Business correspondence is being defined as a way of communication through the exchange of letters. These are the letters written or received by two or more parties which may come in the form of letters, emails, text messages, voicemails, notes or post cards.
By just looking at the above definition, we can generally conclude that business correspondence is a very important factor in the business community. It is like an exchange of events to and from the different points which are the involved business parties.
Business correspondence, being one of the most powerful tools in business agreements and other business deals, is actually evolving nowadays. We are now living in a computer era thats why it is very understandable why there are gradual changes in the methods of business correspondence, from the way that is being written to the process of exchanging letters.
The product of the innovated technology when it comes to the business correspondence aspect is the electronic mail. Because of the email, the conventional ways of business correspondence are being phased out and the use of email is still being developed.
However, the use of paper is still not out of the scene. There are countries that still utilize this kind of method. Although email is on the big screen compared to the other types of business correspondence, let us still take a look with the different kinds of business correspondence.
The different kinds of business correspondence that we use nowadays are business letters, memos, faxes and emails. Let us have an overview of them all.
Business letters are the most established type of business correspondence. No one can ever imagine how long it has been in the business community. In fact whenever business correspondence is being talked about, business letter is the very first thing that would enter to our minds. The very respectful and most technical phrases that we can still see nowadays are first brought by the business letters techniques. It is also profoundly studied at schools especially when it is time to discuss technical writing.
Business memos are not as deeply discussed in school compared to business letters. They are being considered as secondary or just a by-product of business letters. Business memos are less formal and have a more conversational tone.
Business faxes have been around much longer than business memos but because fax machines are not that available to most of the people before, it was not recognized until 1980s. There are no established rules in writing faxes because it is being written the way that everyone considered appropriate. However, because there is now such a thing as faxing via computer, fax machines are now facing a slow death.
Email is a fruit of technology and can be considered as a blessing because you can actually send all the workplace communication and the like in just a blink of an eye! It is now the most widely spread type of business correspondence in the modernized business community. Because of emails, we can now say goodbye to a lot of inconvenience that other types of business correspondence give us. Although we can say that email is still in its infancy stage and there are still a lot of things to be realized, email has now definitely changed the flow of communication in the business world. We can also see that email is actually tremendously influencing the other types of business correspondence.
With the never ending demands and never ending searching for a more convenient way of life, it is not impossible that there will be other types of business correspondence that will arise. Improvements with the things that we have now are very imaginable. For as long as it aids in the success of the business world, without harming anyone, our all out support must be given to them.
Category Archives: Business
Know The Basics Of International Business Gift Giving
Businessmen would agree that in the business world, giving gifts once in a while can never be avoided. Be it Christmas or an important client’s birthday, gift-giving is one of the most effective ways of establishing stronger ties to those who matter to you and your business. This may not be totally true but even as this, it is the most common perception. You might not believe this but there are times when giving gifts can be the worst thing that you can do. This is especially true when you are invovled in an international business. This is because each race or nationality has its own belief about business gift giving.
It’s interesting that while some countries may be very open to gift-giving, others can actually take the act to be completely unacceptable. For example, in the Czech Republic, Columbia, Xuanwuseanesia and some others, giving gifts is a warm gesture between corporate people. This can be misunderstood as bribing when youre on other countries like Australia, Denmark or Uruguay.
It’s interesting that while some countries may be very open to gift-giving, others can actually take the act to be completely unacceptable. For example, in the Czech Republic, Columbia, Xuanwuseanesia and some others, giving gifts is a warm gesture between corporate people. However, there are other countries like Australia and many others that find this act offensive because they think that this is like a bribe.
Therefore, it is important that you try to find out about different countries and their beliefs when it comes to this kinds of things especially when you are involved in international business. Generally, we feel that when we give a gift to a client or a colleague during his birthday, it can strengthen our business relationship. The effect can be otherwise. It can still make negative vibes that may be considered to affect the business relationship. It is significant to always know the background of the people you consider giving presents for this reason.
The issues around gift giving may not even be purely cultural but religious as well. It will be a good idea to research on peoples cultures you are planning to give presents even when working for a company. For example, you might think of giving your boss a little token on his birthday. Perhaps you cannot give him anything made of cowhide as in India, cows are considered sacred if this person is Indian.
