Taking Your Small Business Overseas

Certification with BSI Benefits Small Business

In recognition of Small Business Week, BSI points to its Small Business Solutions as a proven path to success in this ever-demanding economy.  Certification and training services can yield tremendous benefits to a small business. Bluegrass, a leading demolition company, is one such example of how a small business simplified its supplier evaluation, improved its customer service and increased its market competitiveness with ISO 9001 certification.

Bluegrass is a small business, with about 50 employees in offices in several US states and one overseas. Bluegrass pursued ISO 9001 certification to grow their business and differentiate themselves from other demolition providers.  Their decision to become ISO 9001 certified was additionally driven by their need to be more competitive in US and European markets, where increasingly there are demands for proof of a viable Quality Management System (QMS).  

Developing the processes and procedures that ISO 9001 certification requires simplified Bluegrass’ supplier evaluation and enhanced customer service.  In addition, third-party certification increased their eligibility for contracts requiring ISO 9001.  Heather Teate, Quality Manager and Executive Officer stated, “ISO 9001 certification shows people that we have a great system in place and that we care about quality and offer quality services and products to our clients.”  

They chose BSI as their certification partner because of BSI’s reputation with small and large customers. As Bluegrass had an office in Aberdeen, Scotland, BSI provided multinational hands-on customer service. “They were a great fit for us. BSI’s auditors were approachable, accessible, and quick to respond to inquiries,” said Teate.  

BSI offers a comprehensive solution for small business including training, assessment and certification services.  With the highest number of full time auditors of any certification body and skilled instructors from a variety of industries, BSI offers the continuity of service that saves company’s time and money.  BSI works with all types or organizations, large or small, public or private, and in any industry.  Our scalable solutions can increase the performance of one division or the entire enterprise, depending on the needs of the organization. 

About Bluegrass Bit

For nearly 3 decades, Bluegrass has combined advanced technologies and trained professionals to develop, and deliver creative solutions to client problems by harnessing safe work practices to remote demolition technologies. Bluegrass strategies and demolition techniques enhance safety, maximize production, reduce schedule, while minimizing impact to work space, adjacent operations, and environment.

About BSI

BSI is a global independent business services organization that inspires confidence and delivers assurance to over 80,000 customers with standards-based solutions. Originating as the world’s first national standards body, BSI has over 2,300 staff operating in over 120 countries through more than 50 global offices. BSI’s key offerings are:

The development and sale of private, national and international standards and supporting information that promote and share best practice
Second and third-party management systems assessment and certification in all critical areas of management disciplines
Testing and certification of services and products for Kitemark and CE marking to UK, European and International standards. BSI is a Notified Body for 15 New Approach EU Directives
Certification of high-risk, complex medical devices
Performance management software solutions
Training services in support of standards implementation and business best practice.

BSI Group America Inc. is the Americas’ division of BSI and the direct website is www.bsiamerica.com.

BSI, America

www.bsiamerica.com

Shereen Abuzobaa
Vice President Marketing
inquiry.msamericas@bsigroup.com

1800-862-4977

Getting a job from overseas is a challenge, i wanna move to toronto on a work visa any pointers?

im running a small business in sounthern africa and i want to move to toronto asap but i have less than US$20 000, how can i get a job in Canada from here? i tried to get a job online but never got a reply.

Offshore Outsourcing ? How Can It Benefit Small Businesses?

Even though the offshore outsourcing industry has been showing phenomenal growth in the past years, it has been largely restricted to large corporations that had the resources to establish overseas infrastructure and harness it to achieve a high level of cost effectiveness. However, in the recent times, the growth curve has shown a major tilt to small businesses and enterprises.

Unlike popular belief, offshore outsourcing is not just meant for large businesses and organizations. Rather, small businesses can leverage it benefits by incorporating its most substantial points into their business model.

Why should Small Businesses Outsource?

Increasing Vendor Costs – Considering the rising cost of services, small businesses and start-ups find it extremely difficult to get quality services from their home turf that fall within their budgets. One the other hand, offshore service providers offer the same services at reduced costs thus making it a profitable choice for small businesses. Administrative functions, IT processes and logistics are some of the most popular services that are outsourced.

Reduced Capital Costs – Small businesses don’t have lavish budgets to splurge. Most of them function on limited budgets and resources and seek to maximize their profit margins from that itself. Offshore outsourcing enables more efficient use of limited capital budgets. Also, the fixed costs of a company gets converted to variable costs.

Free Time & Resources – By outsourcing the peripheral functions of the businesses, the company can free up a great deal of time and resources that can be further utilized to achieve the core business objectives of the company and provide more value to customers. With more time in hand, you can take up new projects more easily and get in more business.

Availability to Latest Technologies – Since outsourcing service providers are businesses themselves excelling in the services they provide, they would have the latest technologies and skill set for the procedure. And often small businesses require help with a specific process or part of the project, for which hiring new staff is not economically viable. This is where offshore outsourcing comes in. By hiring offshore service providers, small businesses can get access to particular skill set and latest technologies without having to spend an extra dime.

