CompCCompetitive edge over rivals is a must for survival or any kind of a business in the market. For companies in the organized market, rivals could be the big MNCS or their big brands that enjoy considerable market share in their respective segments. These big players have established track-record of superior performance and enjoy customer loyalty due to the high quality of their brands. Therefore, for entrants in the market, it becomes essential to prove their worth, otherwise there will be no buyers.

Attracting the consumers and creating a demand for their product should be the primary objective of every business firm. To create this kind of demand among the consumers, it is very important to understand the needs and wants of the customers, and accordingly design the products across segments. For instance, if the customers want light and compact air conditioner with provision of instant cooling, the product should be designed accordingly. There is absolutely no point if the air conditioner is light and compact but does not provide instant cooling, as it will not cater to the consumers’ necessities and therefore they will not prefer to buy it.

The following processes are crucial for any establishment that aims success:

Studying requirements

To achieve success, a company must define its goals and develop strategies to achieve the targets within a timeframe. These goals and methods formulated to achieve them justify the effort that is being currently put in. This enables to predict the impact of re-engineering that needs implemented to improve processes. The second step is to understand the requirements of the business on the basis of priorities. A well articulated system defining the priorities of an organization helps an organization to focus on the critical issues first.

Workflow analysis

This is a detailed study of various stages of the work process i.e. starting from its conception as an idea and its travel through the business process till it culminates as the output. Workflow evaluation effectively unveils opportunities of optimization of systems and processes.

For instance, a workflow analysis can find out how a work is approved in a company. If the project only existed in a hard copy that an employee needed to take it to the approver for seeking an approval, there is a possibility to automate the process. Using an e-mail cold perhaps reduce the approval time, which can yield higher productivity for the organization. You would have however discovered the necessity if automation, if you did not analyze your work processes.

Architecture and system analysis

Along with the analysis of workflow processes, analysis of the support system is also necessary. For such a task you can seek the help of a professional architecture analyst or an IT audit. Such a professional can compare your business requirements with all the systems in place and find out whether they can support the requirements. Accordingly, he can suggest upgrading the company’s IT infrastructure through process management methods. He will also indicate the investment required in the area and predict the returns on the investments, so that you can manage your scarce resources.

To make the right choice, first of all, you need to plan a structure for your website and visualize the functional areas of your electronic shop. Accordingly, you can make the pages for describing goods and services you are selling, design a trading basket (shopping cart) from which the buyers can choose and store products from your catalog, get payment modes in place for the users to pay through the internet, and obtain a merchant account that will enable you to accept those payments. Focus on the following areas for operating your online store successfully:

Describe your products well

Visitors make up their mind on buying products from your website only when feel confident about products’ quality. Therefore, provide them detailed description of your products, supported with relevant diagrams, drawings, and video clips. Specify the conditions of sale and, delivery and other supports.

You can classify the products under various categories and sub-categories on the website according to the industrial standards. Organization your data in such a manner gives the consumers exhaustive information on the products and enables them to pick up correct products under specific categories.

Make placing orders and making payments convenient

Most websites accept orders only through the internet, neglecting the user category that prefers placing orders by phone, fax, or an email, by habit. To tap such category, you must obtain telephone facility from your software solutions provider. Make it easier for them to pay by accepting payments by all methods of electronic payments.

Get a trading basket for accounting taxes

Trading basket is a complex software that allows you to take orders, calculate tax and shipping, display products, and build an online catalog. You can select from a range of shopping carts programs depending on what products you sell. Some programs are quite simple and others are highly sophisticated with special features such as true order management, catalog building, wish lists, gift registries, and real-time UPS shipping calculations based on weight, ZIP, and type of shipping selected.

Place guarantees of refund

You must place the information related to guarantees of refund on the defective products prominently on your site. It is effective in getting a deal by giving the consumers a feeling of security. By offering refunds you also adhere to the law on protection of the rights of consumers that obligates the supplier to make the refund or replacement of the goods.

Specify policy of confidentiality

Tell your customers who you are and state your privacy policies. Provide secure transactions and make payments convenient for the customers. You may also use privacy certificates, escrows, and digital security to promote trust among your customers.

Your website must pledge confidentiality regarding the personal information received from clients. When you ask for personal information from the users, make it a point to mention where and why you intend to use such information.

You may seek professional web-designing service to ensure usability of you website. Such services are easily available in the market and offer exciting packages to suit all pockets.

