"Hidden costs can kill your web business"

REFLECTION:
After reading the article, "Hidden costs can kill your web business", I learned many new things I never considered before. With our venture project, I've learned we have to carefully design our business plan with all the operation, financial, and marketing plans but I never considered them when thinking about e-businesses. The article speaks of people who choose to run an internet business without designing a business plan and not considering the "hidden costs". After reading this, I realized that running an internet business is nowhere as easy as it seems. People have to consider privacy, and the ability to provide excellent customer services, just like a regular business.

1. What is e-business?
An e-business is an electronic business. It involves the use of the computer for all activities and parts of a business. An e-business allows for the owner to communicate to it's customers through the simple use of a computer.

2. Pros & Cons (Minimum 1 paragraph)
The pros of running an e-business include lower start up costs, the ability to run it at home, and the quick access to respond to customers. With people having internet access on their phones, it is very easy to check any emails from customers whenever, and wherever, whereas running a "real business" would be harder to come in contact with them through closed hours. Although running an e-business may seem easier, there are several cons that occur with it. Although there are low start up costs, e-business owners must constantly be testing order processes and computer anti-virus protection, update blog posts, and traffic their site. Also, it would be smart to always be aware of scams, frauds and of their company's privacy. It is also harder to build customer loyalty as there is no face-to-face interaction. Another thing that people look past in e-businesses is the coordination of returns, refunds, answering questions and special requests. This helps build possibly customer loyalty and will make them want to buy from the e-business again, but it is just as easy for a customer to not want to buy from them again.

BC's Minimum Wage

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/minimum+wage+increased+Sunday/4706418/story.html

As of Sunday, May 1st, the minimum wage of BC has risen from $8/hr to $8.75/hr. In November, it will raise again, to $9.50/hr and in the following year, to $10.25/hr. To me, I don't think it makes a significant difference that the minimum wage has increased, as it means that everything else will have inflated prices. For employees, it may seem that they make more, but like previously stated, all the prices will go up because employers have to pay their employees more and therefore, they have to compensate this difference some way. In the end, I see raising the minimum wage a way of looking positively at premier, Christy Clark. If wages go up, prices of everything else will go up as well, and will just be back to the stage of where it was before minimum wages were raised.

"UBC grad, 19, launches second startup" reflection

a) Summarize the article in a few sentences and write a reflection.

At just age 19, UBC graduate Brian Wong, has launched his second company, called Kiip, which has beaten out Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg) as the youngest entrepreneur to raise capital funding. He graduated from University Hill Secondary at age 11, and UBC at age 19. Www.kiip.me is a site where online game players can win prizes for reaching certain milestones in games. These rewards come from large companies like Sephora, Sony, 1-800 Flowers, and Dr Pepper. Currently, this venture is only available in the United States, but will hopefully soon be available to Canada as well.

b) Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes, but many entrepreneurs succeed or start young in technology - related industries. What may have caused this? Explain your reasons with actual examples

Different experience as they are younger can influence entrepreneurs succession. For example, Bill Gates, the chairman of the multinational corporation, Microsoft, was exposed to technology during his teenage years. In eighth grade, he bought his first ASR-33 Teletype which allowed him to write his first computer program. After, a few classmates and him exploited bugs into the computers at school in order to get computer time. Young exposure to technology allowed him to build a successful company in the future.

Xerox Case Study Summary

Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center has developed many technological breakthroughs such as the mouse, the graphical user interface, and the Macintosh computer. However, Xerox has faced several issues that has caused their capital to drop drastically. Despite their technology, several workers left the company, like Steve Jobs, to build multi billion dollar corporations using the foundations first developed at Xerox. In the 1980s, they lost their market in photocopiers to Canon. Many sales reps left the company to join other companies, which affected Xerox's relationships with customers. Xerox Corporation's stock price had dropped - being the same in late 2003 as it was in 1961. In 1999, Rick Thoman was assigned the role of CEO of Xerox Corporation. It was him who established "Creative Accounting" which made Xerox's Mexican subsidiary look excellent. It was a $119 million write off from a subsidiary with only $400 million in revenues. This discrepancy resulted in the Securities and Exchange Commission launching a lawsuit for overstating earnings by $3 billion in 3 years time. On top of this, Thoman wanted to restructure Xerox's global sales in order to compete with Japanese firms. All of these issues resulted in Xerox's stocks falling and almost declaring bankruptcy. In May 2001, Thoman was fired.

