Promouvoir un produit, une société, une image de marque n’est pas vraiment facile, la communication peut prendre plusieurs aspects (Web, print, Média…), ça demande du temps mais par la suite ça paie. Rares sont les  petites sociétés marocaines qui investissent dans leurs composante communication, autrement dit leurs visibilité sur le web, la société Taoufik Tex a osée investir dans un site crée par HR Connect, Agence Conseil en Communication et Publicité, un site qui est dans son intégralité en Flash. Voilà son lien :

www.ataoufik.ma

Ce site web s’ajoute à un répertoire riche des sites web déjà réalisés par HR Connect.

Le site Taoufik a un design spécial car il est sous forme d’un livre qui s’ouvre et qu’on peut faire tourner pour visualiser les réalisations d’un grand artiste des arts plastiques, un artiste qui a roulé sa bosse dans le domaine de la peinture et qui a été interviewé à maintes reprises par les opérateurs du Média du Maroc. Un grand artiste,on présume, et le mot est faible.

HR Connect est entrain d’accompagner cet artiste dans sa campagne de communication, comme cet artiste va organiser un grand forum ouvert au public. Ce site web a été mis en forme de CD et site Web.

 Bon visionnement et à la prochaine,

HR Connect, Hassan Ait Ali - HR Connect est une Agence Conseil en Communication, Design, Création We, Traduction, Interprétariat, Formation et Recrutement au Maroc

HR Connect avec ses partenaires à l’étranger est entrain de développer un portail de Tourisme, un portail 100% marocain qui va avoir pour mission le mise en valeur du secteur du Tourisme au Maroc. Ce site qui est déjà online, et qui toujours en construction, est un portail qui va englober les dernières technologies de pointe à savoir : web 2, Ajax, Css 2, PHP/mysql, xml..

Nous espérons que d’içi le mois 12, le site soit opérationnel. Ce site va avoir plusieurs sections et annuaires : Annuaires des hôtels au Maroc, annuaires des Agences de Voyages au Maroc, Annuaires des Agences de location de voitures.

 Voilà le lien du site : www.maroctourisme.net

Hassan Ait Ali, HR Connect, Agence Conseil en Communication, Création web et Design au Maroc

Vu que le marché du Mariage est devenu l’un des secteurs porteurs dans le monde entier, la Société HR Connect a jugé utile de mettre son empreinte dans ce domaine. Dans ce sens la société HR Connect avec son Partenaire Khidma.net, société qui pour vocation de travailler avec les pays du Golfe, a crée un portail de mariage pour les musulmans.

Le site web a une caractéristique qui lui donne un avantage concurrentiel par rapport aux autres sites web qui traitent le même sujet ; ce site web a été crée par le PHP et MySql. Les gens qui s’inscrivent peuvent s’échanger les données, photos, vidéos etc entre eux. L’inscription est gratuite, et il y a plus de 30 personne qui s’inscrive par jour, chose qui lui a valu un succès vif alors que le site n’a même pas dépassé une année et 3 mois. Voilà le lien du site web : www.meetmuslimsonline.com

Hassan Ait-Ali is the author of web design maroc and other articles and publications dealing with webdesign maroc. He is also manager of HR Connect.

Printing is a process for production of texts and images, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing.

 Modern printing technology

In 2006 there are approximately 30,700 printing companies in the United States, accounting for $112 billion, according to the 2006 U.S. Industry & Market Outlook by Barnes Reports. Print jobs that move through the Internet made up 12.5% of the total U.S. Printing market last year, according to research firm InfoTrend/CAP Ventures.

Books and newspapers are printed today using the technique of offset lithography. Other common techniques include

• flexography used for packaging, labels, newspapers
• relief print, (mainly used for catalogues),
• screen printing from T-shirts to floor tiles
• rotogravure mainly used for magazines and packaging,
• inkjet used typically to print a small number of books or packaging, and also to print a variety of materials from high quality papers simulate offset printing, to floor tiles; Inkjet is also used to apply mailing addresses to direct mail pieces
• hot wax dye transfer
• laser printing mainly used in offices and for transactional printing (bills, bank documents). Laser printing is commonly used by direct mail companies to create variable data letters or coupons, for example.

