Developing An Essay On Entering The US E-commerce Market For Souq.

Develop a detail strategy on the following:

• Explain how you will implement the virtual management
• How you will manage the team in US which is culturally, politically, and economically different from your country
• How the virtual teams will work together
• What tools are they using
• What are the advantages of using virtual
• What are some disadvantages they have and how they can over come them
• Explain how you will manage meetings between the teams in US and gulf in terms of time, place and language
• As a manager how you will manage the outsourced projects
• How would you solve a problem between two workers
• What is your advice to the team for improvement

  Remember US Market is very competitive and demographically various levels are already existing.

Analyzing Remote Operations and Current Situation

Souq is an e-commerce platform that is owned by Amazon. It is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in arab world. In this report, I have considered myself as a global manager of marketing department.  The business of souq is localized in Saudi Arabia, united arab and Egypt. It was suggested that business need to widespread in other countries rather than just in gulf region. This report covers the strategies through which Souq could be entered in US online market(Parke, Campbell & Bartol, 2014). The different situations are discussed in this report and they are answered thinking in the direction of global manager. Souq is used by Amazon to offer its e-commerce acquisition. It is an amazon company that connects the Middle East online marketplace.

Main Discussion

Virtual management is a business management technique that is used to communicate and control the work virtually. The virtual team can be implemented by the company by undertaking few steps (Parke, Campbell & Bartol, 2014). The first step that is adopted by souq is analyzing and absorbing the remote operations and current situation. The structure of the organization is considered and how it can grow in other countries is decided.

All the data and insights are gathered of the company so that the virtual management and team could be built accordingly (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). Then a vision is communicated among all the team members so that work is carried out in a single direction. Then it is planned in a critical manner so that performance of business is analyzed so that goals could be met. The planning is done in strategic way but be sure it’s time-bound (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).

The team is in US that are culturally, politically and economically different from the country. The cultural differences can be resolved by organizing training so that cultural differences are understood. The meetings and training programs are organized virtually so that communication can be improved (Khan & Khan, 2018).

The virtual team work by establishing regular meetings so that a clear and detail deliverables are organized. The virtual teams can be managed by scheduling face to face meetings so trust and bond could be established. It is a way to have a clear and effective communication. Virtual team can be built by having a right leadership so that certain skills could be attracted. The leadership ensures that good virtual teams are built and also reduces uncertainty (Khan & Khan, 2018). The politically issues can also be resolved by offering the same benefits to all the employees.

The economic conflicts could be resolved by removing the disputes among employees. The virtual teams are built in a way so that emotional response could be evaluated and action plans are designed in a way so that disputes could be resolved. Being a manager, I will implement regular feedback meetings so that the purpose of issue could be resolved (Barnwell, Nedrick,  Rudolph,  Sesay & Wellen, 2014).                                                                                          

Some of the effective tools that are used for managing virtual teams are listed below. These tools are used to improve the online efficiency of business and makes easy to work with virtual team (Katane & Dube, 2017). The business might make use of Google applications to communicate effectively with team members in different country. Highrise is one such tool that is use to control the management of an organization. Yammer is a tool that is used to build social connections. GoToMeeting is one such tool that is used to offer training and tutorials and also supports in organizing the meeting over the network.

Building Virtual Teams

DropBox is one such tool that is used by employees to access the files from other location. This allows users to access the files from any location (Chumg, Seaton,  Cooke & Ding, 2016). The other great collaboration tool for virtual management is Basecamp, it is an online project management tool that allows you to create projects, share information and collaborate with the team members. These tools support in collaborating the activities and make sure that teas work together by removing the conflicts and barriers (Chumg, Seaton,  Cooke & Ding, 2016).

Virtual management in an organization offer huge benefits and advantages. Some of the advantages of using virtual management are discussed. It saves the overall time and travel expenses and also eliminates the lack of experts. It also allow people to take part in dynamic projects and get engaged in multiple and concurrent teams. Virtual teams offer platform to firm so that they can expand their markets by enabling them to retain talented employees regardless of physical locations (Gilson, Maynard,  Jones, Vartiainen & Hakonen, 2015).

