Developing And Implementing A Business Plan For BizOps Enterprises, An Essay.

Present Business Plan

Discuss about the Developing and Implementing a Business Plan at BizOps Enterprises.

BizOps is essentially a new concept in rendering service and utilities. They specialize not only in Knowledge Processing but also in implementing any improvements that may become necessary in the performance of their responsibilities. With their 150 strong retail outlets apart from the online and phone based order execution they have to always be on their toes since they handle the top and exclusive segment of the market and this segment of the market does not tolerate any lapses (Plumme, 2014). 

They not only handle superior quality good but are also careful to remain sustainable and environment friendly so that the exclusive clientele who frequent their outlets and place orders over phone or online remain satisfied with their service levels. This necessitates taking a very close review of all aspects of their operations and then suggesting efforts for improving not only the products that they market but also the services they render. Of late they are insisting on remaining “Green” in all their activities since their clientele has embraced the environmental cause very consciously. This paper is an attempt at undertaking a review of almost all areas of their working and suggesting areas for improvements for ensuring that retain their image in the market for being a highly progressive and dependable organization (Nais, 2010). 

Since this organization is contemplating three things to be incorporated into their business model it will be in order to ensure that their present business plan is fit to take on the challenges that will surface during the process of incorporations of the three dimensions desired by them. These three dimensions are the following:

Putting in place Customer Relationship Management software in their working for higher customer satisfaction.

Develop a hamper for the upper market segment and this hamper would be in line with their brand image of exclusivity.

Intensive mentoring program for the proper development of their operating personnel at the supervisor and team leader level(Entrepreneur, 2015). 

Before getting on with the review and suggestion at each area it may be recalled that there is no scope for controlling the external factors in a business. The only way of ensuring a competitive advantage is by improving the internal strength areas and building up on their strengths and removal of weaknesses. The three steps which this organization has contemplated all go to improve their existing Business Model and at the same time develop closer contacts with their customer base (Fontinelle, 2016).

Financial and Physical Resources

While their Vision remains intact in the sense that their aim is to remain at the number one slot in their industry. No change is suggested to this very basic and foundational stand(Romano, 2016).

Next their Mission is found to give several areas of concern like innovating, delivering high quality, employing best people, being environment friendly and a host of other things. They however miss out on a few things and those are that, while talking of Quality they only point out and mention the deliverables to the customers. They do not include the Quality of their personnel whose Quality decides the level of service and satisfaction that get generated for the customer. Again they do not mention the aspect of remaining in touch with their customer base and learn from them the changing trends in the preference spectrum for their merchandise. These two aspects need to be incorporated in their Mission statement(Xconomy, 2016).

The business objectives are quite comprehensive but to align their objective with the inclusion of the three points into their strategic stance it will be necessary to include a few things into their strategy. First, they will be able to keep in touch with their customers and one objective would be to strengthen the online and phone ordering competencies since a larger number of customers will be interacted with and the number of phone orders and online orders will increase. Second, they will have to take a closer look at the operational levels so that monitoring along with mentoring their people is taken up together. Mentoring and development of their people will now have to be considered as of strategic importance. The easiest part of Customer Relationship Management is its installation. Operating it profitably is a challenge and the most difficult aspect of CRM is quantifying the benefits(Romano, 2016).

The performance of the people will now have to be seen in the context of the CRM which will get installed soon. Thus the performance of the people will be evident by the number of customers who is kept in touch with and the number of such customers along with the visits they make to the retail outlets will be featuring in the performance appraisal system to be implemented. Again the new hamper will have to be introduced with a lot of publicity. The number of customers who show interest and keenness in knowing more about the hampers will get recorded on the CRM. Thus CRM will eventually provide a database which will keep track of the prospects as well as simple queries. These data will form the basis of performance approval under the new set up.

Stakeholders to be Consulted

The financial resources that will be required are:

Investment for procuring the software

Cost of customization

Training costs for the employees

Training up costs for the mentors who will be instrumental in proper and useful implementation of the CRM 

The human resources who will be operating the CRM will need to have a very different approach of communicating over the phone, which will be anew area to be covered by the existing people.

The physical resources will be the facility and maintenance cost of the CRM and keeping it going without a break down or interruption. Any software invariably gives some “teething troubles” which will have to be very quickly addressed. Adequate number of software personnel need to be temporarily hired for ensuring that there is no severe dislocation of work during use.

The hamper will have to ensure that there are no environmentally sensitive materials either in the contents or in the packing materials. It would be very powerful if only bio degradable materials are used for packing purposes. In case this is not possible then the company will have to mention that the packing materials, if returned to the company, will fetch the customers a discount from their subsequent purchases. Thus the hamper will have to be fully eco-friendly and environment compliant.

The stakeholders who will have to be consulted are:

Employees: This is the most important segment of the stakeholders and the communication with them will have to be done with direct verbal communication.

Vendors: The communication with the vendors will be a written one where the details of the new efforts that are being put in will be shared. They will be asked to please help, assist and cooperate in the efforts of the company.

