Business Plan: E-Business
E-business describes the use of electronic means and platforms to conduct a
company’s business. E-commerce means that the company or site offers to transact
or facilitate the selling of products and services online. E-commerce has given rise
in turn to e-purchasing and e-marketing. E-purchasing means companies decide to
purchase goods, services and information from various online suppliers. Smart e-
purchasing has already saved companies millions of dollars. E-marketing describes
company efforts to inform buyers, communicate, promote, and sell its products and
service over the internet. We can distinguish between pure-click companies, those
that have been launched a Website without any previous existence as a firm and
brick-and-click companies, existing companies that have added an online site for
information or e-commerce. Marketers need to assess which experiences and
impressions will have the most influence at each stage of the buying process. This
understanding will help them allocate communications budget more efficiently and
design and implement the right communications program. E-business refers to a
broader definition of E-commerce, not just the buying and selling of goods and
services, but also servicing customers, collaborating with business partners,
conducting e-learning, and conducting electronic transactions within an
organization. Others view e-business as the “other than buying and selling”
activities on the Internet, such as collaboration and intra business activities. The
term e-business is defined here as the use of electronic means to run company’s
business.
We need to maintain the quality, integrity, and loyalty with our clients.
It requires a great deal of marketing efforts to see traffic building. Brand building
has gone beyond the confines of conventional products and services. Today even
countries are trying to build as themselves as brands. Most sales are never made
the first time a prospect sees the product or service. They are made on a subsequent
encounter. Unless we get that client visiting our website the first time ever to return
another day, he won’t be buying anything from us. So we need to make sure that
the client returns. We need to keep in mind the 80-20 rule. 80% of our sales will
come from 20% of our clients. The people who buy from us a second and a third
time and so on. It is easier to make more sales out of our current customers than
new ones. In general we should follow the AIDA concept. That is Attention,
Interest, Desire and Action.
There are certain strategies we can implement to generate revenue for the
company. Such as:
Pay per Click Advertising: As we have launched a new online business
the chances are that very few people know about it. Therefore we can
implement pay per click advertising to get people visiting our website
instantly. Within 15 minutes we could have potential customers visiting our
website.
Buy banner ads: We can also buy banner ads on other websites. It helps us
to build brand recognition. As brand recognition is an important factor for
driving more traffic to our website as well as generates revenue as well.
Launch an Affiliate Programme: After our first couple of months in
business we should have a good idea of our customer acquisition cost. This
knowledge, along with having increased the conversion rate of our website,
means that we can launch an affiliate programme with generous yet
affordable payouts. With affiliate marketing we can pay per lead generated,
pay per sale, or pay per customer acquired.
Increase our Conversion Rate: This is one of the most neglected forms of
online marketing. But once your website has been up-and-running for a
while we will have statistics regarding the number of unique visitors and be
able to calculate how many of those go on to register and eventually make a
purchase. To make your current marketing efforts more effective we need to
convert more visitors into customers.
Determine how fixed and variable costs should be adjusted to maximize
profit, and identify methods to reduce costs.
The financial success for any entrepreneurial business is likely to be driven by
one main factor — the pricing strategy. Pricing is likely the most complex
decision that any business will make and it is one of the most important. There
are various ways we can adjust fixed and variable cost to maximize profit. They
are;
Business Must Understand Their Startup Brand
Calculate Buyers’ Benefits
Consider the Startup’s Competition
Find the Minimum and Maximum Prices
Pricing to Optimize Profits
Consider How the Price Matches Startup Brand
And there are certain methods to reduce cost, such as:
Low Cost Viral Techniques: Finally, we can try experimenting with
various low cost viral marketing techniques. These marketing ideas could be
anything from sending an e-voucher to all our current customers that they
can also forward onto friends and colleagues, or providing a discount at the
end of the buying process if they send our website to number of friends.
