Repeat Customers: Driving Growth For the SME

We all know the importance and value of repeat customers for our businesses. More-so it is crucial for Small and Medium Enterprises to get repeat customers. In times, when global economies are going through major shifts and businesses are feeling the ecosystem evolving rapidly, it is important for every business/ entrepreneur to understand how to retain and build repeat customers.

Cost of customer acquisition: Repeat Customers Cost Less
To start with, we understand that getting a repeat customer is far less costly as compared to the investment done by the business for acquiring a new set of customer(s). There are many studies which have been done which prove the fact the above fact.
There are many business expenses which are related to customer acquisition: marketing, advertising, sales team etc.

Your business in times as competitive as today has to move fast and be on the look-out at all times, everytime, as each customer is being tracked by parallel and in many cases, similar set of services, which could be provided by your competitors globally and competitive prices as well and similar or at times better standards.

Source: http://static.searchengineguide.com/images/sudden-exposure-dsem.jpg

You sell by Word of Mouth
Its is given fact and almost all of us will believe, that repeat customers are walking advertisements for the business. Logic says that if a customer is coming back to your business, he/ she must have liked your set of services. Also, as business is more based on relationship, for SME's, a happy and satisfied customer, will majorly at all times, talk about your brand.

A referral from a trusted source, as we all know, works far more stronger and is a sure-shot way of developing business.

In the recent times Social Networks like LinkedIn and facebook have proven how powerful influencers can drive business for your emerging organization. There are fans following trusted brands, individuals alike which is dominating the board-room discussions in every emerging enterprise.

So how do you build repeat customers?
Though there is no magic wand/ mantra which you can speak of and customers will come running to you/ your business, but as in business, you can certainly follow the steps below and strategically work towards acquiring repeat business:

• Hire the right people

Your employees are your first customers. They are one of the most powerful sales engine for your organisation. Your business must ensure that demeanor and interaction with clients is focused towards cementing existing relationships and bring back business to the organisation.

Customers while interacting with your brand, actually do business with your brand ambassadors, your employees. Hence a powerfully enabled and empowered employee can do more good to your business.

• Your products/ services speak for themselves: be consistent, have a solid delivery

Large organisations as we see them today, did not grow as a chance or strike of luck! They grew to their size with sheer competence, ensuring that whatever they deliver is to the best of their abilities and that they are competitive enough as per industry standards, such that their customers get the best.

Being consistent is a lesson we learn early in life, while we are studying. As we expect even our national teams to perform consistently on the field, similarly we must maintain solid processes internally, which ensure quality at all costs and maintain consistency at all times.

Go to any McDonald's in a city and you will see the same products being sold over the counter, with the same speed and agility and pretty much the same taste. This ensures the customer that what he is going to get is value for his money and hence he walks in without a doubt.

You must set solid process oriented working methodologies in your growing enterprise, which ensure that your business creates ensured quality at all times.

• Know Your Customer - Well!

Learn this art from the banks. When you open a banking account, you fill a KYC form (know your customer). This is to ensure that the bank as an institution knows you well enough. Having such information creates a close relationship based on mutual trust which the client has with the banking institution.

But for SME's building a whole team of people with a KYC process seems an ardent task. Such business challenges can easily be tackled by innovative CRM (customer relationship management) software, available in the market. Smaller businesses can look at the Microsoft Office 2010 Standard and Professional Plus versions, which include Outlook with Business Contact Manager (BCM).

• Make them your best critiques: Co-create

Your customers could be your best critiques. They are at the receiving end of your set of services/ products/ solutions and hence you must always ensure that you take solid feedback from your customers on how are they experiencing your business proposition.

Co-creating with your customers, will ensure a solid relationship which will provide mutual respect and growth. Your customers grow close to you and your business, this way and it obviously helps!!

• Shake hands: go do it

Though it seems more and more profitable for any business operation today to leverage technology like video conferencing and mobile phones etc. Making a physical contact with your customers always creates an equation which is far different from anything else. Once an understanding is set, you can hence leverage the power of technology to touch base, while also helping your customer reduce cost and optimize business operations.

Connect with IndiaMart Knowledge Services to know more and create new business growth! Drop in a comment to this post to connect with us!

The New Companies Bill for SMEs

With the Indian SME becoming the backbone of the emerging Indian economy and the growing Indian stature globally, there are structures to be created which facilitate growth for the SMEs towards their emergence as large sectoral players.

Source: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/07/14/images/2010071453431901.jpg

While we at IndiaMart have been constantly sharing with our SME partners on their views on the subject, many of them have responded back with the thought of a new set of directives to be proposed by the Governments which allows softer norms for SMEs to comply with, which create a holistic environment of growth and spur innovation and collaboration.

We realize that many a times SMEs in India face issues due to lack of information and hence this Knowledge Forum for the Indian SMEs (IndiaMartb2b.blogspot.com) aims at empowering the Indian SME with knowledge and helping them grow! This post dwells upon the companies bill passed for the SMEs in India which at least a step is motivating for the SMEs and we welcome the same.

What is the New Companies Bill and what does it mean for the SMEs?
A small company shall be defined as a company which satisfies three conditions:

• It should not have a paid-up share capital and a turn-over beyond a specified limit
• The company should not be regulated by any sectoral regulator
• It should not hold any subsidiary company

There has been talk all around as to how to create a holistic growth oriented environment for SMEs in India and how to increase their say in the growing corporate business environment?! Many suggestions have since come up and thought leaders have proposed plans.

We all realize the power of the ever growing SME segment in India. Its slowly becoming the backbone of true innovation and growth of the emerging Indian economy globally. For this growth momentum to gain speed and to sustain while creating and delivering value over the longer horizon, the government has to be involved actively and participate in creating and coming up with rules and regulations, which help the SMEs grow.

What is the proposed Bill like: in simple words!

At IndiaMart, our core focus has always been to make things easier and simpler for our partner SMEs and hence we explain the New Companies Bill in its entirety while maintaining simplicity:

• A company should not have a paid-up share capital and a turnover beyond a specified limit. According to MSME Development Act, 2006, a small enterprise is one having an investment of more than 25 Lakh Indian Rupees but less than 5 crore Indian Rupees, if it is dealing in the production of goods whereas if the enterprise is dealing in the rendering of services then the investment in equipment should be more than 10 Lakh Indian rupees but should not exceed the limit of two crore.
• The new bill also clearly states that a company is not to be regulated by any sectoral regulator, for it to gain a recognized status of an SME, this clearly implies that the companies which are governed by a sectoral regulator cannot be classified as SMEs. 

Example: Telecom companies, governed by (TRAI) do not classify under the provision for the small companies in the new Companies Bill

MSME Doing its bit towards Growth of the SME in India

MSME in India has been working to lower many burdening mechanisms which have been existing which make it difficult for a small and emerging company to grow faster. Apart from infrastructure being created and managed, there are new laws being set which relax the requirements for Small and Medium enterprises and help them flourish, towards becoming large working corporate.

• The new bill also mandates that the enterprise that is having other subsidiaries to it, cannot be classified as a small company and hence will not be able to enjoy the privilege of certain exemptions which are validated for SME's.

