4 Signs You Should Invest in Organization Business Plans

When making business plans, we need to keep in mind most important elements (People) and (organization) who might affect it or be affected by it. These are your "stakeholders, and I believe you know what does it mean by stockholders” Don't think it is same word for "shareholders"! stakeholders include everyone who might have a "stake" in the outcome of your actions, not just investors. For easy memorization, the stakeholders are categorized in a framework called "The 4C's, therefore in any business plans we should invest in 4C’s Stockholder’s elements below

() Customers
() Competitors
() Company
() Community

The 4C's Stakeholders Analysis is based on the 3C's Model of Dr. Kenichi Ohmae, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company

Customers

Generally speaking, everybody knows a customer is anyone who purchases or uses your product or service, in concept of marketing  we may also call this group "consumers" for B-to-C operations, or "clients" for B-to-B operations. For nonprofit organizations, customers can include the beneficiaries of the services, or the donors who provide financial and other support. For beneficiaries of your services it is the magic happens when you understand your customer’s world, concerns and priorities. 

I would say that people aren’t really buying your product or service; they are buying the solution it gives them and how it makes them feel.  In the same time, you should bear in mind that first, the end user of your product is not always the one who makes the purchasing decision. For instance students buy textbooks because a professor requires them to do so; hence, textbook companies market to professors, not students. That said, some end users can influence the purchaser!

Second, the customers you target might not be the ones who ultimately buy your product. For example, Samsung produced the Galaxy S4 Mini for people who have  age 25 to 35, but the average age of this product turned out to be 40 ( Do you know about that?)   “Understanding your customers is critical, but don't let your customers tell you what to do”.

Competitors

A competitor is any product (or service) that can substitute for your product in meeting a customer need. For example, Apple's direct competitor is Samsung, but numerous indirect competitors also quench thirst, such as Nokia, Sony, and other smartphones. That's why Apple corporation has products in all those categories. You should also try to predict where surprise competitors might come from — they don't always come from your industry. Also keep in mind that EVERYTHING has competition, since everything competes for the limited time and attention of your customers. The competition for an MBA program, for example, might be someone's family demands, job, or social life.

Company

Your marketing campaign must fit the competencies and interests of your company's internal stakeholders:

() Employees
() Executives
() Major investors

If you are a marketing agency or consultant, then the "Company" is usually your client. In most cases, you need to sell your marketing plan to internal stakeholders before launching it publicly. The diversity of interests makes pleasing everyone impossible: for example, cutting worker wages might please investors but anger employees. Still, knowledge of what matters to your company stakeholders will help you shape and sell your plan.

Community

The wider community can significantly affect a marketing plan. This community includes:

() Government officials at home and in your target market
Interest groups (such as environmentalists, religious organizations, and other activists)
() Journalists and bloggers Celebrities and other influences
() Suppliers and vendors
() The residents who live near your company or its planned operations
 
Therefore, when companies provide this–by building communities that deliver tangible and emotional value, through employees and customers working together to solve collective challenges–they build lasting bonds of loyalty and discover new sources of growth

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5 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Motivations

All organizations are concerned with what should be done to achieve sustained high levels of performance.

Motive is a reason to do something and motivation is concerned with factors that influence people to behave in certain ways. Goal directed behavior!
Motivation is a behavior that can be influenced but not created. Motivated individuals can also get frustrated, discouraged, or tired of work. Team members need to know that they are valued, their efforts are noticed, and their good work is appreciated.

From above concept, I would start my talk and say; motivation and performance of employees in any organization are considered powerful tools for the long - term success of the organization. Performance measurement is a critical characteristic of organization’s management since it reflects the progress and achievement of the organization.

When it comes to performance and innovation, you discover that your competitors can provide the best insights. Brick-and-mortar marketers have shopped the competition forever. Therefore, one of the main aspects of your market research should be the analysis of your competitors’ actions and strategies, and you should  learn from them, this in turn, will help you make your own decisions on how to retain employees, customers and attract new clients.

It is mandatory for your organization to adapt to the important changes that can be sources of motivation for competitive advantage. I would strongly say that any thoughtful changes and planned will have a direct a positive impact on your employees motivation influence in the organization. So to achieve this target you need to get an idea about what are these things that your competitors can teach you about motivations.

