So finally the time has come to sell the business. After investing years of your time and uncounted thousands of dollars, it has become successful, providing for your needs and wants, and it's time to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Where do you start?
A good time to start thinking about selling a business is right after startup, when it shows signs of beginning to succeed and become self-sustaining. Even if you are planning on bequeathing it to your progeny or a partner, it's never too early to think about what will happen afterwards.
The first step is to take your time--selling a business is a complex process and you will only do it once. Confidentiality is a necessity at this point, as word of an impending sale can cause repercussions among employees and business partners (suppliers, customers, etc.) alike.
Your position in the business is also a point to consider. If you are the sole proprietor, the decision is yours alone. However, if you are a partner or board member, selling your part of the business will involve more considerations.
Finding a good broker is worth any amount of time needed to locate one you are comfortable with. Check the Better Business Bureau for any investigation history, and get referrals from fellow business owners or from industry associations like the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA). This is a non-profit "trade association of business brokers providing education, conferences, professional designations and networking opportunities" (IBBA), as well as professional certifications and boasts over 1300 members.
Next, a professional appraiser should be consulted, as just like selling a home, a professional appraisal will give a fair value to begin negotiations with. Keep in mind though, an appraisal is an estimate of the fair value of a business' hard assets, and the market value of the business may be higher or lower, as a business is only worth what someone else is willing to pay.
Determining major terms and price are issues that you are going to have to work out with your broker, but a few basic factors come into play: what do you want to get out of the sale? Continuing salary? Lump sum? Stock options? This is a step often overlooked until late in the negotiations, often to the detriment of the seller.
Financing the sale is usually about 90% left to the seller. If you can't or won't be willing to cover the costs of the sale, it may not be a good time to sell.
Once you and your broker have located a buyer and agreed on a price, a Letter of Intent is drafted. This letter outlines the terms and tentative price in a non-binding document and allows the buyer time to thoroughly investigate the business. This process is subject to Due Diligence, as the onus of discovery is placed upon the buyer and buyer's agent.
After the discovery process is completed to both parties' satisfaction, the Purchase Agreement is drafted. This set of paperwork creates a formal agreement between buyer and seller regarding purchase price, terms, and other legal details. Once the respective lawyers have finalized the details and complied with state law requirements regarding the sale, the Purchase Agreement is signed, closing documents finalized, and the sale is complete. If everything has gone well, it's time to breathe a sigh of relief and start planning what to do with all that free time!
Selling your Business – Step by Step Process
Doing Business In The Future - Business Process Management
Business Process Management (BPM) is a set of activities performed by organizations to improve or streamline their business processes. Since software tools are usually used to aid these activities, these software tools are referred to as Business Process Management Systems.
- Business Process Management Systems
Business Process Management has been in place for some time now. Due to the introduction of software tools, however, there has been renewed interest in the body of knowledge pertaining to BPM. These software tools make design and implementation of Business Process Management easier, cheaper, and more efficient. There are three categories of Business Process Mmanagement activities - design, execution and monitoring.
1. Design
Designing BPM involves capturing the existing processes in a business environment. These processes must be modeled in a way that they can be simulated and tested. Modeling these processes usually involves graphical representation methods that document the processes and stores this data in repositories.
2. Execution
Traditionally, to implement automation in a business organization, developers would have to be contracted to develop applications that automate certain processes. Unfortunately, the scope of these projects was often too narrow. The result of which is that the automation is not well integrated into the business environment since the automation only deals with a particular department or function. BPMS champions a method that pushes for the development of applications that encompass the entire business process. It aims to fully automate the business environment only stopping to query the user when human intervention is absoultely necessary.
3. Process monitoring
Process monitoring involves observing and taking note of the performance of the individual processes so that evaluation and intervention become more straightforward for the business organization. From the information gleaned from here, the business organization’s leaders can make further decisions on the direction the business process takes. The data from this activity can be used to generate different kinds of statistics that are necessary when having to make critical decisions. Business Process Management is an iterative process.
4. The Future
Although BPM strives to automate the mechanical processes of a business, there has been interest in developing BPMs that move into the territory of human judgment. Some of the processes involved in a business environment are not included in the automation because some sort of human decision is needed. With the growing complexity of information systems - especially studies into decision support systems and artificial intelligence - some human decision-making processes can actually be automated. This is the future goal of BPM, to futher automate previously unautomatable processes.
- The Business Process Management Ideals
In 1920, Frederick Taylor outlined three waves of business ideals in managing processes. These waves represented the ways of thinking business process engineers had.
Wave 1. Processes Set In Stone
They are secured in business policy manuals. The manual is the basis of the process, and the organization has to abide by it.
