Owning a small grocery store may seem like a simple retail business at first glance, but the reality is different. The improving economic situation brings growing demands from customers and challenges in the form of labor shortages or increasing competition.

Growing Demands On The Level of Retail Sales

Customer demands for sales quality have constantly been growing for several years. Today, even in a smaller grocery store, buyers expect a pleasant environment and a clear and practical sales area layout and assortment layout. They can make their purchase efficiently and without stress. Therefore, modernizing the store according to the latest purchasing trends is one of the first steps in the entrepreneur’s entry into the My Shop alliance.

Variety of Assortment And Its Optimal Composition

Customers are also increasingly demanding the quality and variety of the range. Retail Alliance My Store will advise the entrepreneurs in this area and suggest the optimal composition of the store’s range concerning shopping opportunities and customers’ customs in the area. It is a very individual process, and the specialist always draws on the given location and his experience.

Price Pressure

Although the population’s purchasing power is rising, the level of prices or the stock offer of goods is still an essential factor in choosing a place to buy, and My Store offers several effective solutions in this area. Twice a month, the Alliance selects several attractive products to lower the price and distributes stock offer flyers at its own expense to households in the store’s vicinity.

Lack of Retail Store Staff And Quality

Retail is one of the sectors where the decline in unemployment has caused a significant labor shortage. Here, too, membership in the Alliance is a support for the entrepreneur. Education at the METRO Retail Academy provides him with professional knowledge and information on how to select and manage staff correctly in today’s environment.

Legislation And Regulations – Retailers, Face Liquidation Fines

Every type of business requires the entrepreneur to know and follow current legislation. At the same time, working with food is specific to several other regulations, especially in ​​hygiene in the handling and sale of food and the operation of the store itself. Violating them can be liquidated for a small business owner.

Growth of Competition

As a result of the improving economy, competition is also growing steadily. Retail chains are expanding their network of stores or coming to the market with entirely new sales concepts. Small stores are being set up in housing estates and business centers, allowing them to be even closer to their customers. Only those who constantly follow trends, improve their offer and bring added value to customers can succeed in intensifying competition.

Also Read: 7 Tips For Retailers How To Increase Your Profits

The post Six Critical Challenges For Retail Business – How To Deal With Them? appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

Sunset

Relating the phase before sunset with the disappearance of a product. When this “goes out of style” or is replaced with another better or superior product, the previous one tends to disappear after living together for some time.

Brainstorming

It is a group work tool that facilitates new ideas on a specific topic or problem. Brainstorming is a group technique for generating original ideas in a relaxed environment. 

Briefing or roadmap

It refers to the path that is going to be taken and the company’s direction. From the beginning, you should keep in mind several points, such as, for example, what are you going to sell, for whom, the competition, the advantages you have compared to other companies, the consumer market, determine your objectives, etc.

Business Angel

The person who lends money to the business venture to recoup his investment in it or have some participation. There are cases in which a successful entrepreneur decides to donate part of his capital to one or more entrepreneurs in exchange for recovering money and earning something else.

Business to Business or B2B

Business model dedicated to dealing between two wholesale companies, in which one sells its product to another and not to the final consumer.

Capital

Money or monetary inheritance that a person can have, either received by himself or outside the company.

Seed capital

The initial financing for the project creation phase, when the company cannot generate profits. Options such as FFF financing or by a business angel are included.

Eat your dog’s food (Not literally wink)

Test a product before it goes on the market, to avoid possible problems already in it, to be able to see if the product completes its purpose. For example, in the case of food, it would have to pass quality controls (tasting, smell, aroma, texture, origin, etc.)

Crowdfunding

It is about making money and moving forward with the new company’s growth through Crowdfunding or Crowdfunding in a selfless way by donors. There are pages dedicated to project Crowdfunding. If you have a good project that may interest many people, do not be afraid to raise money with applicants’ help.

Crowdlending

It is a form of Crowdfunding. It consists of financing by numerous investors rather than by a single or a limited number of investors. It is an innovative model that allows funding by the financial community without resorting to the services of a bank or other traditional financial institution.

Elevator pitch

A project presentation speech, lasting seconds or a few minutes, to potential clients. A good message and a clear idea can get you to sell the project or product. 

Empowerment

It consists of giving equal parts authority and responsibility to the workers of a company. It is a process with which the competencies and abilities of the human factor of the company can be maximized.

FFF

“Friends, Family and Fools,” the 3 “efes” that designate the closest source of financing for the company. They are the first three people an entrepreneur turns to when they think about launching a business. The first two efes refer to friends and family who share an emotional and affective bond with the employer. The last efe means “crazy or stupid.” They invest in the project even without previously knowing the entrepreneur.

