Featured

I was driving home last week and noticed a Thai restaurant I hadn’t seen before. Feeling adventurous for dinner that night, we thought we’d try it out and order some take away. I jumped on Google and, to my surprise, the mysterious Thai restaurant could not be found. I tried Google Maps, and again, no result.

At this stage, most customers would have given up and moved on. But on a desperate hunt for a delicious Penang curry, I even went so far as to stalk them on Google Street View. Unfortunately, their phone number wasn’t visible in the window, so we decided to go back to our trusty local. Read more

This week, MYOB has taken a big step in helping New Zealand’s businesses embrace social media, by fully integrating social media platforms into our existing enterprise suite.

We want to see social media more widely used by New Zealand businesses because it can help them to stand out in the online space, find new ways to communicate with their customers and generate sales leads.

By allowing them to interact with their customers in a more real and enduring way, social media allows businesses to increase customer loyalty, get instant feedback about what is working and what needs to change, and benefit from an ongoing dialogue with potential customers. Read more

I’ve spent the day communicating with people in different cities in varying parts of the world.

One of them is an integral part of my team, but in reality, no one would know we weren’t sharing an office.

The modern world of interconnectivity means that we no longer have to sit with our co-workers in the same room from 9-5, 5 days a week. We don’t have to be in the same state, country or time zone, as long as we are working towards the same, unified goal as someone else, we are part of a team. Read more

These days we spend more time looking at screens almost anything else. About the only time I look at printed material is when I’m on a plane and all the devices have to be turned off. What is worth pondering is whether these connected to the Internet devices with their large amount of storage is changing the way we think.

I pick up my Kindle. It has the capacity to hold the contents of a complete library. Now I don’t really want to wander around with 3,000 books but I am finding that I often have 4 or 5 books on the go. Usually some fiction, some business management book, some technology book and some science fiction. I find that I jump from one to the other. My reading habits have completely changed. Of course I could have done this in the past but who wants to carry around 4 or 5 books? Read more

Did you set out to achieve some key goals in your business this year?

Maybe you set some aims at the beginning of the financial year or maybe at the beginning of this year.

Whatever the case, the end of the Australian financial year is looming. How are you tracking to your targets?

As June 30 approaches, so does colder weather, shorter days and for many people, bouts or various lurgies.

So how do you stay motivated – or regain it if it’s already in hibernation? Read more

The conventional wisdom has it that Governments hate giving a zero budget. The budget is normally a time for Governments to announce popular big ticket items or the sort of big spending on heath or education that usually wins votes, so if there’s no money in the till, meeting expectations can be difficult.

However this year the Government is rolling out its second zero budget in a row and, according to the MYOB Business Monitor, the approach is going down surprisingly well. 68% of New Zealand businesses support “an increased focus on cutting Government expenditure to ensure the New Zealand Budget returns to surplus faster.”

Given the ongoing crisis in the Eurozone, driven by unsustainably large levels of debt, it’s perhaps not surprising that New Zealanders are feeling good about the Government’s emphasis on thrift.

We’ve seen what happens overseas when countries like Greece embrace “Visanomics” and we don’t want the same thing to happen here. Read more

If you are in business it’s important to spend some time building a great business connection base, but how are you currently doing it?

If you are still networking your way across all of the golf courses throughout the country, and attending as many networking functions as possible in the evenings, there maybe a smarter way to meet new business contacts, and probably more your target market. LinkedIn.

I‘ve written many articles on building your connection base and networking within the groups on LinkedIn in the past, so let’s take a look at a way that you may not have thought about. Read more

Self-help books are extremely popular. They’re a great friend of New Year resolutions, but with so much help around it’s a wonder that there is still so much help needed.

Turns out a lot of these publications and workshop handouts become what’s termed in the industry as ‘shelf help’ books. That’s because people buy them, collect them and then store them… never to look at them again. Read more

What’s your social profile worth? Have you even thought about it? Is it growing in value? When you talk, do people listen?

With social reputation becoming more and more of a relevant form of currency, there are powers at play that are looking to exploit this new medium. In the past, it has all been about celebrity endorsement – getting the star of the day to put their name to a product. As the celebrity space becomes more and more distributed, thought the wonders of the increasingly social internet, a new generation of celebrities with social credibility are sprouting up. Read more

The results of the latest MYOB Business Monitor are a worrying read for ratepayers, as they show that businesses all over the country are unhappy with the performance of the local councils and regional authorities.

What is so frustrating about these results is that high levels of dissatisfaction with local government is nothing new, but not only is the problem not being solved, it is actually getting worse.

Nationwide, 44% of New Zealand’s business owners are “dissatisfied” with the performance of their local council or authority when it came to helping their business. The biggest source of frustration was delays in dealing with councils, with 64% supporting more stringent response times for local Government. Read more