Let’s say you’re about to write your first Business Plan. Or maybe write another one for a new business. Or maybe re-write a Business Plan that didn’t work in the past. And you have a choice… You can trawl the web and download some free Business Plan or get out the credit card and buy one. Tricky, isn’t it? There is so much out there, it’s hard to resist. Ok, why am I rambling on about this?

What Google Thinks of Business Plans

A quick search on Google shows us that the business community has some strong opinions on the value of business plans. Some deride them as antiquated whereas others see them as the foundation stone for a business growth. Who’s right? Well, it would be nice if someone did some research on the value of business plans. Actually, they have and Tim Berry presented the findings.

can Business Plan Software really Help your Business?

Here is a quote from a paper presented to the University of Oregon Department of Economics by Eason Ding and Tim Hursey:

Results suggest that planning with software is highly correlated with subsequent successes for a variety of firms.’

Business Plan Software, a closer look

Tim Berry is the founder of the well-respected Palo Alto Software (Business Plan Pro software firm) and, in fairness, flags this upfront.

He explains, “Palo Alto Software asked thousands of Business Plan Pro users a couple of dozen questions about their businesses, goals, type of business, years in existence, and business planning. Almost 3,000 people responded.”

The research findings suggests that those who finished their business plans were about twice as likely to:

1. Successfully grow their business,
2. Get investment, or
3. Land a loan than those who didn’t.

You can see the numbers on the chart above

What’s the real reason Business Plan Software Makes A Difference.

The researchers used the completion of a business plan as the explanatory variable, the success of the business plan as the dependent variable, and a number of related results – original intent of the plan, type of company, stage of company growth, and so on – as controlling variables.

Tim’s interoperation, which I largely agree with, is that ‘

completing a business plan correlated with increased success in every one of the business objectives that came up in the study (which were: getting a loan, making a major purchase, getting investment, recruiting a new team member, thinking more strategically, and growing the company). In every one of these cases, well beyond the threshold of statistical validity, completing a business plan improved the proportion of respondents who achieved the goal.

The authors of the study said:

The analysis indicates that completion of a business plan is positively correlated with every success variable indicated, even when controlling for intent of using the business plan.

And here’s their conclusion:

Except in a small number of cases, business planning appeared to be positively correlated with business success as measured by our variables. While our analysis cannot say that completing a business plan will lead to success, it does indicate that the type of entrepreneur who completes a business plan is also more likely to run a successful business.

the problem with free

I’m not sure it’s to do with the software or the templates….

Why?

I feel that when you make an investment in something, for example, buying business planning software or templates out of your back pocket, then you’re more likely to follow through. It’s not guaranteed but no-one likes to buy something and then let it sit there on your hard drive doing nothing.

For example, the investments I make in my career, business and people ensure that I am more likely to follow through and less likely to take them for granted. I’ve invested in them financially or emotionally and dont want to see the investment wasted.

In a society where ‘Freemium’ is seen as a new business model, we may need to consider the true returns we get from paying for things.

If you get it for free, do you really value it? Does paying for something mean you value it more?

About the Author: Ivan Walsh provides Business Tips for Smart People on Klariti.com. His also runs the popular Business Plan Blog at http://www.ivanwalsh.com

PS: The Business Plan Template is here.Discloser: I work as a consultant for Klariti Ltd just so you know and all. I still think this template pack is the best ten bucks you’ll spend this week

The public website or intranet that keeps screaming for attention with useless images and vain content will get little from the impatient and sceptical customer.

The needs of the organization are great, and the larger and older the organization gets, the greater those needs become. The problem is that the internal needs of the organization rarely match the needs of customers.

Organizations grow strong because they’ve done something right.

Dell is a good example. It grew as a customer centric
organization, but as it got bigger it began to lose that true
customer focus.

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Around 2001, you had two options on the Dell homepage: navigate

by product (laptop, desktop, etc.) or navigate by audience
(home, business, etc.). Every test I have done indicates that
about 90% of people prefer to navigate by product in buying
computer stuff. In fact, audience navigation makes many people
cynical. “Do businesses gets better deals than me?;” I just want
to buy a laptop, why do I have to select what group I belong
to;” “I’m a home business. Which should I select?”

By about 2003, Dell had gotten rid of the product navigation,
forcing the customer to choose an audience. I am told Dell did
this because the audience types mirror the powerful business
units within Dell. These business units could not agree how to
share revenue if someone simply selected “Laptop”.

Dell was once young and customer-centric, but like nearly all
organizations, it grew old and organization-centric. It began to
suffer from organaritis. Similar to arthritis in humans,
organaritis afflicts mainly older organizations. A stiffening of
the joints makes it hard for the organization to change and move
quickly.

There are signs that Dell is trying to recover from organaritis.
Recently, I noticed that it is publishing reviews of its
products on its website. Yes, it allows negative reviews. That
to me is impressive and makes it more likely I will buy a Dell
again. (After what Lenovo has done to the ThinkPad, the choices
have become more limited.)

