High Court and eventually reached the court of Appeal which ruled that the NHS should start another process of procurement as they had made the wrong choice when selecting the private care provider because they had not engaged in adequate consultation with the public. This indicates that the NHS was lacking in the area of market research.
The Health Care and Social Care Act of 2001 requires that NHS primary care providers need to engage in adequate consultations with the public whenever there is a need to introduce new services to the market or before market testing. The issue of market research was also highlighted in the case of Morris v Trafford NHS trust. The NHS needs tp make sure that there is full involvement of the local community in any of its decisions.
Another political issue that affects the above marketing issues is conflict of interest. There are instances when commissioners of health services happen to be health providers themselves. This could undermine efforts to choose the most appropriate health clinician or service provider if the person doing the choosing can be chosen too. (Chappel et al, 2001)
Economic factors
The major factor that the NHS has to consider when offering services to the public is its budgetary constraints. The NHS is run by the government and mainly depends on budgetary allocations granted by the government. Consequently, there is a need to make sure that all the marketing services will be conducted within the given budget. This is a major constraint during the process of decision making; most services, equipments, recruitments have to be laid aside just because there is alack of adequate funding. Subsequently, the best decisions need to be made in order to maximise the limited resources available for use by the National Health Service.
In addition to this, there is also the issue of competition among private health care service providers. The government gave private health service providers the mandate to offer treatment and diagnosis to patients. This means that they need to make use of various marketing tools in order to stay ahead of their competitors. Most of them still lack the ability to develop adequate marketing strategies to deal with this new development. There are various options that marketers can use to deal with competition.
Another economic factor that affects the NHS is the fact that they have so many factors that they need to include in the decision making process. NHS trusts have numerous partners and stakeholders that they deal with on a day to day basis. As a result, they cannot make marketing decisions to suite themselves alone and then leave out their partners’ view points. They have to adopt consultative approaches within their marketing processes. (Mullen, 2004)
Social factors
It is quite necessary for the NHS to tackle some of the needs that their local communities have. This means that there should be identify some of the needs that their clientele have before they can adopt models for the company. It should therefore be noted that the number of patients is increasing by the day and the NHS needs to find out some of the causative factors from the community itself and then come up with strategies to deal with it. The issue of community involvement has led to one of the major marketing problems facing the NHS; market research. They seem to lack the ability to involve the public in this crucial awareness strategy and have therefore been lagging behind.
Private service-providers need to come up with innovative packages for their clientele. However, this can only be achieved through staff training and development. They also need to ascertain that their staff members have the best possible working conditions and also that they are given good salary packages. This will reduce confrontations within private clinics or hospitals and will also enhance cohesion.
Cultural factors
The people in the United Kingdom have taken up unhealthy lifestyles that are incompatible with healthy populations. Most people are fond of eating junk foods or foods rich in cholesterol. This means that the UK population is particularly vulnerable to heart related complications. Additionally, a large majority of the population engage in smoking hence increasing the cases of respiratory illnesses. Therefore, the NHS needs to prioritise some of these issues. They need to asses the level of prevalence of the above mentioned diseases through market research and then they need to come up with special product packages to combat them. (Chappel et al, 2001)
Technological factors
There is a need for the NHS to embrace more technology in the area of service provision. The field of medicine has numerous applications that can utilise technology. This can be in record keeping, coordination of services by other NHS providers, use of up to date equipments in the treatment and diagnosis phase and also in the administrative process. Countries such a the US do not have a national health care system and they boast of having one of the most technologically advanced medical systems in the world. This brings to light the fact that a national health care system can slow down technological adaptations. However, with consistent efforts by the various stakeholders in the NHS, then there will be continuous improvement in this area.
Private health providers also need to embrace technology through use of advanced equipments and training techniques for their staff members.