Its time that SMEs be recognized

Many of our partner SMEs have since time raised the concern that Small and Medium companies need to be recognized and there have to be a different set of levels of compliance for SME's. There have to be new set of expectations to be created for the SMEs which have to be regulated under a formal bill which allow the SMEs to practically explore new and emerging opportunities towards growth.

The new bill proposes to exempt small companies from certain provisions of the company’s act. Those exemptions will be notified by the central government separately.

We are sure, as emerging SMEs you will sure have pointers to raise and concerns to share which can help many fellow SMEs towards mutual growth. Drop in your comments to the post and we shall take steps that your voice be heard!

Crowdsourcing to get work done the smarter way!

Hard work has no other ways to it, but to add onto it, smart work always pays! And if the combination of both can save your business the precious dollars, well, it sure must be music to ears!

What is Crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call. The following Wikipedia article explains the concept.

Source: http://www.enotes.com/w/images/thumb/a/ae/Crowdsourcing_process2.jpg/350px-Crowdsourcing_process2.jpg

How can it benefit your business?
Many a times Small and Medium Enterprises and emerging companies, look at doing things on their own to save on costs, which almost all the times hit on quality. Eg: young businesses and start-ups look at designing a website on their own as they kick-start, as they don't consider a professionally done website is an option, they should invest their critical resources into, till the time their business catches up.

While as a business one is small, the right steps to be taken are to ensure that you invest your resources on things which are your forte, your domain and focus, rather than looking at saving money on things and investing your own time in "trying to get it all done by being a jack of all trades" rather than "getting it done".

Crowdsourcing comes to rescue
Crowdsourcing simply is a way which creates an ecosystem wherein multiple stakeholders are involved, both on the value creation and value receiving side. Intelligently leveraging the concept, your business can surely reduce cost! How?
Lets take for an example, you need to get your website and a few brochures designed and you don't have time and money to hire a major branding company.

The first approach that you are bound to take as a quick action is call up your trusted contacts and ask for a reference of such a company. The work and pricing though may or may not fit into your scheme of things. But what if you had thousands of such vendors from various parts of the globe at your disposal who show you their work, looking at which you can discuss with them your own pricing!

But thousands of vendors?
YES! there are many such examples of platforms which are existing and are enabling SMEs to get quality work done at affordable prices, while keeping the timelines strict.

Why does this model work?
These vendors are themselves emerging players in the market which forms the ecosystem or at times value driven free-lancers. They have the sense that if your business grows, they will not only maintain a strong relationship, get more work in future, but also build up through referrals.

But can I trust them?
There are large platforms existing globally, some of which actually take the guarantee of your work being delivered to you hence you can be rest assured that what you are getting is not a runaway bride, but in actuals work done by specialists which would otherwise cost much for a business.

To know more about how you could outsource specialist work to vendors globally using Crowdsourcing platforms and generate value for your business, drop in a comment to this post!!

Customer Service - Its Crucial!

One of the most commonly used statement by Small and Medium Enterprises, is that : "its difficult for us to compete with larger firms" and generally economies of scale in various aspects of the business are cited as the reason for the same.

Especially SMEs in manufacturing and similar areas and domains comment that larger firms have the ability to purchase raw materials and they have the option of maintaining stocks for a longer time, while being small the SMEs are not able to afford such business scale due to obvious challenges.

Lets look at how Being Small is Beneficial
Many a times smaller firms fail to realize that the smaller scale provides them benefits, as they can provide far more customized service to their customers, while maintaining a personal touch, which is not really easy for a large organization.
Customer service is one crucial area where many companies feel, the bigger the customer service department, the better it is. While the experience of many a customers, when they voice their reasons of working with smaller and emerging firms is has been very engaging. Customers always voice that their experience of working with smaller and emerging companies is the fact that smaller companies are ready to work and go that extra mile for them. They feel its a relationship and not just business.

Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/customer-service.jpg

Customer Retention: only big companies can do it?!
Customer retention is times that we are living in, wherein every business is facing stiff competition. there are enough parallel offerings your customers have from the market at multiple price points, such that they are literally spoilt for choice. Your business has to be compelling enough to actually ensure that its worth dealing with.
Business is a lot about relationships. In our experience of working with SMEs since a couple of years in India, we have seen, companies starting-up and rising up the ladder of success, while maintaining and building upon solid relationships.

With technology keeping conversations alive and new age media and communication methodologies driving engagements, a personal touch to a communication energizes a relationship far stronger than any other way. And relationships are no different when it comes to doing successful business.

But even we will grow to a sizable organization one day!
YES! you will. And that's why we suggest our partner SMEs to create and establish internal processes which create the right set of expectations with the clients from the pre-sales stage to actually creating an experiential "wow" effect post sale.
Remember, customer service is not an accidental happening. It has to be planned before hand and there have to be solid and passion driven customer oriented mechanisms within a company, held together by driven professionals.

Technology helps
Technologies like CRM, Collaborative tools like Internal Social Networks empower your organizational prowess in delivering quality and maintaining and managing it with and for your customers. From ensuring that timely reporting mechanisms exist in your organisation to invoice creation and tracking. From taking feedback to service calls, using available technology in the market can surely help your business become more process oriented and customer centric.

But isn't it going to cost me a bomb?
Not really! Much of the technology is free or priced very affordably. There are many open source tools available which are proving to be a great boon for emerging companies and start-ups alike.

As an SME its in your good to ensure that your customer is happy and that you build on relationships on strong foundations. Going the extra mile is probably one of the biggest reasons why a customer is being with you in the first place, while keeping your expertise and value add on high priority for the business.

To know more about how you can create solid processes in your organization to ensure quality customer service, drop a comment to this post and our team of experts will be happy to help!

The ROBO Generation: Business Idea

We all have heard robots speaking in a strange tone, that mechanical sound which comes out obviously is not something which we humans connect with too heartily, though robots may help us in everyday life, performing many a functions!

ROBO - is not robotic, its the new way of perception oriented buying, the new wave of building trust
What is ROBO?
ROBO - is research online, buy online. YES! We all must have heard about E-commerce and in the past few years, we have witnessed the phenomena of E-commerce take a solid shape. There was a time when we were all a little away from the idea of using our credit/ debit cards online, but today, well, a good consumer percentage is buying online.

So how has the online buying space changed the way we have been shopping?
Online shopping has essentially revolutionized the way we have been shopping. Sitting in the comfort of our own homes we can now have access to almost every thinkable product on the planet. We know, its still difficult for many to believe that you can buy something like a piece of cloth online or may be jewelery online! Lets keep this point on hold for sometime.

But why are trends changing
The consumer today is crunched on time. Lets be honest that one thing which we all are crunched about is time and its an obvious when we say/ hear that time is money, well it sure is. The one major benefit of commerce online is saving on time.

But is it simply just about time?

• Access to a wide variety of products globally

Now you can shop for something you liked and get it in your hands from anywhere across the Globe.

• Save Money

Surely many of us reading this blog post must have had engaged in some sort of E-commerce at some points of time in our lives and must have had saved money. There are exclusive discounts present online on many products and its a win-win for both the retailer and the customer.

But how do I trust just a website?

