Showing posts with label Business Development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business Development. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Kadang Kita Menang, Kadang Kita Belajar.

Halo. Sudah hampir 2 bulan saya tidak menulis apapun di blog ini. Kemana saja? Alasan utamanya adalah pekerjaan. 2 bulanan ini intensitas saya tinggi sekali. Sekarang ini pun saya tidak cukup senggang untuk menulis sebuah postingan disini, tapi disini saya ingin menulis apa yang saya rasakan pada saat ini. Menulis adalah sebuah cara untuk sedikit membuat hati saya lebih ringan daripada hanya sekedar berkata-kata saja.

Jadi langsung saja. Saya sedang merasa kecewa, sedih, marah, malu terhadap keadaan ini. Sebuah keadaan yang mana berkaitan juga dengan pekerjaan saya. Hari ini saya menerima sebuah surat elektronik yang mengatakan bahwa perusahaan saya tidak berhasil memenangkan sebuah proyek yang mana saya adalah "leader" untuk tender tertutup ini. 

Sebetulnya bagi saya ini hal biasa, karena memang kekalahan ini bukanlah yang pertama. Tapi... Saya jujur tidak mengerti mengapa saya dan team kalah. Isi surat tersebut hanyalah: "coba lagi lain kali... semoga bisa bekerja sama dilain kesempatan". Kira-kira seperti itu. Sungguh kekecewaan dan kemarahan saya tidak bisa saya bendung, apalagi saya sampai menulisnya di blog ini.


Kenapa sih sampai sebegitunya? 

Alasan pertama adalah karena ini adalah bidang yang saya kuasai. Saya adalah seorang perintis juga dibidang ini. Bukan hanya itu, dulu juga saya yang mengerjakan proyek sebelumnya. Jadi sudah jelas bahwa saya yang menguasai semuanya dari A - Z, bahkan berbicara tentang pengalaman, hanya saya orang yang tersisa disini. Jadi ya jago karena orang lain yang lebih jago sudah pergi merantau duluan.

Alasan kedua adalah solusi yang saya bawakan adalah solusi yang terbaik yang saya dan team rancang untuk klien proyek ini. Mengapa terbaik? Selain karena alasan pertama yakni pengalaman, yaitu karena saya memiliki team yang mempunyai kemampuan sejenis yang bisa diaplikasikan pada proyek ini. Jadi lengkap sudah, skill, experience and team. 

Selanjutnya solusi ini juga sudah dikonfirmasi dan dipresentasikan kepada klien dan mereka 100% setuju sepenuhnya dengan solusi ini. Kami pun menjadi sangat unggul didepan setelah mengetahui bahwa lawan kami hanya menawarkan solusi yang seperempat matang. Anggap saja team saya menawarkan solusi BI, DW, ET & PT atau komplit untuk kebutuhan si klien, nah si lawan saya ini hanya menawarkan BI atau hanya 1 saja. 

Bagaimana mungkin kebutuhan si klien yang 4 itu di akomodasi oleh 1? Sudah jelas tidak masuk akal. Pada akhirnya harga kami lebih mahal. Ya jelas karena sesuai dengan kebutuhan mereka yang bukan hanya 1 tapi 4. Solusi kami bukan mahal tapi harganya sesuai dengan value yang ditawarkan, beda dengan solusi lawan yang murah dan murahan. 


Mungkin bagi yang baca juga sudah jelas bahwa secara teknis team saya jelas sangat sangat unggul. Lantas bagaimana selanjutnya?

Akhirnya, dari si klien meminta si lawan saya untuk meng-copy solusi dari team saya sehingga mereka menawarkan 4 dari sebelumnya hanya 1. Klien saya berkata dengan jujur bahwa mereka (si klien) memberi tahu solusi saya kepada lawan saya agar harganya bisa bersaing karena secara procurement mereka hanya akan peduli pada sisi harga saja bukan kepada teknis.

Saya jujur cukup terkaget disitu. Ya sudahlah whatever! Toh mencontek aja tidak gampang kok, karena mereka (si lawan) harus memiliki sense and feel yang kuat terhadap solusi tersebut dan harusnya mereka lebih mahal karena knowledge yang mereka miliki terbatas. Kenapa saya berani meng-judge bahwa terbatas? Saya akan ceritakan di alasan keempat, so lanjut dulu deh ke alasan ketiga.

Alasan ketiga mengapa saya kecewa, marah dan sebagainya adalah karena solusi dari team saya sama sekali tidak ditawar! Serius, tidak terjadi ruang negosiasi antara saya dan si klien. Jadi kenapa harus kalah? Kenapa tiba-tiba kalah? Pertanyaan yang menghantui saya sampai saat ini saya menulis blog ini. Bagaimana bisa team creator yang memiliki visi, misi, strategi, kemampuan, dsb yang jelas tidak ikut di negosiasikan?! Gila aja bukan? Dan lanjut ke alasan keempat nanti, semuanya akan lebih gila.