Does your organization have organaritis? If you answer yes to
one or more of the following questions you probably need to seek
medical help:

• Do you have pictures of very important people within your
organization (your needy children) on your webpages?

• Do these needy children require messages from them to be
published prominently on the site?

• Do you have big pictures of smiling actors pretending to be
customers? (Shiny, happy people.)

• Do you have needy departments whose stated objective in life
is to get some real estate on the homepage?

• Do you have needy, powerful managers who demand that their
latest programs and initiatives get prominence on the
homepage?

• Is your culture one that believes that the primary purpose of
the website is to get customers to do what you want them to do,
rather than help them quickly and easily do what they came to
do?

• Does your organization embrace verbosity atrocities?

Headings such as: “Start your way to a clear new world”.

Sentences such as: “We are delighted to announce that our holistic approach
embraces 50,000 ft thinking which is unparalleled in its reach
and depth of understanding of the globalization challenges that
must be embraced holistically if we are to thrive in
ever-changing, shifting, hazy, somewhat unclear, cloudy, and
sometimes downright quite difficult to see through clearly into
the must be embraced holistic future scenarios.”

Gerry McGovern

Content management solutions: Gerry McGovern

http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

Indeed.com highlights that “Technical Writer salaries for job postings nationwide are 5% higher than average salaries for all job postings nationwide.”

Here’s a quick breakdown of the salary for these tech writing roles.

• Business Analyst $74,000
• Documentation Specialist $59,000
• Junior Technical Writer $46,000
• Programmer Writer $76,000
• Request For Proposal Writer $59,000
• Senior Technical Writer $77,000
• Technical Writer $61,000
• Technical Writer Contract $68,000
• Technical Writer Editor $60,000

What’s the going rate in your region?

These figures seem to change from city to city.

I have no info for tech writing salaries outside the US. If you have some, please drop me a line or add it to the comments box.

thanks,

Ivan

Most websites suffer from over-ambition. They try to do too much with few resources. They think they can answer every question.

What is it about the Web that makes us lose sight of reality?
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Perhaps it’s because web teams tend to have lots of idealistic people. These people are imaginative and like to push boundaries.

They were attracted to the Web as a career because it wasn’t like normal business. It was new. It was different, and it offered the opportunity to make a difference.

You can still make a difference on the Web, because a well managed website can make an important contribution to an organization.

However, well-managed websites tend to be those that are narrow in their focus. They do a few things really well rather than attempt to do lots and lots of things.

I tend to deal with large organizations. I can’t remember the last time I met a large organization that I felt had too few webpages.

In fact, I can’t even remember coming across an organization that had just enough webpages.

How do I judge if an organization has too many webpages? If it doesn’t have the staff to professionally manage them.

How do I judge that? By asking a simple question: When was the last time you reviewed all the webpages on your website?

Invariably, I see a look of horror and disbelief. It’s as if I’ve asked a crazy question, a nonsensical question. There’s too much content to review, I’m told. Which, of course, is exactly the problem.

How did it get to a point of too much content? Because the web team was trying to answer too many questions. Because they kept putting up content with the vague idea that it might be useful to someone. Because they were always coming up with exceptions and trying to deal with them.

Have you noticed that the professional, successful web applications are simple and ask you to go through very few steps? When you come across an amateur web application, it invariably has a busy design and asks you to go through lots of steps.

It takes a professional to strip away, to get to the essence of what an application or piece of content really needs to do. The amateur and the inexperienced will complicate. In management, it’s simple to add, but more difficult to subtract.

Stop thinking about the exception. Stop thinking about the audience you’d like to reach. Focus your thinking on the rule.

Focus your thinking on the audience you must reach.

Stop thinking about the customer who comes to your website not quite sure what they want. Instead, relentlessly focus on the customer who comes to your website knowing exactly what they want.

The customers who want to buy from you. How well are you serving these customers?

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Here’s a simple test.

Find a group of customers who are in the market for one of your key products/services. How easy does your website make it for them to buy?

What are the top three things your most important customers want to do on your website?

Are you absolutely focused on ensuring that they can do these things as quickly and easily as possible?

For your web content management solution, contact Gerry McGovern http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

Elementool has released Test Case version 1.1, its newest Software-as-a-Service project management applications.

In real time systems such as banks, hospitals, and airplanes, releasing software that still contains bugs can cause severe damage to a company’s reputation, and to the people that rely on these software systems.

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Elementool’s Test Case 1.1 allows testing managers, who are responsible for ensuring that software is released to the public without any bugs, to customize the tool in order to best organize, control and oversee the testing process.

These updates give the Testing Manager great control over the tool and its functions, allowing them to focus on ensuring that each test case is completed in an efficient and timely manner and no bugs slip between the cracks.

New Features Include:

• File attachments: the ability to attach files to test cases allows for further clarification of instructions, functions and steps in the test case and individual tests.