Now that's a real question! How do I trust a website? Its an obvious, that placing trust on just a website is not an easy thing until it is another eBay or a IndiaTimes.

Lets first create an understanding of the technology that goes at the back-end. Its not just a website that you are interacting with, its a portal, which is guarded by strong codes and is highly secure.

While you actually enter the details of your banking accounts/ cards on a website, the actual transaction takes place through the servers of a banking institution and not the website. These are highly encrypted 128 bit codes which are held strongly and hence your information is not compromised.

Obviously you must have a fair look at the website and know about them, before buying from it. There can always be fraudulent sites, which may look like wow, but may be fraudulent at the back-end.

Not satisfied yet, then go read reviews!!

The best part about online shopping is that you can get reviews from customers of a product globally and that too honest one's. And well, companies have had to change many a ways of their operations with the views which have been done online. Eg: the recent Apple MacBook Air 11.5 inches, many customers have uploaded videos on YouTube, actually showing how sometimes the screen flickers and many prospective customers have responded back with their queries on this one!!

That's the power of online commerce. If you actually go through real reviews online before making a buy decision, you will actually be saving both on time and money.

And where is the business idea: the case!

The case we are making here is with social media emerging globally, there are interesting trends as to how customers are changing the way they buy. Their buying behaviors are changing, which is largely being affected by the online commerce.

There still is a good opportunity in the market for platforms which can get customers to actually review products online for the good of many more and brands actually responding back to the same. Though there are platforms existing of the sort, but with social commerce setting in, there is more to what we has been already scratched!

For more entrepreneurial opportunities, well we at IndiaMart are all ears! Get in touch, drop a comment now!

Mobile Apps to Empower Your Growing SME

Mobile is the way to go. The future of communication and engagement is changing with the mobile technology making a whole new space, with new forms of communication emerging even as we speak!

But there are so many apps available, how does it help my business?
Technology is changing the way businesses operate today. The mobile technology has affected everything from productivity to Travel, Networking to the way you keep yourself updated and also how you communicate better and faster with your teams.

Source: http://www.watblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Juniper-Forecast-Mobile-App-Downloads-To-Reach-25-Billion-By-2015.jpg

Here we present to you some of the most interesting apps for business users:
Travel:
Traveling for business executives is a part of their profile. Traveling may involve client visits, exhibitions/ events etc. What is you would have had a travel planner which shows you who all are your friends who are at the same place where you are traveling, which you can connect with!

TripIt does the job for you!
Platforms available on: BlackBerry, iPhone, Android
USP: it allows you to explore connects with people/ friends/ business connects while you are traveling in any part of the world.

Productivity:
Do we need to stress on how crucial is productivity for the businesses of today? A simple example in case is sales teams in organisations and also customer service teams in various organisations. Their productivity directly affects the operational and delivery capability of the business.

Evernote lets you be productive on the go!
Platforms available on: BlackBerry, iPhone, Android
Evernote allows you to snap a photo, take a screenshot, type in text, or speak your note to capture information on the go. And once you’ve captured the information, it helps you organize and find it by making all of the information in your photos or notes searchable.

Business Networking:
Your network is everything. Every business owner/ senior executive will agree to this. Networking is one of the strongest and critical most part for any SME and what better than networking while on the move?!

LinkedIn for mobile enables you to keep in touch and be updated with what is happening in your professional network at all times.
But there may be times, when its about networking and exploring opportunities with friends and family, which are generally present on facebook. The facebook for mobile app lets you do just that!

News on the go:
Many people today access information on the go. They want to keep themselves updated with what's happening in and around their business ecosystem. Sometimes just getting a hang of the latest news in the circuit can help you take critical business decisions, win deals at times, come up with pro-active pitches and the rest.
The Business Week mobile app makes all the information available at your fingertips LIVE!
Platform available on: iPhone, BlackBerry

For business which want to keep track of International news in their respective domains, The Wall Street Journal Mobile App paves way for LIVE information throughout the day, keeping you abreast of happenings all around.

There are many more mobile applications which are coming in by dozens for business users on platforms like BlackBerry, iPhone and Android etc. These are changing the way business is conducted globally and giving a sharp edge to the executives over their competition.

To know more about how you can develop a business app for your own SME (monitor sales) etc. drop in a comment and our team of experts will get back to you!

Organisational Development: What Areas Should an SME Invest In?

Almost at all times, the Small and Medium enterprises fall into this trap of choosing from a whole list of activities which need to be done for growing the business and taking it to the next level.

We have many items on our list, but we need to invest, what should we do?
Money and resources (time included) are crucial for any company and moreso for the SME. You have to prioritize at various stages of organisational growth as to what do you as a business invest into, at the present and what should you be keeping for the future.

But to me everything seems important, its difficult to prioritize
Many a times SMEs have the similar state of existence, when everything seems crucial to business growth. At this stage the business leads (vertical heads/ business heads)/ people who are responsible for charting our business growth must collaborate together and brainstorm to ensure that everyone is at the same page, while discussing business growth.
This activity will help bring new perspective to the business. Only the CEO sitting at the top, making decisions, in cases of SMEs may not be the right approach to prioritizing.

Are there any particular pointers which you think can help us set our thought process right?
At IndiaMart, our experience with the SMEs over years has led to some very basic pointers which will provide a direction to your thought process, while you are in the process of prioritizing the re-investment into your business.

Some crucial and un-avoidable areas of investment for a growing business, which often get ignored are:
HR

1. Training and Development
2. Investment towards recruiting the right talent on-board

Branding

1. Brand building - Internal and External

Corporate Communication

1. Internal
2. External

Technology

1. Automation and Process Improvement

Customer Service/ Support

1. Strong processes, making the customer support/ service strictly process oriented

Infrastructure

1. Re-invest into your infrastructure, give your people an environment to work in, which they love

Knowledge Retention and Management

1. Using technology you could retain critical knowledge and build practices around knowledge retention and management

Legalities

1. Invest into the right legal advice to build robust accounting practices

Marketing

1. Use internet for business promotion
2. Use mobile to reach to to your set of target customers
3. Go to events and make your brand visible
4. Marketing/Sales collaterals

Process Development

1. You must invest into process development - internally in your business. A process oriented organisation always has an edge over its competitors, people are more productive and all work towards achieving quality within their processes

One of the most important activity which must constantly be invested into is the improvement in an entrepreneur's own self. There has to be a constant up-gradation of the entrepreneur's self which keeps the competitive nature alive at all times and makes the team look upto the lead.

We are sure, as entrepreneurs you must be making many decisions of which area of the organisation to invest into such that you may derive the maximum benefit for your organisation. For more, drop in a comment and our team of experts will be happy to help!

The New Mandate: 365 day communication and not 360 degree marketing

There is a new world order, with the modes of communication going through a whole new evolutionary phase, every business and its customers alike are feeling the change. IndiaMart helps you understand and maintain the competitive edge! Read how:

What does this mean for Small and Medium Enterprises?
For the SMEs well, it means business. Emerging companies in India are experiencing a whole new dynamic shift in the way business is conducted. Every functional area within an organisation is undergoing an evolutionary shift.

