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Is my business successful and what are my
key success factors?
Where is my business process?
IT isn't my core business, how can I reduce
these costs?
Why Prepare A Business Plan?
Is my business successful and what are
my key success factors?
Without determining your key success factors, you run the risk of needing to make
expensive changes of direction later on as you have not aligned your objectives
to the success of your business. You must sit down and think what you really need
to do to make your dream business a success. The process of setting up your key
success factors need not be tedious or difficult.
1. Sell each unit at a profit. Evaluate each and every product that you sell and
determine if you are selling them profitably. If not, you may need to identify how
to make its current sales profitable, whether by reducing your costs for that product
or increasing its price.
2. Continue to reduce overhead costs. A lower overhead should be a continuing
objective for your business. You can cut costs by evaluating your insurance needs,
reducing your reliance on outside consultants and service providers, or cutting
down unnecessary supplies and equipment.
3. Develop new products while maintaining the high quality of existing products.
Ensure that your products are created or chosen in response to the needs of your
customers. Ask for customer feedback through surveys or direct interaction with
them to find out what are the items that they need and expect from your business.
4. Find and retain high-value customers. The 80-20 rule of business states that
80 percent of your business will come from 20 percent of your customers. It is therefore
critical that you exert the extra effort to ensure that you retain the business
of your top customers.
5. Create and maintain the highest level of customer satisfaction. A very important
success factor needed to sustain your business is to provide the best service to
your customers. Satisfied customers are more likely to come back to you. Better
yet, give your customers more than they expect.
Where is my business process?
Service Oriented Architecture, or SOA, is a methodology that helps the enterprise
leverage its existing IT infrastructure and applications to provide new business
value by exposing their capabilities as self-contained modular web services. These
services promote more adaptable business processes, and ultimately, a more agile
and efficient enterprise.
IT isn't my core business, how can I reduce
these costs?
In reducing IT business costs, the business should look to methods that allow
it to produce its services at the same level with lesser costs. Often this means
reducing wastage to help reduce costs. That involves wasted materials, wasted effort,
and wasted time. Effective ways to reduce costs include training the workers, getting
quality goods from suppliers, and using some form of total quality management (TQM)
tools.
If your small business is experiencing a cash crunch, consider the following ways
to cut business expenses. Begin looking at your budget to find areas that can be
cut out completely or considerably trimmed back. List every expense the business
incurs and then determine where the business can save money. Buying in bulk and
comparison shopping are options for saving money.
Why Prepare A Business Plan?
Your business plan is going to be useful in a number of ways
- First and foremost, it
will define and focus your objective using appropriate information and analysis.
- You can use it as a selling
tool in dealing with important relationships including your lenders, investors and
banks.
- Your business plan can
uncover omissions and/or weaknesses in your planning process.
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