Wave 2. Processes Changed Once In A While
Using a one-time activity, changes can be made. This means that the business would have to build their processes around a fixed system since change can only come once in a while, and at a great cost.
Wave 3. Processes On-The-Fly
The primary consideration in such systems is flexibility to change. Businesses that adhere to this goal create business environments that can adapt to its changing needs. This setup also allows the business to constantly fine tune its operations. This wave is not about business-process reengineering. It is about maintaining an environment that is constantly on its toes, ready to adapt to the circumstance, and maximize its strengths while downplaying its weaknesses.
Change is the only constant, they say. In this modern day and age, this could not be truer. The survival of a business could very well rely on its ability to constantly tweak its processes according to the whims of change. With the growing body of knowledge concerning Business Process Management, the path towards a sustainable market advantage based on a streamlined, flexible business organization can only get clearer.
SEO Process for Growth Your Business
SEO stands for search engine optimization. Its topic is- what is advantage of hosting a website in your city or near by location. Delhi slowly and gradually becoming the new Hub of SEO experts, giving a good competition to the world SEO market. With companies like SEO Delhi Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which is housing some of the best SEO talents in the industry is one of the leading your companies which is catering to clients world over. SEO Delhi provides better offers to attract every one. SEO is one such leading the source of great search engine marketing relevance, where one can find extremely good knowledgebase of SEO tips and tutorials. There are exclusive and advance SEO Delhi techniques used by the search engine optimizers who have very vast and rich experience in professional Search Engine Optimization Services. There’s always a team of dedicated and professional SEO Delhi experts who can really make the difference on your site by tweaking your project for better rankings. SEO Delhi provides dedicated and cheapest search engine optimization (Freelance SEO India) services from Delhi, India. These solutions are meant to aid companies in their growth and also help them realize their true on-line and off-line potential. It also includes the content in your words. There might be a great guidance given to the clients to develop customized strategies that will help boost their search engine rankings significantly. Use your key words here to make your site relevant. Don’t over do any of these techniques are you could be accused spamming. That’s why they are unable to reach their targeted customers. So SEO Delhi decided to launch a service which can be affordable by every one. This is mainly links back to your website, but also could be how many visitors you received, how long they stay and what links they click. You can control in some what by SEO Delhi. Search Engine Optimization for any site doesn’t create magic. It is a slow and gradual process with lot of research and implementation. So if you are hiring any search engine optimization expert then have the trust factor. So with clear communication and approach give them the space to show results.
As compared to directory submission and link exchange it is different from other companies searching process. Some other websites also link to your sites when they subscribe to that directory that provides number of feeds and you have uploaded articles in that directory. Those people get the access to your articles. Thus your content gets travelled over the World Wide Web even to those destinations in which you have not submitted it. For SEO services SEO Delhi Company e-Fuzion is the only trustful organization which offers better services to you. But the SEO Delhi e-Fuzion cannot take the helm throughout your place and choose awake in order down the method, you contain exhausted instance on your SEO Delhi.
Business Selling Process (Simple)
1. Determining the fair market value of the business
2. Set Preparing all books and records for prospective buyers
3. Putting the business on the market
4. Dealing with the potential buyer
5. Recieving an offer
6. Negociation - Price, Terms, and Condition
7. Accepting an offer
8. Provide all necessary books and records to the buyer
9. Work with the buyer to remove all contingencies of the contract
10. Signing the closing statement (1~3 days before the closing date at the escrow)
11. The night before the closing date
E-Learning & M-Learning In The Process Industries-Presenting The Business Case
Today’s business depends heavily on employees who are trained in the right skills that they need to run the business. It is not for nothing that an ideal business organization is also called "The Learning Organization". With shortage of staff due to competitive pressures like downsizing and outsourcing, it is highly critical for any business to ensure that all of its employees are trained regularly. This is especially so, for businesses like the process industry (chemical processing, oil & gas production, refining, petrochemical manufacturing, etc) who are heavily involved in engineering and technology, because of the rapid changes and advancements (and equally rapid obsolescence) in technology today. Not just technology changes, but the employees of these businesses have to be regularly trained in safety aspects of plant operations, to ensure safety & environment compliance.
Training employees and other stake-holders in your business regularly is a daunting task if attempted to do with the traditional instructor led training. In this White Paper, we examine the issues involved and see how e-learning can offer a better solution.
The challenge of learning in the traditional way:
In current times, in the process industries, there are several problems and issues related to learning in the traditional way. By traditional way, we mean attending a live class, or training workshop, or information seminar, where the expert teacher or instructor teaches a group of learners on the subject matter.
