New Years Day

At the beginning, you will be offered plenty of advice and support to set up your business ? enterprise schemes often run seminars and give out free software to help you manage your accounting, for example. Local mentoring schemes can provide a useful way to make contacts with other people who have set up in business and excellent chances to network.When it comes to tax and accounting, however, you may want to enlist the help of specialists. Particularly if your business has a large turnover or complicated finances, using an accountant can make a world of difference. While some people are put off by the thought of paying fees to accountants, the costs involved can actually be relatively low, and often your tax bill can be significantly reduced. Taking on an accountant may save you money as well as a lot of hard work! Some offer additional services, such as advice and auditing that could help to make your business more profitable.If you run a business you are legally required to keep records of certain things. For example, if you employ staff you will need to keep PAYE records, and VAT records if you are VAT registered. All businesses must submit a tax return every year ? you can now do this online. If you have an annual turnover of over ?5.6 million you are legally required to have an annual audit, which must be carried out by a qualified and registered auditor.Choosing an accountant is a matter of knowing what you want from your relationship, and finding someone whom you trust to do the best job. While personal recommendations from family and friends are a frequent reason for choosing an accountant, you may also want to consider whether they have particular experience in your sector, how much the practice charges, and what additional services they may be able to offer you.Qualified accountants must be registered with one of the professional bodies that regulate them:The Institute of Chartered Accountants (in England and Wales, Scotland or Ireland respectively)www.icaew.co.ukThe Association of Chartered Accountantswww.accaglobal.comChartered Institute of Management Accountantswww.cimaglobal.comTax is an immensely complicated subject, but the Inland Revenue do attempt to make it as easy as possible to understand the basics. They offer a starter pack for new businesses, and a helpline for the newly self-employed. Check www.hmrc.gov.uk for full details.

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Proposal planning is essential to ensure that you have time to develop, write and produce a well though-out solution to the client?s requirement. Everyone who has written proposals regularly has occasionally wished that they had planned better, started earlier and various occasions stayed late trying to deal with an unsatisfactory and unfinished proposal.Think of proposals as small projects ? develop a plan. Think about all the relevant issues you must cover - how to meet their problem? How you have done similar work in the past? Who will work on the project? Do you need subcontractors or partners to help deliver the project? Who will work on the proposal? How will you present yourself to the client in order to win?Ensure you are prioritising bid opportunities and have your best people working on the most important opportunities for your organisation. Think carefully about which contract is more important. Is it the high value opportunity that will consume all your time and resources for the next several months? or is it the smaller project that allows you to maintain other client work at the same time? Whichever is the most important prioritise your bids and ensure that each one receives the attention it deserves.As with any project, when writing proposals, set and keep deadlines and allocate resources to complete tasks. This is taken for granted when running a client project, but is sometimes ignored on internal ?sales? projects. Proposal writers and sales teams need to manage and run their projects efficiently too in order for them to succeed?and remember one sure fire way to lose the contract is not submitting your proposal on time. Don?t jeopardise several weeks work by being 30 minutes late getting the document in.Unless you are an individual contractor you should delegate proposal tasks to qualified team members. This will allow more time to be spent on each section and that each section of the proposal is written by the most appropriate member of your team. If you have expertise available, make sure that it is available to be used in your proposals. When delegating make sure everyone knows the deadlines and commits to them. Everyone needs to know this is an important project and you are the project manager.Always plan time for production of the documents. Make sure that everything can be produced and checked in the final form prior to submission. The last thing you need is a well-written proposal coming across poorly because it was carelessly assembled at the last minute. Make sure the printer is working, that you have enough paper and that you have time to get it delivered. Book a courier in advance.Having a set and well-defined process can easily streamline the time required between projects and will allow for highly organized proposals that always meet quality standards. Many people underestimate the value of proper proposal planning; make sure you are not one of them.Within the Learn to Write Proposals Bid Management Toolkit you will find great tools to help you ? the Bid Capture Plan helps you define your win strategies and themes, the Bid Development Plan helps you structure you documents and plan the development of each section as well as the whole document and the Proposal Tracker helps you keep on top of the production of multiple bids.

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The call center business has become one of the fastest booming industries today. In the era of customer-oriented services, the provision for accessible support is now a priority. With many companies trying to cope up with their customers? needs and demands, the concept of the call center was born.A call center normally operates with all its agents (or customer service representatives) in one central location. It is equipped to handle a large amount of transactions between customers and the call center agents. Transactions may be carried out through a variety of media. The telephone is the foremost form of communication in call centers today. However, transactions are also carried out via email and the live chat through the Internet.Call centers offer a wide range of services. The first thought that comes to mind for many is support - product information, technical support, and all sorts of after sales services. However, call centers can offer more than that. They also deal with marketing and sales. Telemarketing is an aggressive form of selling your product and can yield very good results. Call centers cater to businesses which aim to increase their sales as well as provide customer services. One example would be credit card companies.While aiming to provide information and assistance to customers, they can also increase their revenue through sales spiels given by their agents. Another service that can be dealt with by a call center is debt collection. Credit bureaus also make use of call centers to provide information on a person?s credit rating. In effect, basically anything that has to do with your customers can be done through call centers.What is the typical set up in a call center? The term call center brings up images of wide open work spaces, with small workstations containing a computer, headset, and telephone dialer. The practice is increasingly turning to the linking of data and voice in one pathway. This integration makes for more efficient work practices and is called Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). Individual agents are normally managed by a floor supervisor who also takes calls when the need arises.Setting up a call center requires certain technology to be applied. There is a wide range of available technologies for call centers today. More often than not, different types of technologies are combined in order to achieve the most effective and efficient set up. The Computer Telephony Integration has already been mentioned is one of the trends in the business today. In fact, CTI is used to combine most applications used in call centers - voice, email, fax, and web. CTI provides many functions such as caller ID, on screen dialing, on screen phone controls (conference calls, hang up, hold, etc.), and agent status control (whether agent is available for calls or not).With all these advances in technology and developments in consumer-oriented practices, the call center has emerged as an ideal solution for many companies. The call center provides standardized service to customers and helps cut the cost. In addition to that, the separate entity of the call center subtracts from the actual operational considerations of the company.

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