International Export Packaging – A checklist

In international export, it may take several days, even weeks before the products reach to the customer, after being dispatched by exporters. Being an exporter, it's your responsibility to package all exporting items in a way that your customers will acquire them in excellent condition. Apart from protection; packaging is also used for marketing (labels & logos) or information (guidelines for consumers) purposes. Exporting products are vulnerable against physical shocks, crushing, climate change, mishandling, etc and the packaging should be able to safeguard them against all these hazards. Though the packaging standards differ with the countries and products, there are some minimum requirements that you need to take care of.

Packaging Box and Tapes:

Usually cardboard boxes are used when packaging for shipment. Always use firm boxes with proper flaps; extra padding (or cushioning) is compulsory for breakable items. Size of the box should be according to the product size, not too small (that you have to forcefully stuff all items inside) and not too large (that the goods can move around and clash with each other). Use separate wrapping for each item. If the products are of fragile nature, you can use wooden box for extra protection. Use standard tapes instead of normal household tapes, special tapes for packaging purpose are easily available. Extra safety measures are needed when you are exporting "food" items.

Addressing & Labeling:

Recipient address should be clearly mentioned, also the sender address where the products will return in case they don't reach the addressee. Also, mention the recipient contact number to ensure the delivery. Your business or brand logos on the package can be used for marketing and promotional objectives. Sometimes attractive packaging is used as a competitor advantage. You can also use the packaging to communicate with the customers about the other products or services you are offering. If the products are fragile or breakable, you can state these characteristics outside the box and give instructions for careful handling.

When exporting to developed countries, be sure to obtain knowledge about the acceptable packaging standards in that country. You can also refer to ISO standards in these cases. It's better to have a clear idea of all the possible hazards that the products can face before they will reach their destination. Remember the main motives of packaging that includes physical protection, quality preservation, storage convenience, marketing and product information. Adopting world-class standards is vital when doing international export, not only your product but your packaging should be of export quality in order to stand out.

Source:
UK Wholesalers

Implications of the "Incoterms" in international import & export

Communication is crucial in international import & export, where both buyers and sellers are located a long way away, there’s every chance of misunderstanding in the interpretation of various terms used in contracts and agreements. These confusions and misapprehensions can cost one or both parties, dearly. What sounds pretty simple and straight-forward to a buyer sitting in United States, could turn out to be a perplexing one for the seller in China.

This problem continued to exist and resulted in many mix-ups and losses until the International Chamber of Commerce set down “Incoterms”, which is a set of 13 terms, referred as

1. EX-Works
2. FOB (Free On Board)
3. FCA (Free Carrier)
4. FAS (Free Alongside Ship)
5. CFR (Cost and Freight)
6. CIF (Cost, Insurance & Freight)
7. CPT (Carriage Paid to)
8. CIP (Carriage and Insurance Paid to)
9. DAF (Delivered at Frontier)
10. DES (Delivered Ex Ship)
11. DEQ (Delivered Ex Quay)
12. DDU (Delivered Duty Unpaid)
13. DDP (Delivered Duty Paid)

Businesses can choose any of these 13 terms according to their own needs and requirements. For example, "Ex-works" inflict the minimum liability for seller; on the other hand "Delivered Duty Paid" makes it obligatory for the seller to arrange for almost everything including export duty expenses, loading and unloading expenses, landing charges, transportation, insurance and custom clearance. Incoterms are not applicable to all aspects of trade, however they do standardize most of the terms used in international trade. For example, they spell out the terms of delivery in detail, and establish the responsibilities for buyers and sellers as to who will bear the expenses of insurance, clearance or various other taxes. Another important implication of "Incoterms" is the reduction (or removal) of uncertainty about the transfer of risk.

As an exporter or importer, you need to spend some time on understanding each of these 13 "Incoterms" and their explanations given on the official website of "International Chamber of Commerce". Each of them is an agreement in essence, with predetermined terms and condition, for that reason each of them has got different advantages and disadvantages. After a careful study, maybe you can underline the best ones and then stress on using that particular Incoterms when getting into an agreement with some buyer or seller. Incoterms are acknowledged all over the world (by courts, governments, etc); therefore a good comprehension of all of these terms is a must for all international exporters. Remember, ICC keep making minor changes (not very often though), it's important to keep a track of these modifications.

