Employee Retention - Invest, Reward, Respect

The success of any budding or existing SME lies in its team of dedicated and productive employees working with it. As a management initiative, it is necessary to retain potential employees and reward them from time-to-time. A study has established that 62 per cent of SMEs face hurdles in recruiting and retaining staff over a period of time.

Invest in your employees
Often, companies invest in a wide amount of infrastructure to train their employees for better production and losing them because of a lack in retention skills can prove to be a big loss. SMEs especially need to prepare their HR processes to save themselves from losing valuable employees. Also, competitors do not hesitate in poaching potential workforce from other companies and may cause damage to the companies by offering their employees better incentives. 

Retain your employees with competitive wages

Competitive Wages
There are a number of ways in which an organization can retain their trusted employees. Paying competitive wages is one of the most important methods to hold existing employees. Also, providing your employees a reasonable amount of flexibility in their jobs can prove to be beneficial. A variety of benefits such as changes in schedule, fixed shifts, leaves for personal matters and family-supporting initiatives can also be crucial. Long-term employees need to be appreciated for their long service. Encouragement to them also proves to be a good example for other employees who realize that the company appreciates their commitments. Simple incentives such as health insurance, benefit packages could support them in making a decision to be with the original employer. It also offers the SMEs an additional advantage over the competition.

Respect your employee
Another key area in employee retention is respecting the employee and offering them space and support. Individualized work desks, promoting healthy relationships, and providing supportive trainings are some of the steps which can be taken by a company. Promoting interpersonal communication is also crucial for supporting existent and new employees. Various communication initiatives such as focus groups, attitude surveys, hotlines, etc. can help them in corresponding about their needs and requirements. A good employer must know what his employee wants. 

Make it transparent with your employee

Retention bonuses are another important step in retaining an employee. SMEs often face a lot of difficult situations such as mergers, acquisitions, financial difficulties, etc. It is vital in those times that companies release retention bonuses to support their employees and retain them. Also, it is better to release the amount over a period of time rather than pay it as a lump sum.

Managing a new hire
In worst cases, one may have to lose out on trusted employees and can benefit from new hires who would be more eager in their performance, would be cheaper to afford and can grow up to be a potential addition to the workforce. The only cons to a new hire would again be the question of reliability and standard requirements for training and nurturing which may take precious time of the employer. 

It is always difficult to find skilled workers and more so, in the times of a tough competitive market and financial meltdown. It always makes sense to retain one’s most effective workers.

How relevant is R&D to SMEs?

The Indian market is developing at an accelerating rate and with rapid globalization, the contribution of technological potential is critical for any firm’s survival or growth. R&D is required to develop distinctive technological competencies and is vital to imbibe external technologies. Relying only on the strategy of reverse engineering and innovative cost-effective processes would simply be insufficient to support under the new technology policy regime.

While initiating an R&D project, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have to consider thoroughly whether the particular research is necessary for their business and if it would deliver the expected results. They also need to examine what is their exact purpose from the research which can dictate its methodology and also clarify the kind of partners required for the project. 

In SMEs, research helps in a number of ways including bringing innovation to existing products or developing new ones. It helps the company in accessing new customers and entering new export markets besides offering an unparalleled edge over the competition by increment in sales, turnover and growth in business. R & D also facilitates global collaboration leading to an intensification of international contacts between SMEs and other companies involved in the field. 

 Indian manufacturing firms of various sizes (small, medium or large) are often found to have a low incidence of in-house R & D and have very less budget allocation for the same. Some of the industries, such as chemicals & chemical products, electrical & optical equipment, drugs & pharmaceuticals and machinery & equipment control about 80 per cent of the entire SME R & D of the country (as per a research by Jaya Prakash Pradhan, SPIESR). Incidentally, these industries are also in the top four across the various SMEs, in India and worldwide in their share in the R &D sector.

Initiatives such as EU-INCOOP-Inter-institutional Cooperation in EU are gaining prominence by bringing together experts from key areas of computing technology from India and EU. This association is expected to boost the IT industry and benefit SMEs in gaining valuable data for entering new markets and also help in understanding details about market dynamics in a developed economy.

