At Best Buy, customer-centricity means �treating each customer as a unique individual, meeting their needs with end-to-end solutions, and engaging and energizing our employees to serve them,� he said. �It is our primary strategy for providing a differentiated experience for customers.�

By listening to customers and employees more closely, Best Buy is benefiting from new ideas that in the past would never have reached corporate headquarters. Through employees that regularly engage with customers, the retailer has discovered several growth opportunities. Those with the highest potential include small-business customers, new services offerings and international growth, which account for a total of at least $230 billion in revenue, according to the 2007 Best Buy Annual Report.

For decades, CE manufacturers focused on creating products while retailers have focused on selling them. Silva demonstrated that retailers are sharing some of the roles that manufacturers used to dominate, such as developing a deeper understanding of the consumer. By doing so, Best Buy is emerging as a new ally of manufacturers and technology product developers alike.

For example, Best Buy has assembled a team of engineers, technologists and product experts from Apple, Xerox, Kodak and other leading R&D companies. Silva said, �they receive, reiterate, vote and synthesize end-to-end solutions to improve the lives of our customers by listening to them. It is the intersection of the three constituents – Best Buy, partner suppliers and product developers that determines what customer needs have to be met. Silva�s team – which invites input from approximately 120,000 sales associates in over 1,150 stores in the US, Canada and China – taps into the �one million hours spent daily by the sales associates wearing blue shirts who are now agents of our customers and not of product manufacturers, as they used be in the past.�

In the supply chain, as the evolution takes place from technology to ideation to shelf, the sales associates are empowered to identify who the products are actually designed for by obtaining customer feedback, understanding the customers� needs and wants, Silva said. As a result, the Best Buy customer base has been segmented into basic lifestyle groups. The purchasing officer is identified for each segment and an associated purchasing index is developed. The data obtained from inputs is collected and analyzed. The intelligence is then extracted for product development, product redesign, new business model development and new service offerings. The results are there for everyone to see, especially as they are applied to Best Buy�s own product brands, including Geek Squad, Insignia, Dynex, Init and RocketFish.

Why does that phone call seem so hard to make? Why do we put much more than years between us when we don’t have to. People make connections and if they are good one, they can become part of their life’s history. Quality connections add something mutually beneficial if only for a few weeks. At the time, we may not realize the purpose but as time goes by we learn about a bridge to another.

Meeting for coffee is an easy invitation to make and should never be looked at as just casual. One of the reasons that Starbuck’s probably survives the Great Recession so easily is because of the incentive the offer. They provideof an atomosphere that fosters good conversation along with agreat cup of coffee all for under $5.00!

Tips on How to Connect with Others Again

• Revisit old company newsletters or newspaper article that covered a project that you and a team worked on.
• Contact others who were on your kid’s sports teams that you are still in contact with to reach other.
• Church
• Social media
• Industry networking groups
• Use an incentive providing a lead or valauble contact

You only have to gain, get connected.

Your business success depends on you attracting customers and employees with whom you work well together. Such cooperation challenges the familiar notions of achieving success by becoming a self-made person and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Despite its familiarity, such a notion is simply a myth. You’ve been the beneficiary of working with others since before you can remember.

Do you remember your mother and father getting up at two o’clock in the morning to feed you? Of course not. Even though it happened night after night for months, depriving your parents of much-needed sleep, these gracious acts of compassionate kindness your parents offered just because they loved you slip through your memory.

There are other gracious acts of cooperation others have done for you that similarly slip through. All of these cooperative acts combine to make you who you are today — a unique human being capable of a positive workstyle.

The people around you–customers/clients, employees/employers, family/friends, and vendors/suppliers — are there for you to lean on when the weight of doing business is too much for you to stand alone . . . and when isn’t it? These people are your team.

Cooperating completely with others presupposes that you are incomplete alone, but complete with others. Sometimes, our ego gets in the way of understanding this concept. Part of the challenge for entrepreneurs is that we are really good at so many and varied tasks that we buy the lie that we can truly do it all. The truth is if we really want to make our dreams come true, we must redefine our egotistical reality of “I can do it all” to “There is something I missed.”

