Meeting today's Business Challenges

In the early age kings and queens rule the land. Now businesses rule the world. Government policies, laws of countries are formulated to facilitate corporate policies of companies. Every state lobbies for foreign direct investment into their land to boost its economy. They give tax incentives, special economic zones, etc. to facilitate ease of doing business. And where businesses rule there are more employment, high happiness index and less poverty.

With the advancement of technology the world is becoming a global village and so the ease of doing business has increased many folds. Today a local small business can scale to the national level and with the same pace to a global scale. For example, what was once a small retail cloth store, it can start selling its products in e- commerce website to its national and worldwide customers. Hence with increased opportunities, market competition and product quality standards increased. Then there are price wars between competing companies. Businesses have to cut through profits to promote discounts and other promotion offers. The advancement of internet technology has increased business scope but has also brought other related problems which were earlier out of scope.

First, let us a case study for e-commerce business. Last decade it was all over the news that electronic commerce is the fastest growing business. It had drawn huge investment, talent and manpower. Now let us have a closer look. One hand it had made the local business truly global but also has increased to the high level of frauds and mistakes. E commerce's are facing a stiff challenge to chaff out fraud customers who cheat through malpractices such as fake orders, frequent misuse of return policies, fake complaints. Recently e-commerce companies formulated policies to regulate return policies and made them stricter after the cops exposed few fraud customer rackets. Companies have to upgrade their policies as per to prevent future such cases but have to bear the loss at present. On the other hand, such high handiness in buying or returning policies will attract less future customers also looms the perils of losing present customer base.

With the changing dimensions of the world, today's businesses have to keep pace with the growing market. What is Invention today becomes a necessity tomorrow? Businesses have to constantly keep on improving its services and products through customer feedback and market research otherwise; they will become outdated. If business decisions are not taken based on the current information chances of loss making and a bad decision increases. Business may lose its loyal customer base if their competitors provide better services than it. Also keeping a market update pays one to identify new opportunities.  Businesses either can venture into the new field as pioneers or be one among the on looking crowd. But as the saying goes: Early bird catches worms. The former one has an advantage of starting early and getting maximum profit.

For a Business to grow- revenue management is the biggest challenge. To start any new venture and projects, companies need cash in hand. One simply cannot rely on credit cards then. It should plan its projects such that the risk of facing cash constraints at every juncture of the project is minimised. Every cent of the revenue must be tightly controlled and responsible expensed. One can also plan for Floating public shares but has to abide strictly by the government rules and regulations. Or one may find private investors who like your business plan and ready to invest money into the project. But at the end of the day what matters is profit. Businesses survive only if they are making a profit. The profit can only be made if one plans ahead and takes wise decisions.

For companies to work successfully on day to day business, they should have right resources and people with right skill sets.  If there is constant conflict at the workspace and people at work are stressed, this will result in their low performance, hence costing to business operations. Business should create work environments that promote harmony and perfect work-life balance. Managers and leadership must listen to the voice of its employees. They should be open to new ideas and business initiatives.

Most businesses are reluctant to change. What was the most successful business model becomes old and outdated? Before the advent of APP based Taxi calling services, you have to stand in a busy New York square and wave at a Taxi to call and board it. But with facilities provided by Uber, etc. one can book and call a Taxi from the comfort of his house or office. Plan his or her intra-city travel itinerary well in advance. As the result those Taxi drivers who foresaw this shift immediately registered with an APP based Taxi calling service and made profits. But those who continued to the old model of on the fly hiring suffered losses.