It lowers the overall office cost and increases the chances of employee retention. It also reduces the travel time and offers a great environment to employees so that they can communicate easily. It also helps in increasing productivity by eliminating the office distractions during the working hours. Virtual tools allow the employees to remain aware and available during the whole day and offer flexibility to access the documents from anywhere irrespective of the location (Dekker, Rutte & Berg, 2015). Additionally, hiring flexible remote team’s worth to scale up or scale down your team members easily as compared to the business that runs at a fixed location.

Apart from that there are some disadvantages that are faced by the organization due to virtual management. It causes lack of physical interaction between the employees and staff. It causes social isolation between the team members and the chances of cultural conflicts increases. These challenges arise due to lack of verbal as well as non-verbal communication.

The cost of technology used to maintain virtual teams is high as the tools used require high maintenance. The other pitfalls that are faced by the organization due to virtual management are lack of cohesiveness (Peñarroja,  Orengo,  Zornoza, Sánchez & Ripoll, 2015). For example, if there is any serious failure in the IT system that can cause huge loss of an organization. It also causes lack of camaraderie as opportunity cannot be expanded as employees go not gather and communicate. It sometime causes risk to the reputation and can cause security and compliance issue (Budaraju, Schmidt & Hossain, 2018).

The company faces various problems while managing meetings between the teams in US and gulf as there is a difference in term of time, place and language. Thus, being a manager I will select a suitable timing that will be conformable for both the countries (Ford Piccolo & Ford, 2017). A fixed time can be set so that regular meetings and conversation can be conveyed. Additionally, to resolve the language conflicts an intermediate could be appointed. They transfer the thoughts so that online meeting and conversation can take place.

Effective Tools for Virtual Management

The virtual teams will be managed by identifying the stakeholders and building relations of trust and reward experience. The technology can be embraced so that workload could be managed and communication can take place instantaneously. The time zones can be managed by scheduling face to face meetings and understanding the time difference. In the office environment, CEOs and managers work on team member’s incremental progress by the means of emails but virtual team works differently. They chose qualified, skilled team members so that trust of doing the job increases (Schouten,  van den Hooff & Feldberg, 2016).

As a manager of company the outsourced projects would be managed in an effective way. The project planning is done before outsourcing the project so that team members are aware about the next steps that would be taken. Once the planning is done, all the important documentation will be shared among the employees so that they can work in an efficient manner. Then the planning will be outsourced to other companies so that services could be improved (Lockwood, 2015). A communication strategy would be built in a strong manner so that frequency of communication could be enhanced.

Some of the ways through which conflicts between employees could be resolved is by listening to their problems, understanding them and then finding out a solution so that their disputes could be resolved. The disagreement s clarified so that conflicts could be resolved by building an agreement so that both the parties get satisfied. The barriers to common goal are resolved by bringing up a best resolution (Pozin,  Nawi & Romle, 2016). The conflicts are resolved by asking the problem from both the ends and then finding out the best solution. It is suggested that while resolving the conflicts the decisions should be impartial and employees should be motivated so that their performance is improved (Syerov, Trach & Fedushko, 2016).

Being a manager I will take various actions so that overall team performance could be improved. This can be done by bringing up new technologies so that innovation is improved at the workplace. The productivity will be enhanced by organizing training programs so that cultural conflicts could be resolved. It is also suggested that team should get involved in managing the resources (Edwards & Wilson, 2017). A clear benchmark report is suggested of all the employees and decisions are taken in a way so that performance could be improved. The work should be organized and prioritized in a way so that productivity increases. I will make sure that there is a clear way a communication for the employees so that they can share their ideas (Davydova & Dorozhkin, 2016).

Conclusion

It can be concluded that souq is an e-commerce platform that is used by management. It is observed that nowadays multi-national organization have employees and teams in various countries. Thus, to make sure that these companies work in an effective manner virtual management team is used. It is a technique that is used by businesses so that they can communicate and work effectively. In this report, I have analyzed the actions that need to be taken so that conflicts could be resolved. The main characteristic that is adopted by managers for managing the virtual team is being goal oriented and teams’ members should have a platform so that they can communicate nationally as well as internationally.

Advantages of Virtual Management

The virtual management can be improved by choosing video calls over emails or chats. They also ensure that working hours gets adjusted according to the time zones so that team members work together. The purpose of this team is to make groups of individuals who can connect from different geographic locations by just relying on communication technology such as email, FAX, and video or voice conferencing services in order to collaborate.

References

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