Gravure

For gravure printing, the image to be printed is made up of small holes sunk into the surface of the printing plate. The cells are filled with ink and the excess is scraped off the surface, then a rubber-covered roller presses paper onto the surface of the plate and into contact with the ink in the cells. The printing plates are usually made from copper and may be produced by engraving or etching.

Gravure printing is used for long, high-quality print runs such as magazines, mail-order catalogues, packaging, and printing onto fabric and wallpaper. It is also used for printing postage stamps and decorative plastic laminates, such as kitchen worktops.

Digital Printing

Printing at home or in an office or engineering environment is subdivided into:

• small format (up to ledger size paper sheets), as used in business offices and libraries
• wide format (up to 3′ or 914mm wide rolls of paper), as used in drafting and design establishments.

Some of the more common printing technologies are

• line printing — where pre-formed characters are applied to the paper by lines
• daisy wheel — where pre-formed characters are applied individually
• dot-matrix — which produces arbitrary patterns of dots with an array of printing studs
• heat transfer — like early fax machines or modern receipt printers that apply heat to special paper, which turns black to form the printed image
• blueprint — and related chemical technologies
• inkjet — including bubble-jet — where ink is sprayed onto the paper to create the desired image
• laser — where toner consisting primarily of polymer with pigment of the desired colours is melted and applied directly to the paper to create the desired image.

Vendors typically stress the total cost to operate the equipment, involving complex calculations that include all cost factors involved in the operation as well as the capital equipment costs, amortization, etc. For the most part, toner systems beat inkjet in the long run, whereas inkjets are less expensive in the initial purchase price.

Professional digital printing (using toner) primarily uses an electrical charge to transfer toner or liquid ink to the substrate it is printed on. Digital print quality has steadily improved from early color and black & white copiers to sophisticated colour digital presses like the Xerox iGen3, the Kodak Nexpress and the HP Indigo Digital Press series. The iGen3 and Nexpress use toner particles and the Indigo uses liquid ink. All three are made for small runs and variable data, and rival offset in quality. Digital offset presses are called direct imaging presses; although these receive computer files and automatically turn them into print-ready plates, they cannot insert variable data.

Small press and fanzines generally use digital printing or more rarely xerography. Prior to the introduction of cheap photocopying the use of machines such as the spirit duplicator, hectograph, and mimeograph was common.

By HR Connect - Print media Maroc

More and more small businesses are finding it essential that they market their products and services online. Customers are increasingly turning to the Web to research companies, compare product features and prices, and to purchase online. A company that does not take advantage of the Web and email to market their business can lose valuable customers.

It has never been easier or more cost effective to market online. There are numerous Web sites, consultants, software packages, and other tools to help you implement a successful online presence.

Here are 10 key steps to successfully marketing your business online:

1. Obtain a Good Domain Name. Before you establish a Web site for your business, you need a domain name. A domain name is the internet address that allows computer users to find your Web site, such as www.Microsoft.com or www.BananaRepublic.com. Good domain names are difficult to obtain, as millions have already been purchased over the years. The most common domain names end in “.com” or “.net” and are seen as the most desirable.

It’s easy to check whether a domain name is available. For example, Yahoo.com has a domain name service check and you can do a check in under a minute. The cost on Yahoo to purchase a domain name is under $10.

A few key tips on domain names:

• Make sure the domain name hasn’t been trademarked by someone else (check www.uspto.gov);
• Make sure it’s easy to spell;
• Make the name easy to remember. But simpler and descriptive may be better - you don’t have to come up with something as catchy as “Google” - and non-descriptive names require more branding effort.