Use E-mail marketing and offline marketing: It may be ugly, but effective
for the cost. We can blast out our special offers, but we need to be nice
about it. We can also use offline marketing to promote our site. Put our url
on all our license plates. Paint it on our car. Buy newspaper and yellow
pages ads with our url. Put up flyers and stickers. Sponsor a little league
team. Do anything and everything to spread the word about our website
around our city. We can also promote our web address in our signature for
e-mails.
Submit an Online Press Release: We should implement online press
release as well. It is one of the most cost-effective ways for new businesses
to generate awareness is through PR. We should try writing a press release,
and remember to distribute it online as well as offline.
Classified Ad Postings: There are many free classified websites which
receive tens of thousands of hits each day. Posting an ad is almost always
free and can bring in highly targeted traffic or be used as a lead generation
tool. So we should also focus on classified ad posting. So it will help to save
cost as well as the promotion of the business is all done.
Describe your process to make recommendations.
Once one has identified the most important problems within the organization to
improve, it's time to describe the current process surrounding the improvement
opportunity. There are certain ways to improve the performance of the
organization, such as:
Customer and Supplier Relationships: Each step in a process creates
relationships in which people depend on each other to get work done. Each
process step depends on one or more suppliers to provide products,
materials, services, and/or information that are, reliable, defect or error free,
on time and complete. In exchange, at each process step the customer
provides suppliers with, requirements that are clearly stated and timely
feedback when needs are not being met.
Every Process Is a System: It's important for everyone in the process to
look at and treat it as a system of connected pieces. If you change even one
part of the system, it will always affect how the whole system works.
Process Documentation May Be Outdated: Teams need to understand the
process they are trying to improve. Oftentimes, a current and detailed
flowchart doesn't exist. If the process has never been documented or the
existing flowchart is outdated, the team will either need to create a flowchart
or update the old one.
Create a flowchart of the current process: Use a flowchart to show all of
the tasks and decisions involved in implementing the current process. Use
symbols to show the flow of actions and decisions in a process from start to
end. List all of the steps of the process as they are currently done. Keep the
level of detail as simple as possible. If necessary, we can always add more
detailed steps later.
Validate the flowchart and the performance measures with the owners,
users, and customers of the current process: Before teams can improve a
process, they need to understand it. The people who have this understanding
are those who work on some part of the process or who use the information,
products, or services that are produced by it. Confirm the accuracy of the
process as it is drawn in the flowchart and the time estimates for each step
by letting the process run untouched. Identify the value, time, and cost added
for each step in the process.
Financial Analysis
Financial Analysis refers to the assessment of a business to deal with the planning,
budgeting, monitoring, forecasting, and improving of all financial details within an
organization. These are certain strategies we can implement to drive more traffic to
our website and it will help to generate some revenue as well. They are:
1. Pay per Click Advertising
2. We can submit our Website to Online Directories
3. Search Engine Optimization
4. Social Networking
5. Buy banner ads
6. Increase our Conversion Rate
7. Classified Ad Postings
8. Use E-mail marketing and offline marketing
Accounting information systems record, report, and analyze business transactions
and events for the management of the business enterprise. Examples of common
accounting information systems include order processing, inventory control,
accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and general ledger systems.
Information systems in finance support financial manager in decisions regarding
the financing of a business and the allocation of financial resources within a
business. Financial information systems include cash management, online
investment management, capital budgeting, and financial forecasting and planning.
What assumptions did you make about the organization and its values?
Ans) The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name,
term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the
goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from
those of other sellers. We mainly focus on brand equity and customer needs.
Therefore it makes sense to understand that branding is not about getting the target
market to choose that particular company over the competition, but it is about
getting the prospects to see only one that provides a solution to their problem. The
company knows that in order to succeed in branding one must understand the
needs and wants of your customers and prospects. They do this by integrating their
brand strategies through the company at every point of public contact. A strong
brand is invaluable as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. For us,
quality is not just a strategy or theory, but is a mindset that they put in practice
every single day. Our values include, delivering the message clearly, confirms the
credibility, connects the target prospects emotionally, motivate the buyer and
concretes user loyalty.
