The Collapse of Enron: Managerial Aspects

Executive summary

Its revenues made up US 9(4) billion, assets equaled () billion, and the number of employees reached more than 30,000 people in 20 countries around the world.

While Enron Corporation was so highly praised by the outside observers, internally it had highly decentralized financial control and decision-making structure, which made it practically impossible to get coherent and clear view on corporations' activities and operations. Of course, the problem was not exclusively due to poor managerial performance, all the departments of the corporation were involved in the ruining corporate ethical values and principles, but executives and managers bear primary responsibility for the absence of corporate culture, clear accountability and transparence of the company. If operations management worked properly, in its full force, and if it was given possibility to work in such a way, there could be a chance of escaping the tragedy.

The Collapse of Enron: Managerial Aspects

Enron Corp brief history

Enron Corporation was one of the largest global energy, services and commodities company. Before it filed bankruptcy under chapter 11, it sold natural gas and electricity, delivered energy and other commodities such as bandwidth internet connection, and provided risk management and financial services to the clients around the world.

Enron was based in Houston, Texas, and was founded in July 1985 (though company with Enron name emerged still in 1930 (Swatz, Watkins, 2003)) by the merger of InterNorth of Omaha in Nebraska, and Houston Natural Gas. Enron Company quickly developed from merely delivering energy to brokering energy futures contracts on deregulated energy markets. In 1994, the company started to sell electricity, and in 1995, it entered European energy market. By the middle 2001, Enron employed about 30,000 people globally (McLEan, Elkind,2003).

Questionable accounting methods and techniques provided Enron with possibility to be listed as seventh largest United States company and was expected to dominate the market which the company virtually invented in the communications, weather and power securities (Bryce, 2002). But instead the corporation became the largest corporate failure in the global history and an example of well-planned and institutionalized corporate fraud. Enron became wealthy due to its pioneering marketing and promotion of power and communications bandwidth services and risk management derivatives, including such innovative and exotic items as weather derivatives.

In 1999, Enron launched an initiative of buying and selling access to high-speed Internet bandwidth, and also Enron Online was launched as a Web-based trading site, making Enron e-commerce company. In 2000, the reported revenues of the company made 1 billion. It had stakes in almost 30,000 miles of gas pipelines, either owned or accessed 15,000 miles of fiber-optic network and had stakes in global operations on generating electricity (Thomas, 2002).

In the result, for five years in a row, from 1996 to 2000, Enron was named "America's most innovative Company" by Fortune magazine, and headed the list of Fortune's "100 best companies to Work for in America" in 2000. Enron reputation was undermined by rumors on bribery and political pressure with the objective of securing contacts in South and Central America, Philippines and Africa. The Enron was blamed to use its connections with Clinton and Bush administrations to express pressure in their contracts. The events were followed by a series of scandals involving irregular accounting methods bordering on fraud which involved Enron and Arthur Andersen accounting firm and led Enron on the verge of undergoing the largest bankruptcy in economic history in November 2001 (Emshwiller, Smith, 2001).

Since Enron was always considered a blue chip stock, the bankruptcy was a disastrous and unprecedented event in the global financial world. Enron's downfall was definite when it was found out that a considerable share of its profits resulted from deals with so-called special-purpose entities, limited partnership under control of Enron. It resulted in the possibility of not reporting many of the company's losses in its financial statements. The final plan of Enron's bankruptcy included creation of three new businesses which would be spun off the company.

The reorganization process started in 2003 with the creation of three companies - CrossCountry Energy, Prisma Energy International, and Portland General Electric. CrossCountry Energy was sold to CCE Holdings L.L.C., with the money to be used for the repayment of the debts, while Prisma Energy International and Portland General Electric should emerge as independent companies descendant of Enron (Swatz, 2003).

Operations management scope of functions

To understand the reasons of this bankruptcy and the level of managerial implication in the quality performance of the company, particularly that of operations management, it is necessary to outline the main functions of operations management and impact it should have of functioning of the organization.

The principal task of operations management is effective transformation of inputs into "desired outputs" of the company (Shafer, 1997). The outputs are traditionally understood in manufacturing and profit-making context within the organizations. But recently it has been recognized that operations management is a discipline which is not limited with such narrow functions; it can be deployed in practically any area where the organization aims at achieving its objectives (Barnett, 1996). For instance, non-profit or public sectors have to learn to optimize their internal operations and processes in the situation of limited resources; service companies come to conclusion that by reappraising their delivery process they can revolutionize and significantly improve their approach to manufacturing companies and their marketplace. Robin Wood (2001) gives the example of such operations management implication in Daewoo company, which understood that it can specialize and differentiate its product by adding definite bundle of benefits to its product which includes additional supporting services. Operations sector is the heart of these changes that are made by leading companies to improve their performance and increase customer base.