Alasan keempat adalah lawan saya itu adalah perusahaan saya sebelumnya. Hahahaha. Ya itu kenyataannya. Saya melawan perusahaan sebelumnya. Saya tahu mereka dengan jelas, kekuatan dan kelemahan mereka. Secara solusi? Meng-copy solusi bukanlah hal gampang buat mereka karena mereka tidak memiliki kemampuan yang mumpuni. Secara harga? Saya tahu hampir semua harga mereka, tapi saya tidak peduli dengan hal ini karena pada akhirnya seharusnya negosiasi harga yang akan menentukan. Idealnya seharusnya seperti ini.


Kenyataannya?

Saya kalah dengan alasan yang tidak jelas tanpa ada negosiasi. Kecewa, sedih, marah adalah sesuatu yang wajar. Malu? Jelas saya sangat malu mengetahui hal ini. Bisa-bisanya kompetisi yang seharusnya fair malah ternodai dengan tanda tanya besar: bagaimana semua ini terjadi? Seperti politik Indonesia yang selalu berwarna dan gaduh, sama halnya dengan tender ini. Saya mendengar juga bahwa solusi saya dituduh meng-copy solusi mereka (sil lawan). Bagaimana mungkin? Toh, si klien aja sudah terus terang bahwa mereka meminta si lawan mengikuti solusi saya. Jujur saya yang tadinya bangga dengan perusahaan sebelumnya merasa malu dan marah akibat dari hal ini.

Apakah hal ini pernah terjadi sebelumnya? Beritanya santer terdengar bahwa ini bukanlah yang pertama. Saya tidak tahu dan peduli sampai pada saat ini saya mengalaminya secara langsung. Selama saya bekerja di dunia professional ini, saya state disini bahwa saya TIDAK PERNAH meng-copy seluruh atau sebagian solusi orang atau perusahaan lain. Selain karena tidak pernah mendapat bocoran atau informasi tentang lawan, saya sendiri selalu percaya dengan kemampuan saya pribadi dan team. 

Selama saya "leader" untuk memimpin team mencari solusi terbaik sesuai kebutuhan klien, saya berkomitmen untuk selalu memberikan karya yang original and creative. Tentunya saya dan team selalu berharap untuk selalu menang, tapi bagi saya pribadi yang terpenting adalah "Solusi dan harga terbaik adalah yang harus menang!". Pada akhirnya saya terkadang menang, terkadang saya hanya belajar. Menang karena solusi dan harga yang saya dan team tawarkan sesuai. Belajar bahwa solusi yang saya dan team bawakan tidak tepat dan kurang sesuai dengan kebutuhan pelanggan. Untuk kasus kali ini, saya belajar bahwa tidak semua hal itu ideal dan adil. Saya belajar bahwa dunia dan khususnya si klien serta si perusahaan lama saya adalah entitas yang saya harus waspadai, tandai dan cermati untuk kedepannya.


Terima kasih sudah membaca postingan kali ini. Saya tahu mungkin tidak semua orang mengerti atau menerima apa yang tulis. Disini, saya hanya ingin menyampaikan isi hati saya tentang kenyataan yang saya alami. Saya hanya seorang yang idealis, dan punya integritas untuk selalu original and creative memberikan solusi yang benar dan terbaik. Sekali lagi, kadang kita menang, kadang juga kita belajar. Mohon maaf apabila ada kata dan kalimat yang kurang berkenan. Terima kasih.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Plan Do Check Act / PDCA - Overview

PDCA is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products.



PLAN : Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output (the target or goals). 
Plan : Identifying and analyzing the problem.

DO : Implement the plan, execute the process, make the product. Collect data for charting and analysis in the following "CHECK" and "ACT" steps.
Do : Developing and testing a potential solution.

CHECK : Study the actual results (measured and collected in "DO" above) and compare against the expected results (targets or goals from the "PLAN") to ascertain any differences. Charting data can make this much easier to see trends over several PDCA cycles and in order to convert the collected data into information. Information is what you need for the next step "ACT".
Check : Measuring how effective the test solution was, and analyzing whether it could be improved in any way.



ACT : If the CHECK shows that the PLAN that was implemented in DO is an improvement to the prior standard (baseline), then that becomes the new standard (baseline) for how the organization should ACT going forward (new standards are enACTed). If the CHECK shows that the PLAN that was implemented in DO is not an improvement, then the existing standard (baseline) will remain in place. In either case, if the CHECK showed something different than expected (whether better or worse), then there is some more learning to be done... and that will suggest potential future PDCA cycles.
Act : Implementing the improved solution fully.

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Source 1 : Wikipedia
Source 2 : Mindtools

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

SWOT Analysis Overview

Definition

A SWOT analysis (alternatively SWOT matrix) is a structured planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in a project or in a business venture. (Wikipedia)

A SWOT analysis can be carried out for a product, place, industry or person.

