Month: September 2019

Amazon is the 5th most admired company in the world. How did it become so successful so quickly? Strategy! Investing in the right plans at the right time and staying the course.

The purpose of this article is to review Amazon’s strategy development model and the external assessment tools it used in helping it to formulate and select top strategies. (Please note that external assessment tools are but a small but vital part of Amazon’s strategic planning process.)

Amazon embraced what known as a “design school model” of strategy development. Despite the title, the model is simple to understand and can be highly effective. It is the one used most by professors and consulting organizations.The diagram located at http://www.strategic-planning-resources.com/Amazon-Strategy-Development-Model.html is Henry Mintzbergs illustration of the model.

Organizations often struggle in finding a compelling competitive position. Successful organization can begin to drift away and total fail at what it takes to be successful. This tool can begin to help an organization get into the game.

EXTERNAL APPRAISALS

The design school model calls for both external and internal appraisals. An external appraisal helps an organization to understand threats and opportunities that are out there in the market. The internal assessment helps the organization to understand its strengths and weaknesses. The “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats” (SWOT) tool is one that most people are familiar with and stems from the design school model.

To do this, Amazon conducted the external analysis using the following analysis frameworks:

– PESTEL Analysis

– Industry and Competitor Analysis

– Competitor Analysis

– Global Internet Trends

– GE Matrix

PESTEL ANALYSIS

The “PRESTEL” framework helped Amazon to identify trends that could impact them in six key areas:

– (P) Political factors: areas to focus on include political direction, taxes, trade restrictions

– (E) Economic factors: includes GDP, inflation, interest rates, exchange rates and other macro and micro economic factors

– (S) Social factors: includes social trends, population growth rate, age distribution, career expectations, etc.

– (T) Technology factors: includes equipment, information technology, R&D

– (L) Legal factors: include health, safety, employment, discrimination, consumer and antitrust laws

– (E) Environmental factors: includes weather and climate

COMPETITIVE POSITION

The external appraisal includes Amazon looking at its competitive position to determine opportunities and risks and where it should focus. To do this, they use Porters 5 force tool that helps them to understand the strengths and weakness of its competitive position, and where they might consider moving forward. In simplest terms, the model looks assumes there are five important forces that determine competitive power. These are:

– Supplier Power: How powerful are your suppliers? Is it easy for them to drive up their prices and are you stuck? If there are a number of suppliers providing the same product at the quality and price you want, then the suppliers dont have much power. However, if the supplier provides a unique product that others cant compete with, then they have more power.

Benefits of online business are very obvious to almost everyone. Internet is not just about selling products online, many other services are being utilized by using it. One such example is Human Resource services. Online job posting, resume management and online hiring are very common now. Even telephonic interviews by using internet are conducted instead of personal interviews. Therefore the market for products serving these needs is rich and growing faster.

Magento as an eCommerce platform serves the need of every business that is running online. It has a rich market scattered with dozens of products for each business type. We are concerned now with Magento Plugin providing solutions for Human resources and we find Open Jobs Manager a great utility because of its features.

This Magento Extension provides 6 smart configuration sections to manage your jobs. You can define job types, their locations, departments and much more. Each job has a section from where you will be able to manage applications received against it. This section provides required information for applicants like Name, Email, Application date, Phone and resume. Also another wonderful feature without which an application is considered to be incomplete has been provided and that is social integration. You can now publish any job to Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in.

Features:

Create, edit, enable/disable Job type, location, departments
SEO friendly URL for Job’s detail page
Set Meta title, meta keywords and meta description for each job’s detail page
View applicants from Job’s edit page
Download CV and view details of applicant right from jobs management section
Post job to your FaceBook wall from Job’s edit page
Tweet Job on twitter from job’s edit page
Share Job on LinkedIn from Jobs edit page
View applicants count on Jobs grid
Job listing page image can be set from configuration
Can change the label of Jobs in top links and bottom links
URL suffix can be configured from system configuration
Can configure the number of jobs to display per page
Can Filter jobs by location
Can Order jobs by Department, date etc.
Quickly apply for a job from a dropdown menu…

If you aren’t selling equipment, supplies, and apparel at your martial arts school, you are definitely missing out on a significant source of revenue. As a practitioner of good martial arts management, a dojo master should always be looking for ways to further serve the students and sustain the school. The sale of services and products in addition to the core school lessons is an important aspect of any successful school. The dojo store can become a very active and profitable part of your school.

Additional Sources of Revenue

In most businesses, it is important to have a few different revenue streams. This way, if the sales of the main product or service falter in any way and for any reason, the other revenue sources can carry the business, at least for a while. Having a peripheral sales generator for your school is a good insurance policy.

It may seem to you as if setting up the dojo store is a big investment of time and money up front, and it can be if it is done too quickly or too expansively. But having the basic equipment on hand, in popular sizes, can be a quick sale to new or advancing students. You may want to display some of the most popular items, but most items for sale can simply be listed on an order form.

What You Should Stock From the Beginning

Here is some of the equipment you might want to have on hand to sell to your students:

Sparring Gear – depending on the particular martial art you are teaching, this can include head protection, mouth guards, hand and foot pads, and chest and groin protectors. Shin and arm protectors are common as well.

Uniforms – especially if you are teaching children, new uniforms will be in constant demand as they grow. Children can grow into a new uniform size every year.

Dojo Logo Equipment – offer a selection of t-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball hats, bandanas, and equipment bags, all displaying the name and logo of your school. Remember that anyone wearing your logo is advertising your school.