The survival of commercial company depends on ability of the organization to focus and shape its operational resources to meet the expectations of its stakeholders: customers, employees and shareholders, expressed in organizational strategy (Russel, 1995) . Irrespective of economic sectors the company operates in, the ability of operations management of this company to fulfill those above-mentioned tasks depends on their understanding that it is necessary to make trade-offs. They cannot avoid the situation of working under constraints and have to understand their capabilities and constraints to provide significant inputs into strategic decision-making process involving further resources of the organization.

Operations managers in the organizations are not empowered to make strategic decisions, but they play important role in shaping the organization's strategy and contribute to the strategic thinking ( Pasternack, Viscio, 1998). Operations managers should be able to translate strategic aims and objectives into clear operational objectives and actions and to implement, design and improve the products of the company themselves and the processes of their delivery. They have to know how changes incorporated to external factors influence the operation and how changes in one aspect of the operating system influence other aspects.

Also, operations managers need to know how technological changes impact organization's capability of delivery, and to incorporate their conclusions into strategic process (Peters, Waterman, 1982). Therefore, the heart of operations thinking includes the ability to think dynamically and systematically across time and space (Miller, 1998). Besides traditional tasks of operation management, new perspectives and objectives emerge connected with the emergence of new trends and developments of operations management, such as total quality management, shop floor control, global supply chain management, manufacturing planning software, and others.

Total quality management has become one of the most important developments of the operations management. The quest for higher level of products and services quality is caused by the globalization of markets, on the one hand, and increasing litigation over service or product failure. The relationship between quality and market share performance is doubtless. Those firms that fail to understand the issue of quality find themselves on the bottom of their industry hierarchy. A significant share of the responsibility for quality standards rests on the operations manager. Global supply chain management is another very important component of operations management. The world economy is becoming more global than ever. Looking for lower production costs, more flexibility and local risk reduction, companies are seeking to outsource and produce services and products on global scale (Heizer, 2004). Operation managers are responsible for fulfilling the task. Project management is yet another task of the operations management department. Operation managers bear responsibility for numerous projects which range from considerable capital projects to specific ones such as installation of new information system.

Effectively managing projects involves fulfillment and delivery them in timely manner and within the budget (Stevens, 2001). In a word, operations management is indispensable component of the organization, since it fulfills numerous important functions of the company. Operations manager handles daily running and functioning of the organization.

The implication of poor managerial performance for the collapse of Enron Corporation

Now it is necessary to find out and analyze whether operations management of Enron Corp performed all the functions mentioned above and what was the quality of their activity.

The Enron did have operations management department, which, according to their official source, fulfilled the following functions: setup accounts and notify utilities, agency agreement from customer, verify the format of invoice, setup invoice data transfer, test algorithms of invoice and file transfer to the customer, determine the reporting requirements of the customer (Enron Energy Services, 2000). As it is seen from the source, the functions of very operations management department are very limited. There are other management departments which perform the functions of operations management stated above: operations facility management, commodity management, energy asset management, financial operations, and capital management. Though, most of functions performed by these departments, according to the source, are purely executive and lack integration, systematic vision, responsibility, control and creative aspect. Besides limited scope of functions assigned to operations management in Enron Corporation, another important point concerns the quality of their performance and overall corporate culture and atmosphere created within corporation. As it was mentioned above, ideally, the functions of operations management include creating ethic values, integrity, competence and clear accountability within the organization. Enron's management failed to comply with these tasks.

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The Collapse of Enron: Managerial Aspects
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The Important Role Of Public Relations

Public relations is fundamentally the art and science of establishing relationships between an organization and its key audiences. Public relations plays a key role in helping business industries create strong relationships with customers.

Public relations involves supervising and assessing public attitudes, and maintaining mutual relations and understanding between an organization and its public. The function of public relations is to improve channels of communication and to institute new ways of setting up a two-way flow of information and understanding.

Public relations is effective in helping:

The Important Role Of Public Relations

* Corporations convey information about their products or services to potential customers

* Corporations reach local government and legislators

* Politicians attract votes and raise money, and craft their public image and legacy

* Non-profit organizations, including schools, hospitals, social service agencies etc. boost support of their programs such as awareness programs, fund-raising programs, and to increase patronage of their services

Public relations in present times employs diverse techniques such as opinion polling and focus groups to evaluate public opinion, combined with a variety of high-tech techniques for distributing information on behalf of their clients, including the internet, satellite feeds, broadcast faxes, and database-driven phone banks.

