Adams Business Advisor Blog

 中小企IT『錢­』談
作者: 關廣智 (白武士有限公司首席顧問 http://www.adamshk.com/)
2008年5月14日

現今的e-Marketing 渠道實在太多了，我們若盲目地投資在一些低回報的項目上，我們只得花了錢而不能帶動業務上升。可是，這些事情不斷地在大大小小的企業中重覆地發生！有些網上廣告公司盲目地推銷他們的服務，以每年能產生對客戶的網站點擊為服務的成果，強行將客戶的廣告放於與他們業務亳不相關的群組網站或討論區中，結果導致有大部分的點擊都不能帶動客戶的業務增長呢！

企業如果要量度e-Marketing 的成本效益，就必需要以三個互動的因素來作出考慮，這三個因素就是「生意效益」（Sales Oriented ）、「群體擴建效益」（Community Building）、 「合作伙伴協同效益」（Affiliated Websites）。 意思說我們投放在e-Marketing 的資源若不能達到以上三個任何的效益時，我們就不應該繼續做下去了。

「生意效益」固然是指藉著e-Marketing 是否可以帶來新的客戶或商機，而「群體擴建效益」就是指對那些關注和支持你們公司的人士是否累積地增加，他們除了不介意接收你們的通訊外，還會主動地到訪你們的網站取得你們最新的資訊，或是介紹別人到訪。當「群體擴建效益」發揮得好，「生意效益」就自然能相輔相成了。最後，「合作伙伴協同效益」是指除了在你們自己的網站外，其他的合作伙伴也在他們的網站上宣傳你們的業務，當你們的合作伙伴網絡越來越大，協同效益就自然能帶動「生意效益」了。

其實e-Marketing 若要成功，網站的設計和架構就一定要好好地策劃，可惜實在太多企業都未能把它們的網站優化到可以達致最高效益的境況。如果要達至最高效益，我建議企業要以4C 為藍圖來製作他們的網站。以下就是4C的解說：

1. Customer Oriented (客戶為本質的分類) ：網站內的主要分類應以目標客戶的分類為本，讓目標客戶亳不猶疑地可於最快的速度找到自己有興趣而相關的內容。
2. Context Driven Content (以客分類之內容) ：現今的客戶，於任何的網站，一般只是10秒的時間，若不能找到自己感興趣的內容就會馬上離開，所以內容就必定要以目標客戶的興趣來編輯。
3. Call to Action (詢問導向的標題) ：若要網站帶來生意，網站的版面必須重複地刊登鼓勵電話或電郵查詢的標題來增加銷售的機會。客戶始終不來電或電郵，生意就始終不會發生。雖然這些標題可能會有損版面設計的美觀性，但若是對生意有幫助又何妨呢！
4. Community Building (建立群體的架構) ：新客戶若只到訪一次就不再回頭，就算花更多的錢宣傳你們的網站，流量始終都不會顯著地增加，唯有刻意地建立支持你們公司的 (網上) 群體，你們網站的宣傳效力才能盡量發揮。

最後，我希望以另外一篇發表過的文章內容為總結，企業若要好好把握和發揮e-Marketing的效能，基本上可以”IDEAL” 的 理念作為基礎：

• I – Identify Your Customers 對準目標
• D – Decide Your Budget 確立預算
• E – Experiment Your Options 勇於嘗試
• A – Assess Your Results 評核結果
• L – Leverage Others 以力打力

Tags: IT「錢」談, Sales & Marketing, 中小企資訊世界 // Add Comment »

作者: 關廣智 (白武士有限公司首席顧問)
Copyright (c) 2008年3月18日

手機電話已經成為了現今社會個人流動裝置不可少的工具。若要不斷發展業務，就要充分利用分秒來與客戶、合作伙伴、同事保持緊密的聯繫。當然，除了手機電話外，其他的商業用的流動裝置不可少的就是手提電腦或最近開始在市場上出現的Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC)，但究竟又有幾多公司能充分和有效地利用這些流動裝置呢？以下是我個人的移動科技應用攻略，希望與大家分享：  

1. 最平的移動攻略：Wi–Fi之戰
去年政府宣佈於政府的樓宇及設施陸續裝置免費Wi-Fi的網絡以方便公眾人仕可更隨便地上網，這真是令人興奮的事，意思間只要手機或移動裝置有Wi-Fi的功能就可以隨時免費上網，可是究竟何時才真正可全面實行就不得而知了。就算要付費，Wi-Fi也總算是比較平的選擇，因為香港主要的兩個供應商(PCCW Wi-Fi 和Y5Zone)已經有幾大規模的覆蓋，在主要的屋邨，便利店和快餐連鎖店均有Wi-Fi的網絡，而且每月服務費也只是HK$ 150內就可以無限流量使用，真是又平又方便！  