Composition:
  • Strengths: characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others.
  • Weaknesses: characteristics that place the business or project at a disadvantage relative to others.
  • Opportunities: elements that the project could exploit to its advantage.
  • Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project.


Corporate Planning
As part of the development of strategies and plans to enable the organization to achieve its objectives, that organization will use a systematic/rigorous process known as corporate planning. SWOT alongside PEST/PESTLE can be used as a basis for the analysis of business and environmental factors.
  • Set objectives – defining what the organization is going to do
  • Environmental scanning – Internal appraisals of the organization's SWOT, this needs to include an assessment of the present situation as well as a portfolio of products/services and an analysis of the product/service life cycle
  • Analysis of existing strategies, this should determine relevance from the results of an internal/external appraisal. This may include gap analysis which will look at environmental factors
  • Strategic Issues defined – key factors in the development of a corporate plan which needs to be addressed by the organization
  • Develop new/revised strategies – revised analysis of strategic issues may mean the objectives need to change
  • Establish critical success factors – the achievement of objectives and strategy implementation
  • Preparation of operational, resource, projects plans for strategy implementation
  • Monitoring results – mapping against plans, taking corrective action which may mean amending objectives/strategies.
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#Strengths
  • What advantages does your organization have?
  • What do you do better than anyone else?
  • What unique or lowest-cost resources can you draw upon that others can't?
  • What do people in your market see as your strengths?
  • What factors mean that you "get the sale"?
  • What is your organization's Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
Consider your strengths from both an internal perspective, and from the point of view of your customers and people in your market.

Also, if you're having any difficulty identifying strengths, try writing down a list of your organization's characteristics. Some of these will hopefully be strengths!

When looking at your strengths, think about them in relation to your competitors. For example, if all of your competitors provide high quality products, then a high quality production process is not a strength in your organization's market, it's a necessity.

#Weaknesses
  • What could you improve?
  • What should you avoid?
  • What are people in your market likely to see as weaknesses?
  • What factors lose you sales?

Again, consider this from an internal and external basis: Do other people seem to perceive weaknesses that you don't see? Are your competitors doing any better than you?

It's best to be realistic now, and face any unpleasant truths as soon as possible.

#Opportunities
  • What good opportunities can you spot?
  • What interesting trends are you aware of?
Useful opportunities can come from such things as:
  • Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and narrow scale.
  • Changes in government policy related to your field.
  • Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes, and so on.
  • Local events.

A useful approach when looking at opportunities is to look at your strengths and ask yourself whether these open up any opportunities. Alternatively, look at your weaknesses and ask yourself whether you could open up opportunities by eliminating them.

#Threats

  • What obstacles do you face?
  • What are your competitors doing?
  • Are quality standards or specifications for your job, products or services changing?
  • Is changing technology threatening your position?
  • Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems?
  • Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your business?

When looking at opportunities and threats, PEST Analysis can help to ensure that you don't overlook external factors, such as new government regulations, or technological changes in your industry.


Monday, July 6, 2015

Competitor / Competitive Analysis Overview

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. (Wikipedia)

Identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and weaknesses relative to those of your own product or service. (Entrepreneur)

A competitive analysis is a critical part of your company marketing plan. With this evaluation, you can establish what makes your product or service unique--and therefore what attributes you play up in order to attract your target market.

Evaluate your competitors by placing them in strategic groups according to how directly they compete for a share of the customer's dollar. For each competitor or strategic group, list their product or service, its profitability, growth pattern, marketing objectives and assumptions, current and past strategies, organizational and cost structure, strengths and weaknesses, and size (in sales) of the competitor's business. Answer questions such as:
  • Who are your competitors?
  • What products or services do they sell?
  • What is each competitor's market share?
  • What are their past strategies?
  • What are their current strategies?
  • What type of media are used to market their products or services?
  • How many hours per week do they purchase to advertise through the media used in this market?
  • What are each competitor's strengths and weaknesses?
  • What potential threats do your competitors pose?
  • What potential opportunities do they make available for you?
A quick and easy way to compare your product or service with similar ones on the market is to make a competition grid. Down the left side of a piece of paper, write the names of four or five products or services that compete with yours. To help you generate this list, think of what your customers would buy if they didn't buy your product or service.

Across the top of the paper, list the main features and characteristics of each product or service. Include such things as target market, price, size, method of distribution, and extent of customer service for a product. For a service, list prospective buyers, where the service is available, price, website, toll-free phone number, and other features that are relevant. A glance at the competition grid will help you see where your product fits in the overall market.

Source : Entrepreneur

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Marketing Mix Overview

The marketing mix is a business tool used in marketing and by marketers. (Wikipedia)

A planned mix of the controllable elements of a product's marketing plan commonly termed as 4Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. (Business Dictionary)



Product = A product is seen as an item that satisfies what a consumer demands. It is a tangible good or an intangible service. Tangible products are those that have an independent physical existence. 

Price = The amount a customer pays for the product.

Promotion = All of the methods of communication that a marketer may use to provide information to different parties about the product.