As public image is important to all organizations and prominent personalities the role of public relations specialist becomes pertinent in crisis situations. Public relations agencies provide important and timely transmission of information that helps save the face of the organization. In the words of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), "Public relations helps an organization and its public adopt mutually to one another."

Experienced public relations agencies have formulation press releases into which they can plug the company news, as well as a targeted list of publications for their industry. Truly good public relations agencies generally have a good working relationship with key reporters, boosting their chances of getting coverage. Some public relations agencies deal only with large, established clients, while smaller boutique public relations agencies specialize in certain areas.

At present public relations as a career option exists in private companies or government institutions that actively market their product, service and facilities. Public relations training courses are widespread in educational institutions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 122,000 public relations specialists in the United States in 1998 and approximately 485,000 advertising, marketing, and public relations managers working in all industries.

Most public relations practitioners are recruited from the ranks of journalism. Public relations officers are highly trained professionals with expertise and knowledge in many areas, for example shareholder management during a crisis, the evolving role of the in-house public relations professional, account management skills for public relations, an introduction to financial public relations, an introduction to consumer public relations, an introduction to public relations software etc.

The Important Role Of Public Relations
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Top Cool Gifts For a 13-Year-Old's Birthday

If your favorite 12-year-old is about to turn 13, it is time to get some cool gifts for a 13-year-old's birthday.

What would light up the face of a 13-year-old girl or boy? Would it be a sparkling silver shoulder bag... a remote controlled airplane... or a magic kit? Or, perhaps a special birthday dinner in a restaurant with great food, a big cake, and plenty of ice cream.

Settle back for now and let us take a look at some cool gifts that may fit the bill.

Top Cool Gifts For a 13-Year-Old's Birthday

Electric Guitar - This electric guitar is ready to play. No TV or sound system is needed. There are built-in songs with a selection for indie, metal, punk, and rock. Your 13-year-old may have a budding career as a rock star.

Pastel Painting Set - This set contains 48 pastels of every color, a block of pastel paper, and a bottle of fixative spray. Your young artist can paint an original painting or paint a picture that is pre-drawn on the paper.

Radio-controlled Trucks - These great trucks come in either a GMC Yukon Denali model or a Dodge HEMI. They are a full 30 inches long and have a roaming range of 100 feet. These remote controlled toy vehicles have giant wheels for rough terrain as well as smooth.

Hannah Montana Projector - Invite friends over, turn down the lights, and pass the popcorn. It is time for the Hannah Montana show. You can project the show on a screen, the wall, or the ceiling. The projector comes with remote and slides. Use a sound track from the show to accompany the pictures.

Pinball Wars Game - This pinball game is a game for two players that switches to a game for one. The standing table is filled with electronic lights and sounds. It has dual LCD scoring as well as internal drop pockets. This cool gift could keep the whole family occupied.

Barbie Girls and MP3 Player - This super gift will bring a lot of joy. There are two Barbie girls and you can mix and match their outfits. Plus, included with the Barbie girls is a good-looking MP3 player with adjustable earbuds and a docking station. This gift could be the hit of any party.

Name Scroll on a Painting - Here is one gift that is always a big hit. This scroll is hand-printed with your 13-year-old's first name and its meaning, and includes famous people with that name. The background is a painting of a kitten, a dog, horses, flowers or other scenes. There is a golden crown, a seal, and a border. This treasured gift is ready for framing.

Well, that is about it. Have a good time shopping for cool gifts for a 13-year-old's birthday. And, remember to have a great time at the birthday party.

Top Cool Gifts For a 13-Year-Old's Birthday
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(c) Benedict Manovill. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

How to Write a Sales Promotion Letter to Boost Your Income

A sales promotion letter is a business correspondence that is used to effectively introduce and market business products and services to both existing and prospect customers. Sales letters are done either through a snail mail or email. But with the advent of internet technology and the wide use of computers today, these letter are now usually done through email. Either way, letters should be properly done in order for them to best serve their purpose which is to entice more customers and patronage to the products.

There are basically several ways to write letters. It can either be formal or informal, depending on your target market, audience, and the promotion type. There is no standard form for sales promotion actually as any types of promotion through letters can be considered a sales letter.

Sales letters are very important as they are designed to create awareness to the public about a company's offers, promos, products and services. Letters are sent to the company's specific market or audience to ensure that the advertisement and promotions reach the intended customers. It is in this sense that sales letters are more effective compared to other means of product advertising such as blogs, newspapers, and magazines. Given this utmost importance, sales letters should be done correctly.

How to Write a Sales Promotion Letter to Boost Your Income

So, how do we write an effective letter to boost sales? Firstly, just like in any other forms of letters, it should be written in an interesting way so as to draw the attention of the reader to the letter's message. To do this, it is imperative for you to understand your target readers. This way, you would be able to attune your writing style and the format of your letter into something that the readers would deem interesting.

