Freelance Consultant's Diary

I love to watch animation films and it took me a while to get to " Kung Fu Panda " but I am glad I did. It is an excellent movie that you can watch with your family. The plot is intriguing and the visual effects are remarkable. Obviously, there is a powerful underlying message that is important to kids as well as adults. What I got from the movie is that there really is no magical power or secret to success (I am obviously excluding being born to rich and/or powerful parents ) other than believing in yourself and doing the hard work. Po (Jack Black) is a panda who leads a mundane life as a family owned restaurant worker but making noodles is definitely not what he wants to do his whole life. What he really wants to do is to be kungfu master. By a stroke of good luck, he is selected to be the Dragon Warrior (the best in kung fu) who must fight Tai Lung (Dustin Hoffman) to protect the people of the Valley of Peace. For a food- addicted , overweight panda, the journey

Here are some simple rules for life: Never join a religion that denies you chocolate , or for that matter, simple pleasures like food , unless you eat so much that you end with a health emergency . Never support the integration of church and state. It is always a dangerous mix regardless of how politicians and church leaders may want to help each other out to screw the people . Always enjoy what you have. On your death bed, you will not regret what you did, but would surely regret all those places that you did not visit or the time that you did not spend with your family or the things that you did not try. Chocolat is a great movie for anyone who likes chocolate or enjoyed "Like Water For Chocolate." Vianne (Juliette Binoche) and daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol) show up in a tiny French village, where the main square appears to be literally just as big as my backyard (it is important to understand this because it shows how small the minds of the residents were). Via

I always enjoyed Steve Carell on The Daily Show but when I watched him for the first time in "The 40 Year Old Virgin," I was disappointed. The humor was lame and the plot was weak despite some good acting by Carell. Then I had a chance to watch "Little Miss Sunshine" and I realized that if the plot was right, Carell could be at his best. I have been a big fan of Anne Hathaway since I saw her in " The Devil Wears Prada ." In "Get Smart" movie, Carell and Hathaway are both agents (Maxwell Smart and Agent 99) for a fictitious intelligence agency. The two go on a mission together to Russia to find out how KAOS, a terrorist organization , was getting nuclear weapons. There is a lot of action-filled comedy and eventually Smart is suspected to be a double-agent. He proves that he is not a double agent by preventing the explosion of a bomb at a concert in Los Angeles attended by the president. If you are looking for spy-thriller , this is not the

Maybe it is only acting, but movie stars engage in the most intimate acts while filming. Take for example Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in Australia , a film that proved memorable for her and Keith Urban because she got pregnant during that time. So how does it feel to kiss another person while you are married . Pretty good if you believe both Hugh and Nicole. She says, "Obviously we're in character when we kiss , but it was good to go to work." Hugh says that filming love scenes with Kidman "couldn't have been better or easier...I won't tell all the nitty gritty...But [director Baz Luhrmann] treats love scenes like choreography. The camera is like a dancer . If you watch any of his movies, visually, the love scenes are like poetry." Sure!

There a few websites that are trying to do something similar to our proposed business. The difference is that the existing websites only offer directories of services, they are visually unappealing and the websites do not offer a pleasant experience to the users. I reviewed the first 10 pages of Google and Yahoo and I found the following websites to be our potential competitors: Note: By directories I mean: providers’ directories: entertainers, food, venues, party supplies, etc. 1- http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com/ This is a content website that offers party ideas. They also have a directory of providers. 2- http://www.birthdayexpress.com/ This website has a shop and offers content about parties. 3- http://www.party411.com/guides.html This website has content and offers advertising. 4- http://thepartyworks.com/ It is a shop and has content. The ideas contributed by users offer simple, cheap party ideas. 5- http://www.kidsparties.com/ This i

I previously published birthday party portal business plan and a birthday party portal web design framework . Here is a powerpoint slide presentation with a business plan for a party planning online business.

