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Let Them Eat Cake…Caterpillar Cake
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is repelled by bugs. In fact, young children often find them fascinating. How else can you explain the recent introduction of a caterpillar cake pan and decorating kit from Williams-Sonoma, a specialty retailer of home furnishings and high-end gourmet cookware.

The company describes the whimsical product, available only from Williams-Sonoma, as “a guaranteed winner for kids’ parties and family fun, our playful leaf-shaped pan bakes eight miniature cakes that combine to form a friendly caterpillar. Kids can use the decorating kit to embellish their cakes with colorful icings and sprinkles, then arrange the sections to create one long creepy-crawly.”

To order your cake pan, visit www.williams-sonoma.com. You can even watch a video of how to make a caterpillar cake, the ideal gift for a hungry entomologist or that budding pest control service technician in your family.

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In the Market for a Used Laptop? Go to LAX.

How many laptops do you think are lost in U.S. airports every week? One hundred? A thousand? You’re not even close. Rushed, multi-tasking travelers apparently walk away from more than 600,000 laptops every year – that’s a staggering 12,000 laptops per week – according to research from the Ponemon Institute.

Even more astounding, approximately 65 percent of those laptops go unclaimed. That’s right, unclaimed. Apparently, in their haste to get to their gate, Americans are leaving behind enough laptops to fill a small landfill. “It’s staggering to learn that up to 600,000 laptops are lost in U.S. airports annually, many containing sensitive information that companies must account for,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. “IT departments must re-evaluate the steps they’re taking to protect mobile professionals, the laptops they carry and company data stored on mobile devices.”

Not surprisingly, about 40 percent of lost computers get left behind at security checkpoints. The study recommends you label your laptop and give yourself more time to get through security the next time you’re at an airport on business.

Here’s another piece of advice. Be nice to those TSA representatives providing security at our nation’s airports. It pays to have friends in high places if you lose your laptop at a security checkpoint.

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Boosting Profits: Focus on the Weakest Link

Want to boost revenue and profits? Then fix your firm’s “weakest link,” says Kevin Fox, managing partner of Viable Vision, a consulting firm in Wilmette, Ill.

A company is like a chain, Fox explained, and generating more revenue depends on its strength. Identify your weakest link, strengthen it and align everyone to support it, and the chain will produce more revenue and profit, he said.

Commonly firms try to “optimize” every business function to save money. “We didn’t bring companies into existence to save money,” said Fox. “We brought companies into existence to make money.” Reducing costs cannot be the long-term way to achieve that goal, he said.

Instead, improve that one area where work piles up or the system bottlenecks. “Put all your focus on breaking that constraint.” Constraints can be relatively easy to find, said Fox. They might be problems in routing or back-office operations like accounts receivable. If you don’t have stacks of work piling up, the constraint might be sales. Is the problem leads? Conversion rates? “What can you do to make the process more effective? Faster? Yield more?” Fox asked.

Fixing the constraint directly affects the bottom line. Improving sales conversion rates by 20 percent, for instance, should result in a corresponding increase in revenue and profit, he said. On the flip side, cutting 20 percent of a firm’s labor cost, which might account for 25 percent of total operating costs, will only deliver a five percent boon to the bottom line while destroying company morale.