Eg: employee engagement, which used to be one of the functions of the HR in any company today is a full fledged function within organisations and tools such as MS Sharepoint and many other collaborative frameworks are being used, which has resulted in not only increasing retention but also reducing down cost of talent acquisition in a way for emerging companies.

360 degree marketing: R.I.P
We have all studied in major marketing manuals about 360 degree approach to marketing. The times we have evolved started from print to television and now the digital forms of marketing. But the times of 360 degree marketing are a passe now. Businesses are soon evolving to understand how consumerism is changing and hence they need to mold the ways of working accordingly to always keep their fierce competitive nature intact.

Source: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1076/4727872584_9ba85bfecb_b.jpg

Lets Un-learn and Re-learn: 365 Days of Communication
Un-learning is as much a part of the process of evolution, as is re-learning. Lets understand for a moment something which we have been doing since ages now as humans: Talking and Conversing!
Yes, we all converse daily in our lives, the effective context may change w.r.t the audience we are dealing with which further influences our content.

Businesses now have to understand just this: talk by creating the right context!


Technology and New Media is changing the game
Mobile Technology and New Media has changed the game for businesses today. Mobility has evolved the way consumers look at and engage with content. Eg:
Apple iPhone and smart devices like the iPad:

Source: http://www.personal.psu.edu/scd5029/blogs/SCDIST110H/apple-iphone-kybd-large.jpg

Communicate to your customers the way they access about you

We have all read about the basic, that you must be in the listening of your customers/ employees and every other stakeholder to your business. Now is the time to put it into effect!

Communicate 365 days with your stakeholders

Leverage the power of Social Media and other emerging technologies where your customers and employees are already present to communicate. You no more need to physically go and touch base. Strong content such as Video: Blogs: Vlogs: Podcasts etc. help your business reach out to your relevant target audience while maintaining the context and the meaning and increasing engagement.

Create a powerful context and Empower your customer to converse with your business daily

Its human to talk and converse, share, learn and grow. That's what your business now needs to be. Instead of being a business to your customers, you now have to be closely related to your customers. The human intention and context makes a lot of difference and new technologies and powerful content enable your business to communicate with its customers smartly!

Drop in a comment to this post, if you wish to know more about how your business can communicate effectively, in less time and with increased engagement. Our team of experts will be happy to help!

Your Website Behaves In a Manner - Understanding Google Analytics

If there are no free lunches in this world, then there sure are God sent tools to help your business get just the right perspectives. As a Small and Medium enterprise, one of the basic most things which a business does to set its online presence is to have a website!

I have a website! But do you understand it enough?
Its important to understand your first step to being online, which is your website, very closely. One skill recommended to business owners who have a website is to have a solid understanding of their site analytics. Many people treat their website as something they need to have “just because.” If you build a site for services you offer or products you sell, what people see and how they interact is directly related to how much money your site rakes in for you.

To start with an overview, what if you know, the most popular pages on your website, who is coming to your website and from where, for how long are people staying on which page of your website, which keywords are people searching for and landing onto your website, are you getting relevant traffic or not, what if you get to know which pages do you need to change in terms of design! Google analytics enables you to do just that and a lot more.

Site Usage Overview: Dashboard

Visits

A visit simply put, is, one person who views one or more pages on the site. If the same person comes back, that’s two visits.

More visits to a site equates to more “traffic” and more people in general seeing the site. Logically you will want this number to improve and be in the positive everytime and increase with time.

Pageviews

Pageviews are the number of pages on your site that were viewed. Generally, each link you click takes you to a new page. If, in one month, 1,000 people went to the homepage, clicked on an article and then landed somewhere on your website, that month would have 2,000 page views.

Since pageviews signifies that more and more of content is being seen on your website, you will wnt this number to increase with time, like visits. pageviews can increase in two ways: more visitors could be coming to the site or visitors could be viewing more pages per visit.

Pages/visit

Dividing total page views by total visits gives the average number of pages that are viewed per visit.

An increasing pages/visit number shows that visitors are clicking on more pages on the site per visit. This is a crucial metric as it helps the site owner understand that more and more of content is being seen on the website.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of people who see one page and leave the site (essentially “bouncing” off of a page). Visitors who bounce have a page/visit number of 1. Bounce rate should generally be lower and you must look at maintaining the content on your website strongly and make it engaging enough, such that the user on your website feels compelled enough to stay on.

A decreasing bounce rate is always a good thing. A decreasing bounce rate means that people found what they wanted and more. Bounce rate is affected by the same things that the pages/visit number is: site design, engagement levels of the content, site UI.

Average time on site

This number is the average amount of time that each visit lasts. This figure is tough to report accurately by any of the analytics programs.

An increasing time, however, could be an indication of reader engagement and attention span. 

% New Visits

This is the percentage of the total visits that came from new visitors. A new visitor is simply someone without our site’s cookie present in their browser. As such, this figure has a fairly high margin of error.

Know your customer: Sources of Traffic

Traffic sources can basically be of three kinds:

• direct traffic (people who type our URL in their browser or use a browser-based bookmark)
• referring sites (a link to our site from another site)
• search engines.

There’s no right or wrong distribution of traffic sources but a healthy strategy will typically keep each piece close to a third. Though it depends upon your business domain, the content available on the internet, search trends of prospective customers etc, these factors help form the right strategic direction for a healthy mix of traffic sources. 

Keeping a strong tab on your Traffic sources can surely help you realize the need for SEO, Optimizing content etc.

Content Overview: Understanding your website content

Content is the most critical aspect/ feature of your product called "website" after the UI and design. Website content is not something which is written once and forgotten forever. Infact it must be evolved overtime and changed dynamically according to the consumer insight you have. According to what you think is your prospective target audience searching you by/ with.

Ensure that content is fairly strongly placed, as that is the key to not only keeping your target audience engaged but to actually get them to reach your website in the first place.

How do we access Google Analytics/ Teach me the initiation of how to integrate it with my website?

Its fairly simple, and its FREE!! If you do not already have a Google analytics account running, create one on: www.google.com/analytics. once you are through create a new account!

Once you are through, Google will give you a GA code, which you will need to enter into the footer of your website in all pages. It will be far easier if you have a CMS (content management system) supporting your site at the back-end.

We hope this information helps our SMEs to further take charge of their online presence and reach to the next level. For more information and support, drop in a comment to this post and our team of expert will get help you truly emerge!!

People Management: How Training Helps the SMEs

Human Resources doubtless are the most crucial part of any business. They are your first customers. Do we need to lay any more stress on the topic, when large conglomerates like HCL proudly announce: Employee First, Customer Second!

Right Talent: Critical for the Small and Medium Enterprise
Its the talk of the town, for every emerging business and let us clarify, not only for emerging businesses, but for every business, getting the right talent on-board is an absolute must. It is true and it stands that every business might have different views to the word "right", and each emerging business might have their own set of standards and expectations from their human resources, but its true and an absolute essential to have the right talent delivering your promise!

I don't believe in Right/ Perfect Talent, Do you?
There are many entrepreneurs who will voice out that they do not believe in something called the right talent/ perfect talent and that everyone evolves, learn and grow, well it is true! Learning is a continuous process and is a crucial part of anyone's existence.
In the enterprise set-up the learning and growth is defined as "training". Employees are trained to do what they are required to and also to achieve far beyond, what they are required to.

