Best Practices for Small Business

Goal setting resources that will help you maximize your goal setting process and guide you as you achieve your business goals, from the simplest to the most ambitious goals on your list.

Reducing costs in your small business and creating processes that will cost you less money over time doesn't have to take a lot of time or even a lot of effort. Here are 10 ways you can reduce business costs and improve your bottom line.

A list of business letter samples and tips to help you write effective business cover letters, new customer welcome letters, collection letters, business proposals and sales letters.

Trend tracking or trend analysis is essential today for businesses to navigate the ever-changing world. Discover the tools and resources you need to become a top trend tracker.

The emergence of earth shattering business trends redefines the ways business is conduct and profits are realized. The following four business trends will reshaped business and society.

Surviving a recession or other hard times requires a steel determination but in today's merciless marketplace, more is needed. Here are 6 small business hard time strategies to help to steer the chopping waters of commerce.

Your business is on an upward track or on its way down. Making improvements to make your business better is a conscious choice. These 10 tips should help you focus on the areas of business offering the biggest gain.

Forget the next big innovation. The approach of big innovation isn't ideal for small business. Small innovations are the best growth strategy for your business. Discover the 7 principles of small innovations.

Learn what big business already knows about benchmarking best practices and how to effectively borrow or steal ideas, tactics, and strategies.

Your About.com Guide to Small Business Management provides an overview of benchmarking and coverage of resources.

The American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC)is a non-profit organization dedicated to process and performance improvement through knowledge management and best practice research. This link provides a list of hundreds of business process metrics to help your company develop a best practice benchmark initiative.

Benchmark Reports provides a free comparison of your financials to your industry peers based on SIC codes. Registration is required. You will need 12 pieces of data from your income and balance sheets.

APQC's Handbook of the Benchmarking Code of Conduct provides ethical guidelines for companies embarking on a best practice study. (PDF File)