One of the most essential ingredients of working positively and cooperatively with others is that how much you think you accurately perceive in life, there is something you miss — or some subject that someone else knows more about than you do.

Related: How to Tap the Power of ‘Thank You’

No matter which direction  your business is going — up or down — you can use some help. The good news is you have it. The universe is designed to partner with you, to provide resources beyond your control for your business’s well-being, including relationships with others who can help you.

The key to leveraging these relationships is to become the kind of person that you want to attract into your business life. You should be someone you would want to do business with.

Consider these questions in shaping yourself to attract positive business partners and clients:

1. What are my core values, i.e., those character traits that I want to exhibit in my business relationships? What would my family members say are my core values?
    
2. What are my life priorities--those matters in life that I consider most important not just in word, but in work behavior as well? How do my calendar and bank statement reflect these priorities?
    
3. What is my unique contribution to make in the world through my business and how do I live into it daily?

Just as “birds of a feather flock together,” you literally attract people with whom you share core values and life priorities. For example, if you conceive your business more positively, you will attract similar people with whom you can grow your business–and whom you can also help in their lives and businesses. Those who resonate on this frequency are drawn to you because of your common business life pitch.

Related: How to Create a Positive Business Outlook

Conversely, if your business life is more negatively grounded, you find people coming into your business–whether as customers/clients, employees/suppliers–who are more of a negative persuasion.

Do you ever find yourself complaining about your customers? They don’t pay their bills on time, or maybe they’re constantly trying to get something for nothing. Who attracted them to your business?

What about your employees? Ever hear yourself saying, “You just can’t find good help these days” or “Nobody wants to want work anymore”? Who hired these employees?

Now stop, and ask yourself: “How am I attracting these people? What is there about me that attracts them, that pitches them in my direction?”

Related: Is an Office Vampire Draining Your Productivity?

One of the greatest challenges in creating a positive workstyle is understanding that like attracts like. These people onto whom you shift responsibility for your challenges are in your work life because you chose them. You attracted them by way of your business’s core values, your business priorities, and your business’s unique contribution.

Once you perceive your work life in a positive light, then, because you are created to cooperate completely, you begin to attract others to your team who share your positive direction. Those who choose to work positive will find their way to you.

This article is an edited excerpt from Work Positive in a Negative World, by Joey Faucette and published by Entrepreneur Press.

 We all know that our clients are important to our business and we should always make a point to invest time with each of them. Some of us will drop everything when Mrs. Big Client calls however the reality is that Mr. Middle of the Road Client calls it is just as important. We have all envyed the incentive of the VIP treatment being offered to high rollers in Las Vegas with fancy roped off areas and servers all conveniently around. Your mid range clients are more plentiful and pay the bills each month. They are the type of clients that would be be thrilled to receive an incentive for an order and when they do, they will tell the world about it. So often just an email is received or nothing at all for doing business with most companies. A simple exchange of money for services.  

Small incentives are money in your investment bank for you in good times and not so good times. We should never forget to thank our customers no matter what the economy.  Appreciation is an act of kindness and respect, something that has dramatically faded during the past decade.

When we are appreciated it is powerful. For example,  I was warmly greeted by a lovely French Canadian Receptionist who presented me with a small menu and asked me if I wanted something from it as I waited for a representative. I was so surprised that I had to ask her to repeat what she asked me.  As I looked at the menu, I noticed there were various soft drinks, teas, coffees, waters and small snacks listed on it.  I could not help but feel special and that I was embarking on a relationship where I was truly  going to be appreciated before the relationship had even begun. I decided to order a flavored tea and sat back in a big leather chair looking around the room admiring the unique artwork and furniture. That day I could have waited an hour for the representative to come in, I was welcome, taken care of and comfortable.