It was not the technological innovation that caused the company to soar down, but it was the organizational politics that happened at the top of the organization. This merely shows how important it is for a company to work on recruiting good quality employees so that they can succeed in their market.

"The Cost of Employee Turnover" Summary

Employee turnover has been a constant issue, especially in the hospitality industry. It can cause operating expenses to increase, as replacing staff requires hard costs, soft costs, and opportunity costs. All of these additional costs will eventually decrease profitability. The cost of turnover is divided into five steps. First is pre-departure, when the employee gives notices about his/her leave. Then there is recruitment, where the company has costs to do with promotional materials, advertising, and recruiting sources, in order to recruit a new member of the team. After is selection, where time is put into selecting a particular candidate through interviewing, background checks and reference checks. Once the candidate is selected, orientation and training is required to understand a company's particular procedures. Finally, there is productivity loss. In the hospitality industry, it was concluded that the higher the job complexity, the higher the cost of turnover. The amount of people for higher level jobs is smaller than of the people for low skill jobs. However, these higher level candidates are generally more qualified applicants. It was concluded that the cost of turnover is higher for complex jobs in larger hotels which run in high cost of living locations. Finally, the result of employee turnover affects revenue and expenses, which in turn reduces profit. With this issue, companies today can try to design better policies and procedures in recruiting and keeping quality employees.

Ashley Jang, Cathy Tran, Matthew Jiu

VENTURE IDEAS

1. Piano Lessons
Because I have my RCM Grade 10 and experience teaching younger kids, piano lessons would be ideal as a service to offer customers. I have a piano at home and I would be willing to travel to the student's house if they have a piano at home to do lessons. Also, I have access to books which I can offer the students. Teaching piano lessons would not require a lot of external materials other than books and maybe flash cards. The demand for this service may not be relatively high but it gives the opportunity to kids to have introductory lessons to music if they want to continue on with a professional teacher. Also, I would not charge a ridiculous amount of money so the parents can test out how piano lessons would be and to see if their child enjoys it.

2. Baked Goods (cookies, brownies)
Although serving food at our school requires FoodSafe, which I don't have, I can always go get certified. With this product, especially at lunch, people get hungry and this group would be my target market. It would not be an expensive product. However, it would be more costly than piano lessons, as I will need to buy the ingredients each time. This product would have higher demand than piano lessons, as it is cheaper and just more practical. The products would be hand delivered to the customer, as I would walk around the school halls during lunch/break.

Sustainability

Sustainability is the act that a business follows in order to have no negative impact on the environment, community and society. Ways that a business can be sustainable include using recycled paper and reusing materials.


To this day, it is in no doubt that the world produces too much garbage. Starbucks has an example of a sustainability program. It is called the Shared Planet program. With this program, the company's goal is to reduce the amount of paper cups being used. By bringing your own reusable mug for coffee, you receive a discount of 10 cents on your drink purchase and they state that with the customer's contribution, over 600,000 trees will be saved in 50 years time. To me, Starbucks' effort does make profit off of their campaign. Because more and more people are willing to bring their own mugs to the coffee shop, that  means that the company itself can reduce their costs on paper cups which, correspondingly, brings up their profits. As a customer, this program actually does affect me and my buying habits. Because I know that Starbucks is a sustainable business, I will support them by buying their products. As a stakeholder, Starbucks also attracts me with their campaign, as it means more profits.
http://www.starbucks.com/thebigpicture

Business Ethics & Social Responsibility

As a business, each organization is expected to act in such a way that benefits the society positively. This is known as social responsibility. Today, they must follow society's "green" expectation which includes recycling, giving back to the community, as well as acting in a positive manner towards our environment. Aside from a company's need to follow a socially responsible conduct, they must also follow business ethics. Business ethics are the moral principles and values that decide the actions and decisions of a group. This conduct should be followed by organizations but it can also impact them as a whole. For example, because they cannot do a certain procedure because it is morally wrong, it could result in a decrease in profits. Within a business, ethics can be implicated to workers through workshops in order for them to be aware of what is considered "right and wrong". Ethics itself is a complicated issue and sometimes it is hard to determine what is morally correct as different people have different opinions.