There will be rituals or rules that have to be pursued as giving gifts is not really discouraged in some cases. The Chinese, for instance, consider red a lucky color. The monetary value of a gift may also affect its meaning in almost all cases. Whatever thing that is costly can make the receiver feel uncomfortable or even embarrassed. In other cases, a gift should fit the level of relationship that the giver has with the receiver.
There are more differences among nationalities in terms of their gift-giving customs and it is important to consider these before you give anything, no matter how well-meant.
Risks And Challenges Involved In International Business
International businesses have to face risks and challenges at many fronts. Some are similar to the risks and challenges a domestic business confronts and some are unique. Even the challenges that are similar by definition differ in nature. For example both types of businesses have to face financial challenges, but an international business will be facing many factors related to global financial markets that don’t affect domestic businesses as much. They are more of a challenge in nature than risks and most of them can be handled through proper planning. Keep reading to understand these challenges better.
The challenge of international planning & strategy:
The first challenge for an international enterprise is to make a global strategy and then implement it. The managers and those at decision-making positions often find it difficult to change their thought pattern, which is not used to work in global paradigm. There are many international businesses but just some of them have truly adopted a proper global strategy. Though the situation is improving with more and more trained graduates and professionals taking on the management roles. Nevertheless, international business management requires extra ordinary management, foreseeing and leadership skills.
Financial and economic challenges:
It starts from arranging the funds to start international business and includes everything such as fluctuation in exchange rate, global economic crisis (or some economic crises in the host country), shift in oil prices, global inflation or tariff barriers imposed by the host government, also the export related policies of your own government.
International Politics:
Political know-how is a must for everybody but it becomes all so important when operating at international level. If some policies were suitable for your business, a change in ruling party can bring drastic changes in those policies. Political chaos will bring down the economy and with that your business. To prevent your business from such negative impacts, you need to make sound political judgments.
Environment, natural disasters and warfare:
Many multinational businesses have to face serious opposition by some environment friendly organizations. Citizens are more concerned about air and water pollution these days as it is becoming a serious threat to their health. Some natural disaster like floods and earthquake, or some kind of civil war breaking out in the host country is also in the list of possible challenges. A new challenge that an international business has to bear now days in some specific countries is the threat of terrorism.
Construction Company Business Plan Equipment Needed To Launch
A major variable in the startup costs listed in your construction company business plan is the cash needed for equipment and tools. As you think through these needs, consider these choices.
Choosing Services
You cannot begin to estimate equipment requirements before knowing what type of construction you engage in and what services you will or will not offer. This decision should be driven by the experience of the team and the opportunity in the market, although the overall cost of equipment may enter into the decision as well. If it becomes apparent that you will not be able to recover the cost of equipment in a reasonable period of time, you may have to rethink offering services which require that equipment.
Buy, Lease, Rent, or Subcontract
Secondly, it is important to remember that purchasing outright the equipment required for a service you must offer may not be necessary. Leasing equipment can reduce the cost of launching and the needs for raising capital, although the total cost of acquiring the items will be higher in the end. If the equipment will be needed for tasks which wont be necessary on every project, or will only be needed sporadically or at one stage, renting the equipment for those periods of time may be a better option, assuming a quality renter is available in your locale.
Finally, it may make sense to simply outsource the work that requires certain specialized equipment to companies which already own the needed tools and have staff trained specifically. Subcontractors specializing in roofing or framing, for example, have the needed tools of the trade and the expertise to do the work less expensively than your company. However, keep in mind that the more work your company subcontracts, the greater the burden on your managers to check quality, to manage vendor schedule, and to develop other skills of vendor communication and negotiation.
Century Business Methods Used Today Are The Problem, Not The Solution
Throughout the 20th century, various business methods for operating and developing the company have been contrived and refined, becoming the conventional business methods that we use today. We improve management and effect business change by laying new contrived business methods and structures over the methods in place. Even with all the improvements, we continue to have fundamental problems with re-organizations, intangible assets, accounting limitations, cost control, information management, alignment, etc. Even with all the business organization and management methods, we still have not found the one right method to organize and manage the company business.
Until now. Result-performance Management, newly launched in 2008, provides the one right method to organize and manage the business in the 21st century company, and leave problems with 20th century business methods behind.
Conventional business methods are the generally-accepted wrong ways
Over the past decade, we implemented breakthroughs like business process re-engineering, business transformation methods, business performance management, and enterprise resource planning. But, these turned out to be just new names for conventional business methods to do the same old things.