Many countries also offer tax relief to SMEs conducting R & D supporting the fact that creation of innovative, high-value-added products and services boosts profitability and growth of such companies and economy of that nation.

Indian SMEs are supported by schemes such as SIDBI’s Technology Development and Modernization Fund, ISO-9000 Reimbursement Scheme and Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme for Technology Upgradation, among others. The government also supports SMEs through direct incentives for promoting in-house R & D activities. Any industrial unit which has received recognition from the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR) is given tax deduction equivalent to the revenue and capital expenditure spent on R & D. 

With a variety of tax initiatives by the government and the global market knocking at our doors, SMEs are safe in opting for a bigger budget allocation for R & D activities which could substantially improve their businesses.

Knowledge Management for SMEs through Internal Social Networking:

Small and Medium Enterprises face a major hurdle in terms of creating and managing knowledge internally. For SMEs Knowledge Management is one area which is not really considered very strongly and is not given much importance. Since its not a focus area which generates direct revenues for the organization it lacks focused effort.

What is Knowledge Management and Why should SMEs focus on it?
WIkipedia defines KM (Knowledge Management) in this article. Though KM has always been considered as a prime function which is given focus when companies achieve a certain scale both in terms of revenues and employees, but today the business environment is knowledge driven.

How do you retain the knowledge even if people leave?
Human Resources/ Human talent is one of the critical most parts for any SME. People are the crucial most resource. The core team/ Middle and Senior management are the essential organs for the right functioning of your company. For technology companies, project managers and the actual delivery teams are defining aspects.

If we take a situation where your people leave to explore other opportunities in life? Its not just that your people leave and you can hire more. But what leaves with them is the knowledge they had contributed to the company, colleagues, clients. Capturing this knowledge for any business is extremely important.

But many organizations have tried it before and not many have been successful
Its true that many organizations, large and small have tried their hand at KM. This led them to implement at a global level, tools such as MS Sharepoint and many other open source tools available. Still driving KM was not an easy option for them. Getting your employees to be a part of the initiative is not an easy task and this infact is one of the biggest challenges faced by any company establishing KM.

What are the challenges faced while implementing KM?
The biggest challenge while implementing KM is driving the initiative through people. While organizations invest heavily into tools which are bound to weave magic of knowledge and content across the organization, but training the employees to actually engage on such platforms is difficult. Employee feedback from many organizations which have implemented such systems has shown that asking them to use software systems for sharing their knowledge is not an activity they are comfortable in the routine scheme of things.

How should the SMEs go about implementing and driving KM?
Knowledge Management essentially is about managing 'information' which is generated throughout the organization by stakeholders, which involve employees, management etc. If we simply perceive it as creation, recording and management of information across the organizational hierarchy, all we need to ensure is to create a scalable structure which lets the employees share openly which adds onto the knowledge pool.

If your employees are on facebook, writing blogs, let them do the same internally!
If your employees are on facebook and writing blogs online, well, that's how they have evolved and that's how they like to communicate today. Why try changing it?

There are many tools available in the market which help replicate the same environment as facebook, Linkedin internally within the company. One example in this case is a tool called: Groupsite. The NASSCOM EMERGE community is based on the same.

What advantages does such a KM tool provides?

• Capturing knowledge
• Self learning and intuitive engagement and sharing tools as: internal blogging platform, discussion boards, file sharing, photo sharing etc.
• Ease of use
• Creation of networked, function specific focus groups: HR, Finance, Marketing
• Creation of raw content: employees communicating on such platforms while sharing best practices and other pieces of knowledge are indirectly creating raw content, which can be used by marketing
• Flattened organizational structure: such tools help in creating a holistic environment across the organization, while allowing employees to always be in touch with the management
• Reducing cost of recruitment: internal campaigns can be very successfully managed across such platforms
• Managing internal communication and internal marketing campaigns
• Addressing and increasing employee retention
• Scalable structure for the management to communicate with employees globally in one go

Employee engagement: how to drive it?

Creating a core group consisting of management, KM team and a representative each from every organizational function as HR, Marketing, Finance etc. should be the first step towards setting the KM structure for the SME.

Training should be the second step. Employees should be trained on core principles of using the KM tool. This process must be incentivized for them making it a part of their KRA's; which will drive them initially towards using the tool.