Training Gear – you can offer the basic training gear, such as paddles or even punching bags, along with printed training cards and educational information such as books or DVDs. You should use caution with the quantity of some of these as they can be expensive to stock up front.

Keep the Stream Flowing

You should remind your students regularly about the equipment and supplies you offer for sale. Remind them with a statement in class, post flyers at your school about the sale of equipment, send email notices once in a while to all of your students, and offer periodic sales and discounts. You could even offer coupons for a certain percentage off merchandise as a birthday present and encourage people to purchase gift certificates.

If you advertise your sale of martial arts equipment in the local media, such as the yellow pages, it may even result in an increase in enrollments by getting the name of your school in front of people.

Your students will need to purchase their martial arts equipment from someone; some company down the street or on the Internet. Why shouldn’t it be you? Your dojo store can provide the equipment and supplies that your students need, and provide you with a new and profitable source of revenue, an important part of your martial arts management plan.

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Survival of the fittest- is the law of the jungle which is equally applicable to the competitive market place where firms struggle and fight for survival and ensuring survival of the firm is a critical task of the manager and that alone is not enough and the manager has also to actively seek growth and no matter how big or powerful a firm may be today, it is sure to be left behind in the race by newer, healthier and more efficient firms if it does not pursue growth. Two sets of factors impringe upon the firm’s survival and growth. The first is the set of factors which are internal to the firm and are largely controllable and these internal factors are choice of technology, efficiency of labor, competence of managerial staff, company image, financial resources etc.

In order to survive in the market, it is the responsibility of the organization in improving the efficiency of its workforce and efficiency is the ratio of output to the input and a manager has not only to perform and produce results; however, to do so in the most efficient manner possible. In order to produce the results a manager requires inputs in the form of money, men, materials and machines. The more output that the manager can produce with the same input, the greater will be the profit generated and profit is the surplus or difference the manager can generate between the value of inputs and outputs.

Profit is essential for the survival and growth of the business and a manager may decide to forego some profit today for the profits which he is seeking tomorrow; however, in the long run he should understand that no business can survive if it does not make profits and the business activity is undertaken to satisfy a need of the society in a manner which yields profits. A business is not a philanthropic or charitable activity which is run merely to provide some goods and services irrespective of whether it is making a profit.

Profit generated can be used for expansion, upgrading of technology, growth or paying dividends. Profits are one of the cheapest sources of financing growth as they involve no interest liability nor putting the freedom at stake by having representatives of financial institutions sit on the board of directors. Profit drives the business manager an initiative to take risk, think big and venture into relatively unknown areas. A profitable firm can turn unprofitable because of obsolete technology, inability to meet high fixed cost structures, high levels of wastage, or simply because the product is no longer in demand by the customers.

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Business management courses are more about creating leaders who can anticipate change than managers who react to change. MBA candidates should learn to invest in people in order to cultivate a more engaged workforce and form meaningful relationships with their peers and subordinates. Here are some uncertainties businesses have to deal with which tomorrows leaders would be wise to keep a tab on:

Change is the new constant: Change initiatives are the new buzzwords, with organisations launching on average up to 5 such measures every year. That being said, the increasing uncertainty in today’s business environment is prohibiting such change to stick. As per a new research, the ability to lead change is a primary challenge for most businesses.

The demand-supply gap is intensifying: Business leaders have their task cut out for them in the coming years balancing workplace needs and the available resources at their disposal. Talent shortage is a key concern as effective leadership would entail hiring the right people. And they won’t always be available from outside. Leaders need to identify and hire desirable talent early and nurture them through retention and training. The right business management course will help leaders to invest in other emerging leaders.

Front-line matters: Front-line leaders form more than 50% of management. They are critical to strategy execution, customer engagement and employee satisfaction. They are the linchpins in internal and external communication, enabling better performance from all stakeholders. For gaining a competitive advantage, companies need to invest a third of their entire leadership development budget in these front-line leaders. Their bottom-line can’t thank them enough for this.

People-leadership abilities to benefit organisations: Studies have demonstrated the ability to lead people efficiently is around thrice as important to a leaders success as knowledge and other skills. The four top people-leadership skills are thinking and acting like a leader, coaching and mentoring one’s team, engaging people and achieving results through others. Top business management courses enable students to develop these skills that are a requisite for front-line leaders.

Businesses have to deal with employee engagement: Customers aren’t the only ones organisations need to focus on. An engaged workforce exhibits lower absenteeism and greater turnover. Keeping employees motivated will give tremendous market advantage and leaders should be aware of the factors which are responsible for more engaged teams.

Leadership is more collective now: For the past 50 years, leadership has revolved around the individual. But, over the last 15 years or so, this trend has changed a fair bit; and has proved more effective. Its now more collaborative, which entails working with others rather than in solitude. The best institutes have realised that their business management courses can inculcate such qualities in candidates and give them an edge over their peers. Students are now prepared to function in multi-level organisational leadership development frameworks as well as be competent in maintaining consistency across language, concepts and themes.

No more boot camp training: A new study involving 700 leaders globally reveals that more than 90% of the respondents believe they have bitten off more than they can chew. They are multi-tasking like theres no tomorrow and still having work left to do. Some 75% revealed they have little to no capacity to achieve more with less resources. Where education is concerned, the boot camp model of learning is obsolete. People are overworked and putting them through their paces will only aggravate their condition. True, there has to be a certain degree of challenge in learning and it needs to be practical, but a business management course should have room for team bonding, open discussions and some surprise elements.