Major Developments Major Developments by Calendar Year

February 25, 2011

Electric Fireplaces Ensure Safety

Filed under: Health — Tags: — Winson @ 8:10 AM

An electric fireplace is an electric heater which mimics a fireplace burning coal, natural gas or wood. Electric fireplaces are being used in place of traditional fireplaces as they are more safer. The electric fireplaces can be installed on to the wall of a room. About 1.4-1.6KW of power is consumed by them and can heat 400 square feet of area.

As the electric fireplaces do not use coal or wood, no smoke is formed. Therefore there is no necessity to use chimneys or other ventilation systems. So any respiratory problems that might arise due to smoke can be avoided providing safety. They are portable and can be shifted from one room to the other. Also as they do not use ventilation system, installation of the fireplace is safe and easy.

Traditional fireplaces include burning of wood or coal. Sometimes entire house can catch fire. This can be avoided by electric fireplaces as no fire is seen. Children have to be avoided to move at the vicinity of traditional fireplaces. But electric fireplaces are so safe that children can move freely and enjoy the warmth. Sometimes gas is also used in traditional fireplaces. Any leakage of gas leads to heavy damages.

Traditional fireplaces need a lot of maintenance of wood, coal or any other source. Electric fireplaces need very less maintenance and hence can be used easily. A realistic flame effect can be given by an electric fireplace. An elegant look can be given to the house without any effort and maintenance. Both beauty and safety are provided by electric fireplaces.

February 18, 2011

Strategies in Implementing SMS Marketing In a Business

Filed under: Business — Tags: , — Winson @ 2:14 AM

As the number of companies and businesses are entering the market to satisfy the customers the competition is increasing. One of the strategies used by the companies to sustain in this competitive market is to make use of SMS marketing. Sending messages to people via SMS messages is a great strategy because the message is delivered to the customer directly. Bulk SMS services are in great demand, due to their cost effectiveness. Bulk SMS service helps in sending a message to large number of people at one instance.

The strategies used for SMS marketing for a business are:

Mobile Coupon Marketing Campaign:
Coupons are one of the methods used by marketers to attract customers to make a purchase. An SMS coupon promotion can have several layers. The mobile number can be published in different ways, which when called by the customer, gives a brief message and then instantly a text message is received by the customer which has the coupon code or discount amount.
Customer Surveys:
Using customer polls or surveys is an effective way to gain insight into your customers’ needs and wants and also promote your products or services. Customers could be given a link to a URL where they can see options for the new spring line and be provided a discount.
Service Reminders:
The appointment attendance can be improved by communicating through SMS, which is found to strengthen communication between business and customer. SMS is a very easy and affordable method of improving the business communication with customers. Professional services can use this strategy as a reminder for services such as oil changes, pest control visits, lawn servicing calls, home repair etc. SMS communication is not only used for communication with customers, but also used in business-to-business calls related to maintenance contracts.

The reasons for using SMS marketing strategy by a business:

  • It is interactive, personalized and cost effective.
  • They can reach the customers anytime at any place.

SMS marketing is affordable for companies or businesses to promote and sell their products and services. This will also help in creating brand awareness.

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February 17, 2011

Benefits of Using Barcodes in Small Businesses

Filed under: Small Business — Tags: , — Winson @ 4:51 AM

Barcode is termed as an optical representation of data showed on certain products. It is read by specific machines called barcode readers or barcode scanners. Symbol scanners are some of the types of scanners used in market these days. Barcode technology can also be helpful for small businesses. Small and medium sized businesses include applications of barcodes in shipping, production, packaging, warehouses, and sales. Some of the benefits of barcode applications for small businesses are listed here.

Easy to Use:
Small business operations can be made easy by use of barcodes. Using efficient barcode scanners like Symbol barcode scanners is very easy and does not require any special skills. A less costly dot-matrix printers can be used by them to create simple barcode labels.