Environmental factors
The major environmental aspect affecting health care providers is in relation to the community. The organisation is expected to participate in community cleaning services in order to serve as an example to the locals. This will boost their public relations and will go along way in promoting their services. Additionally, health care providers need to make sure that they use biodegradable disposing bags for their health related wastes.
Marketing strategies that can solve the problems
The first thing that the NHS needs to do is to adopt a market research strategy. Market research is the process of;
collecting recording analysing data that exists in the market (Kress, 1988)
This data will normally involve both consumers and competitors. Most of the time, market research is done in order to find out information before introduction of certain products or in order to come with forecasts. Normally, organisations will need to come up with demographic factors about their clients. Market research should be mainly be adopted by private health care providers. Since the government has given private service providers the mandate to offer health services to consumers directly, there will be a need to come up with the most attractive package since the sector is no vulnerable to market forces.
Some of the tools that the private service providers or the NHS can use to conduct their market research can include the use of questionnaires. They could find out what patients normally look for in a good health care system. In order to reduce ambiguity or diverse answers, there could be a list of these items to choose from. Additionally, the questionnaires could also include information about where consumers mostly go to purchase their health care and what prices are charged. This will give private service providers information about their competitors and will help them to come up with better prices for their services. This will help them in the process of achieving competitive edge. The main advantage of using questionnaires is that they take up relatively minimal time compared to other sources. Secondly, questions are straight forward and uniform. This will help the service providers come up with solutions as fast as they possibly can.
Market research can also be conducted through secondary sources. Here, private service providers can use the internet or company websites in order to compile information about some of their competitors. By conducting marketing research, private service providers will ensure that their prices, products and location strategies suite their clients. The internet is quite a valuable source on some of the strengths and weaknesses of health service providers. In case company websites are not available, then private health care providers can make use of journal article or newspapers containing information about their field of interest. There are also other countries in Europe that have adopted similar health care system to the UK’s. As result it possible for the NHS to emulate some of their marketing strategies in order to improve the public’s health. (Rossi, 1983)
Market research will go a long way in ensuring that two of the marketing problems mentioned above have been solved. The first was the issue of patient involvement in decision making processes. Issues found from the research should act as a basis for some of the changes to be incorporated into the NHS and also among private care providers. The second issue that will be solved is the issue of innovation. Consumers can give their take on some of the services that they would like to see in the NHS or among private service providers. This will ensure that most of these issues highlighted could be lumped up into anew product package. Consumers have numerous and creative ideas that could boost the public health care system in the United Kingdom.
The second marketing strategy that private service providers could adopt is through brand positioning. There are two main avenues available;
intangible brand strategy tangible brand strategy
Intangible strategies are those brands that are not linked to any particular product. Such brands are usually designed to capture audiences through their names rather than the rationale behind them. The second type of strategy is the tangible brand strategy. These are brands that are linked to specific functions. The most appropriate strategy for private health care providers is the latter. This is because some of the most powerful organisations in the world have adopted this strategy. For example, FedEx has established a tangible strategy that links its name to guaranteed delivery. Citizen Bank has established brand that is responsive and rapid. (Bohmer et al, 2001)
The first step is the process of creating a strong brand image is through a compilation of items that may be most attractive to customers these could include
-properly trained nurses
-convenient locations
-best trained doctors
-has treated people for 50 years
These and many more could act as a platform. The market research strategy mentioned above could also act as a guide and will need more editing and analysis in order to come up with the most popular attributes. Thereafter, the health care providers could compare their attributes with those ones offered by the competitors and deduce which ones will fetch the highest market power. The health care providers then need to come up with feasibility options for different brand options. For example, is they choose the issue of having well trained nurses as their brand strategy, then they must asses what it will entail financially to adopt that trait. This is because possessing well trained nurses is a good motivating factor for patients but may not be very affordable for a particular service provider. (Mitton & Donaldson, 2004)
The issue of brand strategy is quite useful to private service providers because they have now been given the mandate to provide elective services. If clinics, hospitals, etc do not adopt a brand strategy, then they take the risk of disappearing among the other health care providers. Brand strategies will solve the problem of consumer education because they will act as platform for promoting the respective health service provider.