Well, a wholesale market can be defined as a market where the customers buy products in bulk or in huge quantities, but need not be the final customers. They are actually middlemen between the manufacturers and retailers or are retailers themselves who buy the manufactured products in large lots to achieve economies of scale. These products are then sold either to the retailers or to the final consumers directly. These middlemen are integral for wholesale marketing, since not every manufacturer has the network or ability to reach the final buyers to sell their products. The most advantageous aspect of wholesale marketing is that the profit margin in this type of business is generally higher than the small scale markets or the retailers who are the ultimate source from whom the final buyers buy their product.

The working of wholesale marketing is a completely ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ process, where there is no scope of stocking the goods and then selling it though in some markets. It is done where the wholesaler is directly intending to sell his product to the final buyer. As discussed earlier, profit margins of wholesalers are normally higher than the small scale industries because of their economies of large scale buying and selling. They also sell their products to the retailers without much time gap because of which there is immediate flow of cash, which avoids any event of liquidity crunch for the wholesalers. As a result, they can keep on rolling money and make profits. On the other hand, small scale industries are not efficient enough to sell their products in a short period of time from the date of manufacturing because of their inadequate networking. This increases inventory level and heightens operating costs, which ultimately affects their bottom line adversely. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for the small scale Industries to seek the expertise of the middlemen, as discussed above, to reach their target buyers.

There is another advantage that wholesale marketing has over the small scale industries and that is dependence on raw materials. All these small scale industries, depending on what products they are manufacturing, are dependent on some or the other raw material. Moreover, most of them do not have any captive source for such raw material instead they source it from other small and medium-scale industries. In this way, they are exposed to fluctuations in raw material prices, which take its toll on their margins if they are unable to pass these price hikes to the end customers. A wholesaler, being an intermediary only, does not have to worry about any bottom line hit. At the most he can experience some margin contraction, but definitely minimal losses.

Ecommerce is indeed the most efficient and convenient mode of transactions nowadays, but this business needs strict compliance with laws and related legalities, particularly dealing with marketing, because you are dealing with others’ money.

If you in the ecommerce business, then strictly avoid fraudulent promotions, otherwise you could be charged for spamming under the new CAN-SPAM Act, which was signed by President George W. Bush on December 16; the Act is a federal initiative designed to regulate the most harmful and annoying practices of spammers. Violation of the Act can result in the following consequences:

• Revenue losses and damage of reputation
• Major e-mail service providers such as AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo! filtering your messages to block them
• ISP may shut down your e-mail account
• Web host may shut down your web site
• Under the new federal CAN-SPAM Act, you can be fined (up to $2 million) or sentenced to jail (up to five years)

Therefore honestly promote a legitimate business to sell real and valuable products or services.

Operate a legitimate business

Do not use falsifying headers to force your way into peoples’ inboxes. Avoid using deceptive subject lines, hijacking other peoples' e-mail accounts or computers to send spam, creating e-mail or IP addresses specifically to send spam, and sending unsolicited e-mail with sexual content and emails to people who have requested to be removed from your list. These are malicious ways of forcing messages into the inboxes of people who don't want them, which are not only annoying but are illegal and unprofitable.  

Plan responsible e-mail promotions

Always obtain permission from the target users before sending them emails. A user must never get a mail that he is not expecting. Avoid buying or renting email lists as they do not promise validity and at times you end up paying for the addresses that are invalid. If you buy email lists, find out how those addresses were collected. If people in your purchased list have not agreed to receive email related to promotion or advertisements, you might land into the troubled waters.

Be very careful while choosing a subject line; it should be self-explanatory about the content within the email. Mention the real return address and place a functional ‘unsubscribe’ link in all the emails. If you have an exhaustive list of emails you will have to seek professional help to install an ASP or any other suitable program to manage ‘opt-ins’ and ‘unsubscribe’ requests. You must send commercial or promotional emails/ newsletters through you’re your company’s official email address. 

Finally, stay educated about e-mail marketing and spam laws. Laws and their definitions are changing; therefore obtain regular updates on the related laws. 

Create your website

In an ecommerce business, you must have a website that could be transformed into an online store. Thus, the first step is to register your URL through a registration company online. Second, select e-commerce software that has all the essential features like minimum maintenance and easily order processing. You must also check whether the software can place the search engine promptly and provide quality support for promoting and selling your products and services. There are several e-commerce solutions available to create your online catalog, out of which you have to select one that is user-friendly so that you learn it fast. It is advisable that you check the software for flexibility of adding customized features when you need them.   

Start Your Online Store

A successful e-commerce site comprises three elements – a shopping cart, payment getaway, and merchant account.