Accurate:
Many errors arise due to manual entry of data in data collections. Barcodes are accurate and avoid these errors. In order to maintain accuracy, it is necessary to maintain creation of good quality labels. It becomes easy for barcode scanners to read effective labels.

Uniform Data Collection:
Sometimes it is required for small businesses to meet some industry specific compliance standards. Specific requirements with shipments are provided for many manufacturers, industries and other organizations. Uniform data can be collected in specific industry in a fast pace by application of barcodes. This helps in improving relations with existing clients. New clients can also be attracted which helps in enhancing sales and growth of the business.

Rise of Productivity:
Manual and routine activities of a business can be automated by using barcodes. It helps in increasing the efficiency of business processes. As manual work in data collection is less, employees can perform other important tasks of businesses. It increases the overall productivity of an organization.

Timely Feedback:
Data capture can be done rapidly by application of barcodes. Hence, an efficient timely feedback of business processes can be given. Information like the number and brand of products bought by customers can be known to a businesses at the right time.

As these benefits are associated with barcode applications in various industries, small businesses prefer to implement barcode technology.

February 8, 2011

Symantec Report on Disaster Recovery Strategies by Indian SMEs

Filed under: Small Business — Tags: — Winson @ 2:32 AM

Global SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey conducted by Symantec Corp. reported about practices of disaster recovery strategies by Indian small businesses. The report also revealed the status of India’s small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in being ready and prepared for recovery of disasters.

Natural disasters, malicious employee behavior, virus attacks, and changes in IT infrastructure were found to be main concerns for adoption of disaster recovery in India. The report revealed that data protection and recovery was taken care by IT departments in 42 percent of SMBs. Awareness on requirement and importance of disaster planning was increasing among other employees and also among small businesses. Owners and senior executives of about 39% of small businesses were involved in management and execution of disaster planning. In spite of the awareness of disaster recovery, some SMBs were not prepared for planning and execution.

The report revealed that 73 percent of respondents were satisfied with their disaster plans. Around 34 percent felt that they were protected in case of occurrence of a disaster. Most common outages were virus or hacker attacks, natural disasters, and power outages. These were prevalent among SMBs in India in 2009. However, many companies had no plan to deal with such situations. Due to lack of being prepared for disasters, SMBs had to spend a lot of amount and also lost the business.

According to the report, 18 percent of SMBs back up data on daily basis. However, only 50 percent of the company and customer data was backed up on a daily basis by some SMBs. About 59% of the customers complained loss of important data. As a result, materials and presentations were referred by SMBs for preparing a recovery plan. The report found that about 91% of the SMBs had no formal disaster preparedness plan.

February 7, 2011

Rise of Auto Sales 20% in U.S.

Filed under: Automobile — Tags: , — Winson @ 5:20 AM

According to the quarterly sales analysis, auto sales rose about 20% in April in the U.S. A. Still gradual recovery in the economy was reflected from recession-stunted results from the earlier year. The economic recovery in the United States would appear to be on track. But the pace was not expected to be robust.

The sales of Toyota Motor Corp rose 24 percent. This was weaker than the result that was expected. Due to massive safety recalls the sales tumbled in the earlier year. The company incentives were extended for third consecutive month to jump-start sales.

The largest percentage gain at 35 percent was reported by the Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. Following it are the Hyundai Motor Co at 30 percent, and Chrysler and Ford Motor Co at 25 percent. When compared to the previous year, General Motor Co posted 6.4 percent sales increase. The company was in the first position as the top seller in the United States. Ford and Toyota followed the General Motors. The auto industry was bracing for bankruptcies by GM and Chrysler in the previous year. However, even by excluding the discontinuing brands of the company, the sales of GM in April rose 20 percent. Chrysler was filed for bankruptcy at the end of April 2009 and presently it has been under the management control of Fiat Spa of Italy.

Honda Motor Co. Ltd is considered in the fourth position in the United States. This is based on the number of vehicles sold and it is the most closely shopped brand to Toyota. A 12.5 percent sales increase was reported by Honda. The costly incentives had hurt profit margins and used car prices.

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