Management: This group of stakeholders will be the biggest challenge since they will be ready to provide solution before the problems come up. This group can also be communicated by e-mails and other such electronic communications

Logistics support providers: Written type like the vendors

Local administration, Community and Investors: Here also written communication would be best suited(Stakeholdermap, 2016).

The new hamper which will be lodged will have to have a different appeal which will ensure that the snob appeal of the top segment is delivered. Thus the price will have to be on the higher side but then not so high so as to scare away the customers. There is no reason to assume that the affluent people will squander away money just for the snob appeal. It will also have to be of commensurate quality.

Remaining Environmentally Friendly

Strength and weaknesses of the new business plan: before indulging into the exercise it may be noted that the revised business plan is just an extension of the current business plan. Only those features have been added which will come handy in the implementation of the three new concepts. The strengths are that the new additions will address the new set up more completely and it will ensure that all relevant aspects of the CRM, new hamper and the mentoring approach have all been addressed. The weaknesses are just two. First, some segments in the management level may object to the new additions calling them redundant and second the mentoring approach will need a shift in the mentality of the supervisors(Farb, 2016).  

The revised Business Plan would incorporate a few more things.

The manpower that get employed in the organization would be required to work in a different culture of the need for handling a much larger volume of transactions in a shorter time.

The new hamper will have to be promoted not only for its snob appeal but also the environment compliance and green aspect will have to be specially emphasized.

The marketing will now become much more focused since the main segment of the customers are under view through the CRM.

While all other aspects of the Business Plan remain intact the emphasis will have to shift on the speed of delivering the high quality goods and services.

Working with a CRM in place will call for a high level of agility and the number of transactions may be expected to increase substantially. This will cal for inculcating additional skills in their existing people. It may be recalled that the growth in data will not come overnight and thus the employees will have a tendency to “drag their feet”.  It is during this phase that the importance of mentoring and development of additional skill will be required to be done (Alison, 2015).

The communication plan has been touched upon above but it needs to be stated that whatever is to be communicated will have to be done at a very rapid rate and the communication will have to remain coherent and concise. There should not be any areas of contradiction in the communications to the stakeholders.

The mentoring program of the organization should get inbuilt into the culture of the organization. Thus while the supervisor sees to it that the employees function properly they also will have to help the employees ‘navigate the bumpy stretches’

The impact of the changes will affect the following areas:

Profits are expected to be higher since the new system will enable a collaborative effort with the customers.

Communities will get to know from the customers and the various efforts made at different forums.

The hamper will focus and highlight the environment friendliness and sustainability of the new product. Thus there cannot be any adverse effect from environmental considerations.

Lean management and Six Sigma will have to be incorporated to ensure removal of wastages and continual improvements of systems and processes(Lewis, 2014).

The improvement plan will have to be worked out at the level of operations and for this purpose any high level continuous improvement plan will need the various functional modules in details. 

Conclusion: 

This organization is now taking a quantum leap. Thus the basic intentions and strategies for operation will have to be suitably modified. Unless this is done the benefits from the new inclusions will not be forthcoming. Since the organization already follows the basic steps of quality generation and value delivery to the customers it should not have any major problems.

References:

Alison. (2015, October 12). Customer Relationship Management in Business Services. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from Alison: https://alison.com/courses/customer-relationship-management-in-business-services

Entrepreneur. (2015, February 03). Strategies for Presenting Your Business Plan. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241539

Farb, B. (2016, July 08). 10 CRM systems small businesses should know. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from Techradar: https://www.in.techradar.com/news/software/business-software/10-CRM-systems-small-businesses-should-know/articleshow/38460847.cms

Fontinelle, A. (2016, April 28). Business Plan: Your Organizational And Operating Plan. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/university/business-plan/business-plan6.asp

Lewis, G. (2014, July 02). 10 Benefits of an Organizational Change Management Plan. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from Consultparagon: https://www.consultparagon.com/10-benefits-of-an-organizational-change-management-plan

Nais. (2010, March 03). Online business. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from Nais: https://prod.nais.nasa.gov/eps/eps_data/163402-SOL-001-045.pdf

Plumme, D. (2014, September 19). “Digital BizOps”: A Philosophy of Business Operations in the Digital World, Part 1. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from gartner: https://gartner.com/daryl_plummer/2014/09/19/digital-bizops-a-philosophy-of-business-operations-in-the-digital-world-part-1/

Romano, B. (2016, May 14). Usermind Raises $14.5M to Push “BizOps” Vision for Sales, Marketing. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from xconomy: https://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2016/03/16/usermind-raises-14-5m-to-push-bizops-vision-for-sales-marketing/

Stakeholdermap. (2016). Stakeholder Management Templates & ebook. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from Stakeholdermap: https://www.stakeholdermap.com/stakeholder-analysis.html

Xconomy. (2016, March 16). Bizops Mission. Retrieved October 27, 2016, from xconomy: https://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2016/03/16/usermind-raises-14-5m-to-push-bizops-vision-for-sales-marketing/attachment/michel-feaster-portrait/