Bloggy Business Today

While many of us are heaving a sigh of relief on the recent events that saw oil prices going below $115, it is still far from normalizing to the prices that we had enjoyed some months back. Apparently a lot of political issues have been the cause and bordering nation disputes have likewise made oil prices to where it is today.

There are two points for discussion here. Let me enumerate them regarding the current oil price frenzy.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia
While we are celebrating, turn around and look at the oil price in the market. They are not slowly spiking up and a lot of it is due to the current conflict between Russia and Georgia. For the record, Russia is one of the contributing nations towards oil needs in the world and apparently they are now in semi-war with the United States.

With that said, we are slowly getting the feelers. The oil prices are spiking up in preparation for another crisis and if the dispute with Russia is not settled, we may just see another round of oil price increases. Something we do not like but a reality we must face.

Who are responsible for Oil Price?
Oil companies command prices but not depending on supply but more on how they negotiate through contracts. Similar to business, negotiations and set prices are agreed upon depending on how much and how many barrels of oil will be exported from one destination to another.

Unlike what most of us think, oil price hikes are not always signs of oil shortage. Sometimes you have to audit the oil companies closely to get the real score. Sad to say, this is a reality and it is something that we can say that has originated from our own selfish professions in depicting business and focusing on making money.

Source

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In an earlier post on this blog we discussed different strategies for making your business energy efficient as a way of cutting down on costs and in doing so helping your company stay afloat during the economic crisis that is currently unfolding. However, just as energy can be wasted, so too can technological infrastructure.

Most of the technicians that you meet will purposely build redundancies into key parts of a network in order to ensure that a failure at one key point within a network will not affect the whole network in a way that can not be reversed. However, technicians by their very nature are trained to be on the safe side when they are setting up these networks because being on the safe side means a higher customer satisfaction level at the end of the day.

If you hire a technician to reduce redundancy within your network infrastructure however, they will most certainly do it. This is not recommended for most companies and especially not for companies that rely heavily on electronic data, but it is something to consider if you are desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but these measures only become desperate if you actually experience a technological failure of some kind. It is a real life example of the ends justifying the means.

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Networking is usually the first thing that is eliminated when a business starts cutting back on its expenditures. After all, since networking by definition is something that is done above and beyond with other businesses as partners, it would not seem to be that integral to the average business.

However, if you are looking for an innovative way to get through an economic downturn that does not involving massively laying off your employees, then networking with another business might be just what the doctor ordered. After all, when you network with other businesses, you pool resources in order to create a final product that is more than the sum of its parts. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that doing such a thing during an economic downturn could be bad for the finances of both businesses, but the far more likely outcome is that such projects could stimulate growth in both businesses at a time when growth is hard to come by.

This does not mean that you should snap up the first networking opportunity that comes along however. You should evaluate each potential joint venture and then choose the one that is most likely to provide in areas that your company is lacking. Try to find a company to work with where you can reciprocate this need as well as such a partnership will benefit both parties enormously.

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Product Development

There are many different aspects to running a company and one of those aspects in certain cases is the development of new products. Any company that relies primarily on the sale of goods will have to develop new products at one point or another to remain competitive, but with economic times slow the money for product development can seem hard to come by.

The argument against product development during economic times is a relatively obvious one. Since it tends to consume a large amount of internal financial resources, it is often argued that easing up on product development can help a company survive the economic downturn of a particular country.

On the other hand, product development is often what fuels economic growth. The development of new products creates a consumer response within the marketplace and that in turn can lead to new jobs and opportunities for the population. This would suggest that product development is quite important, even in times that are economically bad.

While there is no set answer to this question, the best way to proceed vis-à-vis product development would be to continue it only insofar as it does not affect the primary financial stability of your company. The details of that however are something you will have to decide as the head of the company.

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One of the only industries that have been doing well with the current economic crisis is the electronics industry. They have slashed prices to many of their products and are still getting orders pouring in everyday from companies that are interested in abandoning a lot of their physical infrastructure and making the move to virtual real estate in the form of websites and servers.

This is a good idea and one that you might consider for your own business to help get through the current economic rough patch. If you have physical buildings under your control, not only do you have to pay for the maintenance of that property, but you also have to pay for the amenities inside it as well as the taxes on the property that you own. Switching to electronic holdings reduces the maintenance costs and virtually eliminates everything else, allowing you to really save some money when all is said and done.

Switching to electronic infrastructures over physical ones in areas like retail and management might seem like a less than ideal situation and with the majority of the world still based on last generation’s technology it probably is less than ideal. However, in times of economic crisis nobody can afford to pass up on money-saving ideas, especially if those ideas will allow you for the most part to maintain your business as it currently is, just in a different form.

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