Why are there so many different business methods to do the same thing? Why isn’t there just one right business method? It is simply because all of these different business methods are wrong methods, and we do not know the one right business method. Since all the different business methods we use are wrong, we can only define the right method by identifying the wrong methods that are generally-accepted. The basis for our management and accounting methods is not that they are the fundamentally-sound and understood right business methods, but that they are the generally-accepted wrong business methods. When we come up with the one right business method, it will be known and accepted, and all of the wrong business methods will be obsolete.
Conventional thinking prevents the new breakthrough needed
Since the beginning of business, no one has ever stopped to think, “Are the business methods that have always been used the best business methods”. We accept existing business methods as the basis and try to improve the methods.
New business methods contrive ways to alleviate the symptoms of fundamental problems inherent in the way things have always been done. This we can do ad infinitum without ever solving the problems. How many methods do we have and how many books have been written about corporate governance, business organization, change management, investment management, capital development, performance management, cost and value accounting and management, solution alignment, intangible assets, business collaboration, etc. Why do we keep coming up with new business methods, if previous business methods were supposed to have solved the problem?
Management improvement books are written using the existing body of knowledge or published record as the valid basis. Many of the books cut, reorganize, and paste what has already been written. Other books describe innovative ways enterprises are coping with contrived business methods. These approaches prevent new breakthroughs and can, at best, produce some incremental improvement.
Conventional 20th century business methods do not organize and manage the business
The problem is that conventional business organization and management methods do not organize and manage the business. Instead we contrived business methods to organize and manage people, departments, functions, activities, duties, positions, tasks, and numerous other entities. Each business method defines these entities in its own way. Each method is laid over the business obscuring the actual business and compounding the problems of business change. The many different business methods describe the company with different entities and definitions creating information complexity and proliferation of information systems.
The organization structure is laid over the business. The business changes, while the organization structure remains rigid, building pressure for reorganization and upheaval. Other business methods and structures are laid over the organization structure. The actual business lies hidden under a proliferation of methods.
We need one right way to organize and manage the business
We need to step back and take a completely new look at the basics of our company business and build the one right method to organize and manage the business. Conventional business organization and management methods manage contrived entities, but fail to specifically define the business and manage specific business entities.
The business definition is investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results. Conventional business management methods do not identify and manage the three entities that define the business and must be managed:
1. Results: Specific economic outputs of value and quality produced at any level from business performance
2. Capital: Specific invested capital available as solutions to be utilized in business performance
3. Performance: Utilization of a specific solutions of worth to incur costs to produce specific results
These three entities are used in Result-performance Management (R-pM) to organize the company. Any other entities used must be defined in terms of results produced, capital investments as solutions, and performance in solutions utilized to produce results.
The business organization changes naturally as results are added, changed, or deactivated. The business organization changes with each new capital investment to implement solutions or to discontinue old solutions. Human capital personnel and capabilities are deployed as solutions where they have the capability to manage and produce results. Other capital is deployed as well as specific solutions to be utilized in performance to produce a result. The business organization changes with each redeployment of a solution to be utilized in performance to produce a result.
R-pM is the new breakthrough needed to organize the business
R-pM is a new breakthrough that defines the results that enterprise management wants to produce and adds and deletes results as needed. R-pM defines the capital utilized as solutions in performance, to show how costs are incurred. R-pM deploys solutions to be utilized in performance to the results to be produced to show total performance costs against the result value created.
Once the organization is simplified, R-pM manages the enterprise in three dimensions for ongoing advantage
1. Result: Manage economic output to reach revenue goals
2. Performance: Manage invested capital in performance to reach profit-margin goals
3. Management: Manage operation and development goals by time period for return and strategic value
R-pM develops new capital solutions over time to create value in new results. R-pM governs the company business performance over time to create strategic value.
R-pM is one simple integrated business method for 21st century management
R-pM removes conventional business complexity and provides one simple integrated business method that eliminates re-organizations, intangible assets, misalignments, ad-hoc development, change management, and unknown costs. R-pM enables strategic value creation, result value-quality chains, transparent governance, innovation technology management, beneficial development, cost and value accounting, result-performance optimization, business collaboration, consulting professionalism, solution-sharing, and many other advantages prevented by 20th century business methods.
When we employ R-pM, we have the one fundamental right business method to organize and manage any enterprise for 21st century management, and leave all the obsolete wrong business methods and unsolvable 20th century problems behind.