Thursday, September 13, 2012

Facing Adversity - Reward with Gift Cards


Most sales people can easily find out from their company how much commission they have made to date. Just take the booked, shipped, or invoiced number (or whatever term defines success in your environment) and apply it to your commission plan to work out where you are. Simple. Now, should you want to see where you’ll end up at the end of the quarter, however, that’s a different story. Do you think it’s important to know where you’re going to end up?

The sooner you know that there is going to be a shortfall in your goals, the more time you have to make up the difference. If you know at the beginning of the quarter that you have a projected shortfall, then you have time to do something about it. Hoping that everything will work out is just not good enough. If you are in fact able to achieve such a difficult goal, then it is important to show your team appreciation for the work they put in. This can be in the form of a celebration, recognition, or prize incentive like Amazon email gift cards. Regardless, it creates an atmosphere where people are willing and ready to work hard in the face of adversity, and your team will be much more reliable in the long run. 

Monday, June 25, 2012

Manufacturing Industry Inventions

Between Manufactures and Electricity Buildings
Between Manufactures and Electricity Buildings (Photo credit: The Field Museum Library)
Quite a few inventions have led to economic booms ever since the 1600s. Even something as simple as barbed wire sparked a cattle industry, giving support to large companies and being able to support large populations. In the manufacturing industry, it's all about getting materials from A to B as fast and cheaply as possible, with improving quality and efficiency along the way. Here are a few notable items that helped get the manufacturing industry going throughout the past 300 years.

Steam Engine - Before, many moving parts in a manufacturing facility were powered by the workers or animals. This led to slower machines that could only output a limited number of products at a high cost. The steam engine was, and continues to be, a cost efficient way of moving large objects at high rates over long periods of time. The only real maintenance required is oiling the machinery and making sure there is no wear or tear.

Conveyor Systems - Improvements in producing products required improvements in moving them around. Conveyor belts that could move items at alternating speeds, and assembly tools and equipment that meshed with the whole process led to automated systems that required little manpower and monitoring. Today, computer systems can record every item in a warehouse with little error, something that required the work of hundreds of employees with a great deal of communication, and usually error.

Forklift - This item changed two major parts of the manufacturing industry. Before, large items could only be stored at ground level, which would be moved manually from point A to B. This decreased the amount of materials held at one place and time. Today, forklifts can move huge items stored at the ceilings of warehouses, optimizing the space of a facility and reducing cost from the owners. They also decrease the risk of injury for the workers and the likelihood of damaging valuable materials that need to be moved. This saves businesses tremendous amounts of money in many different departments of business.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Instagram

Facebook buys Instagram!
Facebook buys Instagram! (Photo credit: tetraconz)
Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram has gotten the whole world talking. Why do they need Instagram? Why would they pay so much? What are their long term plans? Although it is tough to accurately answer any of these questions, it is clear that Facebook wants to make a bigger splash into the mobile world. The user experience for most Facebook users is on a desktop, and the company is a bit worried about their future in the growing Mobile environment. What do you think? Great buy or money pit for Facebook?