For SMEs KM especially is a critical part of the game as it ensures creation and management of information and keeping the IP and organizational knowledge within. To know more on KM and how you should go about leveraging the power of KM and the various tools available, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts will be happy to help!

Textile Clusters in India Adopting Technology: A View into Project Vikas by Microsoft India

The Indian MSME's are tightly grouped into clusters. There are clusters of industries spread pan India, which are together working to take the respective industries to the next level of growth. The MSME has details on all such industry clusters present, their operational effectiveness and how they are building up, which industry clusters require what support and many more details.

Focus: Textile Clusters
Objective: to understand how textile clusters pan India are leveraging ICT
The IndiaMART Knowledge Services team has been closely studying the formation on such clusters and in our effort of bringing out some of the best practices being adopted by these clusters, we present to you, how the Textile Industry in India is being supported by large corporations like Microsoft to leverage the power of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

The Background:
Textiles in India has been a generational trade and has been a strong value creator for the Indian economy. The production capacity in India has been increasing steadily, while maintaining the quality. The consumption patterns have also changed over years int he domestic market as well. As the buying power of the Indian consumer is increasing, the domestic consumption has grown to the next level as well.

Source: http://www.idea.org.np/ict%20training/ict%20training.jpg

The Need: Technology
The Textiles industry, though has grown multi-folds in India, the export numbers are steadily growing as well. What has emerged out as a pressing need for the industry is the adoption of technology. Being a traditional industry, Textiles has not really been highly active with adoption of technology, which has changed now.

Change: The Inclusion and Adoption of Technology
This change was pending since long and there have been many steps taken in the past to propagate the adoption of emerging technology for textiles industry which has now taken shape.
Microsoft India, under the aegis of Project Vikas, along with the Tirupur Exporters Association launched online solutions for the textile manufacturing SMEs in Tirupur. The solutions include an online Desktop, a Hosted Email and Unified Communications module. Project Vikas is an initiative which is launched with an aim of improving upon the productivity of these textile units, collaborating to form an emerging industry cluster.

But Why Online/ Hosted Solutions?
The online/ hosted model obviously leaves the power in the hands of the customer by allowing him/ her to choose from the various sets of services on offer. Textile SMEs now have the option of choosing what they really find relevant to their respective businesses and manufacturing set-ups and hence include only the same to enhance their productivity through technology adoption.

Similar technology solutions have been created for many Small and Medium Enterprises in India. Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services will keep bringing you more opportunities, which enhance your knowledge and help you grow!


To know more, you can always drop a comment to this post and our experts will be happy to answer!

Is Export an Option: An Outlook for SMEs

Small and Medium Enterprises while planning a foray into International Business, find the entire process of learning about the markets, the legalities and many other aspects of Intl. business taxing difficult. The IndiaMART Knowledge Services team has received the feedback from many emerging enterprises to help them understand the activities.

For some the basic question is: Why should I export?
One of the basic most answer to this question always is that the foreign markets are more profitable to do business with, where your business can make more margins on the total earnings. Also the emerging markets across the globe which are near to Indian shores are far more receptive to to business from India. There have been examples set by large companies like Bharti in the acquisition of Zain Telecom. There are many smaller examples already in line.

The market dynamics are changing: product life cycle is getting shorter, go to market plans are changing, customer is becoming more active and informed. With the changing scenario, small companies do need to scale up globally to remain competitive.

Exporting is not really a survival option, but a the part of business scaling up globally. Hence the decision making on exports must involve the strategic teams of the enterprise who are responsible for spearheading the business scaling up.

Source: http://unitedstatesexporter.com/common/imagelib/index.htm/707_420_280_crop_b2feb.jpg

What are the Benefits of Exporting?

• Decreased vulnerability to losing clients and economic fluctuations in the domestic market
• Increased sales
• Increased focus on innovation and expansion; with the opportunities provided by the Intl. markets new product/ service categories can be evolved
• Increased expertise and experience; starting from your global business development team to the real people on the ground (product/ services) team, each one learns the nuances of going global

Laws and Regulatory Framework

In many emerging markets the laws and regulatory frameworks are less taxing as compared to those in the domestic markets. Also, since the emerging global markets are opening up to widen their presence, they have relaxed laws and business regulatory framework.