Personal Branding

Translated as “Personal Brand,” it consists of constructing a visible, solid, and honest personal brand with the values ​​of each one, always promoting the best of the individual. This allows us to tell clients what we can contribute and, in this way, see where the benefit of choosing our company lies.

Startup

It refers to a company that has just been created and that has the potential to increase in a short period. This term towards a company is “temporary,” After a while, the company becomes a sustainable company or bankrupt.

Also Read: Sales Psychology – 6 Marketing Principles To Success

The post Entrepreneurship – Terms For The Entrepreneur appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

Do you know that new technologies allow you to increase and sell products and services anywhere in the world? Digital entrepreneurship can be a great solution.

Yes, you can also undertake. To start a business project, whatever it may be, there is no professional profile or a specific reason. It does not matter if you wanted to create your company from a young age or that the need to obtain income leads you to it. Dreaming is free, and generally, those who pursue their dreams hard in the end usually get them.

Steps To Be a digital entrepreneur

Now, you need to be clear about two things: First, before you start, you must design a business plan in which you define your products or services, establish the reason why a customer will buy from you and not from someone else. Most importantly, your competition makes a financial-economic plan in which investments, expenses, and especially the forecast of sales income appear. And secondly, it will be necessary that you have resources that allow you to live and balance accounts until sales income exceeds investments and expenses.

Creating a business plan may seem like a complicated challenge. Still, from this blog, we can help you with our entrepreneurship category and the ebook library, which can help you design your plan, and there are also different public bodies that provide free advice on that field. Regarding income, it is true that risk always exists. Still, at the moment, you have an opportunity that I invite you to assess: As a result of the Covid pandemic, the online channel has experienced an incredible development for a few months.

Reasons To Undertake Digitally.

Creating an online business project can be a good option for most people who decide to start their own business for various reasons. First, creating a space to present the offer and sell the products and services on the Internet is much cheaper than using traditional channels for promotion and sale, such as a store, for example, and the same can be said of the costs of maintenance. And that, for an entrepreneur with few initial resources, can help him to take the step and maintain his business project for longer, increasing his chances of success. It also does not require hiring a lot (or no) of staff, and the results can be seen automatically and instantly.

In addition, once it is possible to sell in one country, achieving commercial results in other markets is simpler, faster, and cheaper than using traditional sales channels in international trade, allowing the development and sustainability of the company.

But not everything is rosy: Although you surely know people who have obtained large income trading on the Internet, this is an increasingly saturated channel and where it also fails. In addition, although there is a growing development of online sales of all types of products and services, thanks to projects such as Amazon, the number of sales made and their value may not allow balancing expenses and investments at least entirely in the short term.

And then, what should you take into account to create and make your business project become your primary source of income?

Also Read: Digitalization – The New Digital Jobs

Operational to Start Selling Digitally

First of all, know what products or services you are going to sell. Review your professional experience and your studies, hobbies, and hobbies since there is nothing worse than working on something that you are not comfortable with.

You must also train yourself in how to create, manage and promote a digital business. You can do it informally by reviewing blogs or YouTube videos or in a formal and structured way through courses like those you have on our website, endorsed by the State Foundation for on-the-job training. Although taking a course like this on Online Business will give you the basis to understand the fundamentals and strategy of an online business, you should also look at competitors or experts who know the sale of your product or service in the online channel to know not only strategies that have worked but permanent updating.

Another essential element in the online channel is the prescriptions: If you advertise that your product or service is excellent, the consumer may have reservations about believing you. But if other people or experts in the field do it, the consumer will tend to value their opinion or judgment. Thus, in Amazon, most influence portal buyers are the assessment that other portal users give about the product.

It will also be essential to create and take care of your brand or online reputation. To do this, you must dedicate time to social networks showing your profile as a professional of what you sell through the online channel. That will require continuous planning and work, but in the long run, you will achieve the confidence necessary for a customer to buy your product or service.

The post How To Become a Digital Entrepreneur in Times of Crisis appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

Any company, regardless of its size or its sector, must be prepared to prevent, protect itself and react to security incidents that may directly affect and impact its business.
Each organization will have to analyze different aspects related to its operation, including those related to ICT, prioritize and determine the limits of acceptable operation and establish the necessary measures that guarantee the continuity of the activity in the event of an incident or disaster, minimizing the consequences of the same.

For this reason, we propose to design a Business Continuity Plan that includes action plans, emergency plans, financial plans, communication plans, and contingency plans aimed at mitigating the impact caused by the realization of certain risks on the information and processes. business of a company. The process and start-up must be carried out according to the following phases.

Phase 0. Determination of the scope

It is the phase with the shortest duration and has a low need for resources. However, its execution is essential since here it will be determined which assets, systems, or processes are critical, that is, those whose unavailability would directly impact our organization, causing an unforeseen cessation of activity. 