Only 1 1/2 months after my first appointment,  I received a small gift of chocolate fortune cookies in a decorative box with a Christmas Card, another pleasant surprise. Even if I am approached by a competitor offering a lower price for the same services, I am not going anywhere. I am not this company’s biggest client nor their oldest client, I am just a client doing business with them and they apparently appreciate it. Good old fashion respect and service.  

An incentive is more than motivating, it is something that builds relationships and helps you build your referral business. I will refer this business each and every time I have the opportunity to do so.

Isaacson’s first fix was to start using a “blue dot” system: putting a blue dot next to each of his approximately 1,000 best-selling items, making them easier to identify, and requiring three to four weeks’ of stock for each. About 2% of Village Green’s inventory used to be out of stock at any given time; after using blue dot, that number came down to just 0.5%.

“Not only does this mean we don’t have to disappoint our customers, but this has raised morale among the staff as well,” says Isaacson, whose Bethesda, Md.-based company has about 50 employees. “They don’t have to deal with the frustration of not being able to fulfill an order.”

Properly managing your inventory involves more than making good hires and getting blue dots next to your best sellers–although those are excellent first steps. Here are some common mistakes entrepreneurs make in managing their inventory, and how to fix them.

1. Too Much Inventory
Afraid of being caught short, it’s easy to spend too much on inventory, which can eat up working capital and erode profits. Warehousing isn’t free, of course, and inventory that sits on a shelf is subject to damage, depreciation, and even obsolescence. Old inventory can be very hard to move. Your options aren’t great, says Paul Huppertz, a logistics expert with The Progress Group, a supply chain consulting company based in Atlanta. “You may end up marking it down, selling to discounters, or shipping it to overseas liquidators.”

To fix it: Start with some decent projections of how much supply you’ll need and when you’ll need it. The best gauge is what you’ve sold in the past. If you’ve sold 100 items per month for the past 12 months, chances are that you’ll need 100 this month. Then there’s seasonality: Do you usually see a fourth quarter spike with holiday sales? Or, if you’re in the home and garden business, do you see more activity in the spring selling season? “You can also identify and quantify less obvious patterns such as month-end spikes,” says Huppertz.

2. Inaccurate Inventory Tracking
Once you know how much you need, you have to make sure you actually have it on hand. Opportunities for miscounts are everywhere: during receiving, during order fulfillment and the all-too-common pilferage. In manufacturing, says Huppertz, you’ve also got to account for yield or scrap during production.

To fix it: Using electronic data interchange (EDI) and bar code scanning can help eliminate data entry errors. Huppertz suggests implementing a system of so-called “cycle counting.” Choose a few items a day and compare the inventory record to the actual count. Best sellers should get counted more often.

3. Lack of Priorities
It can take an outsized amount of time and resources to keep track of all the details for each inventory item. Some triage is in order.

To fix it: Focus on the items that matter most. Generally, 80% of demand will be generated by 20% of your items. Spend most of your effort on those “A” items, forecasting, reviewing in-stock position and reordering more frequently. The next highest-selling 30% of items, the “B” items, will typically generate about 10% of sales. The slowest selling “C” items account for half the items you stock, but only generate 10% of your sales.

4. Using Spreadsheets
It may seem natural to use spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel or Lotus 123 to track your inventory. But Sid Helms, director of IT at Martinsville, Va.-based Diversified Distribution, which provides third-party logistics services, says you’re asking for trouble if you use spreadsheets that way. He says it’s easy for spreadsheets to be accidentally deleted or for changes to be lost. And he says there’s no foolproof way for multiple people working on inventory to synchronize their spreadsheets.

To fix it: Use software such as Quickbooks or Peachtree. Yes, these are better-known as accounting packages, but they include inventory features and will make it easy to get a dollar value for your inventory. They can also provide you with a central database.

5. No Backup Plan
Congratulations! You’re happily bar-coding away, and you’ve got your inventory in Quickbooks or Peachtree. Now what happens if there’s a fire or your computer is badly damaged or stolen?