Word of Caution

Exports obviously will not be desirable always for all products and services. There has to be a strong feasibility study done before deciding upon entering the export markets. Exporting has its own set of constraints which must be taken into account:

• Increased operational and administrative load on your existing business : your business must be prepared for the same
• Requirement for raising finance: your current business may have to raise up loans/ debt/ funding to fuel its expansion plans globally
• Requirement to train people: if your business is of a nature that you can serve the global customer sitting here in India, good, if you have to make exist a local team, you will have to recruit and train a team there, while setting the vision for the Intl. team
• Change in branding: your branding might have to be changed in the Intl. shores, people there might see and value your brand very differently as compared to what your brand is valued at in the domestic markets
• Sales: you might have to deploy a local sales team in the global regions which has more in-depth know-how of the markets and can effectively help you kick-start business

What about having a business partner there?

Yes, you can always operate legally by having a business partner in Intl. shores but with the caution that you must be well aware of the laws, as business might be conducted very differently there and as one of the most obvious reasons, you will have to have a lot of faith and trust in your business partner.

Everything must be done as per Intl. laws. and as a strong word of caution, you must ensure all paper-work is correct and in line.

Exports are critical for business scaling up but you have to ensure everything is in line. IndiaMART Knowledge Services team will be happy to extend help and help you grow! Drop in a comment to this post and share your experiences of going Intl.

What's With a Use Case? Winning Strategies for SMEs

Almost every Small and Emerging Business must have heard of the word called "Use Cases". Especially the IT and the Project Management companies which have for long created use cases and powerfully leveraged their power to streamline many processes which fuel execution.

What is a Use Case?
This Wikipedia article provides much needed clarity on Use Cases. Though it really talks about how use cases are used within system engineering at a higher level within the scope of software engineering.

The IndiaMART Knowledge Services team set forth to take key learnings of the 'Use Case' process to create a powerful, process oriented mechanism for Small and Medium enterprises.

Time to learn: leverage the power of Use Cases
When you go out to the market to buy something, the usuage of the product in your life is clear to you. Isn't is? Buying clothes in winter is about shielding yourself from cold.
Lets set the context: The most effective way to sell the execution of an idea is to describe the use of that product/ service/ proposition and then create and put forth the case first. An obvious question before you do that is, the information you need first hand. Obviously you would need enough information about your objective and then come up with a case compelling enough that it will sell and make a dent in the universe.

And how does it all merge within an enterprise?
Every step of forming up and growth! When a start-up, an organization is in its initial phases of building up the team, the core team has to create a really compelling case to ensure that talent other than them actually is attracted from the market.

When it is about scaling up and raising funds, the 'Use' of the funds has to be very clear to the founding team and a powerful and engaging enough case has to be created for the investors to be pulled towards and convinced of the potential of the idea.

Decision to invest into technology? The 'Use' of technology is clear and so are its advantages. We just need to ensure that we are clear on why should we invest into technology, its benefit for our business and hence make a compelling enough 'Case' for inclusion of technology in your emerging company.

Driving sales again is similar. Your customer/ prospective target audience has to be one with the 'Use' of what you are proposing to them. You must communicate the same 'Use', what your customer perceives of your product, to create a compelling enough 'Case' for your customer to buy.

What are we proposing?
For our emerging partners what we are suggesting is a 3 step Use Case Architecture (defined in the image below):

To know more about how you can make more compelling 'USE' 'CASES' for your business and take it to the next level, contact our IndiaMART Knowledge Services Team!!
Why not start with a comment to this post??

Keep a Hawk Eye on Your Intellectual Property: Tips to Guard Your IP

Intellectual Property is one of the most discussed topic in almost every conference we do. The IndiaMART Knowledge Services team does get many queries to understand the basics of IP and how can Small and Medium Enterprises safeguard their IP.

But small companies should not worry about : IP?
Every company whether large or small builds IP. Infact on the most basic level, your people are your IP. In our experience emerging companies are more focused towards creating a unique value proposition and hence strong Intellectual Property gets created alongway.
There is nothing to literally 'worry' about when it comes to protecting and managing your IP. Your business can create some fairly strategical methodologies and play by the basics to safeguard IP.