The heading of the letter is one of the most important parts of the letter. This is because the heading should be enticing enough to push the reader to read the next important lines of the letter. Contrary to what others do, the heading needs not to contain the entire message of the letter. It should only give a hint as to what the letter is all about but it should never speak for the entire letter. The heading is usually short hence might not be long enough to properly represent the intention and contain the magical words that would encourage customers to buy the products.

The body of the letter can be divided into three concise paragraphs. The first paragraph should introduce the products. The second one should emphasize on the strong points of the product. And finally, the last paragraph should encourage action. Most customers tend to procrastinate, hence the need to encourage them to act immediately. Motivational phrases like "freebies for first 100 customers" or anything of that sort may help encourage the customers to immediately check out the products.

Learn more about sales promotion letter.

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Proven Ways to Increase Restaurant Sales

The continuous mission for every restaurant owner, even successful ones, is to increase restaurant sales. With so many dining establishments vying for a customers business, effective marketing measures are key ingredients for attracting customer attention, establishing your restaurants identity and enhancing customer loyalty.

Word of mouth is the most cost efficient way to increase restaurant sales. If you present a wonderful dining experience, patrons will naturally refer your restaurant to others. But word of mouth works both ways. Bad reviews often travel faster than positive ones. Thats why its essential to be consistent in providing excellent customer service, quality food and an inviting atmosphere.

While chain restaurants rely on a corporate formula to increase restaurant sales, independent restaurateurs can be more flexible, giving them a greater advantage. One important strategy is getting to know your customers. Theres a reason why clubs, theater groups, business people, or friends who get together weekly only dine at one particular restaurant. Its because the owner greeets them by name, knows their dining preferences and is aware of things going on in their lives. These restaurants have created a trusting, family environment that builds customer retention.

Proven Ways to Increase Restaurant Sales

Without a doubt, rewarding repeat customers can lead to increased profits. If you know a customer has referred others to your restaurant or consistently brings in a group of business associates, consider giving a gift certificate for a complimentary dinner or providing a free appetizer or bottle of wine for the table. This is a great sales tactic to motivate your good customers to bring in business to your restaurant.

Your staff is an integral part of building sales. Besides providing impeccable customer service, your staff can increase restaurant sales by up-selling to increase the table check. Rather than ask if anyone would like a drink, appetizer or dessert, they should note which ones are house specialties or offer their personal recommendations. They should also promote higher priced dishes with reasons showcasing their value.

A comprehensive advertising and marketing plan is essential in growing and maintaining a profitable restaurant business. Your advertising needs to set your restaurant apart from others and pique a persons interest to try it. Your marketing efforts should be both in-house with promotions and in the community. Have a presence at community events within your service area, network with business and trade groups, or get involved with a charity that is of interest to you. The more visibility you can give your restaurant, the greater your market reach.

Using the Internet to increase profitability is a must. Your restaurants website should be as interactive as possible, allowing people to make reservations, see current specials and easily get directions. Have a presence on social media sites, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Incentives take on many forms, but all have shown to increase restaurant sales. Some examples of common incentives are discounts, coupons, punch cards, customer loyalty programs, business card drawings, promotions and special events. You might want to try a combination of incentives to enhance business.

Proven Ways to Increase Restaurant Sales
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Jose L Riesco worked in the IT for 18 years and co-owned an Italian restaurant in Bellevue, WA.

By applying his many years of experience working for corporations and his marketing skills to the restaurant business, he has created a unique and groundbreaking marketing system.

Jose has brought top proven marketing practices from other industries to the Restaurant industry, making a unique contribution to this business that he knows and cherishes so much.

Restaurants have traditionally used advertising and coupons as the main marketing vehicle. The Restaurant Marketing Strategies Seminar changes all of that.

By creating a unique Strategy client centric (instead of food or Chef-centric), restaurant owners will be able to dramatically increase their sales while creating happy and recurrent clients.

You can find more about his Restaurant Marketing Strategies and get 20 free videos with Questions and Answers about restaurant marketing by visiting his web site at http://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

Universal Health Care - Ethical Issues in Health Care Reform

Universal health care seems to be a hotly debated topic whenever health care reform in the United States is discussed. 

Those who maintain that health is an individual responsibility do not want a system that requires them to contribute tax dollars to support fellow citizens who do not act responsibly in protecting or promoting their own health. They argue that they want the freedom to choose their own physicians and treatments, and suggest that government cannot know what is best for them.  These people argue that preserving the current system with improvements to provide better insurance coverage for citizens who remain uninsured or under insured for their medical care needs is the only reform that is needed.