Source:
UK Wholesalers

How to deal with employee's high turnover rate

Turnover rate is the ratio of employees leaving the company (or some specific industry) in a given period. A company or industry has high turnover rate when the workers of that company tend to ditch their jobs more often than the employees of other companies (in the same industry). Some industries and jobs have high turnover rates because of the nature of work, however if your company has a high turnover rate than your competitor and you are not able to sustain your employees with you, there maybe something wrong with your policies. In case you don’t pay attention, not only you will be loosing your good employees to your competitors, your business will also suffer from high costs of attracting, recruiting and training the new staff.

Atmosphere and working conditions:

At certain workplaces, you will feel the tense atmosphere as soon as you put your feet in, reason can be strict management or unrealistic targets. Being a manager, it is necessary to maintain some discipline but some managers overdo it by importing rules straight from the books of military. For many individuals (especially fresh graduates) it becomes really hard to adjust in this kind of atmosphere.

Working conditions are linked with health related issues. Light, ventilation, air conditioning, heating systems and safety measures are some of the basic requisites. Sometimes, improving your high turnover can be as simple as loosening up some rules or dealing with some unhealthy environment issues.

Salary & Growth Opportunities:

Excessive work, no incentives and low salaries, these are all grounds for a high turnover rate. Employees are here to earn, and their morale is directly related to their income. If you are expecting them to give their 100 %, you should be giving back in form of good enough salaries. Your salary packages should be competitive if not the best in market. A good salary package will make up for many other factors, but if the salaries are low from the market standards, nothing can hold the employees for long. Similarly, motivating employees by providing growth opportunities is also necessary.

Choosing the right candidate and the nature of the work:

If your recruitment and hiring process is flawed, you are destined to have a high turnover. Many small businesses, in a hurry to fill out vacant positions, hire some unskilled individuals, thinking that he/she will learn the traits with the passage of time. Such hiring is nothing but wastage of time, both for employee and employer. The interviewee should have complete knowledge of the skills required for some particular job, and the successful candidate must be having most of them, if not all.

Sometimes the reason for high turnover is the nature of work, for example the jobs that require night shifts or excessive late sittings. These types of jobs are not suitable for everyone; hence turnover rates are often high in such jobs. These are just some of reasons, apart from looking into these areas; you can communicate with your employees to get the idea if they are having any reservations.
Source:
Wholesale

How important are Performance Appraisals

There may be a huge difference between the performances of two employees, even when their qualifications or all other variables are same. Reason can be the difference in their dedication, commitment or personal traits. Quite obviously, the one who put more effort, more time or more commitment, for the growth of business than his/her counterparts, should be getting some extra reward for that. A timely salary increment or promotion for the best employee is not only an encouragement for the frontrunner; it also motivates others to work harder. If you don't come up with any kind of bonuses or rewards, it won't take long before you see a drop in that employee's performance graph too. Also, performance appraisals are essentials to keep a track of your overall business performance and figure out the deficiencies.

It may sound quite simple to choose the best contributing worker and hand him the reward. In reality, performance appraisals are something that needs lots of planning and careful thinking. Sure, it brings the sense of competition in your workforce, but the evaluations will also attract lots of puckered brows and objections. A flawed performance appraisal will go as far as completely shattering employee's confidence or loyalty towards your company. Bottom-line … don't take it lightly; you need to be extra cautious and fair when planning and implementing some performance appraisal program.

Guidelines for performance appraisal system:
Performance appraisal systems are based on some ranking or scaling criteria. Ideally, the judgment should be made with the help of statistics, along with the feedback coming from managers, coordinates and peers. Assessment criteria must be uncomplicated and easily available to everybody. Give them a transparent review system, where employees can judge themselves against their fellow workers, at any given time. Monitor the performance on regular basis instead of waiting for the month end before you go through the evaluation process. Don't try to stuff your performance appraisal plan with too many attributes and benchmarks, keep the requirements simple and easy to comprehend.

Performance appraisal Meetings:
The most important part of performance appraisal is to communicate with employees and discuss their overall performance. Don't discuss anybody's problem or dismal performance in front of his/her colleagues. Also, don't ignore past performances when judging an employee, if the worker has constantly been performing well except the present month, ask for the reason, especially if something is bothering him/her at workplace. Keep in mind the main objective of performance appraisal i.e. to encourage and motivate your employees, not to mark their short comings or hurt somebody's feelings.

Source: Wholesale Supplier

Decorating your office - the right way

Office design and decoration plays an important role in the overall environment of the office, by the same token the overall environment plays an imperative role in the productivity of the company. Hence, a professional and pleasant looking office is as important as anything in your business success. Remember, you need to maintain a balance in all aspects when trying to decorate your office. For example, employer's comfort is vital but not to an extent that they start getting drowsy or lethargic in the working space. Similarly, it's good to try and make your office a fun place to be but it should not be giving an impression of some discothèque. Here are some important considerations for workplace setting and decoration.