Tell me more, what should SMEs do?
*Disclaimer: there will be many other methods, but we are listing down a few one's which our partner SMEs have come up to us with.

Source: http://www.fsfarrell.com/images/TagLine2.gif

• Computers: an obvious machine to use

No office we can imagine would be running without a computer today. The dumb-box has evolved into a super computing intelligent machine and has changed the way work is done world over. How can you safeguard information?

There are many ways for information to leak out through emails etc. The steps that you can take are:

• Login through set passwords to the official network
• Make it mandatory for your employees to access your systems through a proper login id and password over a secure network. As a rule in your company make your employees to "log off" your official network every time they're away from their desks

• Paper: shredders you must use

Though we understand we have to go green and many things are going digital. There are companies which are trying to manage a paperless office, but paper is still being used. Many of our plans with strategy are made on paper first, which then get converted into scalable digital formats.

Be careful when you are using that old dustbin for throwing away those key sheets of paper which have really important information scribbled on them, including your bills, invoices, receipts. Shred these first using a paper shredder and only then throw them away.

• When your employees leave/ get terminated

Put in place a proper employee leaving system in your company wherein you ensure that every piece of confidential information shared is retrieved. Obviously you cannot work around someone's mind. But at least you can ensure the safety of all possible physical proofs of documents.

• If an employee is terminated, have him leave immediately without providing a chance to think about fiddling with any information
• Check the mobile phone data (make it a mandate)
• Remove the person's login information to your network immediately

• Sign NDA's

An offer letter given to your employees who you think might be accessing critical information, must also be made to sign a strict and formally designed and driven Non Disclosure Agreement, which clearly must state them to not use any information pertaining to the company/ client anyhow, other than as mentioned in their contract. The agreement must also clearly lay down the steps the employees need to follow as a code of conduct within the company's premises and off it.

• Create awareness: set a code of conduct for people with crucial information

There must be a set code of conduct for people with crucial information with them about your enterprise. They must clearly be made to follow a set code of conduct, when sharing any information about your company/ key employees/ new projects and any other key information that you consider confidential.

• There must be keys to every safe lock

Documents kept in your room, which is locked is not enough. Ensure where you keep your documents is a place which is properly under a key and a lock.

• Electronic safety - digital camera's

There are many new devices int the market which ensure that your workplace is under a hawk eye watch even when you are not around. Cheap and smart security solutions available in the market can always ensure that your workplace is being adequately looked after.

• Setting a clear guideline system for sharing information online/ on-mobile

In the world of open conversations on social networks, your organisation has to set clear guidelines which are followed by your employees in terms of what to say/ reveal when talking about your enterprise online/ on-mobile. Many large companies have already set such guidelines and they can be taken as examples to initiate this process at your's.

There still could be lapses. Emerging companies will have to come up with methodologies of safeguarding their information. To help you set such steps and methods in your organisation, contact IndiaMART Knowledge Services team for more information.

Seven commandments of business growth for SME's

Many Small and Medium Enterprises have approached us and asked about top tips given by successful entrepreneurs who have led small and medium enterprises towards success! Well, there is no magic pill, this we can ensure of.

IndiaMART Knowledge Services' Team spoke to many successful entrepreneurs
Our team of experts went ahead and spoke to many entrepreneurs who have created powerful success stories and have set examples for many others. Emerging entrepreneurs who are still in the starting-up or scaling-up phases of their business can surely learn from these examples.

Our experience of interacting with successful entrepreneurs has led us to create a set of experiences. These have been compiled after interacting which many entrepreneurs, who have raised successful businesses.

Source: http://tibcoblogs.com/cep/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/Succeed_5612.gif

The commandments of raising a Successful Enterprise (focus: business development)
Before we share our suggestions: this list might have missed some points or your experiences as an entrepreneur may not fit into these pointers. You might also want to add more suggestions to this.