Reduced Risk – As mentioned earlier, service providers are experts themselves and therefore are highly adept to manage the risks involved in their areas expertise. Small businesses can thereby be ensured of quality services without having to worry about things going wrong.

High Speed Services – With high speed internet and broadband connections, it has become easier to carry on proceedings online. You can literally have a virtual staff working for you from an offshore location and delivering you service on run-time.

Tip to Select a Professional Service Provider

Do a Background Check – Businesses are generally apprehensive about the quality of work they will receive while outsourcing work to offshore countries. Thus it is immensely important for you to run a background check of prospective service provider to make sure you end up with a reliable and professional partner! This includes reviewing their web presence & previous work along with contacting their previous clients for reference.

Look for Specific Skill Set – Choose a service provider with relevant expertise and industry experience of completing the type of tasks that you want to outsource to them. This will ensure that your work lies in good hands.

Would raising taxes on small businesses be worst than giveaways to large corporations?

Republicans are sucking up votes saying falsly that Obama will raise taxes on small business, UNTRUE ! but if were true how can it be worse than their giveaways to corporations that moved jobs overseas

I need ideas to start a small business…pls help?

Ok so here is my story..i will try to keep it short.. I am 8 months pregnant and i really want to start a small business that i can take my son with me when i go to work.

I have an office that is set up and ready to go…it is a small house that is zoned commercial…I dont know what to do with this space..Im paying rent on it every month and it is sitting there empty…i realllllly want to do something where i can make money at it.I live at my moms house now because she moved overseas for while….

And im stuck with a 5yr lease with the small commercial house. The rent is $700 and not to bad..This street gets 20,000 cars a day…so does anyone have any ideas what i can do with this place?????????

Please help…i want to be independant and take care of me and my son…

BTW Im in San Diego California

WHICH IS THE BEST AMEX CARD FOR SMALL BUSINESS AND FLYING POINTS? 10 EASY POINTS!!!!!?

Hi,

I am opening a small Tmobile store and im flying overseas to India with 5 of my family members. I am in Houston and going to India in August.

I wanted to know which is the best AMEX card to go with for Business and to get the best Miles for the card.

Some one told me AMERICAN EXPRESS GOLD CARD miles never expire and they are for business too. And my friend told me that sometimes when you buy 1 ticket the other is free and jut pay for fees and taxes…..is that true?

Any one who has a AMEX card and who flies a lot can help me with this question would be GREAT!!!!

Obama Bats For Incentives For Small Businesses

In a bid to promote the SME sector in the US, President Barack Obama, called for initiation of a new small business tax credit and demanded for removal of all capital gains taxes on small business investment. He further assured the sector that the government would extend tax breaks for all those enterprises that plan to spend on new equipments and machineries. In his first State of the Union address, Mr Obama also revealed his administration’s plan to move money into community banks is to increase lending to small businesses. He plans to shift US$30 billion from Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds into community banks in order to help the latter provide small businesses with the much-needed credit assistance. New small business tax credit has been sought by Mr Obama for those businesses that undertake recruitment or raise wages. He also warned to reduce tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs overseas. Proposals made by Mr Obama in his first State of the Union address are suggestive of the fact that the US administration is now willing to undertake a comprehensive new approach to drive small business growth. For more detail on Business Directory log on to http://www.bizxchange.in/

Internet Marketing Strategies for Small Business

In the past, small business can only focus on local market due
to limited financial resources. Now, a very small business or
even a home business can sell worldwide over Internet. Due to
limited financial resources, small business cannot conduct
massive online campaign in very popular websites or generate
overseas publicity in news. However, there are still many low
cost to free methods to promote your website.

This article offers discuss several practical tactics.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Positioning your website near the top of search engines are
essential. Nearly 85% Internet users use search engines to
search for information. To acquire top rankings, you need to
perform search engine optimization. Search engine optimization
refers to the technique of making your web pages search engine
friendly so that search engines believe your website is more
relevant to your competitors. Consequently, your site has a
better chance to gain high search engine ranking.

Search engine optimization, however, requires extensive
knowledge and time. If you can set a US$1,500-$3,500 budget, you
possibly can find out a good company to help you.

If you prefer to do it yourself, Agog Digital Marketing Strategy
Limited offers 7 practical search
engine optimization advice to assist your optimization
journey.

2. Froogle Promotion

Google introduced a beta version of their Froogle online
shopping search engine. Unlike their well known search service,

Froogle attempts to provide a searchable index of online
merchandise catalogs. It allows searchers to find out products
by keywords and price range.

Some marketers said that users use traditional search engines
such as Google and Yahoo to search for information.
However,users tend to find out specific products via product
search engines such as Froogle.