But how do we train? We don't have the budgets!!
Well, training in today's times is not a very difficult objective to achieve. Digital content and ways to archive content digitally has ensured that the process of training becomes scalable and far less time consuming. Also the digitized form of content can be easily accessed by anyone, anywhere and anytime.

Source: http://rphrm.curtin.edu.au/1998/issue1/vietnam01.png

But we want our people to be trained by the best in class!
Great, you no more have to fly your manpower all around the world. There are fantastic solutions like Webex and Skype with video chat facilities available, which require just a sound broadband connection in place as an investment in the infrastructure.

How do we reach out to such people? 
There are many different ways to reach out to such thought leaders:

• Connect at SME focused events
• Attend focused discussions supported by industry associations like NASSCOM, FICCI etc.
• Leverage professional social networking platforms like LinkedIn

Learning can never stop, is it the same with training!

Yes! learning can never stop and same is the case with training. You must always ensure that your employees always maintain the zest of learning and creating new opportunities for your business.

For more information ask our industry Pro's about training needs in your organisation.

Choosing Your Investor: Lessons in Finance for the SME

Rising from the recession, with the economy getting back with strength, there are many new opportunities being churned and created, especially for the emerging SME sector. There is increased risk taking by the SMEs, which is spurning new areas of growth and development.

SMEs are increasingly becoming the backbone of the emerging Indian economy and one critical aspect of the entire chain is, funding/ investment.

The funding ecosystem in India for the SMEs
There are many sources of raising capital and funds for the SMEs in India, each with their own existence and functional methodology. SMEs may require funds at various stages of existence, from start-up to working capital and scaling up. Broadly classifying, the various ways of raising these funds are:

• Angel Investment
• Banks
• Venture Capital
• Private Equity etc.

But how do you choose your investor?

This is a major and critical step. Choosing your investor will always affect your business in more ways than one. As the stakeholders in the business increase, the responsibilities get more diligent and hence the ownership and also the decision making.

As you venture out on your entrepreneurial journey seeking funds, there will always be many good investors who would want to put money in your business. But it may not always be the best thing as an entrepreneur to give into all such offers and temptations.

Its like a marriage - a relationship of a man and a wife

The relationship between an investor and an entrepreneur is like the bond of matrimony. And any experience person would say that it is better to stay single, than to marry a wrong person, it is better to boot-strap your enterprise than to get stuck with the wrong investor.

Serious investors come on board with a thoroughly professional and experienced approach to investing and they have done it multiple times over years. They do their own due diligence before committing themselves/ their resources/ their money/ support to a budding enterprise.

A strong lesson for all emerging businesses is, while you are looking to raise funds, it does, in no way mean that you cannot have your say in choosing your own investor

What are the pointers that you must take into account while raising funds?

• Are you prepared to share ownership?

Letting go, is one lesson which the entrepreneur must learn and be prepared with, even before going in the market to raise funds. Anyone who parts his money to invest into your business, will surely ask you to part with some ownership of the company, and the ownership status and rights may change. This change at times is not something which the entrepreneurs are always mentally prepared for.

• Take help from experts

Raising funds is not an easy game. Valuations as a word in the English dictionary sounds very good, but not a word which would really be yours at all times and may not be music to your ears at all stages of your growth as a business.

The best way generally is to go to your successful entrepreneurial friends, who have been through the process, they are the best placed to share their insights and experiences.

Source: http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/wp-content/uploads/follow_the_money_small.jpg

• Funds don't come in a jiffy

Fund raising is not like a part time job. It is a full time activity which requires a lot of focus and effort from the entire core team of your enterprise. It requires rigorous planning, focus, host of meetings and presentations. There is no particular template which you present your Bplan in which fetches you the magical money! Be prepared to shelve off time from your daily schedule towards raising funds in a focused manner.

• Big words may not work big

Valuations, Equity, Shares, Projections, Net profit, Gross profit, P&L - these are all big words which you will encounter many a times during your process of raising funds, be sure of it. But what you must do is, to focus and ensure that the real thing is the transaction. The legal documents that you sign off. Read through each and every team and word carefully. Many a times you may or may not understand many terms, ensure you take help.

• Dont' over raise

Your investor at times may be over generous and offer you more buck for your bang and similarly at times you may wan to raise more bang for your buck. Just as they say under-commit and over achieve/ deliver, well, even while raising funds, ensure that neither of you over promise things. Keep your roles and understanding very clear.

• Investor's stake - is it only money?

Is your investor going to come on board with only money or is it the fact that he would bring in business as well? Ensure that your investor is someone who is as interested (if not passionate) in your business and has as much conviction in your execution capability, delivery, team, idea etc. that he adds value in the form of ideas, mentoring, advisory as well, other than just money.

Many a times, the actual value which a start-up needs other than money is, the right hand holding and mentoring.

Fund raising is critical to the growth of the business at the right times of the enterprise scaling up. Ensure that you are prepared well. To know more about raising funds, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts will come back to you!

Awareness In the Market: How Do Small Companies get It?

Small and Medium Enterprises, this segment of the business ecosystem is a class of their own! Why? Well, SME's represent that emerging segment of the business ecosystem which is slowly becoming the backbone of the growing Indian economy. There is a new scale emerging in the economy and that due to entrepreneurs who are rising to the occasion of building new enterprises, coming up with innovative solutions to problems being faced by consumers.

Entrepreneurs: challenge of reaching out for them
Entrepreneurs may be solving many challenges, but one the most heard of challenge which we hear of, from every SME is that of Go To Market/ Outreach/ Reaching out to the relevant target audience.

Why is it a challenge?

• Budgets
• Cost of marketing
• Does it generate ROI in terms of increasing business for the SME?
• Who does it for me, I don't have the bandwidth?!
• I am not a marketing professional, where and how can I seek trustworthy help?

Our experience in the Indian SME space has provided us many insights, which have led us to compile this list of ways in which the SME can create effective outreach campaigns, which lead to results, if leveraged effectively, driven by the right people.

Your Marketing Strategy

Your marketing strategy should be a good mix of various media, which help you satisfy and align with your business objectives. But before you create your marketing strategy, ensure that your business objectives are absolutely clear and set, with defined results that you are looking at achieving from them.

• Learning: Define and Set your business objectives before creating your marketing plan

Your Customer/ Consumer

The next and one of th most crucial steps is to understand your target audience. Lets set this expectation that its not the fact that only the people you want to reach out to, only they will be seeing your marketing messages and the rest will shut their eyes to them. Hence understand, that all you are doing is "communicating" and you need to do it very well!

You must understand your customers and what are they talking about/ communicating/ looking for/ searching for, when they are searching for your/ your set of services/ parallel services.

"Understand the context" this is crucial to understand what the various set of your clients are meaning of your proposition.

"Where is your customer searching you": online/ offline media

• Learning: customer understanding has to be powerful with trends and insights

Lets Talk: Communicate Now

We know well, the fact that you understand your business very well. But its a different ball game to understand what "perceived value" are your target customers/ audience putting on what you are "trying to create"

We all like expressing but we all do it in our own way and manner and hence expect the same. Thus you must not set a one size fits all rule in your communications to all your clients!