Conclusion
The National Health Service and private health providers have not involved the public in their decision making processes, they have also been slow in promotional efforts. Lastly, the two groups have also done very little innovation in their service delivery. These three marketing challenges can be solved through adoption of brand strategies and through market research. (Fowler, 1993) In the current market place, organisations are becoming highly competitive; using these marketing strategies could put an end to patient dissatisfaction.
Reference:
Department of Health (2006): About us: The Department of Health, retrieved from accessed on 30 April 2008
Mitton, C. & Donaldson, C. (2004): Priority Setting Toolkit: A guide to the use of economics in healthcare decision making; London, UK: BMJ Publishing, pp. 35–45
Bohmer, P. et al (2001): Maximising health gain within available resources in the New Zealand public health system; journal of Health Policy, 55:37–50
Chappel, D. et al (2001): Implementation and evaluation of local-level priority setting for stroke; Public Health. 2001, 115: 21–9
Maynard, A. (1991): Developing the Health Care Market; The Economic Journal, 101:1277–86.
Mullen, P. (2004): Quantifying priorities in healthcare: transparency or illusion? Health Service Management Resource; 17:47–58
Coast, J. (1996): Priority Setting: The Health Care Debate. Chichester; UK: Wiley
Fowler, F. (1993): Survey Research Methods; Newbury Park; CA; Sage; pg102
Kress, G. (1988): Marketing research; Prentice-Hall; London; pg 98
Rossi, P. (1983): Handbook of Survey Research; New York; Academic Press; pg 103- 108
Department of Health (2005): NHS improvement plans: putting people at the heart of public services; a report by Department of Health
Dopson, S. (2003): Leading Healthcare Organizations; Pal grave Macmillan
Hyde, j. (2004): Managing and Supporting People in Healthcare; Bailliere Tindall, London International Journal of Healthcare Management
Author is associated with ResearchPapers247.Com which is a global Research Papers and Term Papers Writing Company. If you would like help in Research Papers and Term Paper Help you can visit > and > or >
We’ve often been told that the most profitable industry to be in is health and wellness. This is due to the consumable aspect of it. This is true, you definitely want to be in the best consumable industry there is-when it comes to network marketing.
In network marketing, you get a residual check that you get month after month. So therefore, you want a product that can be consumed at least monthly if not weekly.
The factors to consider when you have a product that is highly consumable, like vitamins, is that it has to be formulated, stocked, packed, and shipped. Those are just four steps-it’s not counting the numerous other steps in between. Each step reduces the profit margin.
Even with these disadvantages, health and wellness is still the most lucrative industry in network marketing due its high consumability factor. Notice I said in network marketing.
Now, when it comes to Internet marketing, that’s a different story. In Internet marketing, you can deliver products electronically and the process is a lot simpler. Therefore, there are a lot fewer steps to get the product to the end consumer. Because of these factors your profit margins are increased exponentially. Let’s examine it a little further.
Electronically delivered products such as e-Books, software, membership sites, video courses/tutorials, and paid newsletters can be made and set up relatively easily in a short amount of time. You don’t have to worry about shipping, because everything is automated and delivered instantly. After you’ve created your product it is simple to make copies of it.
In the case of e-books, you can compile your book from works in the public domain, public label rights, or just create the content yourself. If you frequent forums a lot, there may be a person or two whose forum posts or rants are outstanding and would make a good read in an e-book. You will more than likely have to get their permission, but this still makes for an easy way to get content. Those are just a few ideas.
Membership sites are another revenue stream where everything is handled over the Internet and you don’t even have to issue membership cards! The great thing about membership sites other than everything is handled electronically, is that it is recurring income. This is the kind of income you dream of.