The problems and issues include the following
• Not all employees can be spared for such training at the same time. The employee has to travel away from the place of work for a full 2-3 days at the minimum.
• Costs of travel and stay, if learners are coming from different locations to study. These costs can be pretty significant if air travel is involved.
• Different employees may have different levels of grasping, hence even after undergoing the same course, each learner’s level of understanding will be different.
• Pressure on Instructor to complete the course in shortest possible time.
• No scope for learners to revise the course concepts or re-take the course again and again, unless the company has a policy of regular refresher training. However, typically this is done only for essential training like mandatory safety training, fire-fighting, etc.
• Learning is a continuous process but instructor led training makes it a one shot event.
Let us see now how this situation can be improved.
The case for e-learning & m-learning:
As can be seen from above, process technology has come a long way but people are still caught up in 18th century techniques to teach 21st century technology. How is this so? The traditional classroom based training, is a product of the industrial revolution of the 18th century. At that time, this kind of teaching was the state of the art. Now with the advent of the internet, broadband connections & excellent software, is teaching using these old methods OK?
Certainly not! 21st century training has to be imparted to learners in 21st century fashion! Not in an obsolete way.
Hence all over the world businesses, big or small, local or global are turning to e-learning & m-learning as a means of imparting effective learning.
What does one mean by e-learning & m-learning.? E-learning can be defined as using computer technology, internet, multimedia & other technology to impart learning. M-learning is similar to e-learning except that, it happens not with a computer or laptop, but with a mobile phone.
Advantages of e-learning & m-learning:
The advantages of e-learning are:
• No need to spare all employees at the same time. The employee can choose time and place of learning.
• It will be self paced and if need be can be run again and again till employee is confidently well versed in the subject.
• No time constraints. Learning can be in bite sized chunks or all at once-totally as per the learner’s need-rather than the instructor’s comfort.
• Large number of courses can be managed through suitable LMS (Learning Management Systems) by a very small number of training administrators. The LMS can also document and log number of courses taken, test scores, time taken, etc for each learner which can provide intelligent data for developing your employee’s skills.
• It results in measurable learning. Due to score tracking, progress tracking and time tracking, the performance of each employee undergoing the training becomes measurable. In earlier days with traditional training, this was typically not done.
• Flexible course deployment---either through stand alone CD ROMs, Internet or a company wide Intranet. Hence no travel and stay expenses, which can be a substantial cost today.
Geography is history. Learning can be anywhere, anytime at your convenience.
An e-learning solution can be either off the shelf courses, or a custom designed course.
Off the shelf courses:
You can find several excellently designed off-the-shelf courses in several topic areas .For process industries, these include e-learning courses on Hazardous Area Instrumentation, RFID technology and Gas Monitors from Abhisam Software. To know more about these please visit http://www.abhisam.com
Custom Designed courses:
A custom designed course has to be designed keeping in mind the audience, goals of the course, time allotted to the course and testing requirements. You should ensure that a custom designed course provider can provide to you all these resources at competitive costs. Often custom designed courses tend to be very very expensive. For most standard topics you can safely assume that the standard off the shelf e-learning course is good enough.
Use the right teaching tools in the course:
Your off the shelf course provider should have produced the course not merely as a bunch of pages stuck together electronically but an integrated course consisting of text, flash based animations, graphics, photos, videos, exercises & simulations. It should also have a glossary & an assessment test. For example e-learning courses made by Abhisam Software have all of these features. Also the arrangement of the course material should have a logical progression, starting from basic concepts going to more advanced topics.
Going beyond traditional courses-Electronic Learning Manuals ( Not just e-books):
One should think of going beyond just traditional courses and putting all of your company’s user manuals, procedures, maintenance manuals and installation guides into e-learning modules. This is especially useful for companies who sell capital equipment and need to train their customers thoroughly. Instead of supplying a staid user manual (with perhaps a three day course thrown in for good measure) it would be a better option to convert all this knowledge into an e- learning module which can then be used teach everybody who needs to know it anytime. Say, your company makes an oil fired heater and needs to train the customers in its operation. What better way to train than do it through an e-learning course which through the right combination of text matter, graphics, animation and sound can create quite a lasting impact. This kind of audio-visual training has better retention amongst plant operators than going though a dull manual.
( Please note that we are not talking here of e-books or e-manuals, which are nothing but soft copies of the same dull manuals! )
These kind of modules can be hosted on the company’s website and used to impart very effective training to even faraway customers in a cost effective manner. Does your e-learning service provider have this kind of service?