• Learning: create powerful and targeted messaging and communication

Cost effective tools/ methods to use?

There are many ways you can bring down your marketing cost drastically. And low cost marketing does NOT mean low engagement. Infact you can powerfully drive your communications and measure the results generated as well.

• Use the Internet
• SEO
• SEM (Google Ads)
• behavioral targeting to your evolving customers
• Blogging
• Social Media Marketing
• ensuring strong content
• innovative engaging propositions
• making your brand an "Experience" to engage with
• Leverage events
• be quick to reach out to editorials with your thoughts on various events happening across the industry and how do you see business being affected and solutions being generated
• *an editorial space is worth many more paid ads

Talk: Literally

Why don't you talk to your customers each month by creating a video of your's and communicating the various wins and instill confidence in them about your emerging initiatives. You will see word of mouth happening by its own self. 

And don't forget to talk to your first customers: the internal customers. Keep them updated and engaged with your messages and you will see a team building up with as much excitement, sharing the same vision as you!

Marketing today has evolved as a discipline and in scope. There are innovative go to market methods and methodologies which if leveraged well, can give your business the energy and excitement and engage your target audience in your conversation.

Leave a comment to this post, to know more about going online and leverage the Internet powerfully for your business, from our team of experts!

Winning Mantra for SMEs: Co-create with Your Customers

The Small and Medium Enterprises, evolving into emerging businesses of today, face various operational challenges. With the ever evolving market dynamics, there is stiff competition all around and the customers have a wide variety of choice (most of the times) to the services that you have on offer.

How do you still ensure customer retention?
When we talk about customer retention, there are many interesting variables which are to be taken into account. A strong delivery is one such crucial measure. The business ecosystem is evolving so fast that every emerging business has to emerge accordingly.

But there is so much to do, How do we 'ENGAGE' our customers?
Co-create!!! Co-creation by definition has been explained exhaustively in this Wikipedia article. Lets understand by creating a perspective on the same with respect to the Customer - Enterprise/ Business relationship.

The Evolving Communication Landscape and How has it Affected Business Conduct
In the times we are living in, business is being carried out in ways which were never thought of before. The communication landscape has changed and evolved so widely that it has affected almost every aspect of how businesses communicate both internally with their employees, while engaging them towards success and also how they communicate and engage their customers/ clients.

Social Media and How are Emerging Technologies Changing Business
Technology is changing the way we communicate, which is further impacting the way business is conducted. With the Social Networking revolution dawning upon mankind, there is a whole different view and meaning to what we call freedom of speech.

Businesses globally are waking up to the power of the new medium. Your customers have the ability to talk as powerfully and communicate as strongly today. Its a two way communication and not just you listen and I speak relationship.

So How do You Co-create With Your Customers?
Each business has essentially two sets of customers:

• Internal: employees
• External: paying customers

For any business to be successful, you need to always have both sets of customers engaged strongly in your conversation.

Whether you innovate, ideate, come up with new services/ business lines, look at positively affecting your bottom-line, these sets of customers are highly crucial for every step, the business takes.

There are many insights shared on this topic by gurus, but I intend to make things a little simple and create a thought flow, which will eventually emerge into a process flow. Setting expectations:

                                          Source: http://blog.allencomm.com/index.php/2009/01/benefits-of-internal-collaboration-and-collaboration-between-client-and-vendor-teams/

• Value is co-created by the customer and the enterprise
• Individual is central to the co-creation activity
• Customer - Enterprise engagement forms the core of the value creation process
• Customer - Enterprise engage at various levels, across functions and hierarchies for driving value
• Value driven, focused Co-creation environments are created within the enterprise to foster the Co-creation ecosystem

Lets now take an example to put the case forward: lets say you are an emerging company (SME) who is looking to innovate and come up with new lines of business/ explore/ expand into further business opportunities, while being strong in your domain.

How do you essentially drive the whole exercise? OR let me ask the first basic question, who all do you think must be the stakeholders of this entire activity?

A view to this is, an emerging company, which is many a times crunched on bandwidth, must Co-create with its customers and prospects. It must make focus groups within the company which are driven by targeted goals. These focus groups must be owned by internal employees who are guided by subject matter experts/ advisors.

The next step in line should be engaging your core set of customers who are affected/ will be affected/ will be prospects by/ for your new line of business. Engage?
Yes! Engage. Engage them into working closely with your business. But obviously you cannot expect your customers to put in time in your business, they have their own work to take care of right?!

Yes they do, and that is where collaborative - knowledge management technology comes into the picture. There are many tools and SaaS based platforms which are powerfully being leveraged by many organisations to engage their internal customers, while increasingly empowering the external customers to work closely as one team with the internal stakeholders.

The Lessons
Co-creation has to do a lot about the culture. Its not a process which you implement and it will fall in line, its a thought which needs to be pulled through and ingrained into the working ecosystem of a company. The next stage is usage of smart, social and collaborative technology (many SaaS based platforms) are available now, which are smart and well affordable.

The third and the last leg of the journey is the customer. Bringing him from the offline interactive world to a mode where he/ she connects online and collaborates with you to create success an grow together is another initial hurdle to be crossed.

Happy Co-creating and if need, connect with us by dropping in a comment to this blog post and our team of experts will be happy to share thoughts on how your organisation could leverage the power of Co-creation.

What and How of Business Planning for the SME

Business Plan
These two words would have resounded around you many a times. For any business emerging or large, business planning is one activity, which keeps going on throughout the life of the business. Various stakeholders are involved, at multiple stages of the business planning which ultimately influences the business and how it functions.

Lets start from the scratch
An entrepreneur may have multiple reasons supporting his idea and hence the related business plan, which will have everything from the proposed working plan, the resources required, the funds required, the scaling up plan, the projected revenues and many other things.

From Idea to Reality

• That thing which does not have a physical reality does not exist in business

Your idea is just another one of the many passing thoughts which you might get during the usual course of your life. Putting it down in black and white will only help making it exist for you, which also further enables the entrepreneur to refine the same.

The journey from being a mere idea in one’s head to paper is not an easy one, as it forces the entrepreneur to think with clarity, logic & see the opportunity in its totality.

• Remember your Bplan is not a fund raising document

Many entrepreneurs may think that writing a Bplan is really for the investor, who will be their guardian angel and come and invest. Well, this notion is wrong and hence Bplan must really be used by the entrepreneur to bring more clarity and explore all possible permutations and combinations, ensuring that the business plan is a strongly thought of and well laid out document.

Is there a standard template to write a Bplan in?

Not really! There are a few core aspects of a strong Bplan, but there is no standard template as such. Overtime, though with experience, some formats have emerged which are the resultant of the vast experience of successful entrepreneurs, who have raised businesses.

I have a million dollar Idea to change the world, how do I raise money now?
Investors invest in a business and not in an idea. Any investor would want to see how prepared are you as an entrepreneur, how strong a domain expertise do you have upon which you are proposing a business. A business is something which is aimed at solving challenges which results in value creation along the way.

And before you proceed ahead, lets answer these questions for ourselves:

• Why hasn’t the problem above been solved before?
• What makes you and your team experts at solving the problem?
• Why can’t other companies solve the problem?
• Barrier to Entry:  Why can’t a company with $100M in capital solve the problem better than you?

