Provided below is a summary of today’s ‘Economic Outlook 2010′ webinar hosted by Canadian Business featuring RBC Chief Economist, Craig Wright.  For more information, visit www.canadianbusiness.com/webinars

Economic Outlook 2010 (Abridged Summary Notes)

OCTOBER 30, 1:30 pm-2:30 pm, EST

To begin,  RBC is taking an overall view of “cautious optimism” towards the economy

• This was not a recession made in Canada, so we need improvements globally and in the US (where the recession began). We expect to see fiscal policy and low inflation and low interest rate will help lift us out of this economic recession.

Our growth is dependent mainly on other factors:

• Global financial market stability
• We can see this in key indexes such as the Volatility Index, TED Spread, Borrowing Cost, and Credit Standard that stability is coming back.
  • Global growth & global economy improving
    • We see an improving tone, Decline of 1.5%. Outlook has stabilized and outlook for next year has improved significantly. Continue to revise higher (3-3.5% growth range). We expect that global growth will be lead by emerging economies.
  • Recovery based on the condition that authorities make the right exit-strategy, but of course there’s a risk that errors are made and they pull out too early before a full recovery, creating a possible double dip in the economy.

Looking Ahead – and caveats in our economic recovery

The Canadian Outlook in detail

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Cash is King. Make sure it rules!

Image Courtesy of Flickr - Indiewench

We all know, cash flow is the most essential part of running a business, whether it’s a start-up or maintaining an existing one.. This is particularly evident during tougher economic times. As a small business owner, there are several ways in which you can enhance your cash position, without the need to spend more on marketing, advertising, or getting more customers through the door.

Here are 5 ways I’ve managed to increase my cash flow and intake:

1. Control accounts receivable by limiting credit. Do you sell to commercial accounts? How quickly do you collect on these accounts? Two strategies that I find work well include;
   • Offer the special commercial pricing, but with no credit terms. Instead, ask for payments by credit card. We generate a lot of commercial business to small contractors who can’t get credit elsewhere (and therefore don’t feel welcome at those other places).
   • Offering early payment discounts (2%, 10 days, net 30). If payment is not received by day 30, get on the phone to collect. (more…)

My Story – Part 2

I already talked about what we decided to do as a result of our strategy session regarding our new organizational chart and the shifts in responsibilities. Now here is how we implemented the change.

Over a period of three weeks we did the following four steps:

1. We finalized the new plan. It came after much debate and discussion, but we did come up with a plan that all our key managers were in favor of.
2. We rewrote the job descriptions to reflect the new org chart. We wanted to be fully prepared and able to head off any objection and concern.
3. We executed on our plan. One by one, we talked to all our staff about the changes, presented the new job descriptions and the fact that they were going to be effective by the end of that week.
4. We then instilled confidence in the new team. Once the band-aid was ripped off quickly (we did it all in one day), we assembled the teams the fist of the following week to instill confidence and move on.
5. Finally we finished executing on our plan. We filled the new empty positions from existing staff mostly, we moved to lean scheduling and project based scheduling and we fulfilled all our objectives that we set out to do.

There were some hiccups and twists, and we did lose one person unexpectedly, but in the end, the results were pretty much as we had planned.

The proof is really in the pudding. By pinpointing our inventories of time, changing our org chart, becoming more efficient and having a structure that gave us more flexibility, we were able to save enough to create a new position inside the store while saving approximately 6-8% off our total wage costs (depending on the store), so far year to date.

Small business in the dark about IT security

When it comes to data security and privacy risks, many small and medium-sized businesses may have their heads buried in the sand, experts say.

That’s because these companies tend to ignore the risks of a breach, believing they will never be targets, or that it will cost too much to beef up safety measures.

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Website headaches? A little levity can help

Back in the 1990s, when Paul Chato was in the business of creating corporate videos, he knew he was on shaky ground during a new client pitch when the vice-president of marketing stormed into the meeting and demanded, “Who the [expletive] are you people?”

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Social media can pull clients in

After exchanging greetings, the first thing I do when I get digital marketing guru Mitch Joel on the phone is fess up: I have no blog, no Facebook account, nothing beyond basic e-mail.

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Feedback from customers can be invaluable, and customers are usually more than willing to tell you just how you’re doing.

You never want to lose touch with your customers. Here’s a quick survey that you can use when soliciting feedback from your customers.

 We’ve recently implemented mandatory customer calls that must be performed each week by our managers as well as myself. We built a simple survey, using SurveyMonkey.com’s free online service (free version has a 10 question limit). Each one of our managers has to call at least two customers each week and fill out the online survey with the feedback they receive.  Below is the format and questions we use. 

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