Place = Refers to providing the product at a place which is convenient for consumers to access.

Physical Evidence = The environment / evidence which shows that a service was performed, such as the delivery packaging for the item delivered by a delivery service, or a scar left by a surgeon. 

People = The employees that execute the service, chiefly concerning the manner and skill in which they do so.

Process = The processes and systems within the organization that affect the execution of its service, such as job queuing or query handling.

Saturday, July 4, 2015

What is Cohort Analysis? - Overview

What is Cohort Analysis?

Cohort analysis is a subset of behavioral analytics that takes the data from a given eCommerce platform, web application, or online game and rather than looking at all users as one unit, it breaks them into related groups for analysis. These related groups, or cohorts, usually share common characteristics or experiences within a defined timespan. Cohort analysis allows a company to “see patterns clearly across the lifecycle of a customer (or user), rather than slicing across all customers blindly without accounting for the natural cycle that a customer undergoes.”

A cohort is a group of people who share a common characteristic over a certain period of time.










A cohort is any group of people sharing a characteristic. 

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Example from CohortAnalysis.com


Perhaps the most popular cohort analysis is one that groups customers based on their "join date," or the date when they made their first purchase. Studying the spending trends of cohorts from different periods in time can indicate if the quality of the average customer being acquired is increasing or decreasing in over time.


Cohort Analysis in Google Analytics by Yoast

So a cohort analysis is basically the analysis of a group of people, in this case people who interacted with your website at the same date or date range. When clicking Cohort Analysis in Google Analytics, it’ll look something like this:



I don’t know about you, but this isn’t really immediately clear to me, so let me walk you through how to look at it. The chart at the top is a visualization of the average user retention (percentage of returning visitors) for the date range, which is 7 days by default.

The most interesting, however, is the table below the chart. This actually gives us insight in what percentage of people returned to your site within 7 days of visiting it for the first time. Day 0 corresponds with the date in the first column. Day 1 is the first day after someone visited your website for the first time. So the 4.32% at Day 1 in the March 10th row means that 4.32% of the people who visited yoast.com for the first time on March 10th, visited yoast.com again on the next day (March 11th). Day 2 is the second day (March 12th) and so on.

Note: this is a breakdown of New Users, so although it says “All Sessions”, this only includes people having visited your site for the first time.

#What can I do with this?

This is a question that I immediately asked myself. It wasn’t completely clear to me right away, so I might be a bit slow, or it’s just not that obvious. I’ll let you be the judge of that ;)

Let me give you an example (not yoast.com, by the way):


So what happened on March 14th or 15th that made people who visited this website for the first time on March 14th visit again the next day? The retention rate is about 2% higher there, and even on day 2 the retention rate is higher. Maybe they wrote a nice post? This can be a great way of figuring out whether what you’re trying (new content, new campaigns, etc.) is actually working.

Breaking down the cohort

If you need a more specific look on what’s happening, either because you don’t know why the retention rate was lower/higher, or because you’re just a data geek, you’re in luck. You can actually ‘break down’ your cohort analysis by using segments. For instance, if I were to use the Mobile and Tablet Traffic segment on the data above:


Google Analytics will give me this cohort report:


This shows the data for people who not only visited your website for the first time in the set timeframe, but were also on a smartphone or tablet when viewing the site. You can have up to 4 of such segments active at the same time. This way you can see whether the (expected) effect happened for all sorts of people, such as people on mobile phones, people from search engines or direct visitors, etc.

Other metrics

You can actually select quite a few metrics that will make the cohort analysis useful for a lot more than returning visitors:


Although the Cohort Type has a dropdown, it actually just has the one option. The Cohort Size can be set to ‘by day’, ‘by week’ or ‘by month’ and the Date Range will change accordingly. The most interesting though, is the Metric dropdown. You can select a lot of per user metrics (revenue, pageviews, transactions, etc.) or total metrics (again revenue, pageviews, etc.) apart from the Retention metric I used in the examples above.

This means you can actually see a lot of effects, such as whether your overall revenue or revenue per user has increased after a post or campaign. Of course, you can normally see your sales or revenue increase if you have a successful campaign, but this data is different.
You can now see how much revenue you got from people that visited your website for the first time on a specific date and see if these new visitors bought something on that date or in the days to follow. And since you can see this for an entire date range, you’ll also be able to see if that’s a higher or lower revenue than was to be expected.

Let me give you an example. Say you changed your landing page recently, which is tailored to just convincing new visitors of your site to buy a product. You could just be looking at the revenue from new visitors and see if it increases. However, if a visitor were to visit your website for the first time, only to return the next day to buy your product, Google Analytics wouldn’t show it as a new visitor anymore. And that’s why these cohorts actually work: the visitor was new at the set date, so even if they buy the product a day (or 2, or more) later, they’ll still show up in the cohort analysis. So you’re not just measuring direct effect anymore, you’re measuring delayed effects as well!

By the way, to be sure you have just the visitors that visited that specific landing page, you should create a segment for visitors who visited that page.