While creating your business plan, the basic out-liners you must keep in mind are: 

WHAT

• What is the space 
• Not telecom / entertainment
• Who are the market leaders
• Their size
• The opportunity
• Market potential from external sources
• Keep it very brief
• What is your product / service 
• Are you re-inventing the wheel?
• How does it fit in the landscape

WHY

• Why is your product / service necessary
• What pain points is it addressing
• Is it enhancing an existing value proposition?
• Is the process bettering an existing business proces?
• Are you trying to do something different or differently?
• Is it a need or can it still be worked out?
• Eg: a wallet which essentially is used for keeping money, could be a simple wallet, or a designer case

WHO

• You must identify your actual customer, the one who actually gets affected by your proposition
• Are you looking at creating a new customer base OR enhancing an existing customer base
• Are you directly targeting the end customer/ consumer OR is there a delivery mechanism/ chain in between
• Does your customer already know of the product OR would you have to educate your target segment for the same?
• What are the parameters of your customer?
• Geography
• Age
• Urban / rural

COMPETITION

• Who is your competition?
• Product / service
• Company/ Agency
• A comparative business process (eg: manufacturing)
• Size up your competition
• SWOT of competition
• Lessons learnt from competition
• Business scaling up Trends in competitive companies
• Business Investment Trends
• Human Resources
• Business Scaling up
• Technology
• Marketing

USP

• What are your differentials
• What is the USP of your proposition
• How long is the Product life cycle 
• Your Go To Market strategy
• Cost differential across various market segments

Business and Delivery: Execution is the Key:

For any Small and Emerging business, execution is the key. You must have clearly defined internal processes to back a strong delivery mechanism. Execution must be ensured, backed with a strong delivery model.

Many a times small companies fall into this catch of getting more and more business, while in the thought of keeping the costs low, they take more work than their delivery teams could take up successfully. Your delivery model must look at the following pointers:

• How will you deliver
• Technology leveraged
• Outsourced Alliances
• Pre Sales process
• Execution mechanism
• After Sales Strategy

About Your Team

Your Bplan must definitely have a strong mention of your team which is behind the venture, with their backgrounds, experiences, Job Roles, board of advisors, their equity structure, team scale up plans.

Projected Financials

• Current  / Projected for next 3 years
• Topline / bottom line
• Headcount
• Projected
• When will it break even
• Profitable businesses are more attractive
• Self investment & funding received till date
• Skin in the game
• Investment sought
• For what
• Where will it take your venture
• Next round requirement
• Cash flow based workings
• No debt retirement
• Valuation expectation

RISKS and MITIGATION actually present 

Your risk mitigation strategy should be in place even before you present the plan.

Being one o the critical most activities to be always sure of, to seek advice in terms of Business Planning, drop in a comment to the post and our team of experts will be glad to help!

Legalities for SMEs: Writing a Partnership Agreement

Legalities for SMEs are critical
For any small and emerging business, legal aspects of the business are one of the most crucial and critical to follow and get into. Each geography of the world has a certain way in which it functions and so are the laws.

The knowledge team at IndiaMart is committed to creating opportunities for the Indian SME, which enable smooth functioning and hence add onto the economic growth. This blog aims at making the readers understand the partnership form of business a little more closely and formally.

Partnership: the Start-up!
Many small businesses in India are initiated as partnerships, partners could be in the form of friends known to each other, within the family etc.

If you're in a partnership, it's highly advisable to have a formal, written partnership agreement. 

While it may not be a mandate required by the law, a partnership agreement enables the partners, in designing a strong framework for defining each partner's:

• obligations
• settling the conflicts
• disagreements and other difficult-to-resolve issues

that naturally occur in nearly every business relationship. This ultimately helps in ensuring the long term healthy sustenance of your business.

Starting the Partnership Agreement Creation
Create your written partnership agreement with the assumption that anything at anytime can go wrong with your partnership. There can arise frictions between partners over trivial issues such as money, power or ego. There should all possible "what-if" situations taken care of in the partnership agreement. You will always see that the agreement will make things clearer and more structured for your business and its healthy sustenance.

How can you save money in the application drafting process
Drafting the first phase of the application process and then taking it to your attorney will at least help you save on the initial consulting cost. Some of the pointers below can help you in drafting the first level of your Business Partnership Agreement:


Basics:

• name of the partnership?
• purpose of the partnership?
• duration of the partnership?

Responsibilities, remuneration and the role:

• Define each partner's role?
• Define each partner's responsibilities in the business.
• What commitments in terms of time do each partner needs to make?
• Define the income of each partner, and structure the P&L distribution *this always creates issues if not drafted well enough

Contributions

• Define each partner's contribution to the partnership in terms of cash, assets, loans, investments, and/or labor?
• Future seeking : Are there any additional contributions to the partnership expected in the future from any of the partners, and if so, how will they be handled?

Self Exit/ Expulsion of existing partners/ New partners joining

• Any specific guidelines to be followed if one partner wants to leave the partnership?
• How will any of the partner be allowed to sell his/ her stake to any external entity?
• Define and set terms for expulsion for the partners *this has to be clearly set and athered to
• Define clearly the terms for the New partners and how will they be allowed into the business, will they work on the same terms as the partners before?

Resolving Disputes

• Define clearly the methods that will be used to settle disputes that can't be otherwise resolved?
• Will you use mediation or binding arbitration?

Handling Finance

• Who handles the banking matters and what arrangements are made for the partnership?
• Define, if all the partners or some designated ones are signatory authority on signing cheques
• Who will oversee book-keeping process?

If the partnership needs to be dissolved?

• How and when can the partnership be dissolved?

Defining valuation

• Define clearly the third party institution who will take a call over the business valuation

If you wish to know more, leave a comment to this post and our team of experts will be happy to help you!!

Innovation and The Small and Medium Enterprise

Innovation is the key! we all would have heard this statement many a times in our lives and must have tried our hands at it.

SME and the Growth: Role of the Government
The SME segment in India is a major contributing factor to the growth of the Indian economy. Creating an ecosystem that incubates and promotes innovation, requires policy intervention and funding by the government. For the growth to continue in a sustained manner, the Government has to create strong policies which support the growth of the SME ecosystem.

Cheaper - Quicker - Better: the Comparative Advantage!
One of the strongest winners for the SME is to deliver “cheaper, quicker, better”. Any SME, with a strong comparative advantage in any of these will sure be on the path to being a sure gainer. There are many examples to this thought: low-cost airlines and the mobile telecom sector have clearly demonstrated the advantages of being cheaper; “fast” food chains have built their businesses around “quicker”; many FMCG companies claim their success by being "better".

But Can SMEs thrive only on these three differentiators?
While there may be single companies building on one of these advantages, it is not really sustainable. There will always be a rapid convergence amongst all players in a marketplace on all three dimensions. It happens as the entire ecosystem evolves of which the small and emerging business is a part of.

