Jurisdiction on pension schemes to be corrected 19. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot As was already reported by MittelstandsBlog.de on several occasions before (March 3rd and April 4th), there was the danger for self-employed managing-partner directors of private limited companies of having to pay retroactively contributions to pension schemes. These payments, according to many experts, would have had business threatening effects on small and medium-sized companies.
Budget committee approved VAT increase 19. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot As was announced by the news service of the Lower House of German Parliament, on Wednesday, 17th of May 2006, the budget committee among other things approved a VAT rise from 16 to 19 percent from January 1st of 2007. After having discussed the draft by the Federal Government on the accompanying budget law 2006 …
T-Mobile created innovation award for mobility of SME 17. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot T-Mobile in co-operation with the Markt und Mittelstand magazine confers for the first time this year the »Innovationspreis Mobilität Mittelstand« award. This award is to promote examplary concepts and applications of mobile phone technologies for the work process optimization in small and medium-sized companies. There is only one precondition:
Sponsoring programme Pro Inno II will be relaunched for SME 17. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot For this year the Federal Government is ready to make available 150 million Euros for the technological sponsoring of small and medium-sized entities (SME) from the PRO INNO II programme set up by the Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology (BMWi). This amount represents an increase by 50 percent as compared to the year 2005. …
Special website offers innovative know-how 17. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot The innovations-wissen.de expert portal for strategy, innovation and technology know-how provides specific support in the development of business, process and technology strategies to manufacturing companies in German-speaking countries. It offers manuals, process and method descriptions as well as tools such as Excel templates, checklists etc. The target group are experts and executives from the fields …
New Excellent product of the year 2006 distinction to spur inventiveness of SME 17. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot The association Bundesverband Deutscher Mittelstandsberater e.V. (BVDM) as part of the „Du bist deutscher Mittelstand” awareness campaign (MittelstandsBlog.de has already reported on this) has created a new mark of distinction in order to pay tribute to small and medium-sized entities (SME) of merit. This „Excellent product of the year 2006″ mark of distinction will be …
Franchising opens up completely new opportunites for SME and start-ups 16. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot It does not always have to be one´s own ideas which leads to the setting up of a new company. Franchising is one alternative. The famous futurologist John Naisbitt is even convinced that “by the year 2010 franchising will be the most successful way to commercialize a product.” This opinion is shared by the Swiss …
New initiative facilitates work safety in SME 16. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot For small companies it is often difficult to meet important requirements of industrial safety regulations at an acceptable expense. Quite often there just is not enough money, although, using the respective know-how, many costs could be avoided altogether and additional opportunities be seized. Opportunities because safety may also stand for a competitive edge.
Various errors by employees may threaten the IT security of companies 16. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot The common opinion is that the biggest threats to the data processing systems of companies are represented by damaging software from the Internet. However, according to the Computer im Mittelstand expert magazine, there are many errors committed by employees themselves which endanger the reliability of a company´s electronic network.
SME newcomers are mostly lightweights 16. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot As was reported in January 2006 by the Federal Agency for Statistics most companies set up in 2004 started as one-man shows. Thus, in March of 2004 three quarters of the 276.000 full-time founding entrepreneurs (76 percent) started without paid employees. Among the 68.000 founders which set up on their own on a part-time basis, …