Those who believe health care is an individual right support a universal health care system with the argument that every citizen deserves to have access to the right care at the right time and that a government's responsibility is to protect its citizens, sometimes even from themselves.

Universal Health Care - Ethical Issues in Health Care Reform

Two opposing arguments arising from two opposing ideologies.  Both are good arguments but neither can be the supporting argument for implementing or denying universal health care.  The matter must be resolved through an ethical framework.

Examination of the ethical issues in health care reform would require consideration of much different arguments  than those already presented.   Ethical issues would center on the moral right.  Discussion would begin with not "What is best for me?" but rather  "How should we as a society be acting so that our actions are morally correct?"

Ethics refers to determining right and wrong in how humans relate to one another.  Ethical decision making for health care reform then would require human beings to act in consideration of our relationships to each other not our own individual interests.

Examination of some of the common ethical decision making theories can provide a foundation for a different perspective than one that is solely concerned  with individual rights and freedoms. 

Ethical decision making requires that specific questions be answered in order to decide on whether intended actions are good or morally correct.  Here are some questions that could be used in ethical decision making for health care reform.

What action will bring the most good to the most people? What action in and of itself is a good act and helps us to fulfill our duties, obligations, and responsibilities to each other? What action in and of itself shows caring and concern for all citizens?

As the answer to all  these questions, universal health care can always be considered the right thing to do.

The United States is in the most advantageous position there is when it comes to health care reform.  They are the only developed country without a national health care system in place for all citizens.  They have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes that have been made by all the other countries that have already gone down the universal health care road. They have an opportunity to design a system that can shine as a jewel in the crown of universal health care systems everywhere. 

However, all ethical decision making is structured around values.  In order for universal health care to be embraced by all citizens in the United States, they will first have to agree to the collective value of equity and fairness and embrace the goal of meeting their collective responsibility to each other while maintaining individual rights and freedoms. That may prove to be the most difficult obstacle of all.

Universal Health Care - Ethical Issues in Health Care Reform
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Beverly Hansen OMalley is a nurse with over 35 years experience in nursing education. She is health promotion specialist and is passionate about the necessity to address social determinants of health as part of overall health promotion strategies. She is the owner of http://www.registered-nurse-canada.com where she provides information on the Canadian health care system, the nursing profession in Canada, and the nursing entrance tests for the US and Canada.

Definition of Marketing Mix - Product, Price, Place and Promotion

Getting the marketing mix right for your product or service means you are covering all of the important bases in your marketing campaign. Here is a definition of marketing mix and a description of its main components.

The term marketing mix refers to the primary elements that must be attended to in order to properly market a product. Also known as The 4 Ps of Marketing, the marketing mix is a very useful, if a bit general, guideline for understanding the fundamentals of what makes a good marketing campaign. Here is a brief description of each component of the 4 Ps of the marketing mix.

Product: The marketing mix concept has its roots in the 1950s U.S. corporate marketing world, and the practice of marketing has obviously evolved tremendously since this term was invented. One of the changes is that there are a lot more services available nowadays, such as those available online. Also, the distinction between product and service has become more blurry (e.g., is a Web-based software application a product or a service?). Either way, product here refers to products or services. The product you offer needs to be able to meet a specific, existing market demand. Or, you need to be able to create a market niche through building a strong brand.

Definition of Marketing Mix - Product, Price, Place and Promotion

Price: The price you set for your offering plays a large role in its marketability. Pricing for offerings that are more commonly available in the market is more elastic, meaning that unit sales will go up or down more responsively in response to price changes. By contrast, those products that have a generally more limited availability in the market (but with strong demand) are more inelastic, meaning that price changes will not affect unit sales very much. The price elasticity of your offering can be determined through various market testing techniques.

Place: This term really refers to any way that the customer can obtain a product. Provision of a product can occur via any number of distribution channels, such as in a retail store, through the mail, via downloadable files, on a cruise ship, in a hair salon, etc. The ease and options through which you can make your product available to your customers will have an effect on your sales volume.

Promotion: Promotion is concerned with any vehicle you employ for getting people to know more about your offering. Advertising, public relations, point-of-sale displays, and word-of-mouth promotion are all traditional ways for promotion. Promotion can be seen as a way of closing the information gap between would-be sellers and would-be buyers. Your choice of a promotional strategy will be dependent upon your budget, the type of offering you are selling, and availability of said promotional vehicle.

Marketing has come a long way from the 4 Ps of yesteryear, and yet understanding this marketing mix is for your product remains very relevant today. The marketing mix serves as an excellent touchstone for continually checking that you are covering all of the bases in your marketing campaign.