2. GPRS用得其所，未常不可
雖然Wi-Fi作為流動裝置上網的方案是比較平，但始終它仍然有相當的限制。自從我開始使用Pocket PC作為我的電話裝置平台後，我漸漸就喜愛了在路上和一些公眾會議進行中仍然同步地使用MSN與同事和客戶保持通訊，甚至藉此方式及時地作出生意上重要的決定，從這個角度GPRS就是比較平而最皆之選了，一般來說每月約需HK$ 500就可以使用最大數據流量的月費計劃，除此以外，如果你只是像我一樣有需要才使用，只要你避免下載巨型檔案，其實就算每分鐘計算也是相宜的考慮。

3. 3G優點、影像活現
坦白說，我個人認為3G在商業上的用途仍未能發揮，而且它是較貴的移動通訊方案，除非你從事媒體或產品研發的工作，技術上需要把影像活現於通訊的另一方面前，否則3G技術可以提供的豐富內容實在對業務發展沒有很多的幫助。至於3G的視像會議功能就好視乎大家都同樣用3G手機才能見效。可是作為一個e-Marketing 的宣傳渠道就特別有意思了，因為越來越多人利用3G手機看劇集、聽音樂。所以對市場推廣人就必定要密切留意這媒介！ 

在這”e” 世代，生意成敗總離不開能適設地利用這些移動方案，在應用上每個人一定有不同的習慣，但這些習慣若不與成本效益掛鈎，就算分別只是一線之差，效果卻是天淵之別！

Tags: IT「錢」談, SME, 中小企資訊世界 // Add Comment »

作者: 關廣智 (白武士有限公司首席顧問)
Copyright (c) 2008年2月19日

企業不論大小，對外對內能保持緊密的通訊聯繫就是成功的關鍵。在此互聯網的時代，通訊科技越漸變得簡單和便宜，可惜並不是所有中小企公司已能好好掌握此機遇，而通訊費用可能仍然佔經常開支的一大部份。

一般商業通訊不外乎電話﹝語音﹞、傳真、電郵、視像和數據等，雖然在此不能一一盡錄所有可行且便宜的IT方案，但希望藉以下的討論來啟發各中小企能落實重新部署它們的通訊策略，以至可達到更皆的營商效益。

1. 電話﹝語音﹞的通訊﹝Voice Messaging﹞
當企業有相當規模且有不同地點甚至跨國的辦事處，IP網絡﹝電話﹞裝置差不多是不能缺少的通訊工具，市場上在此方面佔領導地位的供應商當然是Cisco﹝思科﹞ 的系統，但亦有其他很多不同的選擇。

如果你的企業規模不大，Skype 可能就是最方便既便宜的語音通訊工具，Skype 與 MSN 不同之處在於它的會議和電話轉駁功能，除此以外Skype 亦可以傳送短訊﹝SMS﹞，雖然Skype 的國際長途電話和短訊收費不一定是最便宜，但仍然具相當競爭力而且操作方便容易。

2. 傳真﹝Fax Messaging﹞
電子郵件雖然已經非常廣泛的被企業所應用，但一些傳統行業可能仍然十分倚賴傳真作為商營上不可缺少的通訊媒介，其中最重要的考慮可能是傳真能清楚識別簽署的圖樣，而電郵只能單靠電子的認,証。

如果你的業務需要穿梭往來不同地點，不少電訊或網絡供應商和商務中心都能提供Fax-to-E-mail 的服務，意思間無論你身處何地也可以藉電郵收傳真的圖像檔案，除了接收，亦可發放﹝E-mail-to-Fax﹞，一般價格由每月HK$ 50 至 HK$ 100 不等，視乎接收發放量而定。

3. 電郵﹝E-mail Messaging﹞
電郵的應用不用多說，但因著網絡供應商的限制，特別是那些使用最基本﹝寄存式﹞電郵伺服器服務的企業，往往都可能因為流量的限制而不能發放或接收較大﹝5 MB或以上 ﹞的電郵連附件…… 我建議的解決方案就是不要利用POP3 的方法傳遞電郵而改用Web-based 的方法，意思是不要利用電郵軟件如MS Outlook 來收發郵件而是到你的電子郵箱的網頁收發，這樣就可以避開網絡供應商設置於SMTP 電郵伺服器上的限制。如果你不太清楚怎樣從網頁發放電郵，利用Yahoo或Gmail 的私人電郵信箱也是同一道理。

4. 視像和數據 (Video & Data)
我個人認為視像於企業上的應用還未成熟，當中有很多不同的原因，其中傳送速度可能是最大阻礙，其次視像的實質意義也未能被使用者好好地掌握。大部份免費的 Instant Messaging 軟件和網絡如MSN、Skype 或新興的Facebook等即時通訊或Community的網絡工具都有視像會議工能或即時傳送數據(檔案) 和互享應用程式的工能，這些工能日新月異，企業若能對內或與客戶籍此建立一些互動空間，當中潛在的的動力就必定無限。例如我們的公司就是利用MSN與同事和客戶互傳檔案甚至遙距地控制大家的電腦畫面作示範和互動。