Deployment:
Ideally courses which are organization-specific should be able to be deployed immediately in a cost effective manner.
The easiest way to do this is to buy the course from a service provider who does not ask you to install any specialized or expensive software. You should be able to take the course directly by using your PC or laptop & logging in to the course provider’s site via a web browser like Internet Explorer. All of Abhisam Software’s online courses are hosted online by Abhisam Software & its business partners and are available to you instantly by just visiting the course pages. No special software is needed. Thus you can get trained on subjects like Hazardous Area Instrumentation, Gas Monitors or RFID almost immediately.
If you do have a Learning Management System (LMS for short) already installed in your company then your e-learning course provider must be able to give you courses that are compatible with your LMS. Most LMS these days conform to the SCORM or AICC standards and so the courses must also follow these standards. All of Abhisam Software’s e-learning courses are also available in SCORM or AICC compatible formats.
Conclusion:
e-learning is a technology whose time has arrived and companies, especially those in the Process Industries now have compelling reasons to adopt it, which was not the case a few years back.
If you are not considering e-learning for your organization, then you are losing an excellent opportunity to sharpen skills, increase productivity and thus increase the general skill level of your organization, at a fraction of the cost of traditional learning.
If you are unsure about how e-learning can help your company or organization, don’t hesitate. Contact us now and get a free no obligation consultation.
Consultative Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
Outsourcing = Global Momentum
The global business landscape has changed dramatically in the last couple of years thanks to growth of outsourcing. Outsourcing has gained strength as a management strategy for sustaining global growth as well competitive advantage to overcome the challenges of ever growing business complexities. So whether it’s a Fortune 100 transnationals or even a small enterprise, everyone is looking at outsourcing as a key growth engine thanks to the increased levels of process specialization and sophistication. Domain specialization and not just economies of scale are key to the success of any outsourcing relationship. Outsourcing has been recognized to save companies and not just costs.
Evolving Outsourcing Relationships
Organisations now regard outsourcing as a key initiative for overall growth and not just as mere cost saving exercise. Hence organizations are increasingly seeking best-in-class outsourcing specialists and not just large best of breed outsourcing service providers. This is especially true in the IT & engineering verticals as organizations even outsource new product development tasks to specialized offshore vendors. Research intensive, customer focused outsourcing relationships now have to include the following to remain competitive:
• Innovation Update. Quarterly, bi-annual, or annual innovation reviews (also known as innovation boards) focus typically on state of the market, industry trends and relevant information, technology updates, solution demonstrations, site visits, etc. Leverage other industry peer groups to understand what is happening in your industry, the outsourcing industry, and other sectors.
• Benchmarking. Clients should always activate their benchmarking clauses and focus on best practice as comparators of innovation—not just cost comparisons. Benchmark both functional excellence and outsourced environments.
• Stakeholder Satisfaction Surveys. Perform monthly, quarterly, and annual customer satisfaction surveys. They should be “360 degrees”—covering multiple dimensions and all internal and external stakeholders.
• Deliver on Partnering Promise. Hold regular collaborative planning sessions. Where people are briefed on the strategic and business objectives. Service providers need to come up with implantable strategies on how best they can meet their clients’ business challenges. This makes the outsourcing vendors to think and act above simple tactical delivery.
• Value sharing framework. A transparent value-from-outsourcing sharing mechanism on a case-by-case basis should be harnessed to pay for business services delivered. Inclusion of regular mutual rewards for both your organization and that of the service provider boosts people motivation at all levels.
• Service Excellence. All SLAs must be tied to process excellence or customer delight will not happen. Project milestones, “go-live” events, and pilots are tangible means of tracking process maturity & excellence. Other measures include customer satisfaction, productivity, Six Sigma (defects), work elimination, etc.
• Outsourcing Management. The internal governance team should have a transformation or innovation owner, sufficient staff & budget to help drive innovation and must hold the provider accountable for innovation. Reassure and demonstrate to the provider that the relationship is long-term; otherwise they will be inclined to disinvest in innovation and the relationship. Your organization must retain process management expertise at a level at which you can clearly articulate future state requirements, evaluate proposals brought forward by the service provider, and work with your organization to get the business case for change.
• Executive Visibility / Support. Senior executives from the service provider side must have high visibility and access. This includes steering committees, reciprocal headquarter visits, joint speaking engagements, regularly scheduled calls, quarterly and annual briefings.
• Behaviour/Communication/Culture. Be prepared to invest in and encourage business process transformations that are aligned to business goals - rather early in any outsourcing relationship. Transformation requires a partnership mindset, not a transactional orientation. Innovation is often not brought to bear because clients do not ask for it, define what they mean by it, and motivate the provider to deliver it, or put restrictions around it. Clients rarely help the provider to understand what is important to them.