'Light' Delights:
Surprisingly, light has been treated as an addendum when planning for your workplace. Whereas proper lighting at workplace is supposed to be your first priority, because that is where you spend most of your time. Bad lighting will harm your mental and physical health; in addition to this it may have a negative impact on your productivity. Excessive use of computers has made it so important that hiring some lighting expert is not a bad idea if you are not good with lighting standards or requirements. Ideal lighting arrangement should give your working space a feel of comfort and openness.

Comfortable Furniture:
Do some planning before going out to purchase your office furniture, so that you have a clear picture of the furniture that is fitting for your office space, this will save you from buying some needless fixtures. A chair or table that looks classy at furniture shop can turn out to be extremely inappropriate when placed in your office settings. Don't go for the looks, price or designs, comfort should be the main concern. You can go and talk to some sales person at furniture store, tell them your requirements and they'd show you the right piece of furniture.

Right colors for the Right mood:
Even before we had these research works, we knew that some colors have kind of soothing effect on our nerves; on the contrary some colors are quite stimulating. It means that using the right blend of colors, when painting your office walls can bring forth the right set of feelings in you and your staff. It's better to use different colors in different sections, like using neutral colors at workplace and cool colors at recreation room.

Source: Wholesale Furniture Supplies

Coping with the workforce diversity for manager

Workforce diversity is often considered a characteristic of large corporations, with considerably large pool of employees; however workforce diversity is not limited to just large companies. If we go by the definition, any business having two or more than two employees coming from different age groups, ethnic backgrounds, religious sectors, race or gender, etc is basically having a diverse workforce. Sometimes the differences are trivial and hard to notice, sometimes quite flagrant.

Workforce diversity is not something to be wary of, even if it requires a little bit more planning and thinking at manager's end, because it brings so many different perspectives and thought patterns to the organization, hence a diverse workforce is more of a plus than minus for businesses. A diverse workforce results in a more flexible and innovative business. That is why, there's no need to panic, if you find yourself managing a multitalented workforce. Wasting your time in planning to avoid people coming from difference age groups, gender or religious backgrounds is not only a discriminatory practice, but also a bad management decision. By doing this, you are closing your doors to a more versatile workforce, which is more capable of dealing with challenges.

Do's:

First of all, you need to accept diversity and allow your employees to carry and develop their own unique personalities (as long as it doesn't clash with office discipline and business objectives). It comes handy during the process of decision making and business meetings, where some sort of brain storming is needed. A group that consists of managers or attendees with similar ages, genders or experiences is more likely to miss out some noteworthy aspects, which a more diverse group can easily point out. As a manager, you must make use of the diversity when making some important decisions like finalizing a project, making appraisal plans or launching a new business.

Dont's:

Never go over the top with your efforts to eradicate individuality from the work place, with the intention of developing a more standardized workforce. By doing this, you may end up killing the creativity of your staff, a business having no originality or inventiveness can never reach its true potential. Take the example of this world, despite of so many disasters and challenges; this world continues to exist so far because of its diversity. To manage a diverse workforce efficiently, a manager should be having excellent communication skills and an understanding of human behaviors.

Choosing the right Freight forwarding agency

Many small businesses (or those who have just started) find it extremely hard to go through the frustrating procedures of documentation, legalities and clearance, that unfortunately, is a must in all types of international trade. There are quite a number of fronts to handle, and more often than not you find yourself trapped in these time-consuming tasks, when you should be working on the more important ones like marketing, communicating with clients and finalizing new business deals. As a small business, you are left with two options, either hire more staff for these jobs or outsource everything to a freight forwarding agency.

Professional freight forwarders have a clear advantage over your newly hired staff, first they are far more experienced, second they have good working relations with many parties involved in transaction and third, they know many cheap alternatives for transportation. A good freight forward agent will be able to assist you from the word go if you have no real knowledge of international trade. Best way is to engage a freight forwarding agent even before you finalize the prices, as he/she can give you an exact idea on how much documentation, insurance or shipment can cost.

While choosing the freight forwarding (or clearing) agent, you must consider following guidelines.

Experience:
The prime reason for you going to the freight forwarding agent is his/her experience for carrying out those tasks. No matter how qualified your freight forwarding agent seems to be, don't close your eyes to the past experience he/she has in the field. An experienced freight forwarder can prove to be a lot more helpful because he/she will be having working relations with relevant parties. Being an "old hand" also reflects that the freight forwarding agency is a long-standing business.