The downside with most products that are delivered online, is that once the sale is made you’re done- until the customer decides to buy again. With membership sites, you can count on the sale month after month or until they cancel their membership. In a sense you can say that it is consumable, because your customers want access to your information every month.
If you already have a business that does not sell products that can be delivered electronically, you may want to consider adding that aspect into your business to give you another stream of income.
As long as you have marketing system in place products that are sold electronically give you the best return of your time, energy and money.
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Interest in Socially Responsible Investing Increases
Many investors have strong opinions that don’t involve their views on interest rates and stock prices. This might include support for a clean environment or concern for the poor and the disadvantaged – just to mention a few well-known causes.
Increasingly, these investors want their holdings to reflect their social, ethical or religious values. They wish to avoid companies that profit from activities they oppose, and support companies that behave in ways they consider appropriate or responsible. At the same time, however, most investors still want or need to earn a reasonable return on their portfolios.
Socially responsible investing (“SRI”) seeks to reconcile these two objectives by helping investors create diversified portfolios designed to deliver an acceptable level of performance, while at the same time excluding companies that don’t meet the their ethical standards. SRI investing recognizes that corporate responsibility and societal concerns are an important part of many investment decisions—particularly with the world’s increased focus on sustainability and climate change, among others.
SRI investors encourage corporations to improve their practices on environmental, social, and governance issues. You may also hear SRI-like approaches to investing referred to as mission investing, responsible investing, double or triple bottom line investing, ethical investing, sustainable investing, or green investing.
Increasing Interest Over the last several decades many investors have shown an increased appetite for social investors. The Social Investment Forum, a nonprofit group that promotes socially responsible investing, calculates the total number of assets under professional SRI management rose from $629 billion in 1995 to $2.71 trillion in 2007. In fact, the Forum estimates that one out of every nine dollars under professional management in the US today—or 11% of the $25.1 trillion in total assets under management tracked in Nelson Information’s Directory of Investment Managers—is involved in socially responsible investing.
Why has socially responsible investing gained in popularity? One of the reasons may be that investors posed themselves a question similar to this one: while my number one investment goal will always be to create a properly diversified portfolio based on my personal risk tolerance levels, how can I also do a bit of good for the environment, for the world or to improve the condition of mankind?
A second reason for SRI’s popularity is that some of the nation’s most prominent institutional investors have increasingly added a social focus to their investment decisions. These institutions, many with significant assets and often with great public, political and media clout, often carry both a big stick and use a loud voice. Some have become well-known advocates for social issues and this is often carried out through their investments in socially-responsible projects. An example is found in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), one of the world’s largest public pension funds. CalPers recently announced support for the United Nation’s Principles for Responsible Investment, a menu of possible global actions on environmental, social and corporate issues.
A third reason for increased interest in SRI is the simple fact that it’s now much easier to access professionally managed SRI vehicles. Many investment firms have created specific investment processes that exclude companies that, in the investor’s view, focus on non-socially responsible or acceptable activities. Once these decisions have been made, the manager constructs a diversified portfolio within the desired constraints. The goal is to deliver performance consistent with the investor’s return objectives and tolerance for risk.
Structuring investments consistent with social, environmental or ethical objectives offer investors a way to align their portfolios to their own objectives. Please call today, for more information on incorporating a socially responsive component into your investment program.
Graeme H. Patey is a Financial Advisor located in Cleveland, Ohio and may be reached at 216-523-3015 or www.fa.smithbarney.com/graemepatey.
Smith Barney does not provide tax or legal advice, and it is important to consult with a tax or legal advisor before investing.
INVESTMENT PRODUCTS: NOT FDIC INSURED • NOT GUARANTEED • MAY LOSE VALUE
Graeme H. Patey specializes in developing customized financial strategies. He employs a consultative approach on the financial and investment needs of high net-worth individuals and financial services to businesses.