Definition of Marketing Mix - Product, Price, Place and Promotion
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Importance of Career Planning

Career means profession, which we want to adopt for earning livelihood, and planning means proper flow or to make proper decisions.

Pre- planning in our life plays very important role in every aspect of life, to work in a proper flow, and pre-planning for career, which we want to pursue in our future ahead after acquiring certain level of degree is also very necessary in today's competitive world.

According to the Thorndike dictionary

Importance of Career Planning

"A goal that you desire to achieve in a selected field or occupation with a well-thought out plan, to get you there is called Career Planning."

The world is now moving very fast, and the time has come when this meritocratic society accepts only those, having right qualification and right skills.
Olden days are gone, when just a degree would help an individual to get high profile job by giving bribe or using some other mean. Now it's high time, when the transparency in job recruitment has taken place.

Challenges and competition are the part of today's society, and therefore, Career Planning is the only task, which can guide us to do what we want to do in our life, rather than just aimlessly changing job all the time in future.

We have seen many Pakistani, who after completing Intermediate don't know where to go, what to do and we have also seen graduates, who aimlessly do graduation without any specialization. As a result, they earns just in 6-8 figures.

Career Planning is one of the broader aspects of learning in our existence. We all have some intentions and we all think to have stability in our future lives, and for that purpose, CAREER PLANNING serves as a key to success.

Career Planning makes a person to think suitably about their positive and negative aspects. All about their interest, about their creativity becomes possible through proper analyzing ourselves.

Career Planning basically starts, when a person finishes Secondary/ Higher Secondary level of education. After that level, a person could opt for that educational degree, which would help them out to have a good job opportunity according to their skills at the right time.

Career Planning helps us to design and formulate our future smoothly. Like, If a person wants to be a banker, then he or she would choose to go for ACCA or CA or MBA in finance after completing Intermediate in commerce and Graduation in commerce/ business administration.. Else he/ she would go for CAT course or Masters in Commerce or even upto doctorate level.

This pre-planning would be effective and would give him/her benefits after achieving educational targets effectively. It also helps us to evaluate our own personality, which helps us to know that which kind of job would suit us according to our need and capabilities.

In short, Career Planning is like mapping our future. Without proper planning, no one could think of getting a desired job in future.

Think what we want to do and finding out more about the kind of training, education, and skills we will need to achieve our career goal is the core objective of career planning.
It help us knowing the nature of the jobs that interest us, such as educational requirements, salary, working conditions, fringe benefits, promotion chances, future prospectus, and help us focusing in the right dimension.

Career planning directs us, motivates us, and helps us to accomplish what we want. A career goal is a specific vision such as an architect or a teacher or a career goal can be a particular field, which we want to work in, such as Media, Education, Medicine, Engineering etc.

For those who will think about their future and career after completing education without any long term desired goals are the one, whose all attempt might end in smoke.
There are some cases and situation, which bound a person to pre-plan in advance, such like family high family business status, lack of interest in studies or traditional job, low motivation, low financial status etc or some past educational traumas, which had made a person to plan after wards.

Career planning is a life time process we are always learning and growing, and as we do, our interests and needs also change. Career planning is not just making plans to obtain our career, but it also help us to make many adjustments there will be along the ways we learn throughout our lives.

Those who have successful careers like educators, business man, manager, pilot, architect, banker, doctor etc are the one, who has made their ways through proper guidance.

No doubt, that our parents have some wishes and expectations from us, but we have our own too. Therefore, we should also consider others opinion. For that we could take guidance from an educational counselor to get better guidance towards new dimensional fields as well. Teacher, professionals, career guidance websites, Head educational consultants can also guide us, to have a better approach for our future.

We must have freedom of speaking and freedom of choosing our career as we have to lead our lives which interest us. We must try to have an open mind in order to choose the right career on right time.

According to one renowned professor,

"Few of us like to opt for those degree courses, which their family or friend has advised them to adopt and this inappropriate knowledge trapped them into a great mistake and
In this way, they are unable to get good job opportunities according to their interests. Only Proper Career Guidance would help an individual to be on the right path before hand. Few of us try to seek the right path and take guidance from family or teacher to tell them what is good for them, which career is in demand and which career suits their interest."

The future is un-predictable, however, we could still make our place in this meritocratic world by making career goals and plans in advance, for getting better opportunities in today's pluralistic and globalize world.

We must pre-plan our goals under the supervision of professionals in conscious state of mind, so that we could strategically maintain our goals and follow it towards the path of successful future.