#The downsides

While looking at the cohort analysis for yoast.com, I noticed that the Retention metric is quite difficult for our domain. Our traffic, even from the new visitors, is just too stable. The pattern was just the same all the time, no matter what date range I selected. This is probably because we have such a steady flow of new visitors, mainly from Google, that any lift here would only be a small change in percentage.

So, the changes in the percentages are too small; if everything between 3.5% and 4.5% is the same color, it’s pretty hard to distinguish any real differences. Of course, I could just look at the percentages, but that’s just not as convenient.

More importantly, though, we can only create cohorts based on Acquisition Date at the moment, which is a nice start, but I do really hope they’ll start adding more Cohort Types. Just the Acquisition Date is really not enough, for me at least. I’d love to see cohorts of people buying a specific product (category), for instance.

#Summing up

The cohort analysis can definitely give you some insights that weren’t readily available before. However, it does still require more than just basic knowledge of Google Analytics and might be a little confusing in the beginning. So I’m not completely sold on this feature yet, but to be fair; it is still in beta, so who knows how much better it will get right?


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Other Useful Links : Use this spreadsheet for churn, MRR, and cohort analysis
Source : AndrewChen.co

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Aktivitas Presales Dalam Industry IT / Information Technlogy

Dalam dunia SI atau System Integrator, presales adalah satu bagian yang menurut saya paling penting. Istilah presales artinya proses sebelum sales / deal itu terjadi. Bukan karena pekerjaan saya adalah presales, namun karena saat presales tersebut adalah momentum dimana apakah customer / client kita membuat keputusan membeli solusi kita atau tidak. Post sales sendiri lebih ke arah maintain customer, tentunya kalau kita gagal menang apa yang mau di maintain. Hehehehe.



Ketika dalam fase presales, ada 2 hal yang penting menurut pengalaman saya. Yang pertama adalah "relationship", bagaimana hubungan kita dengan customer tersebut sehingga kita bisa mendapatkan informasi penting berikut ini :
  • Problems / Pain Points : Apa saja yang menjadi masalah yang mengakitbatkan hilangnya revenue dan profit, tingginya cost dan lead time, dan sebagainya.
  • Preferred Solution : Bisa jadi customer kita sudah memiliki solusi yang dihasilkan oleh researchnya mereka sendiri atau root cause identification yang telah mereka lakukan. Ketika sudah ada pastinya customer akan membandingkan solusi - solusi yang ada untuk melihat kapabilitas terhadap kebutuhan yang ada.
  • Budget : Seberapa besar budget yang dimiliki oleh perusahaan untuk mengatasi masalah yang ada.
  • Key Stakeholder : Orang - orang atau management yang akan terlibat nantinya di project sebagai owner, sponsor, advisor, dsb.
  • Main PIC : Orang atau pihak yang akan menjadi lead, influencer dan decision maker untuk pemilihan solusi dan vendor.
  • Status Competitor : Apabila sudah ada solusi yang dimiliki customer, kecenderungan competitor berada dibelakangnya pastilah besar.
  • Customer Impression : Bagaimana impresi customer terhadap solusi yang kita bawa, apakah cocok atau bahkan mereka anggap kurang atau malah berlebih.
Hal penting yang kedua adalah POC atau "Proof Of Concept". Itu adalah suatu kondisi untuk membuktikan apakah solusi yang kita bawa bisa memenuhi kebutuhan customer dan menyelesaikan masalah yang ada. Hubungan yang baik tanpa ada solusi yang tepat adalah sia-sia. Ibaratnya dokternya baik, tapi ngasih obat yang salah, ya sama saja artinya tidak pernah akan sembuh penyakitnya.

Berkaitan dengan POC, berikut adalah tips dari saya tentang POC : 
  • perjelas goal dari POC  dan catat hal-hal yang berkaitan dengan tujuan dari POC.
  • buat checklist kebutuhan / requirement, sampai menyiapkan manual untuk eksekusinya.
  • lakukan latihan sebelum hari H POC sehingga nantinya bisa lebih cepat dan lancar.
  • buat pembagian tugas sesuai dengan keahlian dan roles masing-masing team member yang terlibat.
  • dokumentasikan semua network, security, authorization, access, dsb tentang infrastruktur yang dipakai / disediakan oleh customer.
  • catat semua masalah yang muncul selama POC, dan dokumentasikan lewat screen capture atau camera, sehingga problem solving bisa dilakukan diluar jam kantor apabila dibutuhkan 
  • apabila terdapat masalah / bugs ketika POC, cari bantuan bilaperlu sampai ke level principal dan terapkan secara paralel jangan menunggu jawaban saja.
  • yang paling penting, dalam setiap checkpoint pastikan kita melakukan back-up untuk menghindari hal-hal yang tidak diinginkan.
Semoga bermanfaat. Terima kasih telah membaca.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

8 Tips for Successful Business Development by Mashable

Many founders and CEOs come asking, “we need to hire a biz dev person, do you know anyone?” Few roles have more varied job descriptions than business development. It’s no wonder why it is hard to figure out who to hire, what this person should do and how to measure success. Read below for tips on successful business development for startups, including how to avoid many of the typical frustrations with business development.