To fix it: First, take a deep breath and consider the worst-case scenario, such as fire or theft. Your backup plan can be as simple as saving critical data to a removable thumb drive. (Just don’t leave it at the office.) Software such as Norton Ghost or Symantec Backup Exec can get the job done, too. And it’s not a bad idea to send a backup copy of your inventory data to your accountant every month, says Helms. After all, why should the fun of inventory be limited to your employees?

Making a connection is not what it is all about, it is a good start. How do you go from “Hey, want to connect” to “Hey, can you help me find a job or help me get an appointment with Bob in Marketing for a sales presentation?” One must treat the 1 or 2 degree person as a preferred client.  The relationship you have with that first level contact will definitely determine the connection opportunities that may be offered to you. As we all know, a warm introduction is at the top of the list of every salesman’s wish list.

Tips to Enrich Your Relationship with Your 1st. or 2nd. Degree People

1)  Make a live connection by picking up the phone to call to your contacts at least once a month to chat about their kids, current events, a new movie, schedule coffee or lunch together.

2)  Share beneficial articles via email when you come across one that may be beneficial to your contact.

3)  Sincerely ask your warm contact if you can do something for them to help them with their business. When someone comes to the door and offers to help you, chances are you will be more open to take the time to listen to what they have to say. 

4)  Offer information about training that you found to be helpful. 

5)  Make introductions happen between your other friends, your 1st and 2nd degree connections.

6)  Be your friend’s promotional agent, let them know you are supportive and are truly interested in their career.  Talk about your friend’s business with others when they are present so they know that you really are trying to help them.

7)  Provide your connections with an incentive. When a valuable lead or connection has been offered to you, immediately thank them with a small gift card.

8) Motivate your friends by sending thank you cards for their little acts of kindness. Thank goodness good Karma also goes around, not just the bad stuff.

9) Ask your friends what motivates them and what incentives that they may use to reward others who help them out.

10)  Keep your promises, do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it. 

We all have good intentions and feel that nice little warm feeling when we help others be successful. Our incentive should be to enrich the lives of others.

Helen van Hoeven of the World Wildlife Fund and a board member of the Consortium says that these profiles allow companies to “identify and prioritize the largest impacts in the life cycle of a product. This information allows retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers to focus their efforts on innovating and improving on products and their supply chains where it matters most.” (Photo: Delicious and a good deal — but what are its life cycle impacts? Credit: John M. CCy-Sa 2.o. 

According to the organization’s announcement Nov. 1, 2011, they are researching an additional 50 product categories and plan to release Category Sustainability Profiles for those very soon. TSC’s 80 members include Walmart, Bayer, Best Buy, Clorox, Coca-Cola, Dell, Dow, General Mills, Kellogg’s, L’Oréal, Panasonic, Pepsico, P&G, Samsung, Tesco, Tyson, Unilever, 3M, Campbell’s, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Kroger, and Safeway.

Speaking to Joel Makower of GreenBiz in August 2011, TSC’s executive director, Bonnie Nixon, describes the organization this way:

We’re a very diverse group of stakeholders, grounded in the science. We’re collaborating to design and implement transparent, credible, reputable, and scalable science-based measurement and reporting systems, for not just the users of consumer products, but also for the producers of consumer products.

Walmart’s Sustainability Push

These developments represent an important step in the improvement of supply-chain environmental accountability for companies. Walmart is known as a pioneer in this field. Traditionally, the company was notorious among its suppliers for applying continuous pressure on them to squeeze out greater efficiencies and reduce costs to help the company maintain its traditional “Always Low Prices” marketing strategy (Photo: Walmart says it plans to provide training in sustainable farming practices to a million farmers and farm workers. Credit: Walmart Stores, CC BY 2.0) 

Walmart also was known for its efforts in recycling and reduction of waste — these activities just made good business sense.

