Author: Pamela Swift

Categories
Operations

How Toyota Wrote the Book on Lean Manufacturing

The logistical brilliance of lean manufacturing principles proved to be a gamechanger across multiple industries. Manufacturers currently getting on board with big data analytics to optimize their operations want ways to fuse these technological advances with their existing lean production codes, and who can blame them?

Given the likelihood for big data professionals to encounter business entities determined to protect their lean manufacturing systems, we felt it’d be wise to outline its origins. Long before the advent of lean manufacturing software and other integrations between waste minimization and data analytics, a socio-technical system developed by a company in Japan proved to be a precursor to the lean production principles and logistics refinement of today.

As the title of this piece revealed, the name of that Japanese company was Toyota. Now a multinational automotive manufacturer, Toyota started out building automatic looms for weaving cloth and other textiles. The company’s signature development was the ability of its machines to automatically stop when a problem occurred. This attribute, based on the principle known as jidoka, would lay the foundation for the company’s revolutionary approach to automaking known as the Toyota Production System.

The Toyota Production System was developed during the mid-20th century by industrial engineers Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda. The primary objectives of this approach were the elimination of overproduction, prevention of inconsistency, and reduction of waste. These core principles are now the pillars of modern lean manufacturing.

While Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda are the undisputed authors of TPS, their work was based on the observations and insights of Kiichiro Toyoda, the son of the original company founder. He was inspired by the way in which American supermarkets operated; the customer takes what they want and the store restocks accordingly. A symbiotic relationship is created where waste is minimized.

TPS encompasses a broad range of operational principles, but modern lean manufacturing places an almost exclusive focus on the waste prevention concepts developed by Toyota. This is due to a variety of factors, chief among them being the increasing automation of manufacturing operations and development of smart monitoring systems. While TPS was developed when humans played a larger role in the manufacturing process, modern lean production is understandably less preoccupied with this factor.

TPS has remained relatively unchanged for decades, a testament to its success. A similar consistency is being seen in the endurance of lean manufacturing. While it could be considered the open-source version of TPS, lean manufacturing is more than a generic set of principles developed to cut down on production waste and inefficiencies. It’s a code of conduct and road map for achieving maximum efficiency in the age of automation.

So next time a client laments about the importance of maintaining the existing lean framework for a big data integration, think twice before rolling your eyes in frustration. In order for manufacturing to maintain optimum efficiency in the new age of automation, it will have to marry lean production with big data analytics. Consider it a form of job security.

Categories
Online Business

A Smart Knowledge Base Tool is All that Your E-Commerce Business Needs

A lot of startups and small-scale businesses are trying to mimic the success of multinational giants like Amazon, eBay and Alibaba by going the e-commerce way. However, what these first time businesses lack is access to resources that are needed to constantly chase growth to progress to the next level.

With a strategic approach, ecommerce businesses too can expand their relatively small operations by investing in smart knowledge management platforms. E-commerce is not only about selling products, you need to continuously keep learning as a business. A knowledge base tool can help in this exercise that you can use to get updated on a regular basis.

A number of internal e-commerce business processes can be improved with the implementation of knowledge management. External operations too can undergo a positive change as customers have access to superior content. This retains customer loyalty. On the other hand, by providing quick information, businesses can attract new customers too.

What is a Knowledge Base? 

Simply put, a knowledge base is an online library of information about service, topics, products or departments or even plain information about a business. The library functions as a source of self-help for customers. All that customers need to do is to run a search for the question and look up the relevant category to access solutions to concerns that are actionable.

If you need help with designing the knowledge base for your e-commerce business, start by including the ins & outs of select topics that your customers need the most. Publish articles related to your terms & conditions, legal department, products, services, software and hardware operations. FAQs, troubleshooting guides etc.

The idea is to enable customers to self-serve. With a knowledge base in place, they will not have to be passed around between agents and will be able to find solutions to their issues by accessing the online library of content. 

Enhancing E-commerce Business with a Knowledge Base Tool: 

A smart knowledge base tool is all that you need to ensure that your e-commerce business has a competitive edge. The next step is to acquire know-how on how to create an effective one that will help in solving problems. This is where the role of a knowledge base software comes to the fore.