2. Build a Professional Looking Web Site. Your Web site is a reflection of your business. People who come to your Web site can be impressed or turned off by the professionalism of your site. There are several approaches to building a Web site. First, there are plenty of sites (including Yahoo) that will give you templates for a site either for free or very cheaply. Second, there are professional site building consultants who will custom-build a site for you. (But see our Checklist of Issues for Web Site Development Contracts to see what you need to do to negotiate a contract with such a consultant). And, third, there are multiple software packages available to help you build your own site.

3. Make Your Web Site Easy to Navigate and Make it Easy to Find What You Are Trying to Sell. Don’t get caught up in trying to come up with dazzling flash and color for your site. The key to a good site is to make sure the viewers can easily find what they are looking for. This means a clear navigation bar and a good “search” box. Take a look at some of the great sites out there, and sites from competitors. That can help you plan how your site should be designed.

4. Build up Your E-mail List. One of the best and cheapest ways to sell online is through e-mail marketing. It’s a great way to communicate with customers and prospective customers. So it is very valuable to collect e-mail addresses from visitors to your Web site. Offer them something worthwhile for their e-mail address - such as a discount or a free newsletter.

Make it easy to get someone’s e-mail address, but also be sure that you have set forth a Privacy Policy on your site describing how you will use any personal information. And be sure you are up-to-date on the laws affecting e-mail marketing, such as the CAN-SPAM Act. Be sure to read How Can I Make My E-Mail Newsletters CAN-SPAM Compliant?

5. Send Periodic Email Newsletters. Email newsletters can prove to be effective communication tools for existing customers, prospective customers, and other key audiences. What are the hallmarks of effective email newsletter programs? Here are 6 tips:

• Keep it reasonably short. Nobody wants to read lengthy e-mails.
• Make it well designed and visually interesting. Include photos and graphics. Provide multiple links back to your Web site.
• Make it look professional. Don’t have typos, a sloppy look, or broken links.
• Include an easy way for the viewer to contact you and to unsubscribe from your e-mail list.
• Constantly test and track how your newsletters are doing.

E-mail newsletter programs can be established through companies that provide turn-key solutions, such as Constant Contact.

6. Buy Banner Ads. You can enhance visibility and traffic to your site by buying banner ads. The keys to effective banner ad campaigns are:

• Make the ad visually interesting with links to a particular offer or “landing” page on your site.
• Place the ads on sites relevant to your business.
• Constantly monitor and test the efficacy of the ads, measuring not only click-throughs from the ad to your site, but also the actual resulting sales and return on investment (”ROI”).

7. Optimize Your Site for Search Engines. Hundreds of millions of searches a day are performed on the Web through Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. The search engines “spider” billions of Web pages. There is a fast growing area called “search engine optimization” that refers to efforts you can employ to get your Web site to show up higher in search results. For a good introduction to this topic, read What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

8. Buy Keyword Ads on Search Engines. Many businesses are finding that key word advertising on search engines can be quite beneficial. Here’s how it works: If you sell computer books from your Web site, you might buy a small ad or listing on Google that would show up when someone types in the search box a term that you designate (such as “computer books” or “PC books”). If the searcher sees your paid ad and clicks on it, he is transported to your Web site and you pay on a “CPC” basis to Google (a cost per click, such as 30¢ a click). The goal is to get qualified prospective customers to your site.

The key elements of successful key word ad buying programs include:

• Purchase the most relevant key words.
• Write the ads in a way to compel qualified buyers to click on the ad.
• Send the user from the ad to a landing page to your site that sets forth the precise product or service related to the keyword ad. Sending a viewer to your home page is generally not as effective as sending them to a specific product page.
• Constantly review the amount you are paying per click, and the conversion of that click into buyers.
• Constantly test different ad copy and different landing pages to determine what works best for your site.