It’s for sure! Online money is out there. Here I explain what separates the big money winners from the losers. I need to first show you some of the key ideas that pre-date the Internet.
Before the Internet
The need to make money has always been with us. One of the earliest strategies to accomplish this was the “chain letter”. Don’t worry – I’m not promoting a chain letter – rather explaining a lesson we can all learn from that ill-fated methodology.
The power of the chain letter lay in the fact that it allowed people to leverage their investment. It worked like this.
You get a letter that asks you to:
* Send a small amount of money to the person whose name is at the top of a list of future recipients.
* Delete the first recipient on the list, and put your own name on the bottom of the list.
* Copy and mail the letter to as many people as you can.
If you sent the letter to 100 people, and each of them sent it to 100, and so on, by the time your name got to the top of the list it would be in the hands of many thousands of recipients – each of whom would send you a small amount of money.
How Chain Letters Didn’t Work
The principle problem with the chain letter was that your small donation to the person at the top of the list was a gift. You got nothing in return. For this reason, our country’s lawmakers got into the act.
The “End” of the Chain Letter
Lawmakers don’t like to see large amounts of money changing hands without getting their own hands on some of it – to tax it in other words.
So the “authorities” outlawed the chain letter as you might expect. The public rationale was that the process would sooner or later “saturate”, because 100 x 100 x 100 x etc. would eventually encompass everyone on the planet, and those joining toward the end would never get the “reward” they had been “promised”.
This action ignored the fact that no chain letter in history ever actually “saturated”. But the concept looked good mathematically and seemed popular with the voters; so the public remains “protected” from chain letters to this day.
The Invention of Multilevel Marketing (MLM)
In the early sixties, a little vitamin company called Nutrilite invented the marketing strategy we know today as multilevel marketing.
This was a very clever idea. It built on sequential recruitment, the basis of the chain letter; but it sold real products: vitamins. Now there was value received in every transaction.
Two young men partnered up and got really successful at this business and wound up buying Nutrilite. Out of this grew the giant multilevel company known as Amway. Its annual sales hit a billion dollars around 1986, and is approaching seven billion dollars a year today (2008).
MLMs and the Law
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took Amway to court, claiming that the sequential recruitment of distributors violated the anti-chain-letter laws.
Amazing! The courts finally did something right. They recognized that there is nothing basically wrong with sequential recruitment, and completely exonerated Amway.
When the dust had settled, the FTC and the Department of “Justice” agreed to re-define the chain letter and the MLM so the chain letter remained illegal while the MLM was officially legalized.
Many people learned from this that sequential recruitment is legal when the customers actually receive something they want in return for their money.
Mail-Order MLM
Still talking pre-Internet lore: it wasn’t long before enterprising individuals began building mail order businesses in which the products sold were documents (small booklets) that provided the reader with useful information.
Such documents were easy to create, cheap to produce, and inexpensive to mail. Employing sequential recruitment similar to that used by chain letters, such businesses provided (for a price) the document products and the methodology of distribution.
It was up to each participant to reproduce the documents, to advertise them via the mail, and to deliver them via mail as promised.
This system of doing business meets all the legal standards of current MLM laws and provides for a very high return on investment. A document that cost 50¢ to produce and another 50¢ to mail might sell for $10 or $20. This business model is still much in use today, and huge profits are being made.
The use of the Internet to facilitate this money making process further amplifies the method’s profitability and makes it accessible to almost anyone. Its development was the next step towards creation of the first online money making machine.
Enter the Internet
On the Internet today, free or inexpensive email to opt-in lists, cheap classified advertising, and highly targeted (though not-so-cheap) search engine advertising make it possible to advertise much more cheaply than can be done by conventional mail.
The cheap and, often automated, creation of personal websites puts large amounts of information in the hands of would-be “infopreneurs” at a fraction of the cost of snail-mail distribution.