利用IT 方案來通訊其實是一門藝術，因著互聯網的掘起，當中通訊的渠道實在多而又多，我們的企業若要爭取最高的成本效益，我們就當盡量發揮這些通訊科技所帶來的優勢！

Tags: IT「錢」談, SME, 中小企資訊世界 // Add Comment »

作者: 關廣智 (白武士有限公司首席顧問)
Copyright (c) 2008年1月9日

我曾經發表的文章稱為『現金流就是一切』 (Cash Flow Is Everything) ，這理念適用於任何的大小企業中，尤其對中小企就更重要了。一盤生意取勝之道不單是客源，若能好好理財就可更上一層樓。
中小企若要理財得宜，除了要懂得選擇合適的銀行外，還要懂得利用適當的資科技方案 ( IT Solutions) 。以下我們看看三個比較重要的範圍:
1. 會計管理： 一般來說，如果每月的帳目不是太多，(意思說100個出入帳以內) ，中小企可能都仍然可以憑靠試算表 (Spreadsheet) 之類的程式來應付，但若果帳目太多時，會計軟件就是必然之選。選擇會計軟件，首先要了解該軟件是否真的可以適設你的業務需要，你可以從以下的幾方面考慮：

• 是否有足夠的同業成功案例以供參考？
• 運作最好以越簡單越好，因為大不了才升級到更複雜的軟件。
• 是否可以與其他的軟件或銀行服務配套？這樣可省略很多不必要的行政時間和人為的失誤。

2. 網上銀行 (e-BANKING )： 網上銀行服務已經漸漸成為企業不能缺少的營商工具。東主不但可省卻親身到銀行輪侯的時間，而且更可以預先安排指定日子轉帳到所須之付款戶口中。某些網上銀行的服務範圍比其他的更完善，可以直接聯撃到相關的會計軟件以備作出自動員工薪金出纳帳和其他電子缴費的帳目更新。藉此，中小企必能更有效地專注實際的業務，而不用費心花太多時間於不需要的行政運作上。選擇網上銀行服務，可從以下幾方面考慮:

• 保安設備是否完善？是否有雙重認證的功能呢？ 是否藉著手機短訊 或編碼器有雙重登入保障呢？
• 轉帳至不同銀行有沒有額外收費呢？是否容許續次網上新増戶口呢？
• 銀行方面是否有配套可以減輕人力資源的行政需要呢？(包括薪金轉帳、強積金安排及報稅的需要呢？

3. 客戶網上付款： 如果中小企希望擴充營業，増加網上付款的安排就缺不可少。無論是本地客戶或外地客戶，都能夠更快更有效地進行商業交易。到目前為止，網上付款已經非常成熟,，可以用不同的方法都可以達到同樣效果。當考慮選擇讓客戶網上付款時，以下可參考的範圍：

• 客戶是否無需預先登記就可以於網上藉大部份通行的信用咭付款呢？
• 東主是否可以在幾天內就可以提取現金存至自己的本地銀行呢？
• 全年每單交易的手續費是否相宜？

若要聰明理財實在不容易，但藉著適當的IT SOLUTION，中小企就可以話咁易地更安心和更快捷地理財和發展業務了

Tags: Business Administration, IT「錢」談, SME, 中小企資訊世界 // Add Comment »

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited
© Copyright. October 10, 2007

Many entrepreneurs I know are never short of business ideas. I am not exaggerating but they can literally come up with new product or service ideas everyday if not every minute! However, I think this is a frightening phenomenon as I see a lot of the ideas are very demanding for resources in order to develop market opportunities and they cannot leverage with each other at all.

One very basic theory I want to share here is products and services must synergize with each other in a same business in order to maximize your return on investments. Otherwise, you will have a big chance of wasting unnecessary resources (time, money and labor) and duplicating your effort to grow your products or services market(s). If you can really synergize your products and services, you may also experience an exponential rate of growth.

Below are some of very useful synergizing techniques on how to synergize your products and services that I learnt throughout my sales & marketing career:

1. Door Opener Product
2. Multiplying Effect
3. Packaging
4. Consumable & Repurchase

1. Door Opener Product – In order to lower the barrier of your customers’ buying action, you must choose a “Door Opener Product” among all of your products and services. This Door Opener Product must be very attractive both in terms of features and pricing. You have to be very aggressive about your pricing strategy of this product in order to win over your competition. As long as you are not loosing money in real term, do not worry too much about your profit, yet! You will be surprised on how much more of other business you can get through this Door Opener Product.

• Example: A not so famous Shanghais restaurant is offering $1 for half a dozen dumplings. People are queuing outside for a long time in order to eat in such restaurant and of course I was one of them. When I observed such interesting scene, nobody in the restaurant was actually ordering just $1 dumplings but a table full of food and I mean nobody! By now, you should get what I mean. Though the other food is just average, the Door Opener Dumplings are bringing huge Profit to the Shanghais restaurant.
• Comments: You must ensure the perceived value of the Door Opener Product is at high cost and it can achieve good customer satisfaction. Otherwise, the door will never be opened!

