Typical challenges for an enterprise
Setting Organisation Ethos
Setting Organisation Ethos
Setting Organisation Ethos
Do you want to leave a strong legacy - an organisation that would endure? Then you need to define what are the values of your organisation - and periodically assess this
Marketing & Branding
Setting Organisation Ethos
Setting Organisation Ethos
There is no business without a strong, growing and loyal customer base - and no strong customer base without fine tuned Marketing & Branding. And nowadays that also implies a strong digital presence.
Cash Flow Management
Cash Flow Management
Cash Flow Management
Cash Flow is the life blood of an organisation - and to ensure this an organisation needs good systems and processes. Alas this is where many organisations stumble
Pricing
Cash Flow Management
Cash Flow Management
How you price your product and service determines your capital allocation and distribution strategies. Do you want volumes or do you want to focus only on a select clientele?
Setting Organisation Ethos
An Entrepreneur when he sets up an organisation is not merely setting up an entity to generate a livelihood; he is also interested in ensuring that his business entity will be a "living" entity that will endure and thrive much beyond his own life-time.
For that to happen:
- Decide on the Vision/Mission and Values by which your organisation and its stakeholders will live by
- Communicate this across the organisation & its various stake-holders, and get buy-in from them
- Set up a system for periodic pulse checks to understand how well these principles are being followed, and take steps for course-correction
Marketing & Branding
You struggled and after a lot of time and effort developed an excellent product or service. But then you find that your product/service is not well known among your potential customers - and you are often undercut by cheaper copycat competitors.
How do you differentiate and ensure there is "pull" from customers?
- Identify the Target Group Customer
- Understand his/her needs - and ensuring she is aware and convinced that your brand is the best fit for her needs
- Develop good "branding" across all stake-holder and customer touch points : website, packaging, sales points, publicity material, and communication.
Cash Flow Management
This is an area which poses a constant challenge to entrepreneurs - and hence requires no elaboration.
- Set up monitoring systems to warn you of impending cash flow problems
- Implement processes to issue timely invoices, negotiate credit periods with customers, incentivise timely collections, and prevent bad debts
- Establish a decision system that will help decide how much to invest in new initiatives : after all future investments should not be at the expense of present survival. For this it is critical to evaluate the viability and pay-back period of any new investment
Pricing
The question faced by an entrepreneur is:
- Price High -> Skim Market -> High Margins and Low Volumes
OR
- Price Low -> Penetrate Market -> Low Margins and High Volumes
Here is where the start-up entrepreneur is in a dilemma - he either loses out due to low volumes and low capacity utilisation; or he perpetually operates as a low margin player. He therefore gets trapped into a low price model which does not leave sufficient scope to generate cash for future investments.
The solution of course lies in a mid-way course : but knowing what is a correct price point comes only through experience and a process of trial and error. And certainly an understanding of these aspects help in taking the right pricing decisions:
- What is the price - quality trade-off in the mind of your customer?
- What are the price bands which your major competitors play in?
- How elastic is demand at various price points? Would your overall profitability go up either by increasing or decreasing prices from current levels?