Importance of Career Planning
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Munir Moosa Sewani is one of the famous, prominent and creative name in the field of Education since 8 years. He is a Master Trainer In Special Education, Post Graduate, Teacher Educator and a Teacher. He is a Freelance Writer and Photographer too. He is an author of the famous self-published storybook for children named as "The MORAL STORIES FOR CHILDREN" and has also written Biology course book for Secondary Classes. He has written almost more than 20 articles on social, health, educational and cultural issues, which are internationally recognized and published in most of the famous world wide websites, magazines and newspapers.

He is also a Social worker, private tutor, career counselor, musician, lyrics writer and have multi- dimensional talents.

His future plan is to write dozens of informative books and articles and to work for education and media also, in order to develop the sense of understanding many dimensions of life through his creativity.

Internet Promotion - Advantages and Disadvantages

The emergence of globalise trade, increase in foreign investment and cross-border transactions have put many small businesses under pressure to find innovative ways to continue to market their products and services. This is especially difficult given that they often operate on tight marketing budgets.

In the quest for cheap marketing alternatives, these small businesses continue to use conventional marketing tools such as newspaper, magazine, radio and television advertisements, unaware of the advantages that Internet Promotion offers. All too often, these entrepreneurs focus on the disadvantages of Internet Promotion and fail to adequately take advantage of the opportunities that it presents. Moreover, their preoccupation with conventional marketing strategies is driven by a misconception that these are cheaper than Internet Promotion.

To most small business entrepreneurs, marketing or promoting their products or services via the Internet can be a daunting task. However, with adequate information small businesses can benefit significantly from Internet Promotion while minimising the disadvantages that it presents. In fact, it may prove to be the marketing strategy that generates the highest return on investment.

Internet Promotion - Advantages and Disadvantages

The Advantages

Cost Effective and Enduring Marketing Strategies

The Internet has become the information superhighway for the buying public. Most persons prefer the hassle free transactions that Internet shopping can offer. As a result, the Internet has become the most powerful selling tool. Internet Promotion offers cost effective ways for small businesses to enhance their product or service distribution networks. For example, the use of portals can help create new marketing channels and logistics, or provide better or faster product access for customers.

In comparison to other forms of marketing, Internet Promotion presents the advantage of reduced budget and storage costs, when compared with printing brochures, producing television or radio advertisements or managing a call centre. It presents a fast and cost effective option for penetrating new markets.

Market Penetration

With millions of person using the Internet to search for products and services, small businesses can penetrate other markets at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing methods.

Websites act as virtual storefronts, allowing businesses to stay open 24/7. Internet Promotion gives a business greater visibility, thereby creating more opportunities for increasing its customers at relatively low cost. Never before has it been easier for an upstart business to be able to reach out to literally millions of potential customers and to position themselves for success, without the need for costly infrastructure and overwhelming marketing costs. Thanks to the Internet, new businesses can become popular almost overnight.

Low Cost, Instant Communication

Email makes business communications instant, whether the customer or business affiliate is across the street or across the globe. It makes it easier for customers to maintain contact and readily facilitates repeat purchasing. An effective online strategy can therefore turn a small web business into a virtual cost saver and income-generating machine. The net result is that the small business can gain significant competitive advantage in a given market.

Many online businesses have therefore resorted to the use of ezines, blogs, pop-up ads and other online marketing tools to let customers know about new products or services as well as provide information relevant to their respective industry. The benefits of this strategy are two fold. Marketers can effectively heighten brand awareness for relatively new products on the market whilst strengthening customer relationships, with shorter time frames.

Content is Timeless

Internet Promotion also provides the advantage of being enduring. Whereas participation at a trade fair or conference loses sales impact, once it is over, and an advertisement in a newspaper or business magazine may quickly lose its sales generating value within a day or two or as soon as the next issue is released; Internet Promotion is often timeless. Apart from the dates and sometimes prices, much of your website content remains valid years after.

Real Time Statistics For Measuring Success of Promotion Campaign

One of the most significant advantages of Internet Promotion is that its success is measurable. Marketers can use tools that provide real time statistics, on unique visitors, repeat visitors, click through rates (CTR) on advertisements, thereby allowing them to evaluate the effectiveness of a promotion campaign. This enables marketers to determine what works for their particular market and to make timely changes in their marketing strategies.

Time Saving

Another important advantage of Internet Promotion is that it saves time since it generally does away with counselling on product uses and benefits, service information and sales administration. Visitors can access "frequently asked questions" to help themselves, and can buy online, without the involvement of staff. This saves time and money. So, whether 10 or 10,000 visitors visit the site, the increased cost is marginal whilst the savings can be immense.

But like any business approach, Internet Promotion is not without its risks and weaknesses.