We are open to hearing and will be glad to share your experiences:

1. Don’t waste your time going after business which does not aligns with your business vision                                                                              Many growing enterprises fall into the catch of quickly creating cash flow by serving everything that comes their way. Well, this is not a smart move as it generally takes you off your path.
2. The boss usually decides! Do you know the boss?                                      Business development efforts keep going on and on and the sales cycle keeps getting longer if you are not focusing on the right person who has the power of decision making. This ensures lesser cost of sales for SMEs. Hence go network with the right people.
3. Listen, Listen and Listen!                                                                             While your prospective customer is speaking, let him. Listening will do a world of good to you and your business than speaking and trying to justify and explain who you are. SMEs do have to talk about themselves initially as they may not be world class brands, but then you must have a well defined 20 second sharp and precise pitch which clearly states what you want to deliver, what is your USP and what do you bring onto the table and why should your prospect buy you than from your competition.
4. The client’s objective is more important than yours                                                                                                              From the point of listening emerges this fact. Your services are not meant to be 'sold'. They are meant to suffice your client's business objectives. This stands particularly true for companies which are into marketing services. Not everyone needs an apple and you must know that 'An Apple a day keeps the Doctor away' is only another sentence which someone once said.
5. A powerful, genuine recommendation is more effective than 500 people on your friends list                                                                                                                      In the times today of facebook, LinkedIn, well, everything has been reduced to how many you have?? But well, lets be honest about one thing. In Business one powerful recommendation about you and your work is far more stronger than those 500 odd friends you have on Linkedin, which may or may not serve much purpose.
6. There’s nothing worse than an unhappy client                                       Do we need say more on this?
7. If you get the business, it’s up to you to see that it’s well-handled                                                                                                                                          Execution is the key. Its the ultimate key. There's nothing more candid we can get on this. If your delivery fails, even if you are the best salesman out there, you will still lose the business, client and the trust and may be your brand in the market tomorrow.

To know more about how you can really learn the tricks and ensure that your business scales upto the next level, drop in a comment to this post and our experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services will get back to you!

Worried About Your Critical Data? Let the Cloud Help You!

We are all living in the Digital Age, where everything has moved online. There is terabytes of data being generated and being shared over wires, there are key signals roaming all around.

We are living in the knowledge economy where every business is governed by data. Data drives key business strategies and decisions. Business intelligence as a unit is driven purely due to the presence of key data points. It provide the business decision makers with important pointers to drive strategic growth.

Data is critical to me, but it also puts a pressure on increasing storage hardware, any solutions?
The IndiaMART Knowledge Services team has been asked this question many a times before by our knowledge driven SMEs. They are keen to know as to how they can improve data security, while still managing it dynamically and yet keeping the costs low.

Source: http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-6265-10766/cloud_roadmap.png

Lets understand Digital Data loss
Digital data loss can be damaging at all levels. Lets take a simple example, when your laptop hard-drive gets corrupted/ irreparable, what's your first reaction? You are surely concerned about all the data that was there in it. You do go to extents to use technology to "try and recover" that critical data.

Now at an individual level, this may be a very small example and the data loss may not amount to business damage. But translate the same for businesses and well, you have data damage, costing the business and at times it may have pronounced damaging effects on the business.

Losing customer data for an insurance company may simply mean doom.

So how to ensure my data is safe and yet I can manage costs?
If a small business does not take adequate data security measures, there are many things that can potentially go kaput. Eventually a simple computer virus or trojan will certainly infect unprotected computer systems that are connected to the Internet, causing damage or data loss.

For such a situation, better preparedness with an antivirus / spyware solution and firewall is needed for every business computer to reduce risk.

I have large USB/ Hard Drive back-ups every week
We have heard this answer generally from many SMEs and well, we strongly don't agree. Yes backing-up your data on external hard drives is an option, but not a possible solution to your problems. Hard drives are cheap options and yes there are some large and well trusted brands which produce them, but they are not really damage proof. You may lock them against theft, protect them from physical damage, but hard drives may crash, resulting in loss of critical data for you.

Also, hard drives cost a business, depending upon their storage capacity and their technological advancement. How fast can you retrieve data out of them is one such example.