Levels of skills: When you are planning to grow up your business in the marketplace you need to compete and offer better quality, and when you look for better quality you should have skilled workers or employees. So what gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets better. Skills inventory management strategies are giving managers and employees the ability to verify the skills needed to ensure success, pinpoint skills gaps before they compromise the initiative, and improve skills to meet changing needs

Commitment: You can measure the success of any organization from employees’ commitment, therefore the commitment that employees have toward their organization and its constituents is a crucial work attitude. Based on that I would say, an effective organization will make sure that there is a spirit of cooperation and sense of commitment within the sphere of its influence. On the other side, the work motivation has a significant positive impact on organizational commitment of employees, so it is interconnected equation that leads to positive result if the managers adopt it in right way. Therefore, it is essential for managers of organization to provide suitable environment in organizations to reinforce employees’ commitment positively.

Rewards System: The reward system in organizations serve to attract, motivate, and retain employees, both in tangible ways like pay, benefits and intangible form such as promotions and other benefits. Rewards affect people’s attitudes, feelings, and behaviors at work and become a a major determinant of organizational performance on a variety of dimensions. Reward do matter whether they be tangible or intangible the most important question being to what degree do the specific rewards matter to the INDIVIDUAL concerned

Equity: Equity theory evaluation individual inputs to outcome and compares it to that of others. (i.e.) ‘Comparative Referent.’ For example, if what A is for devoting one hour and breaking 1 ton of stones is the same as what B gets for doing the same thing, then equity exists. But if not, inequity exists.

Equity theory is characterized by perceptions of fairness rather than objective of reality. The idea is that the outcome a person’s input should fairly correspond with that of their counterparts. If they do not correspond, the person getting less will perceive inequity which will in turn affect his or her behaviours.

Social recognition: Motivation through social recognition can and does work. It will provide the organization with a benefit and advantage, some of which cannot be measured on a tangible scale. Recognition considered an incredibly powerful tool to foster a close-knit team environment, encourage employees to achieve high levels of productivity and increase your employee retention rates.

I think it’s true that you get what is measured, i.e people will do what they are ultimately assessed on. And if you want people to work together, share ideas and learning, and achieve more, you must also motivate, encourage, and reward that kind of behavior. What I have seen work well is where an individual’s results/rewards are both based on their individual actions and results COMBINED with the team actions results – so that it “pays off” for someone to work and share with their colleagues, not just working on their own and not caring how the rest of the team is doing

Competition helps us to get and stay motivated. It helps us generate new energy when we are stagnated.

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Green Policy - Do We Need to Apply It as Green Deal On Organization?

Nowadays, most people have a clear vision about the concept of Green Organization and what is the reason for organizations to go green in terms of impress employees, business world and enhance corporate reputation. So green strategy is now a trend in the market place, it’s also a term that's been going around for quite some time in different parts of the world. But what's the real deal with "Going Green"? And why should businesses care?
From my perspective, going green for organization pours in one stream which is increase employee engagement, create value might find additional competitive advantage and maintain company’s sustainable revenue. 

I would therefore, summarize why business should care Go Green about and what is the impact on:-

• Go Green for the Environment
• Go Green to Reduce Waste & Decrease Costs
• Go Green for Public Image & Increased Sales
• Go Green for your Employees

 

So for the question, do we need to apply Green Policy in organization? I would say, all companies should have green policy - and all areas of human activity for that matter. Gone are the days when humanity can afford to base decisions solely on cost-benefit in the traditional sense of the term. We are already using more than 100% of the earth's resources available to us each year and if everyone on earth enjoyed the average Western European standard of living, by 2050. 

All companies and all governments need to start considering the cost-benefit of activities on people, planet and profit rather than profit alone. A cost/benefit analysis may not reveal the true cost of the environmental impact and depending on how it is done may not reveal all the environmental costs associated with the project. For example if we did a cost benefit analysis of a vehicle would we go as far as to include the environmental pollution costs? Think about it. Whereas, if you want to see it from second point of view,  green policy will:-

• Reduce costs by consuming less. When you do more with less you reduce overhead costs and improve the bottom line. 
• Reduce costs by reusing materials and goods. When you use things more than once you reduce the amount of new materials you have to buy, which saves money and improves your bottom line.  
• Reduce costs by recycling. Disposing of “waste” is expensive. As we run out of landfill space, the cost of disposal is likely to increase. Recycling materials reduces disposal costs and keeps it out of the landfill.

