Considering todays cutthroat competition in business environment every activity carried out in an organization is scrutinized to make sure it pays its way for the business. This clarity creates both opportunities and threats for in-house professionals. The opportunity is of participating actively in making strategic decisions for the company and thus taking your career to new heights in the process, where as the threat is of losing the job at hand because you are inappropriate to the new role in the organization.
How can you increase the value of your unit and make yourself inevitable for the business? This article will answer all your questions.
Make Strategic Decisions Based on User Needs
This is a two stage process:
A. Research and gather information
B. Formulate your mission and strategy
In the first stage, assess the attitude of the senior management to ensure that they are willing to listen. To achieve this align your goals with those of companys. Keep yourself informed about your industry and your bosss priorities. Attend company-sponsored training, team-building events and read business journals. This stage paves the way for formulating mission and strategy. Find out the process for making strategic decisions. Maintain a library of all information collected. These investigations will help you identify the areas where you could play a significant role in formulating a strategy. This information will form the base of your strategy. Some of the information dependant strategic decisions include; targeting market segment, new investments, location of factories and offices, new product development and launch and pricing and Promotion.
Every product and service has users. Find out why and how they use your output. One particularly useful way of deducing this out is to ask what would happen if you did not offer that service. Even your coworkers could be your user. So, you must learn about their real needs and connect to employees, partners, and customers wherever theyre located.
Use every opportunity to let management know about your efforts. Your responsibilities do not end with suggesting ideas only. Volunteer to implement these ideas. This extra effort will facilitate good ratings in your performance evaluation.
Make your Product Unparalleled
There are innumerable products and services in the market similar to yours. Find out if they are better that yours, if yes then what makes those outputs more attractive than yours? Though there are other options available, what would make your users to stay with you? Your users can buy information elsewhere and probably they do.
Your challenge is to customize and add value to your output so that your users find it hard to do away with your product and services. There are various aspects where you can seek improvement to create a unique product look and feel, feature and functions, broad scope. Apart from these consider accessibility, usability, utility, quality, customizability, packaging, flexibility and reusability of your output as the success of the product depends on these aspects too.
Market Selection
Key to every marketing strategy is to divide market into segments and group customers with common needs. Segments can be based on departments, product lines, or industries served. Do not assume that a single service will suit all customers. As they have needs and priorities hence services should be different for distinct segments of market. This approach will help to change your service from mediocre to an excellent one.
Evaluate Sales and Marketing Based on Feedback
Evaluate your product offering from time to time and take feedbacks seriously. These feedbacks will help you to prune and polish your product.
Consider the following ways to collect feedback:
Include a feedback form with every item you send out. Try to keep it short and crisp.
Maintain a call and chat log. Analyze this to identify the demand patterns.
Formulate your sales and marketing strategy based on the feedbacks collected to increase the sale of the product. Revise your pricing as with change in product pricing does also change. Nothing comes for free and its high time your clients realize that.
Utilize the Power of Technology
The great benefit of todays technology is that it allows access to remote information from the users desk top. With the help of technology you can collaborate between people with integrated e-mail to share files, schedules, and other critical information is great way to increase productivity as now you can work smarter and faster. With the advent of technology networking has become easy. Networks help you reach more customers and serve them better. With the help of technology you can share accurate, up-to-date information more easily. Internet and its search and retrieval tools make work much easier.
Outsource Selectively and Build Partnership
Outsourcing is one of the prevalent marketing styles. Outsourcing brings more skills and knowledge at a lower cost. However, before outsourcing chalk down what you should outsource and what you should retain, e.g. systems development and upgrading systems are typically outsourced but policies and procedures are not.
Building effective partnerships with clients and suppliers is significant. From individual level to organization levels, all kinds of partnerships are important.
Develop Multifaceted Skills
Sharpen your existing skills and learn other skills to to bring improved benefits to the business. Develop communication and interpersonal skills. Keep yourself informed of business issues, organisation know-how and know-who. Try to learn all tricks of the trade. Develop more and more skills to make yourself jack of all trades and master of some. You can achieve this by taking up management training classes and participating in various industry events and courses.