1. Hire the Right Person at the Right Time
A person with deep industry knowledge and strong network ready to “do deals” can turn into a disaster if it is too early in a company’s product lifecycle. There are three stages in the commercialization process and not everyone is suited for every stage.
  • Scouting: The earliest stage of a company. At this point, business development is about identifying various routes to market, points of leverage and providing the internal team early market feedback. The ability to work with product and engineering teams is a key skill.
  • Testing: At this stage, biz dev will close a few deals to test assumptions and provide measureable input before you scale the business. Analytical skills to set up a framework for what to measure, and examining the data, will determine if and where to scale based on the company’s strengths and vision.
  • Scaling: After gathering data from early deals and validating a path to achieve your goals, business development is ready to start replicating deals and putting a support structure in place.
2. Business Development Is Not Sales
In general, business development will identify and create partnerships that enable leverage for driving revenue, distribution or that enhance the product. Sales is focused almost exclusively on driving revenue. Similar distinctions will apply when hiring a sales leader for an early stage company versus a more mature organization.

3. Post-Deal Management Is Crucial
All successful deals are a result of accountability and proactive management — by both biz dev and account management. In most cases, the account manager is a different person than the biz dev person who did the deal. Ideally, the account manager has variable compensation or incentives tied to meeting the goals established by both parties. If you are not ready to allocate the resources to support a deal, think twice before signing it.

4. Qualitative Versus Quantitative
Companies sometimes try to build a business purely around a qualitative value proposition, which is difficult and has a higher likelihood of failure. The market is less willing to pay for a better user experience or the promise of increased engagement, even if they like the product and find it useful. A quantitative value (lowers cost, drives revenue, more customers, etc.) dramatically increases the odds of success. One way to remember this rule is the pacemaker versus the hearing aid analogy: If you could only have one, which one would you choose?

5. Support for Business Development Is Essential
A good business developer will engage internal resources along the way to ensure the company can meet the goals and expectations of a partnership. A lack of support will almost certainly lead to finger pointing and blaming when things go south. Everyone should own part of the success or failure from the start.

6. Establish a Framework for Assessing Opportunity
In order to gain support from your team, everyone needs to understand why the deal makes sense for your company. Does it drive revenue, lead to new users or enable the company to enter a new market or vertical? When the goal is clear and measurable, it makes it easier to address issues like, “Why are we converting below projections?”

7. Make Deals Carefully
There is a difference between doing deals and doing the right deals. A good dealmaker can help identify a false signal –- when there is just enough market momentum and revenue to mask the greater opportunity. Conversely, a less experienced dealmaker or one with the wrong incentives can generate enough momentum and distract the company from the bigger opportunity. Many companies have been weighed down by a bad deal they later regretted -– this is where you want to develop a level of understanding and trust with your business development person.

8. There Are No Legal Issues
A legal agreement codifies a business arrangement and includes commercial terms as well as what happens if things do not work out. This requires business development and legal counsel to assess the business opportunity versus the business risk and explain the trade-offs to management.


...

Building a company is hard and requires a lot of things to go well including having a great product and team. Watching an idea become a product and a product generate revenue that becomes a successful company makes it all worthwhile. Bringing in the right business development person at the right stage, and following these other guidelines, will keep your company on the right track.

Source : Mashable

Friday, May 22, 2015

How to Develop a Business Development Budget By wikiHow

Creating a business development budget is a vital part of planning for your new business, or for a new project within an existing business. Without one, you have no reliable method for estimating profits or for controlling expenses -- both vital tools in business success. Although developing a budget for any business can seem intimidatingly complex, the actual process is simple. It's a matter of systematically applying basic accounting and business principles to the particulars of your project.



1. Determine your development goals for the business or department. Good goals are specific, measurable, realistic and timely.
  • Specific goals are clearly defined. "Make money" is not a specific goal. "Make $100k profit" is specific.
  • Set measurable goals defined in terms where you can easily see whether you have attained them, and check your progress. "Increase market share" is not measurable. "Increase market share to 55 percent" is.
  • Realistic goals are things you can reasonably reach given the resources and realities of your business situation. "Dethrone Microsoft" is not realistic. "Launch a viable streaming video product" is.
  • Timely goals are set with a specific timeline for progress. Without a timeline, it's difficult to gauge how much money to put into your budget for any given quarter.

2. Review any existing financial documents for your company or department. Use the expenses from your budget history to estimate the costs of development.
  • If you're creating a business development budget for a new company, or a project your company has never taken on, you won't have applicable financial documents. In this case, you should base your estimates on numbers for other businesses in the same region and industry. You can get general industry statistics from trade associations and public records.
3. Define the cost categories for your business development plan. Some examples include facilities, payroll, taxes, insurance, raw materials and cost of goods sold.