9. Make it Easy to Buy From Your Shopping Cart. If you are selling products from your site, you will need a shopping cart system and a credit card authorization process. Many companies provide such systems off the shelf, such as Yahoo! Small Business. The key here is to make sure the shopping process is fast and efficient. Many Web sites have found that their checkout process was too cumbersome, and that they lost potential buyers who became frustrated with the amount of time and effort involved.

10. Provide Great Customer Service. A satisfied customer will return to your site. So go out of your way to give great customer support and service. And for those who are not happy with their experience, try to turn them around with an offer of a discount, a free product, or some other benefit.

Hassan Ait-Ali is the author of Marketing Your Business Online and other articles and publications dealing with startup and emerging companies. He is also manager of HR Connect.

Overall Definition:

Johnson and Scholes (Exploring Corporate Strategy) define strategy as follows:

“Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organisation through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations”.

In other words, strategy is about:

Strategy at Different Levels of a Business

Strategies exist at several levels in any organisation - ranging from the overall business (or group of businesses) through to individuals working in it.

Corporate Strategy - is concerned with the overall purpose and scope of the business to meet stakeholder expectations. This is a crucial level since it is heavily influenced by investors in the business and acts to guide strategic decision-making throughout the business. Corporate strategy is often stated explicitly in a “mission statement”.

Business Unit Strategy - is concerned more with how a business competes successfully in a particular market. It concerns strategic decisions about choice of products, meeting needs of customers, gaining advantage over competitors, exploiting or creating new opportunities etc.

Operational Strategy - is concerned with how each part of the business is organised to deliver the corporate and business-unit level strategic direction. Operational strategy therefore focuses on issues of resources, processes, people etc.

How Strategy is Managed - Strategic Management

In its broadest sense, strategic management is about taking “strategic decisions” - decisions that answer the questions above.

In practice, a thorough strategic management process has three main components, shown in the figure below:

Strategic Analysis

This is all about the analysing the strength of businesses’ position and understanding the important external factors that may influence that position. The process of Strategic Analysis can be assisted by a number of tools, including:

Strategic Choice

This process involves understanding the nature of stakeholder expectations (the “ground rules”), identifying strategic options, and then evaluating and selecting strategic options.

Strategy Implementation

Often the hardest part. When a strategy has been analysed and selected, the task is then to translate it into organisational action.

 By HR Connect - Maroc Stratégie

Human Resources may be the most misunderstood of all corporate departments, but it’s also the most necessary. Those who work in Human Resources are not only responsible for hiring and firing, they also handle contacting job references and administering employee benefits.

It’s true that any individual who works in Human Resources must be a “people person.” Since anyone in this department deals with a number of employees, as well as outside individuals, on any given day, a pleasant demeanor is a must.

Managing employees is a major job, so those in Human Resources must be equal to the task. Ten or twenty years ago, Human Resources personnel were rarely seen. Instead they worked behind the scenes to ensure personnel records were in order and employee benefits were being properly administered, but the job stopped there. Today’s Human Resources personnel don’t only handle small administrative tasks. They are responsible for staffing major corporations. This is no minor feat.

It’s not enough to be able to screen potential employees, however. Those who work in Human Resources also have to be able to handle a crisis in a smooth, discreet manner. Whether the issue is health care related or regarding sexual harassment or employee disputes, a person working in Human Resources must be trusted to keep an employee’s personal details to herself. The Human Resource team must also be a good judge of morale and realize when morale boosting incentives are needed. It’s up to them to make sure all employees are comfortable with their surroundings and working under acceptable, if not above average, conditions.

For those looking to enter a career in Human Resources, a college education is necessary. One doesn’t necessarily have to have a degree in Human Resources, however. Majoring in Business Administration, Psychology, Labor Relations and Personnel Administration, as well as degrees in Social and Behavioral Sciences, can also be beneficial.

Human Resources may have gotten a bum rap, but it’s clearly among the most important departments in any corporation. The next time you have to meet with someone from Human Resources, remember that without her, your company might not be running so efficiently.

