Rekopane Dot Biz

Business Intelligence - leading into Systems and Processes

You have thought out the greatest product in the market in the last 2 generations! You have worked out that USP (Unique Selling Point) and think you can package it into an Irresistible Offer which you think cannot be resisted.  It’s been market tested, its GREAT and there’s a HUGE demand!

Everyone wants one….and you only have one!

You haven’t invested in expensive machinery yet as you understand the risks of being over stretched on a prototype. Problem is that you need to meet the expectations of the clients in a manner they have come to expect and every time. That means repetition and the best way to achieve that is to have a process to follow.

If you visit that well known fast food outlet down the road and order a burger and fries tonight, tomorrow or next month you get exactly what you expected every time! Tastes the same, same indigestion…everything! Now how do they get that right?

Now visit another outlet of the same chain in a foreign land and order the same burger and fries combination.  And? That’s right, it’s the same. A remarkable coincidence?  Pure chance. Keep trying it – your own personal “Supersize Me”.

The ‘magic’ is easily described (hard to perfect but easy to describe).

Systems and processes. And break away from thinking computer systems in this case. A system is a collection of processes (normally rather complex or they are just referred to as a process) with other role players starting to have an influence. The other role players are people and applications (IT systems) with the information/data flowing along the process ‘holding’ it all together. The information provides the link between the process actions (by people or applications).

A process, when nicely defined, makes your product repeatable and up to the standard which is what’s making your clients return. Now that’s the start of the upward growth of your initiative, from a little kitchen start up to a franchise!

(Sidebar thought here- even a little kitchen has a …. Recipe book somewhere… that’s the start of the definition of a process, the process of cooking the meal in the same way the family expects it, the same way it tasted last time grandma made it!)

So now the importance of repeatable processes I believe are quite clear.  The picture though is a lot larger. There are processes for the creation of the unique product you have and they should be close to unique yet there are many more which are common across industries and are pretty standard.  A few that come to mind are payroll and accounting related, your regular monthly accounting  ... processes!

Once the processes are defined and in place a whole new world awakens within the business! You are on the way to being able to gather BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE!

Until the processes are being followed there are very few ways in which you can effectively measure the performance of the business.  You will be measuring your success looking backwards! Using the financial performance to measure how well the business is performing is a way to measure but when you think about it, is it the most timely? Your financial information is not always immediate – how current are the debtors and creditors books? They can easily be at 60 days. Is that a timeous way to measure how well your company is performing?

One starts off thinking that there is only financial performance but there is the measurement of the production of that which you are selling on to your clients. Surely as the business owner you would like to be reassured that the products being manufactured are to a standard which the clients expect (one of their attraction points?) and that they are being manufactured in an optimised manner (the attraction to the business owners’ bottom line!)?

Each process regulates the manner in which tasks are performed and against the business owners preferred manner.  Once the processes are proven, at critical points in the process certain measurements can be made to ascertain how the business (as an engine making the produce) is performing. How smartly these measures are setup determines how effectively the business is managed by the owner.

This is true Business Intelligence!

Process: a task, or sequence of them, which needs to be repeated. It should also be defined so that other parties can perform the task with minimal supervision.

Measurement: monitoring against predetermined parameters

Measurement Points: points (milestones) in the process where the key criteria for measurement become available (and are measured)

Stay tuned for Part 4 of ‘In pursuit of Business Intelligence’.

Cheers

Graeme Cartwright

About Graeme Cartwright:

Graeme has been involved in multiple business environments in the last 20 years and his involvement has ranged from the most detailed as a COBOL programmer to the theoretical, as a Business Solutions Architect matching corporate strategy to the business capabilities, and from the most positive with new business start-ups to the most negative – forensic investigations. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and how their successes can help the growth of the community. He is TOGAF-9 level 2 certified (only 6000 certified professionals worldwide)

Marketing Intelligently

In part 2 of our ‘In pursuit of BI’ series we focus on creating a buzz around your business concept.

This article does not cover the Four (or is it 5) W’s of marketing. Instead we focus on the building blocks of developing your small business brand.

Seth Godin has a wonderful book on how you can formulate a key element in marketing your company. This is through using your USP (Unique Selling Proposition), also used as a differentiator. A USP is what that makes you distinctively different and matchless in comparison to your competitors. Seth Godin’s The Purple Cow can help you develop or improve your USP. The book inspires you to find and show off your Unique Selling Proposition.

Your company’s USP could be a product or service or the way in which you deliver it to your customers. A great example was the dry cleaner who integrated a drive-thru. A customer would literally drive up to the window of the dry-cleaner to drop off or pickup their dry-cleaning. No other dry-cleaner had a drop off or pickup drive-thru window, and this provided a USP which differentiated them to their competitors. This helped to create a buzz for the business and ultimately more business. Another important element of the USP is that is must add value to the customer. In this example it saved customers a great deal of time.

Let’s face it, marketing a business is an expensive exercise but also a necessary evil. Regular advertising on tv, radio and other media does not come cheap. You therefore need to find another way to get your customers talking about your product or service. A USP in itself will create an opportunity for extensive word-of-mouth promotion as well as free publicity. People like to talk about special and unique experiences and so does the media. We’ve seen this with the launch of our own ‘Payroll with a Voice’ CD. It helped us get noticed as well at least 1 interview on different media platforms every month for a year, for free.

Satisfying and exciting your customers is still the best marketing message you can deliver. Delivering the promise you make is the cornerstone of your branding and marketing. Developing a USP or differentiator is an intelligent way to help you get in front of an audience.

Use the famous Google search bar to look for examples and exercises that will help you develop one for your company. Another tip to know is that as soon as you’ve launched your USP, start developing another one as it will be copied. Once it is copied it is no longer unique now is it.

In The Great Formula, Mark Joyner says marketing is made up of the following steps:

Step 1: Create The Irresistible Offer (TIO)

Step 2: Present it to a Thirsty Crowd.

Step 3: Sell them a Second Glass.

The rest of the marketing activities can be boring and expensive without something exciting to talk about. Make sure you get on developing your USP or launching and showing it off if you already have one. Normally there is shyness around launching a USP purely because the market might not understand the product or service as it might be the 1st time they come into contact with it. My response here is that you continue to take it to market and not worry about whether it is perfect or not. Good enough will work, as long as it doesn’t fall apart. You will perfect it as you get feedback from the market.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series in which we will look closer at building systems and processes for your business.

Cheers

KK Diaz for Rekopane Dot Biz