2. Multiplying Effect – When all of your products and services are inter-related or inter-dependent, your customers are likely to buy from you the second product/service than your neighboring shop in order to minimize risks and complication. Also, Convenience is a big governing factor for customer buying behavior. A supermarket is a very good example of convenience buying. You maybe buying a pack of gum in the beginning but you may end up buying a trolley of items! Therefore, even you maybe selling something with a small value in the beginning, the Multiplying Effect can be huge for potential or future sales from the same customer if you can build up the Trust. Trust is very important in business and it will eventually turn into “Brand Preference” or “Customer Loyalty”

• Example: Beauty and Hair Salons are often using such multiplying effect to increase their sales. You may originally ask for a simple treatment but you may end up spending a huge sum of money you would never thought of when you first walk into the shop!
• Comments: Multiplying Effect may only happen if products and services are related which can be “Cross-Selling”. Otherwise, the buying desire of your customers may not be so easily influenced as you would with the same product category.

3. Packaging – there are 2 ways of Packaging your products and services that you can consider. First, you can put different but related products to produce a Package for sale and sell for a higher value though it is still discounted. The advantage of this is that you are actually helping customers to mix and match ideas that they may not think of at the time of buying without the packages. Automatically, you are creating a Multiplying Effect. Second, you can Package the same raw materials to produce multiple combinations of products. The advantage of this is that you can ensure your raw materials will not be constraint by certain products when demands are not reaching their goals. In both cases, you can increase sales of the slow moving items as well as expand your overall sales per purchase.

• Example: Set lunches or set dinners are classic examples for Packaging in sales and marketing terms. Diners maybe given a couple of choices for appetizer and main entrée but they do not need to choose a la carte. The restaurant is actually selling more food at a lower price but sales amount is higher than just selling the main entrée!
• Example: A very popular dessert shop, there must be over 30 different kinds of drinks and sweet soaps they are selling. When I look carefully on their menu, no matter hot or cold, more than half of their offerings are merely different combinations of the same ingredients. This is a great example on how to Package your offerings!
• Comments: You have to be very creative when you come to do Packaging. You will be surprised by how much your customers may enjoy by your Packages! You just need to follow your own desire in imaging how would you like to see the Packages if you are a customer.

4. Consumables & Repurchase – Repeatable business is a key success model to many businesses. If you can make your products or services to become re-purchasable or with recurrence payments, this will bring you not only growth but compounded growth. The classic example is ink or toner for printers. The selling price for printers are decreasingly lower than the early days but ink and toners are still significantly expansive when compared with the price drop of printers. Other examples can be paper towel mops, staples & staplers, paid channels on Broadband TV services.

• Comments: Not every product and service may use this kind of synergizing technique. However, my recommendation is to be open to your business. Sometime, you just need to take a simple action in order to create your repeatable business.

Summary
Synergizing your products and services are very important if you want to grow your sales with highest Return On Investment (ROI). If you can master these techniques even you are a new comer to the market, you can still create a very competitive position for yourself! So, Get Synergized!

Tags: Business Administration, SME, SME Innovation, Sales & Marketing // Add Comment »

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited
© Copyright. July 12, 2007

Many entrepreneurs and small business owners have great business ideas and this is reflected in their products and services. These great business ideas are mostly sound but lack one very important element of good business strategy — Cash Flow. Many businesses fail not because their ideas are flawed but they just could not maintain their Cash Flow well.

Any good business plan must provide you with a reasonable forecast (or estimation) of the breakeven point. Even it may take time before breakeven point can be met you should at least ensure that you have available cash on hand to sustain the business throughout its life. Cash Flow must be maintained at a comfortable level at all times. By comfortable, I mean it should be at least more than 2 to 3 months of your total expenses and sales costs.

If you are coming from a finance background, this is definitely nothing new to you but if you are not, then here are some simple steps that you can take in order to start managing your Cash Flow with your business plan:

1. Set a period of 24 months as your scope of planning. If you can not breakeven within 24 months, I would recommend you to really reconsider whether you want to proceed with the business idea.
2. Forecast your monthly regular expenses with enough headroom for all unforeseeable items. You may just include an item called “Miscellaneous” if you do not have a clue for the time being.
3. Forecast your monthly sales with a progressive growth rate. You need to be extremely conservative in order to ensure you are not over promising yourself the sales revenue before you have real data to support these forecasts. You can always revise it up and evaluate when the plan seems to be working or after running the business for a period of time. One thing to note is that even you have sales orders in each month; you may only receive payment after 30 days (or more) depending on credit terms you give to your customers. Accounts Payables always tests a company’s finances.
4. Forecast your monthly sales cost in relation to the forecast sales. You have to bear in mind that sometimes higher sales volume means you have to increase labor; so labor costs or salaries have to rise proportionately.
5. Calculate monthly profit (or loss) by totaling up sales and subtract expenses and sales costs. You will instantly see on which month you start making profits. The initial months will mostly be negative figures (i.e. losses) until total sales are higher than the sum of expenses and sales costs (including cost of goods).