Instead of printing and mailing booklets to their customers, businesses of this sort simply receive payment via secure credit card transaction, and then permit the buyer to download the product at the click of a mouse at essentially no cost to the seller.
Thus the properly equipped “infopreneur” creates a virtual money-making machine that handles all the formerly laborious tasks associated with mail-order document sales.
By combining the best features of sequential recruitment, MLM sales, and mail-order document sales with the computer automation provided by the Internet, today’s infopreneur can make large amounts of money in record time. This is the basis of virtually all the big online money-makers.
The worse the economy, the higher the unemployment level, the fewer the jobs available, the more attractive this kind of business is to the public.
The Best Online Money Machine – So Far
Examples of this newly developed business technology come in many styles. Some are well explained and easy to implement; some are more complex and not so well documented. Unless you want to build your own online money machine from scratch – a major undertaking that I don’t recommend – I suggest that you plug into an existing one that works.
To see the best example of this technology that I have found so far – one that is simple, legal, honest, and ethical – you don’t have to look far.
For a somewhat more thorough explanation of the Online Money Machine go to . For a really good example of such a business – one that can make YOU $1,000 a day – go to .
– a swing trader looks for short-term opportunities in the market to go long at a relative low, or get short at a relative high, with the expectation of closing their position in one to several days. Swing trading involves a longer time horizon than day trading, but avoid holding an open position beyond a week or two.
can be effectively utilized on a part-time basis, allowing a trader to also have a day job. With the sophisticated conditional orders available through most online brokerages, it is not necessary to agonize over every market tick. A stop loss order will close your trade to limit losses, while a simultaneously placed order will capture the profits from your winning positions.
Investing tips – the stock market should present you with a wide variety of NEW stocks in 2009. Many of them are going to be new technology stocks that come from the financial, energy, & communications sectors. Investing tips – mostly seem promising, but the truth is that a good number of these trading & investing opportunities could be extremely risky, while others are simply not as good as they look. That’s why it’s very important to know how to choose among the best especially if you want to day trade them.
Why do so many investments fall through cracks? Experts blame everything from lack of information to wrong strategy and over-confidence about the swings in the market. Here, some tips that may get you find the tracks of investments.
1. Be consistent and organized. Make thorough efforts in whatever you do.
2. Be open to all the new thoughts and get out the myths of your bag.
3. Develop your own plans and play your own games.
4. Access quality investment information available at internet.
5. Diversify your knowledge and investments plans to various channels.
Investing Journal – this newspaper company has a price – to – earnings ratio of 11.3, a price – to – sales ratio of 0.93, a 5 year average return on capital of 17.6%, and a five year average pre-tax profit margin of 27.4%. Investing Journal – the Journal Register Company has an enterprise value – to – EBITDA ratio of 9.07 and an enterprise value – to – revenue ratio of 2.24. Obviously, this company is carrying a lot of debt. So, perhaps the multiples on the common stock price are deceptive.
Investing the stock market – Stock is a share in the ownership of a company. When a private company decides to divide its business and allows the public to be a part of the firm, then it sells shares of ownership through stock offerings. For example, if a company sells one million stocks and you buy one share, then you own one-millionth of that company and vice versa.
When a company sells stocks to the public for the first time, then it is called initial public offering or new issue. One of the major reasons of selling stocks is to meet the financial needs of the company for its growth and expansion. If a company plans for expansion and if the bankers of the company feel that borrowing money would be a heavy burden, they look to investors and/or shareholders to finance the growth of the company.
Investing commodities – now, brokerage firms offer a variety of investments, including equities, bonds, CDs, REITs, mutual funds, money market funds, government treasuries, real estate, options, futures, and other derivatives. The Internet, so crucial in relaying information, is an important source of data for today’s investors. The links herein relate specifically to investments and ventures.