Consultative BPO
Outsourcing has now scaled the maturity milestone globally and hence is increasingly consultative in nature rather than being mere business vendors. Outsourcing relationships now proactively meet business challenges as specialist BPO vendors invest to stay ahead of the learning curve.
Outsourcing is often regarded as a change catalyst and hence clients are increasing using outsourcing initiatives in their growth strategies/ employee career planning initiatives. Joint client-service provider partnering is key to this new consultative approach where both invest in transformations and not just fund reactive process management.
Business Process Outsourcing: The Perfect Solution for Your Business
The business process involves a lot of things. It will involve every aspect of your company in order to let your company operate smoothly and efficiently. It will involve business tasks, such as marketing, payrolls, help desks, management, human resources and more.
In the past, handling all these can be easy. But because of the growing demands in businesses today, you have to consider that it will be difficult for your company to cope up with today’s competitiveness in the business world. Your company should maximize its resources in order to remain competitive with other companies.
This would be impossible or very expensive if you handle every business process involved. This is why many companies are now considering outsourcing their business process.
Business process outsourcing is one of the most popular and the most cost-efficient business solution that you can ever make. By contracting other companies to do a specific business task, you will be taking off extra work involved in your company and focus more on important aspects in running your business.
For example, making payrolls can be time consuming. It will involve computation of salaries of every employees and it will also involve taxes. You can hire your own employees to do the payroll for you. But, this will only add to the expenses that your company is making. Your target would be to decrease overall expense in your company. So, in order to save money, you have to outsource this particular business process to companies that accepts outsourcing.
Another example would be the help desk. Every company that manufactures products needs one. This particular business process is a way to communicate with your clients and know about their feedback in your products and it is also a way to assist your clients in case they encounter difficulty with your product. Creating a help desk department may prove to be too costly. It will involve everything from hiring additional employees and purchasing all the necessary tools you need to create an efficient and working help desk.
Today, there are available call center companies that will be able to provide a help desk for you. They will be the one who will answer your calls and generate reports regarding each caller and providing the reports for your company.
Companies regularly outsource their business process offshore, particularly to developing countries filled with qualified and talented individuals, such as China, Philippines, Mexico and India. These countries offer good quality services for your business process and they charge a very cheap rate for these services.
By outsourcing your company’s business process or some of your company’s business process, your company will be able to utilize its facilities to its maximum potential.
Through business process outsourcing you will be able to cut some operational costs and at the same time, let your company focus more on important factors in running your own business.
These are the reasons why you should consider outsourcing your business process to offshore companies.
Always keep in mind that you should first check the quality of an offshore outsourcing company first before you sign the contract in order to be sure that you will be getting your money’s worth. Remember this and it will pave the way to make your company the best in the industry.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) = Global Fusion
‘Globalism’ Sweeps The World
Increasingly the world of business is coming together to tackles people/business & political issues. This increased focus on collaborative synergies is reshaping corporate strategies and even transforming competition…as even competitors at times come together to collectively grow the markets/lobby for concessions from governments or form business interest groups. All this is the new face of globalisation – called ‘globalism’.
Just like fusion releases limitless energy, business fusion through the spread of globalism is releasing unlimited opportunities for growth today and tomorrow. Outsourcing is one of the trends of this globalism as business come together on a shared expertise basis for jointly adding lasting value to their mutual bottom-lines. Outsourcing has also given rise to many new ways of collaborating - like the rise of collaborative marketplaces/portals on the web where outsourcing people eonverge/meet viz. service providers, service seekers, corporate, thought leaders, CEOs, CFOs, Project Managers, Transition Experts, freelancers, consultants, service seekers, BPO analysts/experts/advisors.
BPO & Global Fusion
Today’s consultative BPOs are a unique example of ‘global fusion’ where different cultures and processes ‘fuse’ to release an enormous energy viz. worker enthusiasm and significantly higher revenues too. Many BPO employ expatriate multicultural staff from different countries to deliver integrated BPO i.e. both the contact center as well the IT needs of its global clients. This leads to immense gains to both service providers as well their workforce as people from different cultures enjoy working together towards the same business goal and there are immense cross learnings for everyone in terms of process innovations and cultural bonding.
The other fusion is at the outsourced business process level as it seamlessly integrates with client process & global operations. This is a process of continuous improvement as the outsourcing vendor is continuously re-inventing its operational procedures by introducing innovative processes that significantly enhance revenues of its clients while saving millions too. Being domain focused enables outsourcing project managers to offer consulting to its clients (as it is able to view the clients’ customer needs more objectively/closely) that help them align their competitive strategies more effectively.