After doing the above steps, you now can probably answer the most important question before you start any new business. That is, how much cash or capital should you invest in order keeping your business running until profit starts to build up? It is a relatively simple calculation as you just need to add all your losses in the initial months together plus two to three months of regular expenses (and sales costs) to make up the total capital required for your new business investment.

For example, you estimate it will take eight months before you can make a profit from your new business and the total loss is $700,000 during this period. You also calculate your monthly expenses and sales costs to total $100,000. Then your minimum cash required to invest at the beginning should be no less than $700,000 + ($100,000 x 3) or $1,000,000.

It may sound very simple but as others will tell you, business is very dynamic and no two companies will experience exactly the same conditions. What is certain though is that dynamics of the market are the same and so be prepared for uncertainties. Still, it is extremely useful to do such exercise in order to have a quick reality check of your business idea. This is the very reason why I did not start up my business early in the process as I could not shorten the loss period to minimize my investment risk!

I have prepared a sample of cash flow template and it can be downloaded from this link here: http://www.adamshk.com/download/SampleCashFlow.xls. You may have to adjust the key items to reflect the nature of your business but it should be intuitive enough to show you the idea.

Enjoy and be mindful with your Cash Flow!

Tags: Business Administration, SME, SME Innovation, Sales & Marketing // Add Comment »

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited
© Copyright. May 14, 2007

Managing time and priority in SMEs is extremely challenging as it is largely due to the fact that resources are limited and things have to do are so many. SMEs have no exemption from doing Sales & Marketing, keeping Accounts, managing Personnel and Office Administrations and yet at the same time keeping all Operations running smoothly.

One very simple way of priority setting I learnt during my Intel days is to always ask ourselves which are the most important Top Three Things (I call it as 3T from here on) at any given moment. Why it is so magical about 3T is once you ask this question, then you don’t have many choices in setting your priorities. Naming your top 3T does not mean you need to ignore all other important things you have to do, but rather keeping yourself stayed above the water with all the things needed to be accomplished in a timely fashion.

I understand that every opportunity is important to SMEs but if we cannot even handle 3 things at a time, we just have to simply “say no” or push out things to allow enough time and resources to deal with 3 things first.

Before I go in details, there are some rules that we may follow when we are using this 3T approach:

We only select the most important 3 things at a given moment; hence the list will change subject to the change of moment.
The given moment can be within next hour, next day, next week, next month, next year and so forth…
Before we can decide which are the most important 3 things, we should have a clear idea in mind what are things are required to complete by when across the board including Sales & Marketing, Accounting, Personnel & Admin and Operations…etc
Deadline is a good indicator for setting priorities of things but I would rather use “Impact of failure” to decide the priorities. The bigger the impact, the higher the priority it should be!

With the above rules in mind, now I want to list a few sample questions that we may ask ourselves when choosing our 3T in different aspects of our business affair. I am sure you can add other relevant questions to the list!

Sales
- Which top 3 customers or market segments that will bring majority of our revenue?
- Which are the top 3 deals in this moment can bring higher income to the company?
- Who are our top 3 competitors in the market in the specific product segments?

Marketing
- Which top 3 products/services of our company have higher growth potential?
- Which top 3 media are most cost effective to support our sales?
- Which top 3 marketing channels can help our products/services get more awareness in the market?

Finance & Accounting
- What are the top 3 accounting gaps that our company is facing most challenges?
- What are the top 3 financial issues in our company may hinder our growth most?
- What are the top 3 areas that we can improve our accounting accuracy?

Personnel & Office Administrations
- What are the top 3 requirements we want most in an opening job position?
- What are the top 3 problems that may deteriorate our working environment?
- What are the top 3 areas that can motivate our workforce?

Operations
- Which top 3 top 3 processes may need attention in order to improve efficiency?
- What are the top 3 issues that may hinder our overall productivity?
- What are the top 3 areas may need to increase resources?

Summary
The ability of identifying our 3T is not difficult to learn but whether we can master this art is a matter of discipline. It is so easy to make a plan without any desire of execution. I have experienced this fact myself and witness many other fellow SMEs failing in doing so very often! Therefore, my advice is making your 3T list as open as possible to your stakeholders including employees, business partners and to certain extends your customers. In such case, we may ask our stakeholders help and safe guard our 3T as well as to avoid false expectation or false understanding of our priorities. 3T may not solve all our priority conflicts but it should give us a good guideline when to distinguish our top 3 priorities when we are so buried in our work with confusion!

Tags: Business Administration, SME, SME Innovation // Add Comment »

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited
© Copyright. March 29, 2007

No matter companies big or small, marketing is always not cheap. Not only money you have to spend, but also resources to execute. Moreover, it is extremely hard to measure your success and return-on-investments (ROI). Therefore, it is very important for SMEs to have very clear ideas in mind what they need to do with marketing in order to remain competitive and yet maximizing their return with limited money and resources.