As a business, you may need some help authoring software to create an effective and efficient knowledge base. Take a look at how a smart tool can enhance your e-commerce business.

Capture and Reuse Knowledge: 

By adapting a knowledge-centric approach with the assistance of a smart knowledge base, it simplifies processes such as customer support, employee training and employee on-boarding. All these processes are information intensive and require constant sharing of data by making use of online collaboration tools. business efficiency can be improved by capturing, reusing and updating the knowledge base with information like FAQs, important issues and topics, guidelines and company frameworks.

Address Relevant Issues with Teams: 

Building a comprehensive knowledge base with online access allows businesses and by extension their employees to address customer concerns in a

more streamlined manner. Team members in an organization will speak the same language, thus minimizing confusions and missteps. This will eventually lead to a greater percentage of satisfied customers.

Higher Resolution Rates of Customer Tickets: 

It does not hold any business in good stead when their customers are put on hold or are dodged with statements like ‘We will call you back’. A smart tool helps customer agents with the right answers available at their fingertips. However, if customers have additional queries, they can self-serve themselves by venturing into the right online communities to get help. This helps in easy and fast ticket resolutions.

Reduced Training Expenses: 

A strong knowledge management program makes certain that all new employees receive updated information and guidance that is consistent across levels, translating to a better work environment. This also ensures that employees do not require multiple training sessions and keeps a check on costs. 

Improves Overall Employee Productivity: 

A research study by Mckinsey states that employees spend almost 20% of their valuable time searching for the right information. With a centralized information platform via a knowledge base, employees spent less time searching for information thus accomplishing more productive work during the same time span. 

Inspires Collaboration and Intensifies Employee Engagement: 

A knowledge base can act as a singular platform where the business can make all company information available to their employees. This transparency encourages a feeling of trust among employees as they appreciate the act of being kept in the loop. This makes them more engaged and invested in the business and overall organizational success.

 

Rounding Up 

Selecting the right knowledge management software can be somewhat challenging. Fortunately, there are affordable platforms in the market that are ideal for startups and small scale e-commerce businesses. To build the best knowledge base solution for your e-commerce business, compare the services before you invest in anything in the short or long-term. Ensure that it has key features such as online document editor, branding and customization options, data security features, etc. to make the smart tool really efficient.

To take your e-commerce business to the next level, is it absolutely essential to have a streamlined knowledge base that caters to both your customers and service agents. It does not have to be a hard task to develop a kickass platform. Start today and save your customer care team from a pile load of support tickets.

About The Author:

Brayn Wills currently holds the position of knowledge management manager at ProProfs. He is responsible for creating unique and relevant content on knowledge base tools and keeping track of the latest developments in the realm of knowledge management. In his free time, he is either reading a new book or exploring offbeat destinations.

Categories
Starting Up

Business Success Strategies To Follow For Startups

All ecommerce or retail startups follow the same business strategies. Most people believe that ecommerce is eating up the retail world at this moment. Well, it is true to some extent due the inherited benefits of ecommerce, but there can be another significant reason for retail businesses, especially the startups, to fail.

This is the lack of a proper plan and business strategy that will lead them to the path to success. Yes, it is crucial to have a proper business plan irrespective of the mode of it to succeed or else you will be forced to either close it or go bankrupt.

You may feel that the digital landscape is an exciting and promising place to be but rest assured that this is not Utopia! You will have to compete with similar digital brands in the marketplace and along with it also face and try to overcome the innumerable challenges that this digital world is sure to offer you from time to time.

Create an online presence

Without a strong and impactful online presence you will find it very difficult, if not impossible to succeed in this modern business world. This holds true for your brick and mortar store or for your online store alike.

However, this is not an easy task. You will need to consider several aspects to hit it big and also know a few of the online trade secrets for that matter. Such knowledge will help you to reach to the top of your business as well as in the Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs just like the most major brands and other sites.