By Hassan Ait-Ali  - Ressources humaines Maroc : Recrutement et formation

Let us now more closely examine several components of communication by looking at two life units, one of them “A” and the other “B.” “A” and “B” are terminals – by terminal we mean a point that receives, relays and sends communication.

First there is “A’s” intention. This, at “B” becomes attention, and for a true communication to take place, a duplication at “B” must take place of what emanated from “A”.

“A” of course, to emanate a communication, must have given attention originally to “B”, and “B” must have given to this communication some intention, at least to listen or receive, so we have both cause and effect having intention and attention.

Now, there is another factor which is very important. This is the factor of duplication. We could express this as reality, or we could express it as agreement. The degree of agreement reached between “A” and “B” in this communication cycle becomes their reality, and this is accomplished mechanically by duplication. In other words, the degree of reality reached in this communication cycle depends upon the amount of duplication. “B” as effect, must to some degree duplicate what emanated from “A” as cause, in order for the first part of the cycle to take effect.

Then “A”, now as effect, must duplicate what emanated from “B” for the communication to be concluded. If this is done there is no detrimental consequence.

If this duplication does not take place at “B” and then at “A” we get what amounts to an unfinished cycle of action. If, for instance, “B” did not vaguely duplicate what emanated from “A”, the first part of the cycle of communication was not achieved, and a great deal of randomity (unpredicted motion), explanation, argument might result. Then if “A” did not duplicate what emanated from “B” when “B” was cause on the second cycle, again an uncompleted cycle of communication occurred with consequent unreality. Now naturally, if we cut down reality, we will cut down affinity – the feeling of love or liking for something or someone. So, where duplication is absent, affinity is seen to drop.

A complete cycle of communication will result in high affinity. If we disarrange any of these factors we get an incomplete cycle of communication and we have either “A” or “B” or both waiting for the end of cycle. In such a wise the communication becomes harmful.

An unfinished cycle of communication generates what might be called answer hunger. An individual who is waiting for a signal that his communication has been received is prone to accept any inflow. When an individual has, for a very long period of time, consistently waited for answers which did not arrive, any sort of answer from anywhere will be pulled in to him, by him, as an effort to remedy his scarcity for answers.

Uncompleted cycles of communication bring about a scarcity of answers. It does not much matter what the answers were or would be as long as they vaguely approximate the subject at hand. It does matter when some entirely unlooked-for answer is given, as in compulsive or obsessive communication, or when no answer is given at all.

Communication itself is detrimental only when the emanating communication at cause was sudden and non sequitur (illogical) to the environment. Here we have violations of attention and intention.

The factor of interest also enters here but is far less important. Nevertheless, it explains a great deal about human behavior. “A” has the intention of interesting “B”. “B”, to be talked to, becomes interesting.

Similarly “B”, when he emanates a communication, is interested and “A” is interesting.

Here we have, as part of the communication formula (but a less important part), the continuous shift from being interested to being interesting on the part of either of the terminals, “A” or “B”. Cause is interested, effect is interesting.

Of some greater importance is the fact that the intention to be received on the part of “A” places upon “A” the necessity of being duplicatable.

If “A” cannot be duplicatable in any degree, then of course his communication will not be received at “B”, for “B”, unable to duplicate “A”, cannot receive the communication.

As an example of this, “A”, let us say, speaks in Chinese, where “B” can only understand French. It is necessary for “A” to make himself duplicatable by speaking French to “B” who only understands French. In a case where “A” speaks one language and “B” another, and they have no language in common, we have the factor of mimicry possible and a communication can yet take place. “A”, supposing he had a hand, could raise his hand. “B”, supposing he had one, could raise his hand. Then “B” could raise his other hand, and “A” could raise his other hand, and we would have completed a cycle of communication by mimicry.