4. Fill in your budget by filling in each category of expenses with the estimates you based on the financial documents you analyzed. Account for any unique costs associated with your particular business, such as payments to a former owner.

5. Check your work against numbers for similar departments and industry averages for your region. If your budget is too small or too large, there's a good chance you missed an important consideration. Review your work and revise accordingly.

Tips : 
  • It's a good idea to include an "overrun and oversight" line item to make up for unexpected costs and unforeseen emergencies. Ten percent of the total of your other budget items is a good estimate for this consideration.
  • Budget estimation is a complex practice, with potentially disastrous consequences if you guess wrong. If you're not skilled at budget analysis and business planning, you can hire a professional to perform this task for you. Be certain to include any fees in your budget estimations.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

How to Team Build for Business Development By wikiHow

To remain competitive and secure in the new economy, it is imperative that companies communicate to their employees the critical importance of proactive branding, marketing and business development. It is essential that management outlines corporate sales objectives and needs, thus creating an innovative business development atmosphere amongst all team members. The idea behind new corporate culture is to build the team for “exciting-times ahead” by communicating the key strengths, opportunities and competitive advantages of their company by first ensuring that all stakeholders are “on-message”. This article explains how to team build for business development.



1. Undertake strategic research and planning with your team. 
As part of doing this, you and your team will need to undertake the following:
  • Develop a mission statement
  • Create a vision statement
  • Create business planning processes
  • Do a S.W.O.T. assessment
  • Assemble a competition analysis
  • Do a risk assessment review
2. Source your competitive advantages. 
Have the team work these out together. When considering your competitive advantages, these are some of the things you should keep in mind:
  • What is your unique selling proposition?
  • Create a brand experience program
  • Plan your sales and marketing thoroughly
  • Investigate product and service life cycles
  • Build the sales team
  • Script the corporate sales
3. Target your marketing. 
In working out who to market to, have the team consider:
  • Selection of prospects
  • Segmentation of prospects
  • Profiling of prospects
  • Researching the decision-maker, timing, need, and budget
  • Determining the entry point
  • Customizing the sales approach
4. Assemble the distribution channel and communication tools with your team. 
When training up the team, get them to focus on:
  • Matching the medium to the message
  • Creating a brand design
  • Using the 7 Touchpoints approach
  • Considering how to implement brand delivery
  • Overcoming barriers to entry
  • Formation of business development tools
5. Have the team ready with a call-to-action program. 
As part of this final business development activity, have the team consider how the business will:
  • Target a return on investment
  • Target measurable results
  • Review plans
  • Target deadlines
  • Construct programs to remain proactive
6. Get the team to report back to you their overall understanding of all the elements outlined above. 
Ultimately, all team members should externally “transfer this knowledge” to clients, suppliers, prospective customers, community, and, of course, to their families. In the new economy, the act of “team selling” is no longer a “luxury” for a select few but a critical “necessity” for all.


Wednesday, May 20, 2015

PEST PESTLE Analysis Overview & Definition


Definition
PEST analysis ('Political, Economic, Social and Technological analysis''') describes a framework of macro-environmental factors used in the environmental scanning component of strategic management.
It is a useful strategic tool for understanding market growth or decline, business position, potential and direction for operations.

PEST is an acronym for Political, Economic, Social and Technological. This analysis is used to assess these four external factors in relation to your business situation.
Basically, a PEST analysis helps you determine how these factors will affect the performance and activities of your business in the long-term. 

4 Main Reason
  • It helps you to spot business or personal opportunities, and it gives you advanced warning of significant threats.
  • It reveals the direction of change within your business environment. This helps you shape what you're doing, so that you work with change, rather than against it.
  • It helps you avoid starting projects that are likely to fail, for reasons beyond your control.
  • It can help you break free of unconscious assumptions when you enter a new country, region, or market; because it helps you develop an objective view of this new environment.
open in new tab for larger screen - by PestleAnalysis