Disadvantages

Difficulty in Attracting Customers

Small business may not have the resources to pay for paid directory inclusion, pay per click inclusions and often have to rely solely on search engine optimisation or word of mouth to drive traffic to their sites. With millions of businesses selling the same product and services, competing with more established businesses can be frustrating and costly venture for small business.

On the other hand, larger companies can offer promotions, pay for directory inclusions, implement pay per click campaigns as well as employ the "who is who" in internet marketing to develop campaigns that generate traffic and leads.

Difficulty in Evaluating Legitimacy of Transaction

Another notable disadvantage of doing promoting businesses online is that it may be difficult for the businesspersons and consumers to thoroughly evaluate the legitimacy of a transaction. Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to thieves using stolen credit cards and stolen information to do online transaction.

With Internet credit card and identity fraud on the rise, small businesses are forced to finance costly security measures to reduce their vulnerability to fraudulent transactions.

Salespersons and Customers are Isolated

Another disadvantage of promotion via the Internet is that the customers and businesspersons are isolated. There is little personal contact between customer and salesperson prior to and after the sales is closed. Thus, the prospect for repeat sales may thus be diminished. Entrepreneurs are therefore compelled to adopt marketing strategies to drive online users back to their site.

From all indications, it appears that the advantages of Internet promotion, far exceed the disadvantages. With adequate knowledge, entrepreneur can benefit significantly from Internet promotion, especially small business owners.

More and more, the growth and outreach of the Internet's, its ease and accessibility for customers is becoming inevitable. Small business would therefore be well advised to start their web advertising function in order to improve their competitiveness online.

Internet Promotion - Advantages and Disadvantages
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Carla Lendor has been involved in Internet Marketing from 2000. She is a co-publisher of eXplosion!, a newsletter which offers guidance to small online businesses. She is the co-founder of Caricom Single Market Economy, a blog with discusses the challenges faced by Caribbean businesses in the CSME. Visit Patant Consultants International or Caribbean Vacation Resorts [http://www.jewelsinthesun.com/] for more information.

Sales Promotion Strategies

Sales promotion has been one of the most heavily used weapons of the producers or manufacturers. It is counted amongst one of their most affective ways of boosting their sales. Sales promotion has certain misconceptions attached to it. One of the most obvious is that sales promotion is only considered as targeted only at the wholesalers. However, this notion is totally wrong.

There are many ways to promote the sales. Sales promotion can be targeted at the wholesaler, retailer or even at times the end customer. There are various methods that are used. First of all, a producer or manufacturer should be able to know his channel members i.e., is the intermediaries and the end customers very well. Moving a product through all these members to the end customer is not an easy job. It takes a lot of patience and understanding. There are many strategies built around the philosophy of moving the products through. There are three strategies that are widely used to boost the sales promotion activities.

These three strategies are; a push strategy, a pull strategy, and a combination of both. Some of the major questions that impact the decision of following a certain sales promotion strategy include brand loyalty towards the product, brand equity, market share, competitive promotional strategies, unique selling proposition, and advertising strategy. There are a lot of questions to be asked before finalizing a strategy that would help company select the right kind of promotional strategy. Let us have a glance at which strategy is follow in different case scenarios.

Sales Promotion Strategies

1. Push Strategy
In a push strategy the company is sure that its customers want the product. The only thing lacking is the lack of push the products have from the intermediates i.e., the wholesalers and retailers. In this the company provides incentives to these intermediaries and asks them to push the product by increasing its sale. This kind of strategy is usually involved in products where there is fierce competition amongst producers and the intermediaries are given heavy margins by each producer to ensure his product is given the preference.

2. Pull Strategy
This strategy is quite the opposite of the push strategy discussed above. The assumption in this strategy is that the customers either don't know at all or not enough about the manufacturer's product features to have an interest in it. By adopting this strategy the producer works with the intermediaries, especially the retailers to better present the products not only in shelves but also improve its general outlook.

3. Mix Strategy
This kind of strategy is adopted when the company thinks that the products need a push from both sides. Neither the intermediaries are pushing the product of the company to the extent nor the customers know or are interested in the product. To make this thing really happen the company simultaneously launches a two prong battle. This strategy is obviously more cost bearing and takes more time to materialize. In this strategy the company not only gives heavy margins to the intermediaries like the wholesalers and distributors, but also tries to attract the customers by making its products more attractive in shelves and packaging.

This is one of the most comprehensive sales promotion strategies. The company should properly plan for the expenses and the expected outcome. A misdirected campaign will not only result into great financial loss but may hurt the brand in the market.

Sales Promotion Strategies
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William King is the director of Hong Kong Suppliers and UAE Dubai Directory. He has 18 years of experience in the marketing and trading industries and has been helping retailers and startups with their product sourcing, promotion, marketing and supply chain requirements.