BPO vendors are then able to charge their its clients on the value they delivers rather than the usual model of effort based costing. This way the clients do not have to pay for any service/personnel in-efficiencies (as is the case with the usual effort based pricing practiced by other BPOs, where the costing depends on the number of seats/people allocated to a process).Thus client engagements at BPOs consistently grow up the value chain and this business fusion is a great win for clients, great for employees, great for outsourcing service providers and even greater for India as a trailblazing destination for BPO innovations!
Global Transformations
Companies who outsource are those who experience higher pressure to provide global integration. According to a recent report, rising majority of companies currently use outsourcing as a transformational vehicle. A key feature of adopting business process transformation through a BPO model is that the process improvement stages can often be funded by the savings released in the initial outsource , particularly if this involves labour cost savings via a low-cost off shoring location.
The outsourcing initiative is now seen to be more strategic. The business reasons for outsourcing appear persuasive, and the experience to date revolutionary to say the least. Apart from technology optimization, the other outsourcing -improvement levers are: outsourcing economies of scale, labour arbitrage, people-skills optimization and continuous process improvement.
BPO providers with core skills in technology and systems integration take the risk out of implementing automation, and their investment in IT infrastructure is an inherent benefit of BPO. Both CEOs and CFOs are looking for ways to drive benefits beyond cost issues to transform overall corporate performance, competitiveness and shareholder value. For them, BPO is a fact of good business life. It continues to grow and make its mark as a prime mover in cutting costs and generating efficiency.
A Peek into Business Process Re-engineering
Business process re-engineering (BPR) sounds esoteric at best, and maybe a little pretentious. Wouldn’t it be simpler to say business process change?
Most people understand what a business process is but when you combine it with re-engineering, it suddenly sounds vague.
The ProSci-sponsored BPR Online Learning Center calls a business process “a set of activities that transform a set of inputs into a set of outputs (goods or services) for another person or process using people and tools.”
It is simple. The way we interpret that is:
That’s elementary enough, but why do business processes have to be re-engineered?
It’s All About the Customer (and Competition)
The philosophy behind business process re-engineering is to please the customer. By delighting him, we get to keep him, turning him into a loyal disciple.
Rivals have a sneaky way of snatching customers away from us. It’s not because this world is full of sly and evil people, it’s because we tend to sit on our bottoms and think that we’ve finally got it made. We’ve become lax.
Business process improvement, according to ProSci, is not be confused with business process re-engineering. Instead of improving on current processes, the re-engineering concept says that because the technique is no longer viable, it has to be replaced, abandoned. There’s a need to establish a clean slate, as the BPR Online Learning Center teaches us.
Business process re-engineering, just like the DMAIC in Six Sigma, presupposes a series of stages: stage 1 involves a definition of the project – its rationale, objectives and scope. Stage 2 covers the entire learning process wherein we obtain as much information as we can about our employees, customers, suppliers and competitors – including non-competitors and align that new information with technology.
Armed with this knowledge, the next stage – stage 3 - is to set up our mission. Others call it a vision of the future. This requires a new set of business processes. Once we’ve determined the desired outcome of this transition, we move on to the next stage which calls for a plan of action that allows us to measure the gap between our company’s present state and where we want it to go.
When we get to this stage, solutions logically follow.
If you’re still wondering what distinguishes business process improvement from business process re-engineering, think of the starting point: are you starting from an existing process and want to improve on it, or do you want to start from scratch?
Thanks to Information Technology
Jump to globalization. We’re ushering in new technologies and they’re coming faster than we can learn them. There’s also this whole new talk about customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. We’re huffing and puffing and bursting at the seams. Businesses that have not adapted to global trends or introduced newer technologies into their operations will be clobbered by the competition. Today’s companies cannot afford to sit back and watch while others struggle with changes in the industry.
Thanks to information technology and the creation of new business models, the world of e-commerce has given new meaning to the way we do business. As Hui-Liang Tsai puts it, “e-commerce is no longer a way to gain competitive advantage, it is a competitive imperative.” (Information Technology and Business Process Re-engineering: New Perspectives and Strategies, Praeger Publishers, Connecticut, 2003). While companies are trying to keep up with technologies, customers are also changing. They are more demanding and are never satisfied. They fall out of love, and don’t necessarily have to explain why.
Picture the speed with which information is transmitted with just a click of the mouse. It used to be that urgent documents had to be couriered by special messenger or faxed immediately; today, documents are electronically portable. Mr. Tsai says that this phenomenon alone is producing a new crop of workers – he calls them knowledge workers. We are looking at the transformation of industrial society into an information society.
