Business Feeds

Nita Clarke, joint author of Engaging for Success, discusses the importance of motivating your employees

With 2010 rapidly approaching, employers in all sectors will want to kick off the year on a positive note and inspire employees to help drive the company forward. While the next year is likely to remain challenging, businesses are starting to look ahead to a period of economic recovery; their first step should be to ensure they have a strong connection with the people on whom success will depend in the year ahead.

Earlier this year, I co-wrote (with David MacLeod) Engaging for Success, an independent report to government exploring the role that employee engagement can play in increasing performance.

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Microsoft and Lockheed Martin have announced a deal to license the software titan’s simulation software — dubbed “ESP” — for use in the aerospace firm’s battle training simulations.

The announcement of the strategic alliance between the two firms came at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference (I/ITSEC) this week in Orlando, Fla.

Additionally, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is also demonstrating its first ESP-based application on the show floor, according to statements from the aerospace giant and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

“The training needs of our military and civil government customers continue to expand,” Chester Kennedy, vice president of engineering at Lockheed Martin?s Simulation, Training & Support business unit, said in a statement.

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There are a lot of online scams out there on the web, but there are also legitimate, easy ways to make money online.

These free ways to make money online are simply companies that usually have the user perform small tasks for predetermined amounts of money. This money gradually adds up and is deposited into a PayPal account or bank account. Here is a list of sites that are legitimate ways to make money online.

MTurk.com Has Free Ways to Make Money Online

MTurk stands for Amazon Mechanical Turk and is run by the Amazon.com. It is a website that provides HITs or Human Intelligence Tasks for users to do for money.

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Microsoft is celebrating the tenth year of the opening of its campus in Silicon Valley, the heart of the technology industry. Ok, so the campus first opened on October 4, 1999, but who’s counting? What’s important is that it’s become the company’s second-largest facility in the U.S., driven largely by the huge pool of technical talent located in the area.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) had various facilities around the San Francisco Bay Area prior to that but in 1999, the company decided to put most of them in one contiguous campus in the Redwood City area, including both product developers as well as researchers.

Now called the Silicon Valley Campus, or SVC in typical Microsoft style, the campus has made Microsoft at least a minor fixture in the Valley over the past decade.

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Excess inventory can be a serious financial drag for any business. But what to do with excess items – no matter what they are or where they came from – can be a difficult dilemma. Selling what you have through normal channels – special sales, for example, or online — may be out of the question. After all, the reason you have the surplus is because your regular outlets haven’t done the job.

And you probably have little patience for continuing to carry the extra load. But there are several tactics that can either net you a cash return on your items, or a nifty tax write-off. And some of those services are places you can buy as well as sell excess inventory. Your five

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Google is continuing its late-year spending spree, today unveiling its agreement to purchase Teracent, a startup that specializes in algorithms to serve custom display ads.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based startup has developed machine-learning algorithms that mix and match different elements of an advertising creative to serve, in real time, tailored ads that boast far greater relevance than the traditional, one-size-fits-all banner ad.

“We think that this technology has great potential to improve display advertising on the Web,” Google Vice President Neal Mohan and Engineering Director Joerg Heilig wrote in a blog post announcing the deal.

The acquisition fits into Google’s plans to bulk up its presence in display advertising, a market led by Yahoo, and crowded with other online heavyweights such as AOL and Microsoft.

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As more and more small businesses are growing, so are the number of small businesses using computers and workplace emails. If you are one of the small businesses that are providing their employees with computers and work emails, be aware that you should have an explicit email internet policy with your employees available.

There are several important reasons for this. The first is that employees may claim an expectation of privacy with their emails if you don’t explicitly say that you may be monitoring their emails from work issued computers. The Wall Street Journal reports that courts are increasingly ruling that if companies have not explicitly told employees that they are monitoring employee emails, then they don’t have the legal right to do it. And the scary part? Th

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Learn the tips and tricks of creating sound financial projections and valuation for a business plan.

Entrepreneurs create business plans for a variety of reasons. Where a business plan is used to seek funding from business angels or venture capitalists, care must be taken to develop a sound financial plan. The financial section of a business plan is critical to convincing investors of a company’s potential and how the company will create a return on investment required. At the heart of a good financial plan lies the following:

· Income statement projections

· Balance sheet projections

· Cash flow projections

· Break-Even Analysis

· Valuation of the company

· Amount of funding required

· Return on Investment and payout to investors

It is convenient to assume that financial projections alone suffice but that may lead to the business plan being chucked into the trash bin by investors faster than one can say Jack Robinson. The key

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Here is a list of the most helpful online resources for women who run small and home-based businesses.

Women who choose to start their own businesses often face many more obstacles than their male counterparts- especially if they are balencing their new careers with motherhood. Fortunately, the Internet has a wealth of resources dedicated to helping women entrenprenuers get the information and support they need to run a successful business. One just needs to know where to look.

For any woman who is thinking of starting her own business,the following list contains some of the most essential and comprehensive sites directed at women entrepreneurs.

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