What then is required for Sustainable Competitive Advantage?
Innovation!!  Innovating across your services, products, solutions and offerings can create powerful set of differentiating factors for your emerging business. In times today, continuous innovation is, the best way of ensuring on-going, long-term competitive advantage, especially in the knowledge and technology sectors. And as we are seeing almost every sector we know of today knowledge and technology becomes the integral part of the growth of any business, however small it may be.

Driving Innovation is sure an imperative in India
Innovation is an imperative and in a way a must to be accounted for emerging Indian businesses. Today as we are a billion strong, there are massive challenges at present and bound to increase in health, education, and food security. These are not small challenges, they cannot really be solved by conventional approaches; a small change will not really make a huge dent into these challenges; they need innovative and creative solutions that ensure radical change towards the better.

The Indian Advantage
Interestingly, in India, call it whatever you may, but we have the advantage of four key innovation-driving factors:

• democracy
• demography
• diversity
• adversity

But how can Indian SMEs really focus on Innovation with all the challenges?

Agreed, Indian SMEs have their own set of challenges. Our own experience with the SMEs has shown that: 

• Indian SMEs still struggle while raising finance, though it has become more accessible in the recent past
• The human resources created by the academia are not the best fit always
• Government policies are not always best suited

But as they say, if we win through odds, we create history, many SMEs have risen up while facing these challenges while innovating purely.

Eg:

One of the strongest product start-ups from India, Zoho, based out of Chennai is one such example, where the intelligent use of human resources has proven the critiques wrong.

Innovation is not a KRA, its a culture

Innovation is not really a departmental approach to things within an organisation. Its not a KRA. Its not the task of a manager. Its ingrained in the culture. Its what an organisation creates as one of its pillars of strength and not only for the sake of it.

There is no fixed way/ model/ methodology in which you must drive innovation for maximum benefit. Its a cultural proposition which has to be custom built in the organisational value system and driven by passionate stakeholders.

A strong example could be the Google 20 percent time policy, wherein every employee at Google can spend 1 day every week, in doing things, which may not directly be related to his project. Here is one employee sharing his experience!

Innovation and taking India to the next level

Innovating across new business models, newer ways to be more productive, drive business and grow will ensure that more and more businesses from India emerge out to rise from being Small to large scale enterprises which are global in nature.

Be there at The SME Conference 2011 to know how to play in a globalized economy!

Technology Simplified: top benefits of the Cloud for SMEs

The Indian SME and the Dynamic Nature
The Indian SME sector is one of the fastest growing industrial sectors and surely one which constantly faces many challenges. For any emerging economy the SMEs are one of the strongest parts of its economic backbone.

The dynamic changes which happen in the SME ecosystem, makes them more agile and swift, which empowers them to quickly create innovative solutions to address the challenges posed by the ever evolving marketplace, they operate in.

Technology: enabling the SME to be swift and agile
Technology has undoubtedly created many opportunities and changed the way business is conducted. The general trend of adoption has always been from the large enterprises to the smaller ones, but we are witnessing a change.

Technology: costs, risks and adoption:
Since its critical for SMEs to take result oriented investment decisions in all operational areas, technology adoption has been one of the key aspects. Largely technology has been related with costly licenses, growing costs, updating and managing costs, manpower costs and much more. Many SMEs also get stuck with the growing business complexities and the same with technology as well.

These challenges make the decision making for the CTO/ CIO critical, on what technology to adopt in the organisation. The risks weighed for the SME are always on the higher side.

Cloud has changed the game:
What is Cloud Computing: this Wiki article on Cloud Computing has an exhaustive explanation of the same!

1. Lowered cost/ Affordability – there is no need to install heavy servers, additional housing and maintenance cost, IT support staff and the best, pay as you use!
2. Scalable storage – If you need more space, it is just a mouse click away. You no more need to buy or invest into hardware
3. Remote access – since you can access your systems over the cloud anytime and anywhere, well, your staff has the power to be mobile and you as a business empower them with ready access to information
4. Access to enterprise-class service – New cutting-edge applications, platforms and infrastructure is available on the cloud at affordable costs
5. Re-knowned Technology Providers – Microsoft, Yahoo, Sales Force, IBM and Amazon are some of the most known names who are building services on the cloud for you, hence keeping your business always running
6. Easy to use and implement – its as easy as setting up your Google Mail account :)
7. Business Competitive Edge – Small and emerging businesses now can access smart business tools and technology, which originally was always available only to the large players.

This sounds good, So where is the problem for the SME?
The only problem is embracing technology and the know how. There are many resources from where you can get to know much about the cloud, but they are scattered and as the cloud market heats up with competition from large service providers, there is an overload of information for the small business owner.

If you would like to find out more about how cloud computing can help your business, increase productivity and much more, drop in a comment to this post and our experts will sure advice you right.

Finance for the SME: Government Funding and Schemes

Every SME requires a continuous flow of funds not only in the initial start-up phases, but also for ensuring successful operational efficiency.

Raising funds for the SME: various ways:
There are multiple ways for SMEs today to raise funds. Also there are multiple factors which the SMEs need to consider while raising funds. At various stages of business the requirement of funds are different. They could range from setting up a new business vertical, to scaling up in terms of human resources to expanding geographically.

Some of the popular existant ways to raise funds for the SME are:

1. Angel Funding
2. Venture Capital
3. Private Equity
4. Government Schemes
5. Banks

Focus: Government supported schemes!
There are many ways to meet financial requirement for the SMEs, the Government (both at the Central and State level) has taken several steps like formulating various policies and schemes, setting up of banks and financial institutions; etc.

This clearly shows the focus of the government towards emerging realization of the power of the growing and emerging SME segment in India. All such measures are focused towards helping the SMEs scale to the next level and play an empowered role towards nation building.

Banks:
The public sector banks are the major source of financial assistance to the SMEs. They extend credit support to the firms in the form of loans, advances, discounting bills, project financing, term loans, export finance, etc. Some of the active banks extending schemes for the SME are:

• State Bank of India (SBI)
• Bank of Baroda
• Andhra Bank
• IDBI Bank

Policies and Schemes for the SMEs by the Government:

Finance for the SME is a continuous need, basis the business. Recognising the need for a focused financial assistance to such industries, the Government of India, along with State Governments, has formulated several policy packages including schemes and funds to fuel the growth and development for the SME. Most of these programs of the Central Government are implemented through two principal organisations:-

National Small Industries Corporation Ltd (NSIC): has been established with the objective of promoting, aiding and fostering the growth of small scale industries in the country. NSIC has been assisting emerging enterprises through a set of specially tailored schemes which facilitate marketing, credit, technology and other supporting services.


Small Industries Development Organisation (SIDO) : is an apex body for promotion and development of small scale industries in the country. The major activities it undertakes are:-

• Conducting periodical census/survey of the small scale industry and generating data/reports on various important parameters/indicators of growth of the SME sector.
• Maintaining close liaison with other Central Ministries, Planning Commission, State Governments, Financial Institutions concerned with the development of small-scale industries.
• Advising the Government on formulation of policies and programmes for the small-scale industries.
• Facilitating the development of human resources by creating the necessary infrastructure for enabling skill upgradation through training.

At the State level, various State Financial Corporations (SFCs): have been set up by the respective State Governments for providing financial assistance to the industrial units. These local financial corporations emerge out as a close window of opportunity for emerging companies across India.