Business News and Information Page

The workbooks,How to Choose the Best Bank for Your Business and How to Secure Financing were created as a result of requests from small business owners.

In the workbook How to Secure Financing, you'll learn how to calculate your financial needs, forecasts and projections as well as how to put together a polished package to present to a lender. How to Choose the Best Bank for Your Business discusses how to select an institution interested in building a relationship.

In addition to the workbooks, VISA has added a small-business element to it's Web site: www.visa.com/smallbiz. Here, you can learn about legislative and tax concerns, plus other issues pertinent to entrepreneurs.

The workbooks are available from any SCORE chapter, or by calling VISA at (650)-432-3200.

According to RHI consulting, an information technology placement agency, the prospects have never been better. A newly released study shows that networking is the hottest specialty, with the demand for network, LAN and systems administrators especially  strong.

The six specialty areas experiencing the strongest national growth are:

   Networking  32%                                 
   Internet/Intranet Development   18% 
   Programming   13%                                 
   Help Desk/End User Support   12%     
   Project Management   9%                      
   Systems Analysis  7%                           
   Other   9%                                                
   Total   100%                                            

As you can see information technology is great career choice.

Home Business Away From Home

Home Front

While you run your business mainly from your residence,travel to certain clients makes sense from time to time. Studies indicate that 85% of business people use office equipment when traveling. At least one company,Wayne, PA-based USA Technologies Inc.,is taking steps to satisfy that need. Its service Business Express provides "business centers",or mini offices,to people working away from home.
The centers can be found in airport hotels nationwide-St. Louis's Holiday Inn,San Francisco's Galleria Hotel,New York's Best Western,to name a few. The office layouts are U-shaped(10 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet) or rectangular(10 feet by 2.5 feet by 8 feet).
The equipment in these mini offices: an IBM-compatible Pentium computer,a plain-paper fax,a Lexmark laser printer,a Minolta black-and-white photocopier,and a laptop print station. The software: Microsoft Windows Office Suite,Microsoft Internet Explorer,an Internet access provider,as well as security and virus protection. All is activated via a credit card.
Depending on the service,your pay-as-you-go time at Business Express will range from $8 to $20 per hour. For more information and a full listing of Business Express locations call 1-800-633-0340.

Listing of Small Business Associations

Listing of Government Agencies

American Marketing Association
250 South Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60606-5819
For publications to help you with your marketing questions

Guide To Technology

Backups: Copies of your text, graphic and musical files, databases, etc., that are similar to a carbon copy of work done on a typewriter, or Xerox-type copies. You should back up your files onto a floppy disk or removable cartridge on a regular basis to safeguard against system crashes, power outages, fire, theft and so on. Try to store backup disks with vital, irreplaceable files in a separate place, far from your computer, such as in your briefcase or a safe deposit box, or in a fireproof box.

• MHz: Megahertz is the speed rating of a com-puter system. Right now, an 80 MHz machine is adequate, but if you can afford something rated at 133 or faster, get it. A computer rated at 300 MHz will blow your hat off! Speed isn't so important if you're mostly doing word processing, but graphic software and large databases require more speed.
• CD-ROM drive: A CD player that has a pro-gram, an encyclopedia and/or music (all of these combined are considered "multimedia"), etc. It's a "ROM" storage device because it's "Read Only"--you can't "write" to it or change it. But some are fully interactive, and by cooperating with your computer, they give the feeling of being customizable.
• Scanner: A device that lets you funnel photos, newspaper clippings and other materials into your computer. Vital for photographic manipulation and storage, scanners are also useful for storing things you need but don't want to keep in paper form. In the case of scanned text, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software will let you word-process most articles, letters and other text files you've scanned.
• Software programs: These are like movie scripts. They are endless lines of code that tell the computer, for example, "If the user presses the Control Key and the `F' key at the same time, activate the `Find' function," allowing the user to find a key word, a file title, a name or anything else stored on the hard drive, floppy disks or removable cartridge.
• Inkjet printer: Black-and-white and/or color, these printers use primary color cartridges, plus black. Some brands produce awesome results. Cheaper ones are very good, but the more expensive ones produce incredibly high-resolution type and graphics. They produce professional-looking documents and compete well with laser printers.
• Laser printer: Also available in black-and-white and/or color. A very precise technology and, as with inkjet printers, the more expensive ones produce incredibly high-resolution type and graphics.
• Modem: Connects a computer to a telephone line to access e-mail, send computer-generated faxes, surf the Internet or auto-dial phone calls.
• E-mail: Text and other files sent or received over a modem. It's very fast and very convenient.