I would add, in order to have a successful company you must have a good, solid reputation. Reputations come in all forms – they come via the quality of your product, your people skills, customer satisfaction levels, etc. Going green is a considered a great step to improve your company’s reputation – just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, not just to boost sales.

Going green may also enable companies to keep customers and investors happy, maintain market share, become more efficient, avoid legal liability for environmental damage and stay in business. So if you have a small company or business I would strongly say you should go green in order to stay competitive in the market and gain the opportunity to compete.

Establish and implement green policies such as hardware energy consumption, waste disposal, using recycled and environmentally superior content, water and energy efficient products and alternative fuel vehicles can very significantly impact your organization performance in positive direction and will know that your business invest going forward

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4 Ways to Impact your Content in Positive Direction

People are sharing content among each other through different social networks platforms because they would like to interact with others or seek about some Information or things to talk about and knowing about others. This is when we talk about individual aspect, so when we want to apply the social technology tools in organization or company and use it to drive our business in positive direction to market our company to leads and customers. This means that thousands of companies just like you are using the internet to market their products and services. In fact, 73% of B2B content marketers are producing more content than they did 12 months ago according to a 2014 survey from the Content Marketing Institute.

Therefore, we need to sketch out a clear plan about the mechanism of how to enhance the ways of attraction customers. Below are six ways to generate and maintain content that will make sure your leads and customers know you are different from the rest.

 

Differentiate in your content concept 

When you would like to write a blog post or article about your new product or service that your company offer, you should think about how other competitors in the market place might write on that topic. Try to express something different from what you would expect from the other competitors, and different from what the average reader might expect on that topic. Therefore, you need to clarify the content in a smart way that lead to attract your customers.  Be bold, genuine, and creative—these are things that intrigue readers, making them want to read more content from you.

Plan before publish your content 

It’s great to have time to carefully plan your content before publishing it to the internet, in the same time you need to know what is your customer suggestions and or opinion about your product and service that you offered, you may see some very positive results from your customers or followers by offering survey application form for them to interact with them. Also you followers will be thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with you through your company website in real time, and give them opportunity to listen to then through open forum.

Make Your Followers “Stars”

Followers like hearing what you have to say about yourself and your company, but they also like being in the spotlight now and then. Featuring a “follower of the month” through an interview article, follower-submitted photo or video, or podcast recording you share on your blog or Facebook page is a great way to create user-generated content and keep followers excited. Any follower will jump at the opportunity to express themselves in front of an audience. Other followers will keep updated with your content if they know there is a chance they could be the featured “follower of the month” next.

Surprise Your Followers

If there is a certain form of content you rarely share with your followers, surprise them with that content and see how they react. Release an impromptu podcast with a well-known figure in your field. Post some coupons or discount codes that followers can use on your website. Announce a surprise sale that will end at midnight the next day. Mail your followers a free gift as a token of your appreciation. Your followers will notice that other companies are not doing this, and they will keep a closer eye on your content in anticipation of more fun surprises. Content can get boring as soon as people know what to expect, but if followers can expect the unexpected from you, it will leave them on the edge of their seats waiting for more.

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Information Technology and Sustainable Business Growth

I have introduced the concept of sustainability in different platforms, and I have presented the topic of Secret to Sustainable Business Growth in my MBA defense in Cumbria, UK, in 2013. One of the questions that I added in my research; what is the strategy you should follow in order to grow and keep the business going. Maybe you're offering a service that not enough satisfy your customers, or maybe you've hit a wall and you do not understand your competitors. In any case, the plan just doesn't seem to be working, at least not as you hoped it would.

Today's global marketplace is forcing many companies to re-evaluate, find out innovate solutions and even collaborate their efforts just to keep up with demands of the business and services in the market place. 

For instance, in Information Technology sector we know the Information technology (IT) is essentially a tool to manipulate flow of information in business system. With the growth in need of IT services across the globe, we have found several companies have started venturing away from self-sufficiency in their way of conducting business to identifying specific processes that can be developed by some other company in order to reduce costs and focus on their core business.

Adopting sustainability is considered an important business strategy that affects your products and services in terms of cost-reduction opportunities, reputation, and revenue generation. Many people think that incorporating sustainable practices requires a significant transformational program, but the ultimate goal is to embed sustainability into business- as-usual activities.