Here, I am summarizing the most important areas that SMEs should consider when they plan and do any marketing in an effective and target way:

Alliances – run marketing activities with your partners and maximize costs & resources
Benefits – always highlight your product/service’s benefits and values
Concentrate – focus 80% effort on the most strategic 20% of products/services
Dynamics – leverage your products/services strength to gain the maximum return
Environment – ready to adapt changes of business environment and ecosystem

Alliances
It is so easy for anyone to think and act in silo. However, with SMEs money and resources are limited, we really need to look out and find partners that are complementary to our business and do co-marketing activities with them. Not only it is a cost-effective thing to do but also it creates synergy and excitement to our customers as they may get better and more complete solutions to fulfill their needs. With combined forces,

• We have much stronger bargaining power with the advertising agencies & channels
• We present a much more prominent presence and image to our customers
• We may broaden our reach to potential customers that are previously covered only by our partners

If you do not know where to start, just try to work with some professional organizations, chambers of commerce and some other associations that your potential customers may belong to.

Benefits
Too often we market our products/services with functions and features without really telling our potential customers the benefits and values of our products/services. Customer buying behavior typically is based on how fulfilling is the product/service to their immediate needs. Any good product/service need to address the needs of the customers by their values and not the functions or features. Customers are generally willing to even pay more if they get the perceived values and benefits they want. One simple way to check your marketing message to see whether it is addressing the benefits and values is to ask if the customer would miss anything for not buying your products/services. Some examples of the answers should be:

• The customers are missing the opportunity to solve their problem or address their needs
• The customers are missing the chance to save money or to earn time
• The customers are missing the wave to catch up with the season or the trend

It is not easy at first when you try to write your marketing message and addressing your customers’ needs but it is absolutely essential if you want to differentiate your products/services with so many competitors out there!

Concentrate
Many of us have learned about the 80-20 rule but always do not know how to apply in real lives. I have seen many cases with SME’s they are trying so hard to get every possible income for the company but losing their focus to get maximum return from their core competency. Let me be a little bit more elaborate on this, we should really focus 80% of our effort/ money/ resources on top 20% of our products or services that are helping us to gain 80% return of our income. Obviously, it is just an indication but not an absolute rule, some may use 65% effort to gain 80% return…. etc. However, when we find ourselves using 50% effort in dealing with or promoting the bottom 20% of products/services, there must be something wrong with our time and resources management. It is a very loud alarm that we should be alert! So some basic questions to ask are:

• What are our top 20% strategic products/services that are generating 80% revenue? How much time, money, man power are we spending in promoting this 20%?
• What are the bottom 20% products/services we can put aside and not market now?

If we can master this 80-20 rule well in our business both sales and marketing, I am sure we can progress our business at a faster rate than we can imagine!

Dynamics
When we market our products and services, we should really try to leverage the strengths of all different products and services, so that our customers can relate them easily without thinking. It is very expansive to build individual brands for different products and it is an art to manage brands well. My recommendation to SMEs is to avoid as much as possible of introducing new brands unless absolutely required. However, the whole process should start when product/service managers and research & development managers decide which products/services to be launched to the market. Hence, when we launch new products and services, we should ask ourselves that:

• Whether the new products/services are complementing the existing products/services? Can we do bundled sales?
• Can we use an overall umbrella brand to cover both existing and new products/services?
• Do the new products/services differentiate themselves well enough that customers will not be confused?

I can guaranteed you that creating dynamics for your products/services is very exciting especially when you see they are really helping each other to sell and grow.

Environment
Business world changes every second, we have to be ready and adapt changes as soon as required. We cannot blindly repeat what we have been doing in the past. We should be willing to change according to the environmental changes. The ecosystem of the environment changes so fast, our customers, competitors, channels, complementors may not be there forever. We have to keep our eyes open and keep reviewing our marketing strategy by challenging ourselves to see if our marketing strategy really fitting to the real world! Here are some of the principles:

• We should stop using the same advertisement or we should make changes to the advertisement if there is no response from customers for a period of time
• We should use different marketing channels to test out the best responses and cost-effectiveness
• We should pay extra attention if there are seasonal effect to customer buying behavior…e.g. beginning and end of fiscal year, major holiday seasons…etc

The business environment is so volatile, no one can completely grasp the real situation but if we are diligent enough to notice, monitor and apply changes accordingly, we can make crisis to opportunities!

In summary, we must be ready to adapt changes in our business environment and willing to work with other alliances to create the maximum effect in marketing of highlighting the benefit/values of our most strategic products/services with most of our effort by leveraging the strengths of different products and services. It is a very exciting and interesting game we are in!