But in 2005, something changed at Walmart. In a speech he delivered Oct. 24, 2005, Walmart’s then-CEO Lee Scott announced a set of groundbreaking goals for the company:

Our environmental goals at Wal-Mart are simple and straightforward:

1. To be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy.

2. To create zero waste.

3. To sell products that sustain our resources and environment.

Scott told his audience,

As one of the largest companies in the world, with an expanding global presence, environmental problems are our problems. The supply of natural products — fish, food, water — can only be sustained if the ecosystems that provide them are sustained and protected. There are not two worlds out there, a Walmart world and some other world… Our Associates, customers and suppliers occupy the same towns, our children go to the same schools, and we all breathe the same air. These challenges threaten all of us in the broader sense, but they also represent threats to the continued success of our business.

The company’s new goal to develop sustainable products naturally led the company to focus on its supply chain. And its traditional influence over its suppliers gave it considerable leverage. Scott hinted at how it was going to be working on its supply chain, mentioning its seafood suppliers:

For example, in the area of seafood, we will certify all shrimp farms supplying Walmart in the U.S. according to environmental and socio-economic best practice standards through third party accreditation. It’s better for our customers, it’s better for the world, and it’s better for our company.

The Sustainability Consortium got its start in 2009, when Walmart announced that it would be developing a new sustainable product index to “establish a single source of data for evaluating the sustainability of products.” To develop that index, the company would be providing initial funding for a consortium of universities, suppliers, retailers, government organizations, and NGOs “to develop a global database of information on the lifecycle of products — from raw materials to disposal.”

Life Cycle Management: A Key Tool for Corporate Sustainability

TSC’s initial Category Sustainability Profiles, says the Nov. 1, 2011, announcement, are Beef, Coffee, Cotton Towels, Yogurt, Fashion Dolls, Laptops, Laundry Detergent, Televisions, Toilet Tissues, and Wheat Cereal. Discussing how the profiles might help companies improve the life cycle impacts of their products, the announcement uses the example of laundry soap:

The Category Sustainability Profile for laundry detergents tells retailers and manufacturers that by incentivizing the correct use of cold-water detergent, they can have the biggest impact on the sustainability of laundering, enabling consumers to use cold-water settings on laundry machines.

The Consortium develops its profiles using a knowledge base of published research on the life cycle environmental and social impacts of products and by consulting with subject-matter experts in academia, business, government, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Joby Carlson, knowledge base manager for the group says that,

From that, we begin to understand the most well supported environmental and societal issues related to a product category. We also reveal relevant and actionable best practices or product attributes that organizations can implement to address these priority issues. What is most exciting about this effort are the opportunities for better design and business model innovation.

The newly-developed life-cycle-based Sustainability Profiles make up an important piece of the Sustainability Measurement and Reporting Standards the Consortium is developing. Explaining the standards, the organization says that 

Sustainability Measurement and Reporting Standards (SMRS’s) … will define, for a particular product type, what product manufacturers should measure, how to measure it, and how to report it to a common database. This reporting will be facilitated by IT tools and standards that make this viable in real supply chains, and by research concerning how buyers, merchants, and end-consumers make decisions about sustainable products. Once the product-level sustainability information is in a common database, then manufacturers, retailers, and third-party certification and index owners will be able to use these data for a variety of purposes, all aimed at driving communication of and improvement in product sustainability.

Life cycle management (LCM) is a process used by businesses to continuously analyze and improve the sustainability of products and supply chains. A key characteristic of LCM, according to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) “is that this approach requires companies to move away from just looking at their own operations and to look at what is happening in their value chain (upstream and downstream operations that are outside the company’s direct control).”  (Photo: What happens when they’ve finished with the product? Credit: woodleywonderworks, CC BY 2.o)

Life cycle assessment (LCA), one of the key tools of LCM, is described by UNEP as “a compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and other interventions and the current or potential environmental aspects and impacts … throughout a product’s life cycle — from raw material acquisition through production, use, end-of-life treatment, recycling and final disposal.” LCA helps a company identify ways to measure and improve the environmental performance of a product throughout its life cycle, and to report that performance to company stakeholders, regulatory agencies, and consumers.