Phase 1. Analysis of the organization

This phase bases its activity on obtaining, elaborating, or understanding the circumstances that surround our organization, analyzing both processes, technologies, or resources. To achieve this overview, we will have to carry out a set of tasks.

Hold meetings

In the first place, it will be necessary to meet with the end-users of the processes selected as critical or within our scope, gathering all the information on the operation of said processes. For example, know if backup copies are made, both data and applications, how often, response times in case of having this service outsourced, etc.

Analysis of impact on the Business.

From the information collected, we will conduct a Business Impact Analysis, also known as BIA, for its acronym in English, Business Impact Analysis. This document will contain the requirements, both time and resources, of the processes that are within the scope of the project: 

• Recovery time, RTO ( Recovery Time Objective ), or time that a process remains stopped until it is restored.
• Human resources and technologies used so that a process works in a contingency situation.
• Maximum tolerable downtime or MTD ( Maximum Tolerable Downtime ). That is, how long a process can stay down before disastrous consequences occur for the organization. 
• Minimum levels of service recovery or ROL ( Revised Operating Level ). This would be the minimum level of recovery that an activity must have to be considered recovered. 
• Dependencies with other processes, whether internal or with external providers. It is about knowing if a contingency situation in other processes or in an external supplier would be transferred to our company. 

Degree of dependence on the actuality of the data or RPO ( Recovery Point Objective ). The impact that the loss of data would have on our activity is determined.

With this information, we will be able to determine which processes and applications are a priority when it comes to being recovered, as well as the need to have, for example, backup copies. 

Risk analysis.

It consists of studying and determining the possible threats to which the organization is exposed, as well as the possibilities of materializing in each case, and the impact they would cause if they were to occur. 

Once the conclusions have been drawn, a risk treatment plan will be drawn up, describing measures, mitigating risk, those responsible for implementation, necessary resources, etc. 

Phase 2. Determination of the Continuity Strategy

This phase is based on determining what recovery strategies should be implemented for each of the elements identified as critical or that could be affected in a contingency. That is, how to recover a system or a process to avoid that the contingency degrades it irreversibly for the organization. Keep in mind that some processes may require several recovery strategies.

Phase 3. Response to contingency

This phase begins with the implementation of the initiatives that have emerged in the previous phase. In addition, all documentation related to the response to the contingency must be addressed, through the following documents:

• Crisis plan whose objective is to avoid improvised decision-making that could worsen the situation or that decisions are simply not made. 
• Environment recovery operational plans, which must specify on which environment they are applied. It must be taken into account that these documents may cover one or more environments, and will contain specific information for each of them. For example, one environment can be an ERP, another email, etc. 
• Technical work procedures, which describe the actions to be carried out for the management and recovery of a system, infrastructure, or environment. 

Phase 4. Test, maintenance, and review

For a Continuity Plan to be effective, we must verify that it really works and keep it updated. To do this, a series of tests will have to be executed on the identified environments, after which we will prepare reports that collect the results obtained. In addition, all incidents arising in this process must be reflected, which is essential to establish corrective measures. 

Phase 5. Awareness

That awareness is part of the last phase does not imply that it is less important than the predecessors. In this phase, all kinds of measures will be put in place to promote staff awareness in terms of continuity and knowledge of the plans drawn up. The target audience will be both technical and business people if they have some kind of relationship with the scope. 

Regardless of the sector or size, any organization must be prepared to confront with guarantees a security incident that could affect the development of its activities. Establishing a series of measures aimed at minimizing the impact that any type of contingency may have on the business will provide greater security and responsiveness to any eventuality. If you need to know more about all these phrases related to the development and implementation of a Contingency and Business Continuity Plan.

Also Read: Software Robots With Artificial Intelligence: The Future Is Already Present

The post Phases Of A Business Continuity Plan appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

At a time when speed, transparency, and security prevail, it is important to transfer to SMEs – also the rest of larger organizations – the need to print an agile, flexible and, above all, efficient management. In the commercial environment, in particular, any action and decision that is put into practice must have the seal of quality and service added, both for the customer and for the internal operation itself.

On the other hand, what was a trend years ago, the paperless office, is today, practically a reality – to a greater or lesser extent – within many SMEs. In the commercial section, in particular, a large number of documents are generated that must be consulted regularly and, moreover, kept for a specific period of time – some for several years. In this sense, the contribution of ERP software is key, both for its storage and for its security. It also applies to collaboration and savings.