Charts Candlestick patterns are used by each and every kind of trader. Day trading and swing trading utilize Charts candlestick as a way to read chart patterns quickly and efficiently, while getting the same data offered charts. Professional traders love charts candlestick because they can be read much quicker than a bar chart, while also allowing a different kind of technical analysis known as charts candlestick reading.
new investors – Investing is one of the most important decisions we must take. If you are new to investing then this is the best place to start. Investment is a learning process that requires one to implement their knowledge in a proper way. It is very simple to lose money and very tough to generate money. If you want to make your first investment you should get your capital in proper order. Once you started handling you expenditures, it will be must easier to start investment.
oil etf – all of the commodity ETFs (exchange traded funds) oil is probably the most exciting, as well as the most frustrating. Until very recently, the market price of oil ETFs has been steadily rising for quite some time. Is this a direct result of the increasing price of crude oil? In many ways it is. If you had invested in oil, in any capacity, a year or more ago, you are probably quite satisfied with your returns to date.
energy etf – This means that they watch the future prices and resources of the energies. For example, oil and gasoline are futures. These energy ETFs depend on the future prices of a barrel of oil as well as how much oil is being made and stored. In other words, will there be enough supply to meet the demand. If the prediction is that there won’t be enough, then the obvious follow up is that gas prices will continue to rise. Therefore, anybody owning these energy exchange traded funds are likely to make money on them.
10000 dollars – Some of the simplest strategies work the best but having 10000 dollars today to invest can be a daunting thing to do. Most investors start at the risk profile of any potential investment and doing this is the first step in making sure your investment not only pays off, but that your seed capital stays intact and is returned to you.
invest 10000 – Some of the simplest strategies work the best but having invest 10000 dollars today to invest can be a daunting thing to do. Most investors start at the risk profile of any potential investment and doing this is the first step in making sure your investment not only pays off, but that your seed capital stays intact and is returned to you.
investing 10000 – If each share costs ten cents then you can buy 10,000 shares with $1000. And if a share rises to $12 then you can easily earn $2000 by selling those 10,000 shares. You can sell the shares for $12,000 immediately after investing $10,000. That means you have not made 20% profit but its 100% gain.
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Ecommerce or electronic commerce is the process of conducting business activities like buying and selling through various electronic systems like the internet or other computer networks. Hundreds and thousands of people are dialy jumping onto the ecommerce bandwagon to start their online business. If you are also one of the many who want to be a part of this revolutionary idea of doing business then the first thing that you must do is to hire ecommerce development services.
Some Components of ecommerce
The most integral component of ecommerce is the development of your own website. You need to have an internet presence if you want to be a part of this process of doing business. Herein, many a ecommerce development company, India will come to your rescue, who have the proven expertise in not only developing an ecommerce website but also in various other components like Search Engine Optimization, special online carts, development of special transaction pages, search engine marketing, internet market, amongst a host of others.
Special Components
Ecommerce or open source Commerce is an online store-management software program and hence a very important component when it comes to ecommerce. The best part about this program is that is an open source software meaning that it is available free of charge under the aegis of the GNU General Public License. It has across the board browser compatibility and can cater to an infinite number of products and categories. These are just some of the advantage of this special component. The ecommerce development services of any company would profess expertise in this significant component.
An online store management software branched out from the open source software mentioned earlier and this is known as Zen Cart. This project differs from the other project on not only aesthetic lines, but also as a result of a few extra features like a Voucher/Gift Certificate module, sales download mangers, amongst other aspects. There are many more components that help in getting your ecommerce business on track and giving it a push in the right direction.
Choice of the Best Services
The choice when it comes to an ecommerce development company, India that has professional expertise in the field of ecommerce is seemingly endless. However, you must be sure to choose the one that can meet all your demands and requirements to the T. Therefore, it’s best that you undertake your selection with the utmost care, analysis and research.
Like any other business, the business of ecommerce also requires the requisite attention. You just cannot take it for granted and it is proper planning and management that would see your getting the best of results in this regard. So, understand ecommerce first up and only then embark on your journey.