Mobile phone life cycle. Credit: United Nations Environment Programme.

Kevin Dooley, a professor of supply chain management at Arizona State University, serves as one of TSC’s academic directors. A few days after the Consortium’s announcement, Dooley told The Atlantic, that product life cycle management is the innovation that will have the single most significant impact on corporate sustainability efforts:

Most people are largely unaware of the life cycle of the products they purchase, and their environmental and social impacts. They worry about the packaging and whether it’s recyclable, which is good, but are unaware of the effects related to the product’s supply chain, from raw material extraction to manufacturing to distribution and retailing…

I think life cycle approaches will bring about great strides in product and supply chain innovation as this approach becomes more widely adopted. While we have had efforts to reduce certain impacts in particular life cycle stages, this more holistic approach will help us grapple with the more complex problems that await us.

TSC’s Bonnie Nixon told GreenBiz that a science-based approach to product sustainability will help companies find the path to business models that are both environmentally sound and financially viable. She told the publication,

I think companies need to ask, “How do we redesign products? How do we take full responsibility for the impacts that we’re having? How do we accurately assign value to the social and environmental benefits that we receive today for our planet?” I don’t think to date that we’ve fully taken responsibility for the impacts of our production and consumption patterns.

What we’re doing at the Consortium is designing a consensus-based accounting system that essentially enables companies to internalize the societal and the environmental externalities.

FORTUNE — The image to the right is almost surreal: It shows part of a Honda auto factory in central Thailand, one of the largest in Southeast Asia, swamped under 15 feet of water, brand-new cars floating in the currents. The devastating November flooding in Thailand, which killed more than 600 people, also knocked out some of Honda’s key suppliers, including electronics component maker Rohm & Co., forcing production delays in plants as far away as Ohio.

The Thailand floods alone would test any company’s operational prowess; now consider that much of the auto industry and many technology companies are still recovering from the earthquake and tsunami that tore through north-central Japan in March, shutting down dozens of contractors and subcontractors that supply everything from glass to test parts.

The twin tragedies in Asia have shone a spotlight on the often anonymous but incredibly important niche companies whose products and parts go into every MacBook or Prius. Invented by Toyota Motor Corp., (TM) and perfected in the era of globalization, the lean supply chain completely decentralized manufacturing: Big manufacturers developed a multinational network of specialists to supply them with parts and to make sure those components arrived at assembly plants at the moment they were needed. When things go as planned, the system benefits everyone in the chain: The assembly plant is more efficient (no pesky inventories to manage), suppliers keep the cost of parts down by locating in regions with cheap labor, and consumers enjoy lower prices.

But natural disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami reveal just how fragile this carefully crafted ecosystem can be, As Bob Ferrari, a leading supply-chain consultant, puts it: “You never want to hear about the guys who run the supply chains for multinational companies. When you do, usually it means something really bad has happened.”

Insurers and companies are still calculating the direct costs of the devastation. Munich Re, the big insurer, pegs the economic cost of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan at $210 billion for the first nine months of 2011 alone. Thailand’s insurance commissioner estimates some $30 billion in losses from flooding in his country to date.

Scattered shipping containers in Sendai Shiogama Port in Japan on March 13

Because of the interconnected nature of supply chains, the economic impact of these disasters will be felt well beyond Asia — and for many months to come. Computer hard-drive maker Seagate (STX), which operates two factories in Thailand, predicts disruptions to its customers (Seagate supplies hard drives to makers of PCs and servers) through 2012, and CEO Stephen J. Luczo says the industry won’t “be back to normal” until 2013. iSuppli, a market research firm, says the computer industry is in need of 175 million hard drives but suppliers can deliver only 125 million units — a shortfall of 29%. Apple (AAPL), Hewlett-Packard, (HPQ) and most recently Intel (INTC) are among the companies that have told investors that the flooding will have an impact on future earnings. 