• Remarks: a new remarks message board lets team members share information quickly and access results or questions from previous tests.

• Customizable test form: enables the administrator or test case manager to change and add fields to the test form, altering the form on for different projects or teams. Account administrators can now also clear the history in any field.

• Report customizations: users can now customize the test report and choose filters and report columns to obtain only the specific data  needed at that moment.

• Sub groups: the option to create sub groups within individual tests adds further clarification to the process.

Using Test Case 1.1, project managers can assign test cases to team members, track test progress, activate email notifications to individual users regarding assignments, and generate test case reports.

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Test Case 1.1 can be accessed from any computer via Web browser without downloading or installing any software.

Pricing and subscripting information is available at www.Elementool.com

Anyone who suffers from dyslexia, or other related literacy difficulties, tends to find it hard to read or find information on the Internet. TextHelp has now released several new software products to address this. Fact Finder helps dyslexics and those with literacy needs often struggle when searching for information due to their unique spelling patterns. You can now search Google through from inside Microsoft Word, ensuring the right spelling before starting the search.

Other writing software includes:

Fact Folder – assists those with organisational and sequencing problems commonly associated with dyslexia. It lets you compile information on any topic so you can organise work more efficiently. For example, this makes it easier to complete a business report as all the information they require is at hand.

Fact Mapper – produces a visual representation of facts and ideas online. This is particularly useful when brainstorming, revising and drafting work. Also lets you use images to help remember what your key facts are when revising, brainstorming ideas or drafting work.

Tip: you can export the Fact Map to a web page or to Microsoft Word. This is particularly useful if you have used the Fact Mapper to set out points you wish to include in an essay. Mind Mapping has been shown to help children and adults with learning difficulties to achieve higher exam grades.

The Fact Mapper incorporates this technique along with the other support features most commonly called upon to assist those with learning difficulties.

Link: Texthelp Systems

Designed specifically to address the business writing needs of managers, marketing and sales representatives, and customer service or tech support specialists, CorrectEnglish™ Business ensures every document you write reflects highly of you…

TextSpeak recognizes and corrects online shorthand, such as texting, instant messaging, and e-mail acronyms, to ensure proper English use.

Advanced Word Choice Help analyzes sentences and identifies vague or overused words, and suggests alternatives that help writers sharpen their compositions.

Cross-Lingual Grammar Feedback detects grammatical errors in seven languages, and provides explanations and suggests corrections for documents in Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

Document Formatting automates and validates document formatting, making papers more polished, and assuring they adhere to one of four standard publishing styles: American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), Council of Biology Editors (CBE), and Modern Language Association (MLA).

Virtual Dictionary, Virtual Thesaurus, and Bilingual Dictionary provides definitions on demand, and suggests more effective words.

Microsoft® Integration creates a toolbar button for Microsoft Word and Outlook, which makes it possible to launch CorrectEnglish’s services with just one click. CorrectEnglish also supports any word processing program that uses Microsoft DOC or Adobe PDF file formats.

Customized Academic, Business, and Personal Editions address the unique requirements of different styles of writing. Academic Edition provides editing tools and style resources that help professors, researchers, and students create polished abstracts, essays, papers, and proposals. Business Edition strengthens corporate writing skills with instruction and models for drafting effective e-mails, memos, briefs, and business letters.

Created specifically for English language learners and developing writers, CorrectEnglish™ Basics covers the elementary aspects of writing, composition, and communications. Included in every edition of CorrectEnglish™, Basics provides instruction and tips for:

Starting a writing task
Organizing ideas
Paragraphing
Using logic, arguments, and rhetoric
Communicating cross-culturally and in American business styles

Breaking down English writing and composition to its most fundamental elements, it asics helps unfamiliar writers become comfortable with the structures and styles that are expected in English writing.

While CorrectEnglish™ is particularly useful for international or returning students who want to brush up on their writing skills, it is recommended for all individuals who want to improve the core elements of their writing. CorrectEnglish™ Basics is included in every version of CorrectEnglish™ at no additional charge.

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Document Formatting Features and Help

Following standard formatting guidelines is simple. With just a click of your mouse, CorrectEnglish™ Academic provides help with basic document formatting so your papers look polished and adhere to your required style. CorrectEnglish™ covers basic document and page formatting according to four standard publishing styles:

American Psychology Association (APA)
Chicago Manual of Style
Council of Biology Editors (CBE)
Modern Language Association (MLA)

Download from: http://www.correctenglish.com/

With Screenshot Pilot, you can capture screens in a variety of different ways:

- Active window
- Active client
- Full screen
- Screen region
- Selected object
- Window under cursor
- Menu under cursor
- Cursor
- Background image

After Screenshot Pilot is started, it automatically makes multiple screen captures and creates a document with different types of screenshots (active window, full screen, window under cursor).

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Then you can save any screenshot as a graphic file onto your hard drive, or send it by e-mail.

Download it from: http://www.colorpilot.com/screenshot.html