If you read the birthday party portal business plan , this article will help you figure out how to design the website. Item 1: Interactive tools This section may include: Party budget Polls Quizzes Send this page to a friend Bookmark Item 2: Listings Listing of party venues and service providers Database could be searchable by area code or zip code and by category Item 3: Create you web page Registered users can create their own mini-site. This will include the possibility to have a scrapbook Item 4: Access to forums and boards Item 5: Party manager It may have: Guest list Save budget Book services Cards, e-cards Store favorite providers (shortlist) Store favorite articles Item 6: Gift registry Wish list of gifts The guest may register as guest to access to access this list or have a cookie session from an email link. Once a gift has been selected, it will be deleted from the gift list. Providers’ pages A provider can

I was bouncing this idea off a couple of investors. Essentially, it is a portal where parents can find everything they need for planning and managing a birthday party for their child. Here are the main components. Features · Hosts all the local party themed activity providers (E.g. Paint-A-Party) · Advertisements or lists – Tents, helium tanks, Toys-R-Us, Toys shops. · Birthday registry · Evite/Snailvite o Real time guest list · Thank you cards o Form to enter gifts received from guest · Catering services – Cakes, food etc. · Entertainers (e.g. clowns, magician) · Decorations o Themes · Hall rentals · We can design and host a website for these services – Portal to create their own website · Photo gallery of the party · Services to create goody bags · Props (e.g. Moonwalk) · Birthday parties at museum, aquarium

Packaging buyers tend to stick with branded products because they’re familiar with them and they know what they are getting. Generally, most successful packaging suppliers follow a strategy based on building brands. What comes to your mind when you think of Bubble Wrap, Tyvek, and Valeron? These are all well recognized brand names in the packaging industry that are known not for what they are made out of but for what they do. Their suppliers — Sealed Air Corp., DuPont and Valeron Strength Films (formerly Van Leer Flexibles), respectively — could completely change the underlying material of construction, but their users will continue to buy these as long as they perform the functions that the brand is associated with. Despite this, it continues to amaze me that the number of well recognized brands in the packaging industry is still so small. Our industry has been so focused on product attributes, manufacturing capabilities and materials of construction that we have failed

As access to pricing information becomes more readily available to packaging material buyers, suppliers will need to rethink some of their strategies and embrace business models that are based on much more than price alone. The packaging industry remains one of the few privileged industries since customization is still widely popular. Manufacturers of both industrial and consumer goods may have almost indistinguishable products, but they still make their best efforts to use unique packaging. The obvious advantage to packaging material manufacturers is that, despite the underlying raw materials being essentially commodities, they can still differentiate their products and obtain premium pricing. This differentiation has been the major driver for pricing patterns, and consequently, margins. Information access The second dimension of pricing is not talked about openly very often. The price that a supplier quotes for its products is also largely dictated by the amount of inf

If your company is to be the best it can possibly be, a smart approach is to tap into resources outside of your organization. A “community” allows you access to the best and brightest people — whether they work for you or for someone else. In the near future, as companies increasingly focus only on their strengths and outsource everything else, they’ll have mostly partners and very few competitors. The fact that you are reading this article is clear evidence of your recognition of the power of a community. I am continually amazed by how much can be done with only a little once you build a community. If you are a member of a community and contribute even occasionally, you probably know very well that more gets done there than in your office. The added advantages are that one doesn’t have to wait 12 months before the next annual meeting, nor is there any limitation on where the participants live and at what time of the day they contribute. The power of community Imagine w

Packaging buyers are becoming increasing comfortable with using the Internet as a tool to find information prior to making a purchasing decision. Companies who provide effective content and interactivity on their site will grab the most eyeballs and, hence, maximize profits. The Internet has fundamentally changed the manner in which we obtain information and the amount of information that can be accessed. Remember the days when someone in your organization was able to obtain your competitor’s price list or data sheets or organization chart? It would go into a file marked ‘confidential competitor information.’ Now, you can get the same information within seconds. In fact, companies are beginning to compete with each other in how much information they provide on their websites. It is no longer surprising to see customer lists, examples of applications, detailed product literature and an employee directory. What’s missing? The Web is essentially the easiest way for a compan

E-commerce is not only about reducing cost and automating transactions; it is also about using it as a channel to exchange better and larger amounts of knowledge with business partners. If I were to say that competition in the packaging industry has been based all along primarily on knowledge, most of you will agree but only after some thought. Some of the recent hype about “knowledge management” may give an impression that it is something new. In the packaging industry, we have been doing it all along without necessarily using a very formal name and process. Even while selling a basic package, a successful salesperson typically talks less about the actual package and more about how it will protect the product, provide aesthetics and reduce cost. This salesperson will also probably bring along a technical professional who can help the customer’s manufacturing group implement all of the above. This sales team has not only used knowledge to sell the product, it has actual

