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Posts Tagged ‘recession’

Maybe it’s all the doom and gloom of the financial and metrological climate here in the UK. But more people are looking at buying a second home that they can use for credit-crunched domestic holidays and to generate some additional revenue for the other 11 months of the year. Others still have chosen to leave the UK altogether and find that piece of heaven they have been looking for by moving abroad.

Whatever the reason and whatever age group you may be, you can escape the cold winds of recession and the weather by following this route, but you still need to look at protecting your investment, whether at home or abroad. Finding a company that will give cost effective cover for second home insurance and overseas property insurance isn’t as easy and can often be more costly than you might imagine.

Deciding on insurance for your second home is no walk in the park, it can become very difficult and tiring. This is because insurance companies know that second homes are generally left unoccupied for lengthy periods of time, because of this, the home can face weather damage like burst pipes. Even if you are able to overcome those problems, it can still become stressful when the property is damaged by the current occupiers.

If you do obtain cover you will probably find that most holiday home or buy to let insurance policies have restrictions in the small print. Because of this, you can get a shock when you find out your insurance is not valid when you make a claim as you haven’t correctly crossed every T and dotted every I. There are some providers who understand that most holiday home and second home owners only use their property occasionally.  

Because of this reason, there are some policies available that won’t end up leaving you with no water or electricity as they have no restrictions or exclusions in the small print. If you choose to let out your new second property, with those same policies, you can get some extra advantages such as £5m public liability insurance and contents protection.

As we descend into an increasingly crippling financial crisis, private and public sector organizations alike are having to be more intelligent with their budgets to avoid getting into trouble. Inefficient accounting is a common occurence which can lead to wastage in terms of fixed asset expenses. If you ensure that you have a grasp on what’s happening with your fixed assets, chances are you’ll be able to make significant savings and boost your profits for relatively little effort.

What are fixed assets?

Let’s begin by defining what fixed assets are. Businesses have two kinds of assets. Tangible or fixed assets are things like equipment, machinery, computers, buildings or land. In essence, they are objects of value that you can touch. The other kind are intangible assets, such as patents or trademarks, or ownership of creative ideas. It is tangible assets that I’m writing about in this piece.

Why should I care about tangible assets?

You need to know about them, fundamentally, because its illegal not to – it needs to be part of your tax return. If you don’t know about them you could get in trouble. But more than this, the more clued up you are on the status of your fixed assets, the more prepared you are to save money within your organization. By this I mean knowing how much they’re worth, calculating depreciation, and knowing where they are. In a sense asset tracking is a way for a business faced with financial hardship to pull cost savings ‘out of thin air’.

So exactly how are you supposed to manage your fixed assets?

Well first of all you need to make a record of each of your fixed assets. You have probably already done this bit, since the taxman forces you to. Most commonly this is recorded on a humble spreadsheet, but increasingly savvy organisations are using more sophisticated asset management software. It’s about going beyond just recording your assets in your register, and having a system that’s able to react to changes in your organization. That means where it moves to, how much it’s worth, how often it breaks down, and so on.  Now when you’re a mom and pop business working out of your living room that’s a case of glancing round the room and scribbling on a Post-It note.With bigger businesses and organizations, this job becomes a lot more tricky. And this is where dedicated asset management software really comes into its own. It makes the auditing, tracking, maintenance, communication and accounting bits of asset management come together beautifully. Crucially, a well made package will be able to pinpoint where the largest cost savings in your organization can be made. The real question is, how can you afford not to invest in it.

The advantages far outweigh the drawbacks during a downturn when viewed from an online marketing perspective.

Every dollar spent on marketing whether online or offline give you much more during a recession if you apply your resources in the right way, like your ability to get the maximum from you publisher with your negotiating skills. If you take it positively, this is a god-sent opportunity for a marketer to get more return on your investment on marketing and advertising of your products.

Actually, businesses benefit more during a downturn provided you continue investing in marketing and advertising. This can be confirmed from various studies conducted by highly-acclaimed researchers. f you compare the statistics, you will notice that those businesses that promoted aggressively their products always gained 4% to 5% in market share when compared with their competitors who did not hike their spending on marketing/advertising during a downturn.

The key factors that you should take into account when marketing and advertising during a downturn are:

Customers: You know very well that in any business, customer is the king. It is highly recommended to provide all benefits to your customers like discounts and gifts and extra facilities like free downloads and free tools to help the customers to get more value from their online experience. This will ensure your customers will come back again and again to your business and thereby generate more sales.

Flexibility: For you to be flexible, you should be alert and oriented of your customers search behavior pattern. In other words, monitor your customers for what actually they are searching for, and then change your marketing/advertising strategies accordingly. Any rigid approach on your marketing strategy will backfire on you.

Cost-Affective Targeting: Please note that not everybody will succeed in cost-affective targeting. For any business to succeed, you should have certain key elements like well-known brand name, multiple products, targeted advertising, after-sales service, and support. These key elements are vital for any business to succeed. Any missing elements will have an adverse effect on your cost-affective targeting.

If you have studied recession or downturn long enough, you will find that this phenomenon does not last longer than 11 months or a year. Take recession positively, study it well, and apply your marketing and advertising strategies accordingly without compromising or downgrading your marketing and advertising costs. The key elements like well-known brand name, multiple products, targeted advertising, after-sales service, and support are to be incorporated into your business if you want to succeed.

The economic crisis is like a bewildered Godzilla, tearing through downtown New York, tearing down all but the most secure of fixtures.The UK has seen the fall of some pretty big and well established retailers such as Woolworths and MFI in recent months. Now its the turn for diamond and pearl jewellery retailer Diamonds & Pearls. The Bedford-based company announced recently that they have gone into administration. More than 300 jobs are at risk as their 91 branches across the UK are threatened with closure.Global accountancy and management consultancy firm KPMG have been named as administrators. The administrators named by KPMG’s restructuring department, Myles Halley and Richard Philpott, said that they intend to sell the business by the end of the year and are currently seeking a buyer.It was clear from their statement that this is going to lead to branch closures, and, in their words, “a number of redundancies”.

So another one bites the dust and joins the growing list of recession casualties in 2009. But it wasn’t long ago that Diamonds & Pearls descibed themselves as “one of the UK’s fastest growing fashion retailers”. How do you go from that to bankruptcy? Does this mean it’s set in stone that if you’re one of the smaller players in the retail industry, you will not survive? Far from it. While Diamonds & Pearls’ physical stores may have been doing well in recent years, a quick look at their website, http://www.diamondspearls.co.uk, tells me all I need to know. Aside from being a pretty poorly designed site, when you click on “Online Shop” you get the message “Our Online Shop is currently under development, Please call back soon”! That says it all! End of mystery, to my mind. By failing to support their business with a strong online presence and the ability to shop online, Diamonds & Pearls have really shot themselves in the foot. The internet has been the saviour of businesses during the credit crunch, with increasing millions of consumers going online to find the best deals. It is particularly crucial for SMEs. If you are not at least holding your own in the online world, and relying purely on traditional methods of retail, its simply become a question of how long before you go bust, not whether you do. Even retail giants such as MFI, Woolworths and most recently Principles have suffered greatly. These companies had one thing in common: they categorically failed to really capitalise on the online retail revolution that has been going on for the past decade. If I was looking for information on saltwater pearls, or browsing for freshwater pearl jewellery for a Mother’s Day gift, the first thing I’d do is search for those things. So would millions of others, and they wouldn’t find Diamonds & Pearls in the search results. Retailers beware: this is the clearest example you’ll get, and if you fail to heed this advice you could be next.