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As a business owner, you have probably established a merchant account. This is a specific bank account that caters to business owners so they can accept credit and debit card payments on customer purchases. An agreement is established between the bank and the merchant and in some cases; a 3rd party may be involved. This could be:

• An ISO Or Independent Sales Organization

• A MSP Or Member Service Provider

• A Payment Processor

But is that enough! If you are a high volume or high risk merchant you should probably look into getting at least 2 or 3 accounts, so that if there is an issue with your credit card processing account or bank that your business does not come to a stand still.

Merchants that generate a high amount of credit and debit card transactions can benefit from establishing multiple merchant accounts. They can grow their business and minimize their risk in the process. By diversifying their accounts, those businesses that are categorized as “high risk” can protect their interests. Although opening multiple merchant accounts may cost you more initially, the savings in the long run far outweigh the initial expense. Here are six additional benefits to be aware of.

• Disperse your monthly sales volume and lower your risk classification.

• Even if your bank or payment processor experiences any downtime, you will avoid losing profits.

• Improves your ability to process payments for multiple websites.

• Increases revenues by having more payment processing options available.

• Reduce your ratio of chargebacks to total sales.

• Reduces any excess surcharge fees, which saves you money in the long run.

If you want to manage your merchant accounts more effectively, you can use a gateway to control an unlimited number of them. Best of all, you can accomplish this with only one control panel. Having the ability to control and fine tune merchant account operations by using a single interface is essential to managing multiple accounts. Additionally, using the right gateway enables you to change or modify any business situation immediately.

This is a more effective method for improving the management of multiple credit card processing accounts. By employing the right management solution, you can focus on your main priority – running your business and being more profitable. Most importantly, you can protect your interests more effectively by establishing multiple accounts. Remember, the right payment gateway for multiple accounts enables you to control and protect the processing of your credit and debit card transactions. A great gateway that can load balance the merchant accounts automatically and if there is an issue there is no down time or switching between processors. A little know fact that the gateway is the lifeblood of your business and your company, so choose wisely because it become very difficult to switch later and could potentially hurt your business.

The key to a successful globally efficient and effective operation is leveraging and enhancing the skill set of global resources through procurement transformation. It is therefore important for a business to develop a set of strategic actions that address challenges to effective procurement. Key to such a strategy is aligning the strategic actions into 4 imperatives that represent the nucleus of the procurement transformation strategic plan. Below is a look at these imperatives.

1. Transform global strategic sourcing and provide on demand supplier relationships

The objective of this is to transform the fundamental sourcing model. This is achieved by continuing to increase aggregation of spending across commodities locations, external suppliers, customers and internal partners. It is equally important to ensure that the business is able to leverage global reach by looking beyond the existing lower cost regions. Also important is the continual assessment of emerging supply sources (nomadic sourcing) and extension of support capabilities for strategic operations. This entails changing the management system to actively review the end-to-end sourcing model across all business units. This allows for the optimization of end-to-end cost, quality and supply prior to initial design sourcing choices by brand, development and manufacturing.

2. Influence and provide leadership to internal partners in delivering on demand innovative solutions

This drives collaboration and focuses on the business strategy of suppliers, internal partners and customers. A seamless integration of suppliers with the needs of the individual business unit allows procurement transformation to mold and influence product strategies, solution development and life-cycle management. This may prove to be a key competitive differentiator.

3. Grow profitable revenue from commercial procurement services

While continuing to focus on service offerings, businesses should also leverage the expertise, processes and IT of their procurement department. The aim of this procurement transformation imperative is to deliver and exceed committed cost savings to clients, while growing revenue for the business. In addition, the company should leverage client spend with the supplier base as a way of increasing the collective purchasing power, and providing clients with significant value.

4. Achieve excellence in class operational quality, efficiency and functionality

This enables a business to become more efficient, while developing tighter integration across key procurement processes. The central focus of this work is the rebalancing of resources across geographies to ensure the right balance between various skill sub-groupings, to automate and eliminate low value add activities, as well as improve resource utilization tracking. All this is done while consistently maintaining the appropriate quality standards.

An extraordinary group achieves outstanding results while members experience a profound shift in how they see their world.

These amazing groups show up in all sectors… Our stories of these extraordinary groups came from organization leaders, information technology professionals, soldiers, software developers, trainers, managers, small business owners, community college counselors, doctors, nurses, event organizers, health care administrators, insurance executives…

Extraordinary groups exhibit 8 factors…

1. A compelling purpose that inspires and stretches members to make the group and its work a top priority.

Watch an extraordinary group at work and you will see that an inspiring and shared purpose surfaces repeatedly. Motivated by their purpose, members make their group a priority even in the face of other demands on their time. Members know that agreeing on a common purpose is critical to their work together.

2. Shared leadership that encourages members to take mutual responsibility for helping the group be successful.

Extraordinary groups are not top-down or leader-centric. Instead, leadership is expressed by many in the group; the lead role shifts with the subject at hand and the expertise required.

Members know they can initiate with a quest, task, issue or proposal. In these groups you will see members leading together; initiating, facilitating, structuring, suggesting, and doing all manner of things to help the group be effective.

3. Just-enough-structure to create confidence to move forward, but not so much as to become bureaucratic or burdensome.

Extraordinary groups will come up with ways of working that are governed more by outcome than structure. Members work together in ways that are collaborative, flexible, creative and adaptive.

They create just-enough-structure – at the time that is needed – to support purpose and outcomes.

4. Full engagement that results in all member jumping in with enthusiasm, sometimes passionately and chaotically, regardless of role. When fully engaged members readily contribute their knowledge, skills, and talents; they do not wait to be asked, rather than holding back, members may have trouble getting airtime – waiting for others to breathe so they can dive in.

5. Embracing differences so that group members see, value and use their diversity as a strength. They respect each other for who they are as human beings as well as for the skills, knowledge, and talent they apply to the group’s purpose.

6. Unexpected learning that translates into personal and group growth. Learning is central to these groups being transformed. Excited by the work before them, members are united in learning together and supporting one another.

7. Strengthened relationships among members characterized by trust, collegiality, and friendship.

New relationships grow form the work together and sometimes result in lasting friendships. This is not surprising given the quality and energy of the interactions that characterize such groups.

8. Great results, tangible and intangible. Results that surpass members’ expectations regularly happen in extraordinary groups.

Keep this list of indicators at hand. Watch an extraordinary group at work and you will be busy checking them off… Whether the groups were for profit or not, involving volunteers or employees, fact-to-face or virtual, these eight indictors emerged.