Business Sphere

As a management consultant, I have helped clients set up their own businesses. Over the years I have noticed that the success or failure of a business depends a lot on how it was conceptualized, implemented, and managed. The world is littered with the hubris of failed businesses, of shattered dreams, and of hard-earned money going down the drain, all because of lack of business planning and faulty implementation.

     Since success in business does not happen by chance, it is important that in starting a business you must have a roadmap, a guide, so as to avoid being included in the growing statistics of business failures. That way, your hard-earned money, dreams and hard work will not go to waste, and your enterprise will survive, grow, and become profitable, three indicators of good business planning and management.

     The following are the five guides or roadmaps in starting a strong business.

     1. Generate Business Ideas. All businesses first started as a thought, a dream, or an idea in the mind of the entrepreneur. So, to determine what products you will produce or sell, or what services you will provide to your target market, you must conduct a self-analysis, to find out your distinctive competence, or what you can do better than others or what you have that others do not have. It may be a skill, knowledge, talents or specialized training. You survey and understand the business environment around you, to find out strategies employed by  the successful businesses and those that failed, and their respective products and services. Study what the market need and buy.  Look at the available skills or manpower, raw materials, technology. Or you can even start a business using the easier route, by buying a franchise or by buying an existing business. The possibilities and opportunities are endless.

     2. Validate the Business Ideas.  Before you formally launch your business, you first test your product or service with the target customers by asking their feedback and comments. Do market surveys, interviews, promotions. This is to find out the feasibility or the chances of success of your product /service to your target market.

     3.  Set size or scale of Business Operations.  Once you have already validated your business ideas to your target market and found out its feasibility, prospects and growth, you can now make your detailed plan to implement your venture. This involves finding the location of your business, identifying the resources that you need, the suppliers, raw materials, inventory, sources of assistance for training and support, the target customers or your niche in the market. This also include knowing how much is the required capitalization and identifying the sources of capital. The size of your business is dependent on these factors.

     4. Birth. Once you have accomplished the preceding three steps or stages, now is the time to implement your business, according to your plan.  Develop systems and procedures to operate and promote your business, including hiring people with the necessary skills and attitudes, setting up your recording and accounting, registering your business to comply with the legal requirements, build relationships with customers, suppliers, workers, and other networks.

     5. Survival.  Before you can experience growth, expansion, and even diversification, you must first ensure that your business fundamentals are in place. This means you strengthen and consolidate your operations, establish management and control systems, develop products and markets, and train your people for them to become efficient and effective. To ensure survival, you have to run your business using the tools of management, which means you must constantly plan, organize, lead and control, since your business is dynamic and the environment where your business operates is also in a state of flux.  

     As you can see, starting a business is quite easy. It is how you manage your enterprise to make it survive, grow and become profitable that is hard. But business, like any human activity, requires work, hard work. But hard work has its own rewards, like the satisfaction of seeing the business grow, the sense of fulfillment of achieving one’s financial independence, of giving jobs to others, of serving the needs of the customers, and the joy of seeing the bottom line.