LimeMinds - A Fresh Approach to Business | Articles | Page: 2 | LimeMinds - A Fresh Approach to Business

When To Lose…

By admin On July 15, 2012 · Add Comment

The idea that it is okay to lose or even that you may chose to lose, to some people would sound a very bizarre concept. For many successful people winning is what got them where they are and in the “game” of business if you don’t win you don’t survive, but winning all the time can be counter-intuitive. Let me explain…

Ultimately to progress personally, professionally and as a business you need to make more winning decisions than losing, however winning every time can actually hinder your progress more than it helps. Imagine how your boss feels about you if every time you debate an issue you win the argument and make him/her look foolish. Will your boss be speaking highly of you with other managers and senior executives? Or from the other side if you never let your direct reports win the debate or influence decisions, how motivated will they be to contribute to future business meetings or projects?

Win – Lose is not an outcome that you want all the time it may get you results in the short term but over time you will erode support and trust and ultimately destroy long term success, the outcome Lose – Lose!

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DEC launch an appeal for African Drought Victims

By admin On July 9, 2011 · Add Comment

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has launched an international appeal for donations to support the victims of the recent African drought.

You can find out details of the disaster and how you can support through the DEC website…

http://www.dec.org.uk/item/506?gclid=COSC9Lz286kCFRQKfAodJDF5Zg

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Product Review: Acer Aspire 5742 Laptop

By admin On June 21, 2011 · Add Comment

Acer Aspire 5742 15.6 inch Notebook (Intel Core i3-380M Processor, 4 GB RAM , 320 GB HDD, DVD-Super Multi DL drive, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) – Black

The Acer Aspire Series offers a diverse range of notebooks that give you the performance, graphics and communication tools to step up your digital entertainment, complete your daily computing tasks, and stay in touch with everyone you know, whether you’re at home or away.

The Acer Aspire 5742 notebook meets your daily computing needs with one of the latest Intel Core i3 processors and integrated graphics. Providing smooth HD media playback, this notebook offers richer entertainment at home or on the road, while boundary-free wireless communication keeps you in touch with family and friends. What’s more, the Acer FineTip keyboard and multi-gesture touchpad provide simple usability for more relaxed computing. Click here to see a diagram showing the features of this notebook.

With an abundance of graphics-intensive multimedia and sharing applications available these days, smooth multitasking is more vital than ever before. Keeping this in mind, Aspire Series notebooks pack today’s best processors and memory options so your system always runs efficiently.

The Acer Aspire 5742 comes equipped with the power of the next-generation Intel Core i3 processor, designed to speed up multitasking performance so you can work faster and have more fun, with less waiting. As well as faster performance, this processor enables better playback of high-definition content over the Internet, and allows you to enjoy the full Windows 7 Aero experience on your laptop.

The Acer Aspire 5742 also includes fast DDR3 memory, which offers twice the speed of DDR2, ensuring faster, more efficient multitasking. Add that to a large-capacity hard disk drive that provides generous storage for work and multimedia files, and you’ve got a notebook that can handle almost any task you care to throw at it.

It’s easy to connect your notebook to your HDTV for 1080p playback. Click here to see a larger image.
Fantastic Graphics and Playback

Movies, Internet video, pictures and more shine brilliantly on Aspire Series notebooks, and HDMI® connectivity extends the spectacle to larger displays.

The Acer Aspire 5742 notebook comes with a high-definition 15.6″ Acer CineCrystal display that presents crystal-clear imagery and text. A widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio increases the viewing area while a high resolution displays breathtaking visuals in high definition for productive on-the-go multitasking.

If you need an even bigger screen, the HDMI interface supports exceptional high-definition viewing on a full range of peripherals. Perfect for connecting to a big-screen HDTV, plugging a HDMI cable into your notebook allows the transmission of both audio and high-definition video, up to a 1080p resolution. You’ll find lots of compatible HDMI devices are now available, or already in your home, so the Aspire 5742 will fit perfectly into your digital life.

Surf the Internet and stay in touch with your people with reliable, high-speed connectivity via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. A Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ wireless-N network connection enables long-range, fast, reliable wireless Internet. Offering greater range and faster connection speeds than wireless-G, the Aspire 5742 allows you to connect to a wireless LAN within 300 ft and with a transfer rate of up to 300 Mbps.

A fast connection is perfect for video chats, and the Acer Crystal Eye webcam with PrimaLite technology for high-definition 1280 x 1024 video conferencing means that you’ll always be looking your sharpest online.

Attractive Aspire Appeal

The Aspire Series notebooks are attractive, ergonomic and durable. Slim profiles, cool aesthetic accents, and eye-catching colours abound, while easy-access controls and the innovative chiclet keyboard ensure effortless handling. A variety of environmentally sustainable materials with inviting textures and sturdy construction endow the Aspire Series with a unique and solid feel.

The Aspire 5742 comes with a revolutionary multi-gesture touchpad. Click here to see how it could put you firmly in control.
Your notebook won’t just look the part – thanks to Acer’s multi-gesture touchpad technology you’ll quickly be controlling your notebook without the aid of keyboard shortcuts:

Scroll – Navigate web pages, files, music playlists and photos using a two-finger vertical scroll motion.
Pinch – Pinch to zoom in and out of application windows.
Flip – Browse photos, websites, documents and photo albums with a back-and-forth, two-finger horizontal slide motion.
Rotate – Rotate images 90 degrees in either direction with a two-finger pivot motion.
Click here to see more details on the multi-gesture technology.