This will help your customers to find your website easily when they type in a specific keyword in the search engine. For example, when you type in ‘debt relief’ in any of the search engines, it is highly likely that you will see nationaldebtreliefprograms.com featuring at the top of the SERP or at least within the first four or five search results. This is online presence.

There are several important factors to consider for ensuring this as well as the success for your startup.

Brand is the main purpose

The next step to ensure your startup success is to buildyour brand value. Remember, for any business success the values behind it is the key and the primary purpose. It is the core of the identity for any business believe it or not. For this you will need to find out the answers to a few specific questions:

  • What it is
  • What you have to do and
  • Why you need to do it.

Typically, while creating the brand value you should remember that your brand should embody all those values that are not only related to the central endeavors of your business but also provide some specific value to your customers.

That means you will need to have a clear mission and vision regarding your brand and avoid the common mistakes that older brands make and do not age or perform well.

You can do this by making sure that:

  • You identify the purpose of your brand
  • Align these purposes properly on the basis of the values of your targeted customers
  • You know the extent to which your company can motivate brand advocacy and
  • You must know how all these will affect in making a purchase decision by the customers.

When you assure that everything is as it should be like the above, you will enjoy the desired results. However, at this juncture you must know that these results may vary from one demographic to another. Therefore, your brand as well as the level of appeal your brand can create in the customers is the key to success.

The bottom line here is that you should never deviate from your brand as there are serious and chain reaction of it.

  • When you deviate from your brand, it will seriously hurt your message.
  • When your message is hurt, it will in turn hurt the reputation of your brand.
  • When the brand reputation is hurt or tarnished, it will hurt your customer values.
  • When the values of the customers are affected, it will hurt the organic traffic.
  • When the traffic is affected, it will hurt the conversion rate and its chances.
  • When this is hurt, it will affect your business revenue.
  • When revenue is hurt, you must understand that the end of your business is close by.

Now the question is can you really afford such things to happen and is it worth when you can easily avoid all these with a clear strategy followed? Surely not, and it should not be. This is because your brand is the most important thing for your business that will always persiston the perceptual map of your customers.

Focus on SEO

Now you know a lot about brand and customer value and therefore it is time to focus on the Search Engine Optimization or SEO aspect. This is something that is very important for all business startup as well as the established ones, irrespective of the fact that it is only an only store or a physical store.

Proper SEO will bring in more traffic and there are lots of articles in the internet you will come across when you look for ways to build a better SEO. Not going into how to build a strong SEO, here is the importance of it for your startup.

  • A strong SEO will ensure that Google ushers your site to feature near the top of its organic search engine results.
  • It will also ensure that your site meets with all the requirements of the Google’s algorithm that keeps on changing so frequently that it is sometimes too hard to keep pace with it.
  • In addition to that, SEO will ensure that your site also avoid lowquality posts simply with an intent to generate more revenue but focus on meeting with the Search Quality Guidelines of Google.

All this will ensure high ranks and easy success to your startup business.

Categories
How-To Guides

10 Ways To Increase Growth In Your Business

Author: Donna Jo 

Building a business is hard work; it takes time, personal sacrifice, and grit to turn your dream into physical reality. You must wear many hats, learn the ropes of business law and taxes, and learn about compliance. You will experience a steep learning curve in many areas of business, but the fact of the matter is, if you want to grow, you’ll have to take some specific action steps to ensure solid and steady growth. Here are some simple yet effective steps you can take to increase growth in your business.

Success Tip #1: Automate your sales funnel

The foundation of any successful business is a sales funnel. If you miss this critical step in business growth, you are making a big mistake. Sales funnels can automate your business and create consistent and steady growth. With proper customer care and follow up communication, you will soon build a loyal following that continues to bring in revenue for years to come.

Success Tip #2: Use a customer management system

Tracking transactions manually might be manageable at first, but you will soon outgrow that system and need to somewhat automate your system of customer management in order to stay organized with increasing volume. Most customer management systems can seamlessly integrate with other types of business organizational software, and the wonderful thing about cloud systems is that they communicate and organize data by integrating all systems together. Spending a little capital right now and making the right investments in organizational software will ensure that you are around long term.