So is there some trusted solution, which does not burns a hole in my pocket?
Sure there is, we suggest the cloud for SME's. There are many options of data storage on the cloud. Small businesses can actually choose to use such technology to their advantage while keeping the cost of data security and management fairly low. Large global companies who manage such applications on the cloud invest into ensuring that your data is well secure and accessible, as per your needs. All this is available to you at far lesser a cost as compared to actual hardware that you invest into.

For more on how you can manage your data on the cloud, drop in a comment to this post and our experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services will touch base with you.

The 7 Enablers of Growth for SMEs: Getting Out of Micro Managing Your Business

The leadership of Small and Medium Enterprises are more often than not caught up in a catch-22 situation. While they are focusing on taking their business global and raise it up to the next level, most of their time gets eaten up by the day to day management and in many cases micro-management of the company.

For your company to grow, you have to rise up above the day to day management
IndiaMART Knowledge Services asked many experts and enquired about how SMEs, especially companies which are low on Human Resources and hence highly tightened on the available working bandwidth, can grow to the next level. A level where the top management is focussed on growing the company and not engaged in day to day micro-management of the company.


But my business needs me, how can I achieve this?
Many entrepreneurs, especially the Small and Medium Enterprise segment, always have been thinking about creating a self replicable and scalable structure for their business, which provides them with the time and resources in terms of critical band-width to take their business further.

Source: http://www.banking4tomorrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/SMEsucccess.jpg

The team of experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services suggests the following to help SMEs achieve the next level of growth:
Business leaders in SME's need to work on the emotional attachment to their business. Appropriate investments in technology and people have to be made to ensure scalability and self replication into formation of strong business processes.

SME's must create, maintain and manage strong global alliances. These must be focused towards complimenting business values and propositions with partners who share the similar passion and hunger for global exposure working with a strategy in place.


The 7 Enablers of Growth for SME's:
As a result of constant interaction with SME's in India and the learning's in the past, our Knowledge Services team has put together these 7 enablers of growth for SME's:

1. Strong knowledge and understanding of target market
2. Strong sense of Customer's perceived value perception of the proposition
3. Quality and Technology processes to be put in place
4. Strong Business Management Systems (Business Processes) to be implemented
5. Strong focus on People growth and knowledge management
6. Strong systems in place to manage finances
7. Strong processes to drive and manage Innovation

Though there can be more, but these are the common most enablers to address the growing concern of SMEs regarding business growth- building strong business processes is the key.

To know more on- How you can free yourself from your day to day operational role to scaling up your business and still having enough band-width to look at global opportunities, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts will touch base!

Outsourcing is Not Just for the Big Daddies

The value chain for any business runs across the top to bottom. There are premium players who provide 'A' set of services/ product offerings/ propositions and these are followed by many service providers which are active at the lower end of the value chain, providing supporting services/ creating innovative/ niche service offerings.

Outsourcing: the business case:
With Small and Medium Enterprises there is a peculiar catch of bandwidth and critical human resources. While serving customers to the best of the possible nuances which the SME has, achieving the ultimate customer satisfaction levels always remains a challenge with the rising expectations. Customer retention is critical for any business, but is all the more necessary for SME's. A major part of retaining the best customers includes serving them with the best you have.

Source: http://www.webdesigndev.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/outsourcing.gif

Got, it, so how do we solve the challenge and reign supreme?
Lets first break the mold that outsourcing is the game for only the big daddy of the market. Today, many smart SME's are outsourcing work to niche 'smaller' players in the market. For example: we recently got to know of an educational institution, which runs career oriented degree courses. To ensure quality, they call proven experts in their respective domains as visiting faculties from the top institutions from India and abroad. This is apart from the full time faculty they have.

Now, its not that the college cannot afford full time faculty. They very well can, but the full time resources may not have the real hands-on experience of the emerging domains/ subjects which the college wants to include in its curriculum. This approach helps the college in quality delivery of the course and hence the word of mouth publicity resulting in creating a solid brand positioning and more registrations for their future batches.

But we want to grow, why outsource?
Lets create an expectation head on, any business grows if the related ecosystem grows. Hence outsourcing, as a part of your services to niche players in the market will not only help you grow but also help in delivering quality at affordable prices.