Political
Political factors are basically to what degree the government intervenes in the economy. 
  • Tax Policy
  • Trade Regulation & Restriction
  • Government & Political Stability
Notes : 
  • Political factors may also include goods and services which the government wants to provide or be provided (merit goods) and those that the government does not want to be provided (demerit goods or merit bads). 
  • Furthermore, governments have great influence on the health, education, and infrastructure of a nation.
Consideration :
  • Depending on the country, how well developed are property rights and the rule of law, and how widespread are corruption and organized crime? How are these situations likely to change, and how is this likely to affect you?
  • Could any pending legislation or taxation changes affect your business, either positively or negatively?
  • How will business regulation, along with any planned changes to it, affect your business? And is there a trend towards regulation or deregulation?
  • How does government approach corporate policy, corporate social responsibility, environmental issues, and customer protection legislation? What impact does this have, and is it likely to change?
  • What is the likely timescale of proposed legislative changes?
  • Are there any other political factors that are likely to change?
Economic
Economic factors include 
  • Economic Growth 
  • Interest Rates
  • Exchange Rates
  • Inflation Rate
  • Growth In Spending
  • Rate of People in a Pensionable Age
  • Recession or Boom
  • Customer Liquidations
Notes : 
  • These factors have major impacts on how businesses operate and make decisions. For example, interest rates affect a firm's cost of capital and therefore to what extent a business grows and expands. Exchange rates affect the costs of exporting goods and the supply and price of imported goods in an economy.
Consideration :
  • How stable is the current economy? Is it growing, stagnating, or declining?
  • Are key exchange rates stable, or do they tend to vary significantly?
  • Are customers' levels of disposable income rising or falling? How is this likely to change in the next few years?
  • What is the unemployment rate? Will it be easy to build a skilled workforce? Or will it be expensive to hire skilled labor?
  • Do consumers and businesses have easy access to credit? If not, how will this affect your organization?
  • How is globalization affecting the economic environment?
  • Are there any other economic factors that you should consider?
Social
Social factors include 
  • Cultural Aspects 
  • Health Consciousness
  • Population Growth Rate 
  • Age Distribution 
  • Career Attitudes
  • Emphasis on Safety
  • Value / Beliefs
  • Language
  • Religion
  • Education
  • Literacy
  • Time Orientation
Notes : 
  • Trends in social factors affect the demand for a company's products and how that company operates. For example, an aging population may imply a smaller and less-willing workforce (thus increasing the cost of labor). Furthermore, companies may change various management strategies to adapt to these social trends (such as recruiting older workers).
Consideration :
  • What is the population's growth rate and age profile? How is this likely to change?
  • Are generational shifts in attitude likely to affect what you're doing?
  • What are your society's levels of health, education, and social mobility? How are these changing, and what impact does this have?
  • What employment patterns, job market trends, and attitudes toward work can you observe? Are these different for different age groups?
  • What social attitudes and social taboos could affect your business? Have there been recent socio-cultural changes that might affect this?
  • How do religious beliefs and lifestyle choices affect the population?
  • Are any other socio-cultural factors likely to drive change for your business?
Technological
Technological factors include technological aspects such as 
  • R&D Activity 
  • Automation 
  • Technology Incentives
  • Rate of Technological Change
  • Internet
  • eCommerce
  • Social Media
  • Electronic Media
Notes : 
  • They can determine barriers to entry, minimum efficient production level and influence outsourcing decisions. Furthermore, technological shifts can affect costs, quality, and lead to innovation.
Consideration :
  • Are there any new technologies that you could be using?
  • Are there any new technologies on the horizon that could radically affect your work or your industry?
  • Do any of your competitors have access to new technologies that could redefine their products?
  • In which areas do governments and educational institutions focus their research? Is there anything you can do to take advantage of this?
  • How have infrastructure changes affected work patterns (for example, levels of remote working)?
  • Are there existing technological hubs that you could work with or learn from?
  • Are there any other technological factors that you should consider?

Environmental
Environmental factors include 
  • Ecological 
  • Competitive Advantage
  • Waste Disposal
  • Energy Consumption
  • Pollution Monitoring
Notes :
  • Ecological aspects such as weather, climate, and climate change, which may especially affect industries such as tourism, farming, and insurance. Furthermore, growing awareness of the potential impacts of climate change is affecting how companies operate and the products they offer, both creating new markets and diminishing or destroying existing ones.
Legal
Legal factors include 
  • Discrimination Law
  • Consumer Law
  • Antitrust Law
  • Employment Law
  • Labor Law
  • Health and Safety
  • Product Safety
  • Advertising Regulations
  • Product Labeling
Notes :
  • These factors can affect how a company operates, its costs, and the demand for its products.


Source 1 : Wikipedia
Source 2 : Mindtools
Source 3 : PestleAnalysis

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

SaaS - Software as a Service - Overview & Characteristics

Wikipedia
is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. 

Webopedia
is a software delivery method that provides access to software and its functions remotely as a Web-based service. (Webopedia)

Salesforce
Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management.

SaaS applications are sometimes called Web-based software, on-demand software, or hosted software. Whatever the name, SaaS applications run on a SaaS provider’s servers. The provider manages access to the application, including security, availability, and performance.



Characteristics :

#MULTITENANT ARCHITECTURE
A multitenant architecture, in which all users and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base that is centrally maintained. Because SaaS vendor clients are all on the same infrastructure and code base, vendors can innovate more quickly and save the valuable development time previously spent on maintaining numerous versions of outdated code.

#EASY CUSTOMIZATION
The ability for each user to easily customize applications to fit their business processes without affecting the common infrastructure. Because of the way SaaS is architected, these customizations are unique to each company or user and are always preserved through upgrades. That means SaaS providers can make upgrades more often, with less customer risk and much lower adoption cost.

#BETTER ACCESS
Improved access to data from any networked device while making it easier to manage privileges, monitor data use, and ensure everyone sees the same information at the same time.