ERP: The Key To Guarantee The Security & Speed of The Processes

• Therefore, in addition to the multiple functionalities to improve the operation of the entire commercial cycle that these applications include, it highlights its contribution to improve interdepartmental collaboration, since, among other things, it allows sharing documents between several users, always providing the latest version of them. Documents that are filed in electronic formats, with full legal validity, and which can be accessed quickly and safely. If the system is hosted in the cloud, access will also be effective at any time, in any place and, through any device.
• Specifically, everything that has to do with the documents involved in the commercial process must be treated with special care because they all record the operations that have been carried out. Delivery notes, receipts, budgets, invoices, etc. They identify the actors involved in a specific process and are, in themselves, a reliable test to consult in the event of any incident.
• Therefore, being assets that support the accuracy of all business operations, their management must be done with great care. Better, still, if the tasks associated with the management of any commercial document are automated because, in addition to printing greater agility to the processes, it provides greater security of the information that is handled.
• Given the importance of efficiently and agilely managing the mechanization processes of business cycle documents, the use of an ERP for enterprise resource management is presented as the main tool to guarantee the security and speed that these processes need. In this sense, an ERP facilitates the design and use of automatic price modification formulas, the automatic allocation of purchase and sale prices, the calculation of discounts or the automatic processing of orders to suppliers either by minimum, by sales forecast, by replacement or by customer orders.

How To Improve Management Agility

In addition, these applications help to easily incorporate delivery notes, orders, budgets, text templates or groupings, to work with the delivery notes, whether periodic, collective, from budgets or from orders, to proceed to regularizations: stocks to zero, Import ASCII complete or reduced documents, to use barcodes or to track and control warehouse in mobile environments.

Therefore, to mechanize those tasks in which any type of documents of the commercial cycle intervene helps to save time, minimize the margin of error and optimize the resources used. Automatically applying prices and discounts and managing all these documents in an agile way will improve the level of competitiveness of organizations and will undoubtedly provide a better service to both customers, suppliers and, of course, different areas that make up the organization and that, directly or indirectly, have to use any commercial document.

Mechanizing, in addition, promotes the elimination of paper and digital storage of documents with the consequent savings that it entails. It provides faster since the necessary information is placed at the click of a button, more reliability and, more quality in business processes.

Also Read : What Types Of Cloud Services Exist?

The post Mechanizing Business Cycle Documents is a Success & A Necessity For SMEs of the digital age appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

Although small and medium-sized companies continue to be clear about the multiple advantages of the digitalization of their processes and operations, the truth is that these types of organizations continue to present a significant delay in this regard, compared to larger companies.

Although I recognize that we have experienced significant progress, especially with regard to the use of process-oriented technology, the truth is that the pace at which progress is still too slow and, worse, not very efficient.

To try to compensate for the gap that still exists between technology, people and processes, I propose three recommendations to keep in mind:

Change The Culture of SMEs Regarding Technology

Although small and medium-sized companies have, more or less clear, what they want, they have not just identified which solutions are best suited to achieve the proposed objectives. This means that what many SMEs understand by implementing technology to boost the digitalization of their processes has nothing to do with making digital to optimize their business models, let alone develop new models that help them identify new opportunities. That is, modernizing a website or being more active in social networks – although it can be very beneficial – does not mean that the organization has a clear digital strategy.

SMEs are becoming aware that replicating the operation and methodologies of the world off to the online environment, does not make sense, especially because the consumer does not behave the same, does not have the same level of demand or has the same options to compare or decide.

Training To Acquire or Improve The Digital Skills & Abilities Necessary

Training to acquire or improve the digital skills and abilities necessary to make the pace of change greater. It went through the Internet and continues to happen – albeit to a lesser extent – with the Cloud, that many organizations were reluctant to use this technology, especially due to ignorance of their security or even loss of control. However, the information campaigns that have been launched from the different agents that make up the value chain, the intense training that has been implemented and the practical verification of the advantages they provide, have been the levers that have driven its internalization, not only in the SME ecosystem.

In this regard, it is important to note that the change in corporate culture that is needed to modify conventional work models must always be accompanied by a change in the human resources environment. The idea is to encourage collaboration and exchange, not only of information but of knowledge between employees with more digital skills and those who show a greater need for training in this regard. Of course, organizations must also be open to hiring new talent, whose digital knowledge can easily permeate all areas of the business. Therefore, making all employees move towards digital will be one of the keys to making the company, in itself, drive its own digitalization process.

Search For New Sources Of Financing

To stop relying on both conventional sources of financing. In this sense, optimizing the financial management of the business with specific technological solutions will allow the construction of a “financial” system around the data and, thereby, improve performance by minimizing risks and improving control over liquidity and treasury.

Planning, disaggregating, analyzing and controlling costs also helps to make smarter decisions, either regarding prices or regarding suppliers. But, in addition, it allows us to determine the profitability of the products and/or services and make decisions in real-time to accelerate or stop their commercialization as appropriate. On the other hand, establishing an efficient collection and payment system will also allow the organization to obtain financing from its suppliers and thereby establish a more profitable, more flexible and adapted system.

Also Read: The Risks of Not Backing up Data in the Company

The post Three Recommendations To Address The Digital Divide In SMEs appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.