The effects of Mother Nature’s wrath still are being felt in the U.S. Auto assembly workers in Ohio saw their hours cut in November because Honda (HMC) couldn’t get parts from Thailand. (In late November, Honda returned those plants to normal production levels.) On the other hand, a factory in Decherd, Tenn., that normally makes engines for Nissan cars sold only in the U.S. suddenly had to ramp up production after the Japan earthquake; Nissan had the American plant ship engines to Asia for use in cars sold both in Japan and in Southeast Asia.

Not surprisingly, the events of 2011 have forced many manufacturers to rethink their global infrastructures. “These recent ‘Black Swan’ or unprecedented natural disaster events have obviously exposed vulnerabilities among industry supply chains,” says Ferrari, the supply-chain expert. “The question now is, has the quest for lowest-cost production and hyper-lean supply chains overridden and exposed vulnerability to significant business risk?”

It is a big, knotty issue for CEOs: Are bottom-line-oriented executives prepared to pull back from a system of low-cost suppliers and “just in time” manufacturing in favor of a more old-fashioned model that has plants squirreling away components for a rainy day, or, more dramatically, investing in backup facilities?

For some companies the answer is a resounding yes. Seagate CEO Luczo says sophisticated companies have started asking his company for longer contracts on supply arrangements.

Analysts say Nissan has bounced back better than other Japanese automakers because it was able to ramp up production at its other plants, including the Decherd facility. (One stroke of bad luck: Nissan also bolstered production at one of its operations in Thailand, which has been slowed by flooding.) FM Global, an insurance company based in Johnston, R.I., surveyed 600 chief financial officers in early 2011 and asked what they feared could derail their companies’ revenue drivers. The most frequently cited answer? Supply-chain disruptions. And that survey was taken before the Japan earthquake.

Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Nissan, is philosophical. “There’s going to be another crisis,” he told an audience in New York in late November. “We don’t know what kind of crisis, where it is going to hit us, and when it is going to hit us, but every time there is a crisis we are going to learn from it.” If he’s right, and crisis mode is the new normal, then the real cost advantage may not go to the manufacturer with the nimblest supply chain but the company with the most robust one.

This article is from the December 26, 2011 issue of Fortune.

There is no better time than the holidays to buy gift cards and other incentives than now.  Many restaurants, grocery stores and retailers are going out of their way to provide you with an incentive to buy more gift cards.  Most restaurants are offering 1 $10.00 gift card when you purchase a $20.00.  Although some think that gift cards do not provide the “ah” factor as a beautifully wrapped present with a gift inside,  it does have longer lasting effect.  A few days or even months later when your friends and relatives go to use their clothes, food or cocktails it is always reminds them of you or your business once again. You see a gift card is not just a gift providing the recipient with their choice of gift or incentive to do business with you, it is a long lasting incentive that often includes sharing who presented them with the gift card over dinning.  If you are a business owner you realize the importance of word of mouth advertising, the best type of advertising in the world!

One thing to note, if you are mailing gift cards be sure to place it in a box so that it can not be felt in a Christmas Card and stolen. Also, select a retailer or restaurant who insures the card in case of theft or lost.

Other Ways to Maximize Your Gift Card Purchases:

1)   Combine purchases with friends for a bigger incentive.

2)  Look for coupons online or swap coupons you need with friends.

3)  The incentive to buying online is saving money on taxes and get free shipping.

5)  Purchase at smaller retailer who are willing to bargain for your business.

6)  Ask friends on Social Nets works where the deals are on gift cards and other cool things.

Even if you are finished with your Christmas shopping, take advantage of gift card incentives on groceries and other items saving you even more money. Hurry deals end when the Christmas season is over.

Give

6)

Companies have found that having an eco-friendly supply chain can save money.

• Reducing waste to zero
• Using 100 percent renewable energy
• Selling sustainable products