The usability doesn’t stop there. The Acer Aspire 5742 also comes with intuitive and helpful software to help you get the most from your machine. The Acer Backup Manager places an advanced yet simple-to-use backup utility at your fingertips. Whether you want one-press backups or scheduled backups, you’re in control, allowing you to safeguard your files for the future the way you want to.

This notebook also includes all the benefits of Windows 7, helping you to simplify everyday tasks, make complicated tasks (such as setting up a new network) easier, and enjoy the many features of Window Media Center. A faster, safer and more reliable operating system for your digital life.

If you want more power from your notebook, the Aspire 5742 range includes 15.6″ notebooks with some of the latest Intel Core i3, i5 and Pentium multi-core processors to give you the power to perform even the most demanding tasks.

The 15.6″ Aspire 5552 range features notebooks with AMD Phenom and Athlon multi-core processors for blisteringly fast performance and smooth HD media playback. Movies look great on the Aspire 5750 and 5951 series, with stunning HD 15.6″ screens.

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5 page website for your club – only £85

By admin On January 29, 2011 · Add Comment

All Small Businesses, Sports Clubs and Social Groups – Get online today for £85 with a fully customised and social media friendly website

LimeMinds brings true value and impact to you through a great offer of only £85 for a 5 page Social media ready, customised website. Perfect for your business, sports club or social group to get online and to reach millions of customers, fans or supporters at a low cost.

Your website will be fully designed around your needs, will be ready to promote through social media such as Facebook and Twitter and will be so easy to use that if you can use Microsoft Word you can publish your own content whenever you want.

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Business Advice: Working with the big retailers

By admin On September 6, 2010 · Add Comment

Often for those who run businesses selling consumer goods the big retailers are seen as some kind of holy grail. True they can deliver great economies of scale to your production, they can get your product out the widest audience and yes they can help you break out into being a mainstream product. But is trading with these big national retailers everything it’s cracked up to be and are the challenges and stresses they exert on your business worth the reward?

Working with large retailers such as Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s can help get your product out to the widest market possible, lets face it who doesn’t shop in a supermarket at least once a month? These operators can help you turn a fledgling niche business into a big operator overnight. You can go to zero to hero in days! So what’s the issue, sounds great? Big retailers, big orders, your product in the reach of thousands of shoppers what could go wrong? Well a number of things in truth and some you will have no control over at all.

Firstly getting into the big retailers is no mean feat, getting time with the right person can be challenging enough for big manufacturers let alone some small independent producer no one has every heard of.

Lets imagine you got that meeting and its going well, they love your product, but they have a few questions. They have margin targets and your product won’t deliver in its current format, can you reduce the cost or re-engineer the format? Competition is tough on their shelves have you got the marketing budget to make it work? If it does go into high distribution and demand is high can you meet production requirements and will you make them the number 1 priority over your other small but long standing customers?

Of course these were all questions you’d thought they’d ask and deflected them beautifully, now you need to work with their product development and merchandising teams to make sure the product is delivered and packaged in a satisfactory way. The product is tested for scanning at till and despite a few minor hiccups long the way it all gets through.

Supermarkets can have your products in the reach of thousands

So a month or two down the line and your product is set-up, in depot, on-shelf in store and ready to be scanned. You’ve agreed a launch promotion to help get the word out (of course there is a ticket fee for running it and you will be expected to fund the promotion to keep it margin maintained). Your first product is sold and over the coming weeks and months so are many more. You couldn’t be happier and everything in the garden is rosy, before you know it other retailers are taking your product and you are well on the way to being a big deal in consumer goods.

So where is the real problem? Well often further down the line you will need to invest in your infrastructure to cope with the increased demand, you’ll need more people to support and manage the growth. All good things for any healthy growing business. The challenge comes when you need to increase your prices to support this investment and when the retailers demand support on margin because they’ve decided to move the retail price down.

Further pressure comes when they expect you to promote your product to ever increasingly deep mechanics such as Half Price or BOGOFs. You can quickly escalate into spending huge sums of money in driving your product through the retailers, supporting their margins and watching yours erode.

Your brand equity can be destroyed instantly if they choose to crash the retail price or promote to excessive levels. Of course you can stand firm and refuse to promote to these levels or force the price increase through. The result at best a reluctance to work with you and your brands, a decrease in the levels of distribution. At worst de-list!

We would never say working with the big grocery retailers was a bad thing in fact it can often be the best thing for a product or brand. All we would say is manage your expectations and be wary of potential issues and pitfalls of trading with these big players.

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Workers running businesses from home to beat the recession

By admin On August 9, 2010 · Add Comment

More people working from home

Britain is reacting to the recession by starting up more small business and working from home, new sales figures have revealed.

Demand for home office equipment has jumped by over 200 per cent in the past year alone, says supermarket Sainsbury’s.

The move may be welcome news for Chancellor George Osborne who believes that the answer to the UK’s debt problem may lie in encouraging enterprise and commerce at a grass roots level.

“There’s no doubt that working from home is going to the future for thousands of workers all over Britain.”

The trend towards home working may also be good news for the environment, reducing the need for commuting and fewer car journeys.

Workers who have been made redundant are deciding to go it alone, using their knowledge and skills to form their own fledging companies rather than seeking employment elsewhere.

In addition, larger companies, seeking ways to reduce costs, are now actively encouraging more employees to work at home rather than occupying expensive office space.

A further push is coming from employees who see working from home as a much better way to create a life-work balance rather than facing the daily commute.

With the arrival of high-speed/low-cost broadband, ever increasing capabilitues of home computing and a growing trust and belief in web-based enterprises. It is now easier than ever to setup your own business on-line and it looks like this recession my change the face of our economy and British enterprise for good.

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