Success Tip #3: Research your competition

If you want to outsell your competition, find out all about them! Uncovering a competitor’s marketing strategy and finding out what types of products they offer will give you the knowledge and advantage to outsmart them. Whether by dropping your prices, making additional offers that customers cannot refuse, or finding ways to boost your search engine ratings, knowing what your competition’s strategy is will give you opportunities to be superior in every way.

Success Tip #4: Create customer rewards and loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are a great way to boost sales with existing customers. It costs almost three times to acquire a new customer as it does to pamper an existing one; if you offer incentives for spending more money with you, customers will begin to see the clear value of your products and services, and they will return time and again for the high-quality products and superior service you can provide. Asking for referral information in exchange for rewards is another way to continue to treat your existing base well while looking for new customers as well; treat every transaction with utmost integrity and care, and you will continue to grow your base exponentially.

Success Tip #5: Identify and capitalize on new opportunities

As you begin to know your demographic better, their needs will become clear to you. Finding ways to create products and services that fulfill these needs is key to gaining their trust and loyalty as they do business with you. Stay relevant to their changing needs; regularly ask for information with regard to what customers are looking for, and then find ways to give it to them. You never know where your next great product suggestion is going to come from!

Success Tip #6: Build an email list

Getting potential customers to subscribe to an email list will be a very important factor in building your sales funnel. Regularly posting valued content, sales promotions, and personal stories that allow others to connect with you in meaningful ways will cause people to revisit you and your site time and time again. If you are seen as a trusted and credible source of information they are seeking, you will eventually turn your contact with them into sales.

Success Tip #7: Form partnerships

Finding companies with similar and complementary visions to yours can be very helpful in determining what pathway your business travels. If your business specializes in security systems for industrial businesses, you might want to consider partnering with a company that specializes in the development of a home security system in order to boost sales and product recognition. While it may take time and a bit of forethought as to how these partnerships can be mutually beneficial, it will be worth the time, money and effort put forth to build on these partnerships and offer customers better and better product packages. Your business will explode!

Success Tip #8: Evolve….constantly

With the changing climate of the market, your changing demographic, and product saturation, it becomes necessary to constantly look at your business efficiency and ask some hard questions:

  • Are my products still relevant?
  • Am I making enough money?
  • What can I do to gain new business while keeping existing customers
  • Am I still outperforming the competition
  • What do my customers need, and can I give it to them?

Being able to ask and answer these questions will put you in a position where you can grow and change as your customers are growing and changing. If you don’t change to fill market needs, someone else will. Flexibility will gain you growth.

Success Tip #9: Build passive income streams to fund growth

You don’t want to lose your shirt on every little mistake that you make. Having some income put aside from passive income streams will ensure that you can afford to take some bigger risks that yield more significant growth without worrying about your primary source of income running dry.

Success Tip #10: Keep everything in proper perspective

In everything, there must be balance. Work needs play, effort needs rest, activity needs stillness. Know what you need as you work your tail off to build your empire, and then take the time that you need to care for yourself and your family to ensure that nothing falls by the wayside. Business is business, relationships require much care as well. Keeping life in proper perspective will make business ups and downs a little bit more manageable.

Be proud of the work that you are doing, that you have done, and that you will do as you turn your dreams into reality! All the very best of luck to you and your future business success!

Categories
Home-Based Business

10 Tips for Running a Business from a Small Apartment

By Laura Gayle, Business Woman Guide

On his popular children’s TV show, Mr. Rogers used to walk through the door (singing), take off his jacket and throw on a sweater. This signified that the show had begun. If you work from home, you might want to create similar rituals for yourself to signify that your work session is starting or has ended. This marker can help you maintain discipline — and let anyone who lives with you know when you’re un/available for interruptions.

In a recent Gallup poll, 43 percent of employed Americans worked remotely at least part of the time. Any space is good enough in a pinch, but if you decide to work full-time from home, you need to set yourself up for success. The following tips should help you do just that.

Preparing Your Workspace

Designating a working area and keeping it as task-friendly as possible will help you focus on your work.