• Shopping Cart: It is a complex software that allows you to take orders, calculate tax and shipping, display products, and build an online catalog. You can select from a range of shopping carts programs depending on what products you sell. Some programs are quite simple and others are highly sophisticated with special features such as true order management, catalog building, wish lists, gift registries, and real-time UPS shipping calculations based on weight, ZIP, and type of shipping selected.
• Payment Gateway: It automatically processes sales and authorizations online, reducing processing time dramatically. It is advisable to get payment gateway bundled with a merchant account. By doing so you avail the payment gateway at a discounted rate. If you use Pay Pal, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions store, and some other hosted systems, the payment gateway is already supplied.
• Merchant Account: This account enables you to accept payments for the products sold. You can use a bank or any other financial institution to accept and deposit credit card payments into your account. Usually, your bank will have an online facility for your transactions and fees associated with this service.

Make sure that you select your shopping cart first. You can then select a merchant account and payment gateway compatible with your shopping cart.

Get your business rolling

For operating your business successfully online, you must get visitors to your site. Majority of them will get your reference through search engines. Hence, do key word research to obtain a list of key words that can be used in your site information so that the visitors find you. Include these keywords in product names and descriptions. You will also have to design a shipping process after selecting a shipper to establish a successful order fulfillment process.

Ensure security and trust

Tell your customers who you are and state your privacy policies. Provide secure transactions and make payments easy for the customers. You may also use privacy certificates, escrows, and digital security to promote trust among your customers.

To do good business, let us first try to understand the prime motive behind doing that business. Well, the answer is simple, profits.  Profits can be earned in two ways – 1) first, you can price your products highly, so that you are able to make higher margins on the products sold or 2) you can opt for target volumes. This means that you focus on selling higher volumes at a reasonable price and make money by minimizing operating costs. The first option is not advisable for a beginner, since the person is yet to earn credibility and goodwill in the market being a new entrant. You can begin from the second option and as your clients start becoming loyal keeping good faith in your services, you can gradually hike the prices of your services or products in a phased process.

A home-based business is indeed the most sought after business opportunity, especially by the youngsters. The young generation is keen on such an opportunity because it gives them a chance to pursue a lot of other things than just spending precious time of their lives working for others and in many cases in areas that do not interest them.

There are several advantages of doing a home-based business:

• The first and most important advantage of home-based business is the freedom you get while working. Here, you don’t have to depend on anyone to make decisions. You can think and act according to your own will and learn from experiences.
• The second important advantage of home-based business is the return you get for your efforts towards the development of the business. That is money and intellectual development.
• Being the sole operator of the business, you get an opportunity to shape it up and think from different perspectives. For example you can think from a viewpoint of a salesman, as a manufacturer, a promoter etc. This will not only help you to develop your business skills, but will also enrich you in experience.
• One more advantage of home based business is that it requires a very low investment as compared to other business.
• Last but not the least; home-based business is something that you can choose to do as a part-time work. This gives you the flexibility of continuing your job or studies and at the same time pursues a home-based business opportunity part-time, whenever you are free.

In this way, you can pursue your own area of interest, earn money simultaneously, and develop necessary skill sets at the same time.

These 2 polarities are not always easy to balance and the human resource managers specifically try to maximize output from employees by instituting various schemes and policies. The following are some of the functions handled by the human resources team.

Handle compensation and rewards:–

Human resources are responsible for tying incentives and rewards to certain positions and roles in order to maximize performance levels. This is a strategic thinking task because it affects every single person in the organization and has to be planned separately for each position, depending on level, department and goals. Some jobs need to be more goal driven, such as sales so salary can be basic but commission can form the bulk of the remuneration, leading to more incentive to work effectively and close sales. Some firms tie top management’s salary to stock price but this can be risky. It is up to human resources to structure this important aspect to everyone’s satisfaction.

Recruitment:–

Another important task handled by the human resource function is the selection and retention of employees. If the right type of employees does not enter the organization, its days are numbered, because people drive almost any type of organization towards success.

Performance management:–

Regular, balanced and systematic appraisals must be administered consistently in order to evaluate the performance of each individual in the organization. This allows human resources to pinpoint the weaknesses of an individual’s work style and the strengths. They can then share this information with the employee in order to affect a change in performance. This in turn will lead to more productivity and potentially better returns on human investment.

Point of contact:–

The human resource personnel form the point of contact for an employee with any type of difficulty or query about their remuneration or other aspects of employment with the business. It is essential for someone to be available to answer questions and provide guidance. This communicates to the employee that the business cares about his or her concerns and is available to address them.

Employee expectations:–

The human resources function fulfills a very important ‘soft skill’, unspoken task – that of balancing employee expectations and the organization’s expectations. Both need to be addressed and aligned for a business to be successful and one with satisfied employees. Only a content and motivated employee will deliver good work, so it is the job of human resources to keep track of the expectations of the employee and those of the organization to ensure both are met simultaneously.