And how to find trustworthy partners?
We want trust-worthy partners and not just a company which we can outsource to. We want people who are passionate towards mutual growth and really making things work. The first and the most obvious choice as we have seen from our experience of closely working with the SMEs is 'personal references', options from friends and family. The second best option nowadays is to go online. There are many B2B exchanges and crowdsourcing platforms online, which have lakhs of sellers/ service providers listed with them, which can deliver good quality at affordable prices.

Let us know if you have any questions/ queries by dropping in a comment to this post. The IndiaMART Knowledge Services team will get in touch with you, to understand your business better and further suggest you a customized solution.

Did you Marry the Right Person: Experience of Successful Enterprises

IndiaMART Knowledge Services team has by far interacted with many emerging enterprises. We have closely studied overtime, the challenges faced by Small and Medium Enterprises, especially those at the start-up stage/ or scaling up stages of their businesses.


The business needs more minds on board: lets get Co-founders
At the start-up stages of a business, while it all starts with the passion and dream of either an individual or a team of friends/ common connects together, who are committed to adding value by creating services/ products for addressing the market needs.


Two to tango: look around
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, all these major businesses have been built by two or more partners. There is a certain chemistry that works wonders for a growing venture when like-minded people come together to create an enterprise. There sure are many successful businesses, which have been created by entrepreneurs single-handedly and there will always be, but even they have felt the need for getting more people and especially those, who are smarter than them, on board to drive real value of their ventures.


Its a relay baton
Sports teach many a lessons in business. The relay race in which the baton is passed by the first runner to his/ her partner, who carries the same further to the finish line is a perfect example of an enterprise being set-up by a core team/ co-founding team.


There is a sense of strength, bonding, sharing and mutual growth in such teams which actually takes the venture further to achieve greater heights. Many a times, when an entrepreneur loses steam and feel down and out, its the real jet setting that is received by the core team sharing the same vision and dream, which gets him. her back on track! The core team is like a band of brothers which plays the same tune at all times and knows each others moves with just the look of the eye.

Source: http://sharepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Google-co-founders-Larry-001.jpg

How is it being single?
We have seen and met many 'single' entrepreneurs who have expressed the need of actually getting someone on board at a senior level with them, but one of the major most challenges they face is the passion.
A major learning we received from such entrepreneurs is, finding such people is easy, who are passionate initially looking at the opportunity, but there have been instances when that passion fizzles out and the steam runs out.


Strikingly, we have also seen instances where the teams have dis-integrated post the joining of members on board who have great potential but are a cultural mis-fit to the organisation and hence not really well aligned with the growth of the enterprise.


Hence many a times people (ready to mingle) say its good and bad being Single.


Did you get your Horoscopes match?
Like in a marriage, in business, a few rules do apply. Its always good to have more people adding real value to your business in more ways than one. But you must see that your Co-founders must have the same set of values, principles, goals and vision for the business. They must also be at least till a certain extent like minded on business issues as yourself. Its about how being a 'Couple' is. The chemistry quickly shows.


Lessons Learnt: A complexity increases, define the KRA's
In the highly complex business ecosystem today much of the human reactive approach is aspirational. And aspirations may change with time and may also hence instigate a change in the behavior and needs and wants of various people. The same may also happen with the co-founding team of a business venture.


IndiaMART Knowledge Services team has hence identified for such businesses the smart move is to quickly and clearly define KRA's and ensure that a 100% ownership of the same is taken and well adhered to.


Finally, there are times, when marriages don't work and its time to bid adieu
Yes, marriages are supposed to be made in heaven, but God helps those who help themselves and hence you have to work towards making a successful married life. A strong bond, a relationship forever.


Similar is the relationship which has to be worked upon amongst your Co-founders who have to really work hard in aligning themselves with the core vision of the business and place the business before self. But at times this may really not work and if its the case, keeping the business concerns alive and kicking and working towards its growth, the partners may have to look towards exiting out.


Its not easy to leave your own dream mid way, but as we have spoken to so many entrepreneurs who have been through such experiences, well, it sure will give you a huge relief which will set you activated once again to further look for challenges and create real value.


IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to creating quality knowledge resources for SME's to learn from and grow. To know more, drop in a comment and our team of experts will get back to you!

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!