Progress in information technology is only one of the many reasons why companies have embraced business process re-engineering. If organizations desperately want to succeed, first they need information – truckloads of it. Second, they need to know how to turn that information to their advantage. The practice of business process re-engineering can refine a lot of that information into digestible parts.
A Process For Selecting Your Work At Home Business Opportunity
By Kirk Bannerman
It was back in 2001 when I started looking for viable work at home opportunities. It was a time consuming process, but in retrospect, I give myself a pat on the back every month when I cash the check from my home based business. The primary purpose of this article is to perhaps help others make their selection with a little less time and effort than I had to expend.
Having spent many years running traditional "bricks and mortar" type businesses, I didn't buy for one second the numerous heavily hyped, or worse yet, scam operations that touted the instant and fantastic riches that could be achieved (often with little or no effort required). While doing my research as to which business I would eventually pursue, this type of claim became an instant
trigger for me to move on to check out some other "opportunity".
I mean, give me a break, if those claims were close to being true, why would they share their "secret" with anyone else? They would just execute their "magic system" and in short order would have made all the money that exists in the world...yeah, right!
In the course of my investigations, a few other natural filters surfaced to help me narrow down the realistic and legitimate opportunities from among the far too numerous unfounded offers. Early on, I determined that the "get in on the ground floor" offers were essentially smoke. After all, if I wanted to take a chance on the lottery, I would have purchased a ticket. Because of my business management experience, it soon became clear to me that three of the primary factors that would influence my choice would be:
*successful longevity (how long has this particular company been successfully doing business?)
*reasonable income expectations touted by the top management of the company offering the opportunity.
*support systems and training resources available to help the participants succeed.
One thing that really struck home with me was a statement made by the founder of the company that I eventually selected for my home based business. It went something like the following:
"Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear from an affiliate questioning why he or she is not seeing a big check yet. More times than not, the person asking hasn’t even been involved for more than 90 days and is only barely beginning to even understand how the whole system works. And frankly, even if the number was six months, it’s still much too early to be expecting a significant income stream to have developed.
I always say that if you’re not willing to give a business at least a year, don’t even bother getting involved. You need to understand that it takes time to get to know all the nuances of the compensation plan. It takes time to determine which products you want to lead with. It takes time to develop a game plan. It takes time to figure out what marketing activities deliver the biggest bang for the buck. Anything worthwhile takes sustained effort. If you’re not thinking long term, you’ve set yourself up for failure."
To sum it up, the selection process should focus on reality (there is no "magic" in home based businesses) and reject any so-called "opportunities" that seem too good to be true.
Business Process Management
Business process management is the process of designing and maintaining an environment in which individuals, working together in groups, efficiently accomplish selected aims. This basic definition needs to be expanded as manager’s carry out the managerial functions of planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. Management applies to any kind of organization. It applies to managers at all organizational levels. The aim of all managers is to create a surplus. Managing is concerned with productivity implying effectiveness and efficiency.
Many scholars and managers have found that the analysis of business process management is facilitated by a useful and clear organization of knowledge. In studying management, it is helpful to break it down into five managerial functions involving planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. The knowledge that underlies those functions is organized around these five functions.
Managers are charged with the responsibility of taking actions that will make it possible for individuals to make their best contributions to group objectives. Management applies to small and large organizations, to profit and not-for-profit enterprises, to manufacturing as well as service industries. The term enterprise refers to businesses, government agencies, hospitals, universities and other organizations. In business process management, all managers carry out managerial functions. However, the time spent for each function may differ. Top-level managers spend more time on planning and organizing than do lower level managers. Leading, on the other hand, takes a great deal of time for first-line supervisors. The difference in the amount of time spent on controlling varies only slightly for managers at various levels.
Business process management, like all other practices such as medicine, engineering or baseball, is an art. It is know-how. It is doing things in light of the realities of a situation. Yet managers can work better by using organized knowledge about management. It is this knowledge that constitutes a science. Thus, managing as practice is an art; the organized knowledge underlying the practice may be referred to as a science.
Business Process Outsourcing in Action
Business process is the skeleton of a certain business activity. It involves the description of different tasks and possible outcomes that are associated with a specific business activity. It is essential in crafting the business goals of a certain corporate organization, which is clearly defined in the organization’s business strategy.
Business process is classified into three categories, which are as follows:
• The management processes, which is followed to run the operation of the business and comply with all existing yet relevant requirements.
• The operational processes, which is followed in delivering the business value to clients, and is considered as an integral part of a corporate organization’s core business.