Submitting your products to Froogle is free, so why not promote
your products there? To submit product to Froogle, you need to
create a “data feed” listing your products, description,
pricing, URL, and etc. Instructions on getting your online store
listed in the Froogle can be found at

https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants/feed_instructions.html

3. Article Submission

Writing article could be scary to some people. However,
submitting your own articles with your writer profile is a free
and very helpful promotion method to advertise your business.
When you write an article relate to your business and get
published in other websites, it shows your potential clients
that you have expertise to help them. They tend to trust you
more and is more purchase your product and service.

In addition, you get a link from other websites and help to
boost your search engine ranking.

Submitting articles is time consuming because you need to find
out relevant sites that accept article submission.
About-webdesign.com has gathered many submit articles links and that can save you lots
of time.

Article submission is even more important if you are selling
services, e.g. internet marketing, legal consulting and etc.

4. Link building

Acquring links from other websites are essential because it can
1) draw direct website traffic, 2) improve search engine ranking.

To obtain the benefits mentioned, you require to do the
following:

- Exchange links with related websites and organize the links in
a directory. To save time to manage your link directory,

you can consider using reciprocal link manager
software like LinkAutomate.

- Asks your business partners to list your URL in their website

- Submit your website to human-edited directory such as Open
Directory.

5. Live Demo

If you are selling a product, especially complicated product,
you are recommended to build a live video demo and presents it
in your website. Sometimes, a video demo is better to use words
to explain benefits and usage of your product. It helps you
improve conversion. A prime example can be found at Apparel Management
Software Provider – Indigo8. You only need to spend a few
hundred dollars and can make an attractive live product demo.

6. Blogging

Blog is a weblog and enable webmasters to write something for
their visitors freely. It becomes very popular from last year
and business firms pay attention to it. The merit of
establishing a blog in your business website includes:

- Allows you to add content easily and keeps website visitors
return to your website. Of course, it relies on whether you give
useful information in your blog, e.g. tips about your product,
or some advice to your site visitors.

- Allows you to communicate with your website visitors.

- It allows you to add fresh content daily and search engines
like it. In return, your website can get updated by search
engines more frequently and draw more website traffic.

7. Google Adwords

Advertising online via Google Adwords for time sensitive event
can be very useful. For example, a special discount program in
Christmas. The major advantage of Google Adwords is that you can
get exposure within 1/2 hours to 2-3 days. If you select keyword
phrases carefully, you can draw instant website traffic in a
relative low cost and obtain a quick profit.

Moving Businesses Overseas – The 3 Prime Reasons For Relocating Your Business

People often wonder about the reasons for doing so when they hear of people moving businesses overseas. This may happen because of good or bad reasons. Such reasons can be categorized into three types. They are:

1. Opportunities: Oftentimes, businesses are moved by people overseas because of availability of better opportunities, which are events, when given a proper reaction, will improve the business greatly. People usually have to search for an opportune moment, which can, sometimes be found overseas.

The most common reason is that people find an open market overseas. Many people have a tough time managing their business due to competition, because of which lots of cash will be lost. A good entrepreneur won’t give up in spite of presence of heavy competition. They will look for markets which are new and can be dominated by them. They look for opportunities and exploit them. Many people move their businesses because they feel that they will have lesser competition there than they had in their own place or even because their product may have more demand in that market than the one in which they previously were put up in.

Also, reduction of cost is another opportunity because of which people move their businesses as their profit will increase by doing so. For example, Adidas and Nike have set up factories in the Asian continent because of availability of cheap and skilled labor, which eventually means that their business will be expanded and will earn more profits.

2. Threats: People move their businesses overseas owing to the presence of some threats in their country. Threat can mean anything that has a potential to cause harm or loss to the business. For example, heavy competition is considered a threat and if you think that it is not very different from the previous reason, you are wrong, because according to the situation described there, remaining in the same place may cause a small dent in the amount of profit made, however, in this situation, remaining in the same place would be the end of the business.

Threats can be defined as events, which when not dealt with in the right way, can make the business face its worst of times. The best way in which they can be evaded is by moving the businesses overseas.

3. Miscellaneous – People who even move their business because of no reason, whatsoever, related to the business are present. If the move of a business does not fetch any new opportunity or other profits for the company, then, the move of the business would be due to personal reasons of the entrepreneur managing the business.

Oftentimes, people feel that they want to have a change and may want to start a new life and feel the thrill. However, moving overseas cannot be done without means to support themselves and sustain life and income. Hence, some people may move their business because they are migrating to some other country.

Transferring a business from one country to another may look like a random thing, but, everything that is done is done for a reason only. Others may not understand it or it may be too subtle to be understood, however, it is still present. By obtaining knowledge as to why businesses are moved, we get a glimpse into the mind of another person, which is just a minuscule part of knowing about the whole universe.

Traveling overseas, best way to get cell phone calls?

I am traveling overseas to Italy soon. AT&T rates are too high to use my cell phone. I do however need to check my email at least once a day (small business owner). What options do I have overseas to keep the costs low?