  • Identify potential workspaces. Carve out the best possible workspace in your apartments for rent in charleston sc or studio. If you don’t have a spare room that will hold a desk and all the accessories, find or make an empty corner with enough space for you and your tech. Even a closet can make a great home office.
  • Move unused furniture and belongings to storage. To maximize space in your small apartment/office, consider renting storage space to stow away belongings such as camping equipment, large furniture that’s rarely used, and seasonal clothing and outerwear.
  • Soundproof a room for conference calls. To maintain focus and cut back on embarrassing distractions (dogs barking, kids going nuts in the next room), there’s an easy way to soundproof a room: Cover the door with a fiberglass blanket.
  • Go wireless. If you want to maximize desktop space in a small apartment, wireless is the answer. A wireless connection lets you move around the apartment. You’ll need a wireless keyboard and mouse, for starters. Also, if you use a printer, connect wirelessly and put it somewhere else to preserve your valuable workspace. Bluetooth headphones work with your mobile phone to let you quickly accept incoming client calls without carrying around your phone.

Getting Outside

Even after making all these adjustments, you may find it’s too challenging to work from home 100% of the time. Here are some tips to get you out of the house and talking to people.

 

  • Shared Office Space. Renting shared office space gives you the flexibility to work in a professional office building while retaining your freedom to work from home most of the time. The great news is that you don’t have to rent full-time office space for those critical conference calls and customer interactions. Shared office space is cheaper than renting space full-time in a commercial building; it also provides you valuable networking opportunities with others in your space.
  • Trade Shows and Conferences. There are a lot of benefits to working from home, but when you don’t have a storefront, it can be harder to be seen and get your business noticed. One way to deal with that is to attend a trade show, conference, or convention related to your business. This will give you great face-time and exposure to potential clients.

Working Efficiently and Using Productivity Tools

Establishing a schedule helps you maintain equilibrium and separate your work life from your home life, even when they both happen in the same space. Meanwhile, gathering the right digital tools around you can help you keep track of projects and timeliness, increasing your productivity.

  • Stick to a schedule.  Make your workday as productive as you can without burning yourself out. Keeping a schedule might seem counterintuitive if you’re working from home to gain more personal freedom. However, knowing your working hours in advance helps you maintain a sense of professionalism. Also, when you know the clock is ticking, you may find yourself more motivated to finish tasks promptly rather than procrastinating.
  • Take advantage of apps and programs. Computer and mobile apps help you keep in touch with clients and other business contacts around the world. You can do your marketing from your laptop and automate a lot of your customer interactions. Some of the most useful ones will soon become essentials in your work-at-home toolkit. For example, Skype and join.me let you conduct professional video calls and meetings. Other user-friendly at-home tools include Grasshopper, which answers client calls professionally, and Basecamp, a great project management tool. Google apps also provide a plethora of free tools you can use to take care of business from your home office. An added benefit: Using technology can boost your image to co-workers and clients and counteract any doubts about your technical capabilities while working at home. Lastly, if you’re self-employed, you can use a free tax calculator to estimate your taxes for the end of the year to avoid any surprises.

Creating a Collaborative Haven

If you have roommates — or even employees who sometimes need to work in the same space with you — running a business from your apartment can be a little more difficult. If you need to share your space for work, consider renting or creating a co-working space that’s inviting, relaxed and versatile.

  • Open up the space. To foster communication and collaboration, create an open workspace. Psychologically, the shift from “my space” to the more collaborative “our space” helps each employee remember they’re part of something bigger, and bouncing ideas is easier.
  • Envision a flexible work area. Modern employees carry mobile technology at all times, making it easy for millennials (and other generations!) to take their work to cafés, homes, or even local parks. Sometimes a change of scenery can help you come up with creative solutions to complex problems — even if you’re just moving from kitchen table to easy chair to desk. In this way, a variety of work areas can help increase overall productivity.

Working remotely is a great option for many workers, but navigating the necessities of remote “officing” is not necessarily intuitive from the beginning. However, with a little preparation and some thoughtful manipulation of technology, time and space, you can be organized and stay productive while working at home.