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Let us help reduce the pain of your business planning! As we reach the end of another calendar year, thoughts inevitably turn to the budgeting and planning process for the new year. Many, if not most, small businesses manage their financials on a cash basis.

After attending the RemaxWorld Expo and Summit in Zhuhai, China, I have three observations. First, Zhuhai has continued to grow and prosper since my first visit nearly twenty years ago and even my most recent four years ago.

When widespread internet access became available in the 1990s, our ability to use it for improvement was limited. Bandwidth (speed) was poor; you had to be a software (programming) expert to build anything. It took a long time, and it cost a lot of money.

For a small office supplies business focused on day-to-day tasks and simple survival, neglecting longer-term objectives toward creating and preserving enterprise value is pretty straightforward. However, without a strategic plan addressing these objectives, a business will likely cease to exist.

As expected in a mature industry, imaging supplies are deep into their natural business cycle, with manufacturing, distribution, and retail all having experienced significant consolidation. In each of these channels, only a small number of large organizations remain.

Popular talk surrounding the print consumables market in North America has been about Clover Technologies Group as the dominant Aftermarket force, the appearance of "new-build" compatibles from Chinese manufacturers, and the ongoing legal battles waged by the OEMs against the aftermarket players.

The imaging supplies industry is a mature business; according to various industry analysts, annual retail dollars are now declining along with printed page volumes. However, despite the decline in total spending, the market remains vast, with over $25B in retail dollars expected to be spent in the United States on ink and toner alone.

Web traffic - the holy grail of modern business and essential for office products resellers and e-commerce strategies. However, developing sustainable, relevant traffic is hard work, likely to take a long time, and involves both science and art. Figure it out, build enterprise value, sit back, do nothing, and watch the competition eat your lunch!

In 2009 or so, I asked our marketing manager what we should be doing regarding our business strategy and social media. I was both concerned and intrigued with what was going on with social media marketing in small businesses. Still, I didn't know what our strategy should be or what value could be extracted from such an initiative.

In a small business environment, e-commerce is often thought of as no more than an online catalog and shopping cart with little to no effort to transition an existing business base onto an e-commerce platform.