How can you increase the value of your unit and make yourself inevitable for the business? This article will answer all your questions.
Make Strategic Decisions Based on User Needs
This is a two stage process:
A. Research and gather information
B. Formulate your mission and strategy
In the first stage, assess the attitude of the senior management to ensure that they are willing to listen. To achieve this align your goals with those of companys. Keep yourself informed about your industry and your bosss priorities. Attend company-sponsored training, team-building events and read business journals. This stage paves the way for formulating mission and strategy. Find out the process for making strategic decisions. Maintain a library of all information collected. These investigations will help you identify the areas where you could play a significant role in formulating a strategy. This information will form the base of your strategy. Some of the information dependant strategic decisions include; targeting market segment, new investments, location of factories and offices, new product development and launch and pricing and Promotion.
Every product and service has users. Find out why and how they use your output. One particularly useful way of deducing this out is to ask what would happen if you did not offer that service. Even your coworkers could be your user. So, you must learn about their real needs and connect to employees, partners, and customers wherever theyre located.
Use every opportunity to let management know about your efforts. Your responsibilities do not end with suggesting ideas only. Volunteer to implement these ideas. This extra effort will facilitate good ratings in your performance evaluation.
Make your Product Unparalleled
There are innumerable products and services in the market similar to yours. Find out if they are better that yours, if yes then what makes those outputs more attractive than yours? Though there are other options available, what would make your users to stay with you? Your users can buy information elsewhere and probably they do.
Your challenge is to customize and add value to your output so that your users find it hard to do away with your product and services. There are various aspects where you can seek improvement to create a unique product look and feel, feature and functions, broad scope. Apart from these consider accessibility, usability, utility, quality, customizability, packaging, flexibility and reusability of your output as the success of the product depends on these aspects too.
Market Selection
Key to every marketing strategy is to divide market into segments and group customers with common needs. Segments can be based on departments, product lines, or industries served. Do not assume that a single service will suit all customers. As they have needs and priorities hence services should be different for distinct segments of market. This approach will help to change your service from mediocre to an excellent one.
Evaluate Sales and Marketing Based on Feedback
Evaluate your product offering from time to time and take feedbacks seriously. These feedbacks will help you to prune and polish your product.
Consider the following ways to collect feedback:
Include a feedback form with every item you send out. Try to keep it short and crisp.
Maintain a call and chat log. Analyze this to identify the demand patterns.
Formulate your sales and marketing strategy based on the feedbacks collected to increase the sale of the product. Revise your pricing as with change in product pricing does also change. Nothing comes for free and its high time your clients realize that.
Utilize the Power of Technology
The great benefit of todays technology is that it allows access to remote information from the users desk top. With the help of technology you can collaborate between people with integrated e-mail to share files, schedules, and other critical information is great way to increase productivity as now you can work smarter and faster. With the advent of technology networking has become easy. Networks help you reach more customers and serve them better. With the help of technology you can share accurate, up-to-date information more easily. Internet and its search and retrieval tools make work much easier.
Outsource Selectively and Build Partnership
Outsourcing is one of the prevalent marketing styles. Outsourcing brings more skills and knowledge at a lower cost. However, before outsourcing chalk down what you should outsource and what you should retain, e.g. systems development and upgrading systems are typically outsourced but policies and procedures are not.
Building effective partnerships with clients and suppliers is significant. From individual level to organization levels, all kinds of partnerships are important.
Develop Multifaceted Skills
Sharpen your existing skills and learn other skills to to bring improved benefits to the business. Develop communication and interpersonal skills. Keep yourself informed of business issues, organisation know-how and know-who. Try to learn all tricks of the trade. Develop more and more skills to make yourself jack of all trades and master of some. You can achieve this by taking up management training classes and participating in various industry events and courses.