Basically, all things are considerations. We consider that things are, and so they are. The idea is always senior to the mechanics of energy, space, time, mass. It would be possible to have entirely different ideas about communication than these. However, these happen to be the ideas of communication which are in common in this universe, and which are utilized by the life units of this universe.

Here we have the basic agreement upon the subject of communication in the communication formula as given here. Because ideas are senior to this, a being can get, in addition to the communication formula, a peculiar idea concerning just exactly how communication should be conducted, and if this is not generally agreed upon, can find himself definitely out of communication.

Let us take the example of a modernistic writer who insists that the first three letters of every word should be dropped or that no sentence should be finished. He will not attain agreement among his readers.

There is a continuous action of natural selection, one might say, which weeds out strange or peculiar communication ideas. People, to be in communication, adhere to the basic rules as given here, and when anyone tries to depart too widely from these rules, they simply do not duplicate him and so, in effect, he goes out of communication.

Now we come to the problem of what a life unit must be willing to experience in order to communicate. In the first place the primary source-point must be willing to be duplicatable. It must be able to give at least some attention to the receipt-point. The primary receipt-point must be willing to duplicate, must be willing to receive and must be willing to change into a source-point in order to send the communication, or an answer to it, back. And the primary source-point in its turn must be willing to be a receipt-point.

As we are dealing basically with ideas and not mechanics, we see, then, that a state of mind must exist between a cause- and effect-point whereby each one is willing to be cause or effect at will, is willing to duplicate at will, is willing to be duplicatable at will, is willing to change at will, is willing to experience the distance between, and, in short, willing to communicate.

Where we get these conditions in an individual or a group we have sane people.

Where an unwillingness to send or receive communications occurs, where people obsessively or compulsively send communications without direction and without trying to be duplicatable, where individuals in receipt of communications stand silent and do not acknowledge or reply, we have factors of irrationality.

Some of the conditions which can occur in an irrational line are a failure to be duplicatable before one emanates a communication, an intention contrary to being received, an unwillingness to receive or duplicate a communication, an unwillingness to experience distance, an unwillingness to change, an unwillingness to give attention, an unwillingness to express intention, an unwillingness to acknowledge, and, in general, an unwillingness to duplicate.

It might be seen by someone that the solution to communication is not to communicate. One might say that if he hadn’t communicated in the first place he wouldn’t be in trouble now. Perhaps there is some truth in this, but a man is as dead as he can’t communicate. He is as alive as he can communicate.

By HR Connect - Agence Communication Maroc

How does one talk so that another person listens and understands? How does one listen? How does one know if he has been heard and understood?

These are all points about communication that have never before been analyzed or explained.

People have known that communication is an important part of life but until now no one has ever been able to tell anyone how to communicate.

Until Scientology, the subject of communication had received no emphasis or study. Any attention given to it was mechanical and the province of engineers. Yet all human endeavor depends utterly on a full knowledge of the real basics of communication.

To master communication, one must understand it.

In Scientology, communication has been defined – an accomplishment that has led to a much deeper understanding of life itself.

Communication, in essence, is the shift of a particle from one part of space to another part of space. A particle is the thing being communicated. It can be an object, a written message, a spoken word or an idea. In its crudest definition, this is communication.

This simple view of communication leads to the full definition:

Communication is the consideration and action of impelling an impulse or particle from source-point across a distance to receipt-point, with the intention of bringing into being at the receipt-point a duplication and understanding of that which emanated from the source-point.

Duplication is the act of reproducing something exactly. Emanated means “came forth.”

The formula of communication is cause, distance, effect, with intention, attention and duplication with understanding.

The definition and formula of communication open the door to understanding this subject. By dissecting communication into its component parts, we can view the function of each and thus more clearly understand the whole.

Any communication involves a particle which can be in one of four categories: an object. . .

. . . a written message. . .

. . . a spoken word. . .

. . . or an idea.

Any successful communication contains all the elements shown here. Any failure to communicate can be analyzed against these components to isolate what went wrong.