A new generation of computing that utilizes distant servers for data storage and management, allowing the device to use smaller and more efficient chips that consume less energy than standard computers.
Author Archives: Admin
Simple Ratios Offer Symptoms of Financial Health or Malaise
Gary Lenzo, Las Cruces Market President, Century Bank
Operating a successful business requires attention to numbers — especially to basic financial ratios derived from the business’s financial statements.
The current and quick ratios calculate a company’s liquidity, while the debt ratio evaluates its long-term solvency. The gross profit margin shows if sales revenue covers the expenses incurred in making those sales.
Lenders and investors use business health assessments like these to determine if a company qualifies for a loan or is a good candidate for venture capital. Business owners should use them to regularly evaluate their business’s financial standing.
Mentors Help Small-Business Owners Develop Leadership Skills
By Paul Choman, Regional Manager, WESST Enterprise Center in Farmington
Deciding what direction to take a business is isolating for the owner of a small business — especially a sole proprietor. Relatives and friends can offer advice and opinions, but they often lack the expertise to provide the informed, objective counsel the entrepreneur needs.
That’s when a mentor is handy. A mentor is both coach and sage — someone who’s versed in the challenges of running a company and ready to share knowledge with others who need help with business strategies, resources and goals. The best mentors empathize with the people they’re helping and aim to empower them to anticipate and overcome obstacles.
The junior partner in this arrangement isn’t a passive disciple, and the mentor’s word isn’t gospel. Continue reading
Obsession With Sales Can Blind a Business
By Lou Wolter PhD, Integrated Thinking
An observer can always tell a sales-driven business by what its owner thinks and talks about the most. If his chief concerns are cost, price and profit, his is a sales-driven business, not a market-driven one.
Not that cost, price and profit aren’t important to a market-driven business, but they’re not the sole basis for the business decisions of a market-driven venture.
It boils down to the term “driven.” To the degree that an entrepreneur is too focused on how much she makes and what it costs her, her thinking will be too limited to consider all the important things that really determine costs and profits — and the more limited her choice of alternatives and actions when the inevitable challenges arise. Continue reading
Crooks Target Businesses with Creative Scams
By Fidel Gutierrez, Sr. VP, Los Alamos National Bank
In an age when many products sell in cyberspace and the buyer and seller never meet, creative crooks are finding new ways to defraud businesses — especially web-based businesses and individuals selling items through online platforms.
One scheme involves counterfeit versions of a time-honored currency – the cashier’s check.
Scammers commit cashier’s check fraud using an authentic-looking cashier’s check to buy a product. The seller deposits the check and her account is charged for the amount when the check bounces back to the bank as a fake. Continue reading
The Loan Fund Helps Launch In-Home Care Service
Joe Justice, Community Development Officer, The Loan Fund
Leslie Van Pelt knew she wanted to do some type of work that improved people’s lives when she visited the Albuquerque offices of Comfort Keepers, a national for-profit company that provides in-home nonmedical care to the elderly and other adults recovering from illness and injuries. What she saw persuaded Van Pelt, co-owner of Cutlery of Santa Fe, to begin searching for funding to open a Santa Fe franchise.
Van Pelt already had a home equity line of credit, but she needed more money to launch the franchise. Her inquiries led her to The Loan Fund, an alternative lender that provides capital to businesses and nonprofits in New Mexico.
Fabricator Has Long-Term Commitment to Lean Manufacturing
Jennifer Sinsabaugh, Operations Director, NM MEP
When David Smith, owner of Taycar Enterprises in Albuquerque, phased out the use of paper in his sheet metal fabrication and assembly plant, it pushed some office workers beyond their hard-copy comfort zones.
Going paper-free was just one part of Smith’s efforts to bring the principles of lean manufacturing to the business his father started in 1983, but it was harder than the changes he instituted to make his job shop operate more efficiently. Now the business stores all its records electronically and conducts all its correspondence by email.
WESST Offers Global Program to Home-Grown Businesses
By Julianna Silva, Albuquerque Regional Manager, WESST
WESST brings a global business initiative to New Mexico in a five-part series of workshops designed to empower small-business owners to make sound financial decisions.
HP Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurs — or HP Life — is a global program sponsored by Hewlett Packard that trains the owners of microenterprises to apply information technology and business skills to establish and expand a job-creating venture.
WESST sponsors the workshops at its Albuquerque Enterprise Center.
B&I Loans Help Rural Communities
Mike Hoyl, Senior VP, Western Commerce Bank in Lovington
You don’t have to live off the map to qualify for a U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development loan in New Mexico.
Most of the state is considered rural for the purposes of this economic development program, which can back loans as high as $25 million to qualifying ventures in towns with 50,000 or fewer people. That excludes only Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Las Cruces and Santa Fe, while towns close to these metro areas easily qualify.
Accion – Now known as DreamSpring
A nonprofit organization that increases access to business credit, makes loans and provides training which enables New Mexico-based entrepreneurs Continue reading