Tags: Business Administration, SME, SME Innovation, Sales & Marketing // Add Comment »

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited
© Copyright. February 21, 2007

After having talked to many SME owners, I found a cruel phenomenon is that a lot of them are often ignorant for not going through any structured business planning process at all even having started their businesses for sometime. I am compelled to share this article as it is dear to my heart and I hope it may help SME owners in general.

As SME, you just cannot take chance to waste your limited capital on any undesirable investments. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to go through your business planning in a structured fashion in order to ensure you are making the right business decisions.

The 5C’s of Business Planning is actually a model that I combined from different business planning ideas and models. I think it is simple and easy enough to any SME owner to use without much effort. You just need to follow the steps and answer the questions honestly. Even you do not know the answers for the time being, you may just put “ACTION TO FIND OUT!” to continue and follow up later.

So, what are the 5C’s, they are Customers, Competitors, Complementors, Channels and Costs.

1. CUSTOMERS – It is not surprised to see this to be the first on the list but questions you should really ask are:

• What are the industries or business segments that identify your customers?
• What age, gender, education and income level that identify your customers or do it matter at all?
• What countries and national boundaries that your customers operate?
• What are the common characteristics that identify your customers? e.g. size of business, years of operation, number of employees…etc.
• How big is the Total Available Market (TAM)? i.e. How many potential customers are there in your targeted market across the board?

COMMENTS: You should spend as much time as possible to go through this analysis of your customers as it will help you to uniquely identify your desired customers. Any future sales and marketing effort and resources should only be spent on your desired customers but not any customers.

2. COMPETITORS – As stated in Sun Tzu’s Art of War, “You will win every battle by knowing your enemies as well as yourself!” Just knowing the names of your competitors are not good enough, you should also ask:

• Who are your direct competitors? i.e. they have similar products/services to your offerings?
• Who are your indirect competitors? i.e. they have substitute products/services to your offerings?
• What is the price ranges of your direct and indirect competitors?
• What are the success factors of your direct and indirect competitors?
• What additional product features or services areas that your competitors are offering over yours?
• What marketing or promotion are your competitors doing?

COMMENTS: You should focus on those direct and indirect competitors of your desired customer segment. Some companies maybe doing similar business of yours but not necessarily are your competitors at all as they maybe focusing on very different customer segments.

3. COMPLEMENTORS – Alliances is a topic getting more and more attention in the business world. The way Steven Covey’s “Seven habits of highly effective people” put it is “To Think Win-Win”. For example, a digital camera company is a complementor to battery cell companies as well as digital memory companies. So the basic questions to ask are:

• Who are the companies or organizations that your products/services will benefit from the sales/growth of their products/services?
• Who are the companies or organizations that their products/services will benefit from the sales/growth of your products/services?
• COMMENTS: Working with other companies requires a lot of effort and sometime you may even have to give in for relationship building but strong alliances will definitely help you to grow your business in a faster rate than you could do it on your own. So it is worth spending time and effort in finding and building your complementors!

4. CHANNELS – Without properly identifying your channel players even you have great products and services, they can only be sold in a contained environment! The idea of channels is very abstract and you have to have a clear mind when answering these questions:

• Who else can help you to sell your products/services to your desired customer segment? (Typically, these are your resellers but sometimes your customers can be a very effective selling channel of yours!)
• Who may already have strong relationship to your desired customer segment that they can market your products/services for you? (Very often, your complementors and your field workers are your very strong marketing channels!)

COMMENTS: You need to build a very good framework and sales kits in order to manage your channels well as channels are very often opportunistic as your business is not necessary their primary priority!

5. COSTS – Pricing is an art and it governs everything about your profit and loss accounts in your books before you sell any product/service to your desired customers. You really have to be extremely sensitive to this topic and careful to take a balance to ensure your success in sales. So you should ask:

• How much is the maximum can your customers afford to pay for your products/services?
  b. How much is the minimum you are willing to selling your products/services to your customers?
• How much more/less you want to charge over your competition and why is so?
• What discount rate are you willing to give to your customers if they are buying in quantity?
• What margin or percentage discount are you prepared to give to your channel resellers?

COMMENTS: Cash flows should be your topmost concern. Under this consideration, you should really be aggressive enough to establish a good size of customer base by offering an attractive pricing over your competitions if you are new to the market. A good pricing strategy with channel support should help you to reach your goals in a faster pace.

In summary, the 5C’s of Business Planning is just a model for you to go through your business planning in a structured way. You should use it to ratify your business decisions. There are no model answers to the questions being raised above but definitely the answers will change over time as your business progresses. Therefore, constant review of your business using this model is required in order to reflect the changes of the kind of dynamic market situations we are in today and ever!