What’s true in life is even truer in business: Isolation does not allow free exchange of information among industry peers and, thus, limits opportunities for developing new ideas or building on existing solutions. Sharing of information builds trust and allows companies to exploit information for the overall good of the industry. We are all familiar with the expression, “No man is an island,” which, of course, implies the need to be involved in other peoples’ lives and to have them involved in ours. The same could be said about businesses — “No company is an island.” Yet, a vast majority of packaging companies have a tendency to embrace an “island mentality” primarily because they are able to partner with a select group of large customers, and thus, don’t need to pursue additional clientele. This is further compounded by a tendency among their customers to discourage the packaging suppliers from working with competitors. Thus, large packaging companies align themselves w

If you’re a packaging company frustrated with trying to “get your arms around” e-business solutions, you’re not alone. There are, however, some simple strategies that both packaging companies and e-business solutions providers can implement to successfully engage in business online. As e-business solutions continue to emerge, the pace at which packaging companies are embracing them has been slow. These companies have been frustrated with not being able to identify the right solution for their needs. My discussions with executives of both e-business solutions providers and packaging companies lead me to believe that some dedicated work needs to be done by both parties before they can better appreciate and complement each other. A large proportion of packaging companies is seriously committed to exploiting online opportunities. By now, the benefits and strategic considerations are apparent to almost all decision-makers. However, actually making this transition is not easy,

As e-commerce changes the underlying economics of business, is the old business model — based on scale — under serious threat? In my consulting work, some of the packaging companies that I like to track are AEP Industries; Avery Dennison; Ball; Bemis; Crown, Cork & Seal; Owens-Illinois and Sealed Air. These companies supply a wide variety of packaging materials, and looking at them I can get a fairly good indication of the overall industry trends. However, by looking at their performance in the past 52 weeks, I am disappointed. Other than AEP Industries and Bemis, the rest have not been profitable investments. Market share as a driver What concerns me is that when the economy is so good, the packaging sector continues to perform rather disappointingly. What would happen if the economy slows down? My discussions indicate that only the top management in the packaging industry is concerned about the performance of the stock; the middle-level management is still driven b

When business slows down, as it has in recent months, it is not unusual to lose track of what is really important and instead focus on what is more immediate. For instance, as customers of packaging companies pack and ship fewer products, the immediate response in the packaging industry is to cut back on a wide variety of investments and reduce costs. While we have not yet heard any major layoffs in the packaging industry on a scale that some of the larger companies have announced, I suspect that some companies are already doing this on a smaller scale. Similarly, I am also aware that several companies are scaling back on R&D and new product development. While most of us recognize the potential long-term hazards of cutting down on research and development, I think the way we are structured, these are inevitable. However, there are certain things that a slowdown should allow us to do. I might even say that a brief slowdown is healthy for an economy as well as an enterpr

I am often asked to advise sales and marketing executives about their challenges in managing key accounts. While it is critical for a business to have several key accounts to provide stability to the business, it is also important that the key accounts be monitored carefully to ensure that these accounts continue to be profitable at the same time. It is quite common to see in our industry that key accounts end up demanding more than a fair share of their supplier’s resources. Most executives have to constantly struggle with finding an effective key account management strategy since losing even one of these accounts can have a devastating impact on the company. On the other hand, having account-specific teams is costly, and in most cases, it is hard to cut down on resources committed to key customers. 'Key account value analysis’ This is one tool that I recommend that companies use at least once every quarter. In businesses with small size orders, the tool can be used

I have received several emails recently pointing my attention to some extremely important things to consider before you digitize your business. The number one item that almost everyone has pointed out as absolutely critical in any business process, and even more so in e-business, is differentiation. The reason I’m dedicating this column to differentiation is the fact that the speed at which companies have had to or are implementing e-business programs has sometimes resulted in a difficult situation. Specifically, in some cases, putting an ‘e’ in business has become more important than paying attention to what we have always considered as the core element of doing business, i.e. differentiating yourself from your competitors. In our industry, we have not prided ourselves on exploiting IT. We are still an industry obsessed with materials and engineering and have come up with some great solutions for our customers. Of course, some IT tools like design software or communicatio

I am often asked by packaging industry executives how they can exploit the Internet as a source of revenue generation because, when they present a case for integrating Internet in their business process, this is the first question that is asked of them. There is no simple answer to this question because it depends on such factors as type of business/products/customers that a company has, typical order size, degree of customization required, and nature of relationships with customers. Since most companies in the packaging industry have not made e-commerce a significant part of their business activities yet, it is difficult to say what the potential savings can be and how much of their business can be moved online. There is still too little information available to us. However, there is some learning to be had from companies in other industries that have taken a more aggressive approach to making the Internet a tool to find new customers, improve customer relationships, and