Best Business Tips

When producing minutes for a business meeting it is required that formal language is used. This is because minutes are records that are stored for business use. Minutes could be later used by an employee, as evidence to show a meeting has taken place or used in another discussion with other professionals. Formal language makes minutes of a meeting clear and make sense. The tone required for meeting minutes must be serious and formal. They do not need to be persuasive or intriguing, as they are a set record of the discussion within a meeting so they just need to be clear and understandable. The image of a set of minutes should include in the organisations set logo, colours and themes. This is so that it is easily recognisable as the organisations document. The presentation of a set of minutes must be structured into different agenda items, which may be in a table or just simple paragraphs so that the document is clear and people can easily navigate the parts they need to read.When writing an email, the language should be formal. This only tends to vary when the audience changes. For example, if an employee was to email another colleague, they may be friendlier and slightly informal. Formal language should be used to internal and external business people, so that it gives a good impression of the sender as an individual and shows professionalism of the company they work for. The tone required for emails are dependent on the recipients. For instance, when writing a sales email, a more persuasive tone will be used. When writing a complaint response, a more sympathetic and helpful tone will be used. However, a professional tone should be maintained in emails to keep up an organisations reputation and professionalism. The image of an email should have the organisations particular style of font and email signature to make it easily identifiable by other companies. It also makes the email look more professional to make people take the company seriously. The presentation of an email is required to be structured into paragraphs with a professional greeting and closing message. When integrating images into documents it's important to use the format and theme to use that is the same as the businesses. It is important to think about what the business needs to accomplish and what impression needs to be given to the reader. Whilst creating the image of the document that we want to reflect well on the business, it is also important to make sure copyright laws are not being breached. Therefore images and themes should be checked to make sure it is not that of another brand or business. A good image has to be unique and professional as it will be used often for all kinds of documents being sent to external customers and internal workers.An image can be inserted into a word document or PowerPoint by attaching an image saved onto the computer by clicking on the insert tab and pressing pictures. To easily locate the desired picture it is best to save it somewhere and name it something memorable. Another way of integrating images into documents is to copy and paste them by right clicking on the image and pressing the copy function, then right clicking where the image needs to be copied to and pressing paste. This is the quickest option however sometimes it doesn't always work and we have to save images to the computer instead. Corporate identity allows documents to have their own trademark. Corporate identity makes a businesses documents look professional, draws in more customers and makes them easily recognisable. This includes the company's logo, header and footer styles, theme colours, personalised document templates and font choice. When this is changed and updated it could affect previous documents with the outdated corporate identity by making them not recognisable as that company. It is important the corporate identity is only amended slightly and still maintains it's unique theme so it is always recognisable. It's also important to notify all staff members of these changes so that everyone is using the same corporate identity to avoid confusion. To avoid breaking copy right laws, a company must ensure they have their own corporate identity that is not the same as another company. To avoid breaking copy right laws, a company must ensure they have their own corporate identity that is not the same as another company. When designing or creating a document you must follow corporate identity by using the businesses fonts, logos and themes etc. If another businesses fonts, logos or themes are used in your businesses documents, it could appear as though your business is stealing another businesses identity. This looks like your business is trying to commit fraud or frame another business. In regards to the Data Protection Act, it is important that a persons personal information isn't included in letters or emails unless permission is given by that person. Data stored on documents about a person must be stored safely and securely and only accessed by permitted persons. Documents including data with someones personal information must not be shared with any one other than permitted persons and must be kept strictly confidential, else this is a breach of the act. To avoid breaching the Copyright laws, a company must not use images, ideas, or work etc. that is copyright protected. A document producer must check this before integrating images or information on to their documents. The same goes for intellectual property. Any original idea owned by someone or a company cannot be used by another person when protected by copyright.Intellectual property is something unique created by an individual or a group. To avoid breaching intellectual property legislations when producing business documents, it is important to make sure other peoples creations, e.g. names or brands are not included in the documents. This means documents must be strictly the creation of the company itself and not copied from another company's. Version control is when changes that are made to a file are traced with the details of who changed them, when they traced them, why they did and any problems enhanced or resolved when the change was made. Organisations do this to ensure that previous versions of a document are accessible as well as current ones to follow up problems occurring or to compare them. Organisational procedures for version control are that employees must always record their name, the date and what changes they have made to a document so that other employees are aware. This is crucial for tracing back to old documents and comparing them to recent versions. Other organisational procedures for version control is that old documents must be maintained in case newer versions may contain errors or having missing information. Security requirements for documents are having set passwords to gain access into a file so that only particular people have access to it. Other requirements are read only settings so that the author only has permissions to make changes to the document so that other people cannot edit and make unwanted changes to it. A document created for external use needs to have the recipient checked if any personal data is included within it to prevent breaching the data protection act if the email was to be sent to the wrong recipient. If personal data included on a document is being sent by mail, it is important the mail is stamped with ‘private and confidential' on the front to ensure safe delivery.