Sustainable IT goes beyond using IT to reduce energy consumption. It’s also about helping the whole business meet its sustainability targets. From the other side, businesses considering sustainable IT face many questions such as: 

• Does the organization recognize IT as a significant contributor to its overall sustainability strategy?
• How does IT contribute to the organization’s sustainability goals?
• What more could IT do to contribute to those goals?
• Are there clear, measurable objectives for sustainable IT?

Nowadays, sustainability has considered as key factor for IT in several organizations to improve performance and growth. Numerous firms have worked to adopt different strategies in order to re-manage its organizational performance, enhance growth, and competitive advantage in terms of social and ecological sustainability, so the success of sustainability means raise the economic scale through the ability to innovate, as well as increased competitiveness by lowering costs and increasing profit as a result of better-quality and services. 

So to answer mentioned questions, I would follow Mines's research when he showed that a number of organizations are expected to jump on the Green IT bandwagon pushing the Green IT services market to an estimated US $4.5 billion by 2013. 

Therefore, the process of development green product or services is increasing attention as means to improve companies’ performance. CIOs have singled out “Green IT” in their organizations as the most important sustainable strategic technology. 

In order to achieve “How does IT contribute to the organization’s sustainability goals” question, I would say, Green IT initiatives will become mainstream and will move from niche projects to a part of core business practice. Therefore, working on new innovations in the field of green products and services will have an efficient role in supporting companies and economies towards environmental sustainability, For instance in 2010 and 2011 video conferencing efforts an environmental savings of more than 87,500 metric tons of CO2 emissions. Another example is cloud computing which is considered as core of IT infrastructure application network as green technology, it is an evolving paradigm which is enabling outsourcing of all IT needs such as storage, computation and software. 

The reason why cloud computing is a greener technology is that it looks to enhance and to better utilize computer resources which ensures the decline of physical resources and hardware components needed within firms as researcher states (Hafner and Zhang 2012).

To sum up, the concept of sustainable growth can be helpful for planning healthy corporate growth. This concept forces CEO's and managers to consider the financial consequences of sales increases and to set products and services growth goals that are consistent with the operating and financial policies of the company or organization

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5 tools to thrive your organization

Nowadays, business needs to grow up and stand firmly in order to compete in volatile markets today, doing business feels like competing in a heavyweight boxing ring. To prevail, should your company rely on agility (nimbleness) to quickly spot and exploit market changes? For instance, working in different directions to improve your business operating income and spur revenues.

From my perspective, in any business we need to understand the market deeply and do our research before moving to the next step and take any decision, especially when we are in uncertainty status about what is the consequences, it is like characteristic of any boxing match. Fighters and trainers can study the tapes of past fights or select sparring partners who simulate an opponent’s style, but they cannot predict a blow-by-blow chronology of a fight, foresee spikes in confidence, and foretell the errant punch that splits an eyebrow.

So if we would like to apply what mentioned above on any organization, we should make the organization like any athletic – Agile, and organizations can achieve agility in 4 distinct ways. 

Productivity, Competency, Investment and Sustainability

1- Productivity: we can define it “is anything that makes an organization function better”, and in organization or business we can summarize the productivity’s word in two senses – Input and Output. 

Generally, productivity is relating with change in quantity and the output of quality (goods and services, etc...) relative to the input (labor, mate, energy, machines and capital) used to produce them. Therefore, the ability of companies to enhance the productivity of their resources is critical for remaining competitive in this market or environment, and this can be done based on business leaders’ strategies in organization.

2- Competency: High-performance organizations realize that their success depends on how capable their people are in organization environment. Therefore, competency is a tactic that organizations are using to recruit, hire, train, develop and manage employees, and improve organization culture. So the competency is playing a key role in thriving of organization and build up a perceptual map in the market.

3- Investment: Investment implies the production of new capital goods, services and equipments. I would say it is how the company or organization invests in innovative solutions to drive economic growth and services development. We conclude to the point says; investment in services, people, capital can lead to higher returns for the organization.

4- Sustainability: sustainability today is considered as a topic of vital growing importance in all aspects of organizational life. Organizations and CEOs are working thoughtfully to adopt new strategies to incorporate a balance among economic, ecological, and social. In economic aspect, sustainable service or product increase corporate profits," so sustainability should always be a core value of organization because it is all pour in the organization’s environment in terms of efficient of company operations and organization employees whether they are engaged, empowered, and productive.

Sustainability Triple bottom lines

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