How Important is Business Strategy?

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Before we answer the question "how important is business strategy?", let us look at the definition of business strategy:

• "Business strategy can be understood as the course of action or set of decisions which assist the entrepreneurs in achieving specific business objectives." - Business Jargons
• "A business strategy is the means by which an organization sets out to achieve its desired objectives. It can simply be described as long-term business planning. Typically a business strategy will cover a period of about 3-5 years (sometimes even longer)." - CIO Wiki

So what is business strategy?

It is a plan on how to achieve your business goals and objectives. The strategy could be short term or long term. 

How Does a Small Business Contribute to the Economy?

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Small Businesses are credited as the engines of job creation. Creating jobs positively impacts families, the community and the overall economy.

Let us look at some research numbers to validate the tag of "engines of job creation":

• As per a research by Entrepreneur magazine, small businesses in the United States account to more than 60% of all US jobs
• A study published by Google and KPMG, "India has 51 million small and medium businesses and they employ about 120 million people. SMBs account for 37 percent of India's $2 trillion GDP

How Can a Small Business Survive Competition?

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The competition is getting tougher. The barriers to entry for a lot of businesses are being either eliminated or reduced by a large extent. Technological advancement is to blame for the fierce competition and disruption in every industry. How can a small business survive competition? Competition from bigger companies. Competition from existing competitors. Competition from new entrants.

It is needless to say that continuous improvement, innovation and adoption of technology is essential for sustainability. Businesses are not just competing with other similar businesses. Players from different sectors and industries are disrupting existing business models. Think Uber, AirBnB and Netflix. These are primarily tech companies disrupting existing business models.

Small Business Growth Strategy - "Keep it simple"

"Business Strategy" is being discussed everywhere - conferences, social media, professional networks, business management books, blogs, networking and coaching sessions. Everyone, everywhere is talking about business strategy.

Do you need to be a cost leader? Do you need to add more value? How to identify a niche segment?

There are questions and then there are answers. However, quite often, especially small and medium businesses lose their focus as they spend a lot of time planning a strategy. The complete plan often does not see the light of the day.

At an early growth stage, at times the mantra is to "Keep it Simple". Keeping it simple could be the best small business growth strategy.

Speed and flexibility are the major advantages every small business has when they enter a new market or compete with larger players. A lot of time, effort and resources spent in strategic planning tends to slow them down. This neutralises their advantage.

At an early growth stage, spend most of your time, energy and resources in execution. Talking to clients, visiting them, ensuring follow-ups and deadlines are not missed add more value and fuel a company's growth.

todo.vu - CRM for Small Business, Consultants and Freelancers

Small business owners, independent consultants and freelancers often look for FREE or budget friendly options for their business requirements. Software and tools meant for larger companies tend to be too complex and costly. Here, we give you an overview of todo.vu - an integrated CRM, task management, project management, time tracking and billing software.

todo.vu claims to bring all your customer management and project management into one place, with built in time tracking and billing. Check out the todo.vu intro video:

todo.vu packs in all the necessary features required by freelancers, consultants and small teams. Along with the features, it also meets the budget needs.

How to Retain Employees?

Small businesses, like all organizations, often struggle with their hiring and retention strategies. Owners and the Management spend a lot of their productive time dealing with human resource issues. However, unlike large organizations and MNCs, small businesses do not have dedicated human resource departments or executives to hire, retain and manage talent. The office HR rep is more often than not a shared resource. She is busy with other functions such as admin, purchase or client relations along with managing her HR duties. Hence, human resource management tends to be a neglected department. The need is felt when there is a sudden pressure to hire new talent or when an existing employee decides to move on. While hiring the right talent is very critical, our focus here will be on how to retain employees?

How can a small business create value for employees?

Tips to retain employees

• Fix your hiring process. Yes, the focus of this blog is retention. However, hiring the right talent is indeed the first step. Most small businesses fail to plan their hiring requirements. The result - they always issue urgent hiring requirements. The urgency does not allow adequate time to screen profiles, research and ensure the most suitable talent comes on board. It certainly is difficult for smaller companies to create hiring forecasts.