Knowledge:
Choose the one with extensive knowledge of the market, policies, rules and procedures, and more importantly the best modes of shipment. The agent should be capable enough to go through complete process with ease and in a timely manner. An ideal freight forwarding agent will have the knowledge, skills and technology to provide, you and your customers with top-notch services.

Price:
Freight forwarding agent substitutes you for a good number of tasks, plus he/she will provide you with valuable counseling and guidance as well. So, the fees are supposed to be considerably high. Decide all the services you expect to receive and settle on prices in complete details, make sure there will be no additional charges in the future. If you are dealing with a freight forwarding agent from another country, bear in mind the communication problems (because of foreign language involved) that can arise in the future.

Choosing the right bank for international trade

International exporters need the services of banks or financial institutions at many stages of their trading business. They need loan to help with initial setup, they need financing for production phase, and they need the services of banks to make or receive payments (letter of credit, wire transfer, etc), they can avail lots of other services like online banking, small business loans, credit cards, etc. When deciding on your bank you should consider following points carefully, because you can't keep changing your bank often.

Interest Rates and Service Fee:

Normally, there’s not much difference between interest rates offered by various banks operating in the same market and circumstances, mainly because of cut throat competition. However, that doesn’t mean you should completely ignore the small differences at hand. Similarly, banks charge different fees for different services, if you have a clear idea of the services you are going to avail, you can easily decide on the most suitable bank. Banks have to rely on these service charges and fees for their profits, but you must make sure that you are not getting ripped off by your personal bank.

Repute & History:

A well reputed bank of good standing will also speak for your business credibility at international export, so you better go for some bank, which is highly regarded among business circles. If you are choosing a bank for long term relations, you should go through its business history, past performance and achievements. Another question to go over is how financially strong that bank is, especially after we have seen more than 15 US banks failures in first three months of 2009. Just because they deal in money, doesn’t mean they’d never run out of it.


Customer Relations & Customer Service:

Good banker-customer relations are a result of mutual understanding and collaboration. Bank staff normally consists of well mannered and courteous individuals; still some banks go that extra mile to please their customers and establish long term relationships. Customer service can slightly vary on branch to branch basis as well. Don’t get overwhelmed by the politeness and the display of utmost sincerity when going through the procedures of opening an account, instead you should talk to some existing customers to make sure they are satisfied with the banking services and the behavior of staff.

In addition to the points described above, you can look for the quality of products and services offered by the bank.

Checklist for organizing successful meetings

Company meetings are meant to be highly informative, problem-solving and solution-providing events, however most of the times these meetings end without accomplishing any of these targets. That is why many people consider these meetings as a waste of time, for them participating in the meeting is nothing but an obligation that doesn't make any sense to them. For all these reasons, as a chairperson or someone who's looking into the task of organizing a company meeting, you need to take care of these points, in order to turn it into a constructive and valuable experience for participants.

Purpose of the meeting:

As earlier mentioned, all meetings are supposed to have a clear purpose; these are not mere gatherings where some employees spend some time sitting around the table and crack jokes at each other. For example, some meetings are meant for informational objectives like holding a meeting to explain some policy that has recently being implemented, or to pass out instructions for the use of some newly introduced technology. Another likely purpose could be to analyze or get to the bottom of some problem. The person who is named as the chairperson must have an unmistakable idea on what the meeting is all about.

Choosing the participants:

Preferably, a meeting should be having a small number of participants; however that doesn't mean some persons who are closely linked to the meeting agenda are left out just for the sake of having the least possible partakers. Choose the participants according to the nature of meeting; if the meeting has been conducted for instructive purpose, it's quite obvious that you must have an expert speaker who'll brief the participants on that particular topic. If the meeting is taking place because a problem has occurred and some kind of brainstorming is needed, it's better to have managers or representatives from all departments.

Controlling the discussion:

If you are chairing the meeting, your role is of utmost significance. First thing first, don't try to get overly authoritative, that will discourage free flow of information and ideas, once you have started the discussion, encourage everyone to take part, don't impose your ideas on anybody, during the discussion your main role is to keep the dialogue on track. Settle down the situation if participants are getting excessively aggressive, rude or emotional. Once everybody has shared his/her opinions with the group members, it's now your turn to evaluate and come up with conclusions, which will be based on the discussion and everybody's opinion. Last but not the least, prepare the minutes of the meeting and forward the detailed report to higher management.