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關廣智先生

白武士有限公司首席顧問

2007年1月12 (c) 版權所有

作為一間中小企，你總不能浪費你的有限資金在一些不良投資上。因此，你是絕對必要創建一個有完整架構的業務計劃，以確保你做出正確的業務決策。這個5C的業務計劃，其實是我從不同業務計劃的思路和模式結合出來的典型。我覺得這是既簡單又易用，任何中小企業業主都不需花太大氣力就能使用。你只需要遵循有關的步驟和誠實地回答問題。即使你不知道答案的時候，你可以只標示「行動去了解！」，以便繼續進行和稍後跟進。

那麼，甚麼是5Cs？這是指客戶(Customers)、競爭對手(Competitors)、輔助者(Complementors)、渠道 (Channels) 和成本 (Costs)。

A. Customers 客戶:- 這項首先出現在名單上是毫不讓人感到奇怪。你需要問以下的問題：

1)　你的大多數客戶是來自哪些行業環節？

2)　你能確定你客戶的年齡、性別、教育或收入水平？這是重要的嗎？

3)　你的客戶是來自特定的國家或地區？

4)　你的客戶有沒有共同特點？舉例來說，業務的規模、開業的時間和員工人數等。

5)　到底目標市場有多大 (Total Available Market,TAM)？在你的目標市場中到底有多少潛在客戶？

了解明白你客戶的資料是至關重要的。上述練習將幫助你界定哪些是獨特的關於你想要的客戶。任何未來的銷售、市場營銷的努力和資源，應只用於你的理想客戶，但不是對任何客戶都一視同仁。B. Competitors 競爭對手:- 孫子兵法有云：「知己知彼百戰百勝」。知道你競爭對手的姓名並不足夠，你亦必須問：

1)　誰是你的直接競爭對手？他們有否提供跟你相類似的產品或服務呢？

2)　誰是你的間接競爭對手？他們是否有替代或媲美你提供的產品或服務呢？

3)　你直接和間接競爭對手的價格範圍是多少？

4)　你直接和間接競爭對手的成功因素是甚麼？

5)　甚麼額外產品功能或服務領域是你的競爭對手正在提供超越你的呢？

6)　你的競爭對手在做甚麼的市場促銷活動呢？

你應該著眼在你理想客戶環節上的直接和間接競爭對手。有些公司可能會做跟你類似的業務，但不一定是你的競爭對手，因為他們或許著眼於非常不同的客戶群體。

C. Complementors 補充者:- 在商業世界裡，搭配越來越受到更大的關注。Steven Covey的「高效人士的7種習慣」將它形容為「想像雙贏」。舉例來說，一間電子數碼相機公司可以是電池公司，以及數碼記憶體公司的補充者，因此一些基本問題要問的是：

1)　誰是公司或組織受惠於你的產品或服務的銷售或營業增長？

2)　誰是公司或組織受惠於他們的產品或服務的銷售或營業增長？

與其他公司合作需要投入大量的精力，有時你甚至可能為了建立關係而要讓步，但強大的聯盟一定會幫助你加快拓展業務的速度，遠遠快於你自己能夠做到的。因此，你還是值得花費時間和精力去尋找和建立你的補充者。

D. Channels 渠道:- 如果沒有適當列明你的所需渠道，即使你有極好的產品和服務，這些亦只能在一個狹窄的環境中銷售！理想的渠道是很抽象的，而你在回答這些問題時必須有一個明確的態度：1)　有誰可以幫你銷售你的產品或服務到你的目標客戶群？(在通常情況下，這些人都是你們的經銷商，但有時候你的客戶可以是你一個非常有效的銷售渠道。)
2)　誰可能已經跟你的目標客戶群有了牢固的合作關係，這樣可以使你的產品或服務有了市場定位？(很多時候，你的補充者和你的前線員工會是你非常有力的營銷渠道！)

你需要建立一個很好的框架和銷售套件來管理你的渠道，但渠道往往是非常因勢利導的，正因你的業務未必是他們的優先考慮的首選。

E. Costs 成本:- 定價是一門藝術，它主宰一切，在你銷售任何產品或服務給你的目標客戶群前，定價會決定你的盈利和虧損帳。你對這個題目真的要非常敏銳，並謹慎地尋求平衡，以確保你的銷售成功。因此，你應該問：

1)　你的產品或服務在你的客戶承擔能力內最高能叫價多少？

2)　你願意將你的產品或服務賣給你的客戶最低價是多少？

3)　在有競爭之下，你想賺多些還是少些，為甚麼會這樣？

4)　如果你的客戶大批入貨，你願意給與甚麼折扣率？

5)　你準備給你的渠道經銷商多少折扣率或幅度？如果你是新進入一個市場，通過給與較你的競爭對手更吸引的定價，你應該要有足夠的野心去建立起一個有規模的客戶群。一個有渠道支持的良好定價策略應該有助你更快達成目標。

總之，5C業務計劃只是一個模型，讓你有系統地進行業務規劃。你應該用它來使你的業務決策獲得認可。上述問題不會有標準答案，但答案肯定會隨著你的業務進展而有所轉變。因此，為了反映我們今日和以往那充滿活力的市場轉變，用這個模式來不斷檢討你的業務是有其需要的。

Tags: Business Administration, SME, Sales & Marketing, 中小企資訊世界 // Add Comment »