• The supporting processes, which is followed to support the core-based processes. It includes accounting, information technology (IT) support, and recruitment processes.
Being the skeleton of your organization’s business activity, you must give utmost importance to your business process as a whole. This is extremely important since the success or failure in achieving the goals of your business will largely depend on the process that you have followed, together with your business strategies and plans. Thus, without an effective business process, your business is as good as dead when the time comes.
Realizing the importance of a business process in achieving their business objectives, there are companies that prefer to outsource some or all of their business process (most specifically the non-core processes) to third-party organizations. The main motive in outsourcing a business process is to allow the business to invest most of their time, financial, and human resources into core activities and focus on building effective strategies, which will fuel the growth of the company.
Since the global marketplace is fast-changing and highly-competitive, your business must concentrate on improving the productivity and at the same time trim down unnecessary costs. Non-core business processes are being outsourced since the tasks involved in these processes consumes time, essential resources, and energy. Thus, outsourcing these non-core business processes will help you achieve a cost-efficient system.
Non-core business processes that can be outsourced range from production to customer service to support functions (such as software development). Most companies that are outsourcing their business process are from Western countries and they are delegating the work to outsourcing firms located offshore, especially countries located on the Eastern hemisphere, such as China, Philippines, India, and Malaysia.
While more and more companies are becoming comfortable with outsourcing their business processes, outsourcing most of their learning and development functions is still a new approach to many learning professionals. Moving the training and learning model that is completely in-house to one that will be handled by other individuals outside the business is a big leap. However, as mentioned earlier, it is important that these processes receive equal importance and consideration for the benefit of your business as a whole. Thus, despite of business process outsourcing as a new approach, many training and learning professionals are starting to get the grip of the new system and subsequently will follow the outsourcing trend.
Business process, especially the non-core one, needs to be given equal importance and attention to achieve an efficient business operation. Outsourcing these business processes will not be a waste of time and financial resources, but rather a strategy to be followed. Surviving in this highly-competitive global marketplace is not as easy as you think. You need an option that will work to your advantage — and that is outsourcing.
Business Process Outsourcing: A Cheap Alternative to Get the Job Done
Try to imagine that you need a business process to be finished. You hire a professional in your country that charges about a hundred dollars to get the job done. This can prove to be too expensive for your company. What if you can get the job done, with the same quality made by a person with the same qualifications as the person you hired before, to do the particular business process at half the price?
This can prove to be very attractive. However, how can you be able to find this person with the same qualification but charges half the price your professional charges? The answer to this question is to outsource your business process in developing countries full of talented professionals.
Since developing countries have lower minimum salary rates, outsourcing can prove to be a cheaper alternative to do a particular business process that you need. Not only that, if your company is burdened with heavy workloads, outsourcing can help your company ease the burden. This will mean more efficiency and productivity for your company while saving a lot of money in the process.
By outsourcing your business process, you can be sure that you will be able to get the job done at half the price. Developing countries, such as India, China, Philippines, and others can provide cheap labor compared to hiring professionals in the United States.
Outsourcing companies is considered as a major industry in developing countries. Governments of developing countries are welcoming outsourcing companies to provide top quality jobs for their professionals with high paying salary. Although the salary you will give to outsourcing companies in other countries may be considered high, in the United States it will be considered to be very low, the minimum wage in developing countries is far lower than you can imagine.
Outsourcing business processes in other countries will also mean saving a lot of money on company insurance, social security payments and other benefits that you will be required to pay for if you hire a regular employee in your company to do the job.
As you can see, outsourcing your business process' main advantage is providing your company with cheap labor and at the same time quality and professionally done jobs. The bottom line for outsourcing is saving a lot of money for your company.
So, if you are looking for a way to get cheap labor for your company, you can consider looking outside your country for outsourcing companies that can tailor your needs for your company.
However, before hiring a particular outsourcing company, you have to make sure that the quality of their work meets your company’s standards. Outsourcing companies are now providing ways for you to evaluate their work first before you hire them. Because of this, you can be sure that you will be getting the best outsourcing company to get your business process done.
Outsourcing doesn’t only provide cheap labor for your company, but it can also ease the burden of heavy workload because of the growing demand for your company’s services. Through outsourcing, you will be able to increase productivity and efficiency of your company.
However, you should always remember that outsourcing is not for everybody. You have to determine if your company should outsource your business process or not. If you think your company can handle it, you should keep the work in your company. But if it proves to be very burdensome, you should consider outsourcing. So, instead of hiring additional regular employees in your company, you can outsource your business process and save a lot of money.