Business Processes – Dutch Uncles

How to Start a Small Business in India?

Aakash Sharma — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 01:35:03 +0000

A small business is an excellent way to catapult yourself into the big world of entrepreneurship and business. To start a small business means to embark upon a challenging yet satisfying journey. Small businesses are independent businesses that require less capital, fewer employees and little or no machinery to run. In India, small businesses are often defined based on the foundation of a company’s ability to invest in infrastructure and machinery.

Here we describe the path you can, as a young entrepreneur, follow to start a small business and make the idea a reality.

Business Plan

A business plan determines the success of the company. The first step in a company is to start with a feasible study and plan for its work. You can do this depending on the type, modus operandi and financial viability of your business idea.

The business plan should contain detailed information, including names, suggestions, ages and qualifications of the owners and associates, a revenue model with more details like cost and sale price, taxes, delivery charges, etc.

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A big business starts small, and making something that people want is the biggest motivator to start a business.

Financial Resources

Most small businesses in India started with self-funded or community-based financing. New entrepreneurs can also seek funding from MSME commercial banks. You can also get funds through diversified fundraising or venture capitals.

Online Presence

Depending on your business type, small businesses are categorised into three broad terms: fully online, online + physical, and entirely physical (business/office) companies. The online presence of any business is necessary for today’s digital era. This presence depends on your budget and the type of product /service you offer. An online presence can be established by creating a website or a social media page on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Marketing

To survive in intense competition, you need to promote your small business properly. You may have to spend a significant part of your budget on advertising, translating into a lot of revenue for the company overall. Largely beneficial and less costly marketing channels include Facebook marketing and promotion on websites like Twitter. You can also post your products and services on social media such as YouTube and Instagram.

Government Support for MSMEs

The Indian Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises MSMEs is responsible for developing small businesses. The ministry is responsible for supervising the licensing and regulation of small and medium-sized enterprises. It creates and regulates business development plans and projects like MUDRA loans for small entrepreneurs.

Start a Small Business like these

Content Writing and Blogging

If you are equipped with basic writing and reading skills, you can make a lot of money using your knowledge and skills. Content writing and blogging have become a profitable business not only in India but around the world today.

Digital Marketing

There are many opportunities in digital marketing. Once you start your own business, you can work independently, promote a wide variety of products, and make huge profits. For a thorough understanding of digital marketing skills, you can easily learn about the field from various online courses.

The post How to Start a Small Business in India? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Video Marketing Done Right: The Window to The Audience’s Soul

Kiran Kennedy — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 10:08:37 +0000

Who doesn’t love a good movie, or like to watch a short funny clip as you are scrolling through Facebook or Instagram on your lunch break at work? Humans are visual creatures; we rely so heavily on our eyes and for good reason. Vision is one of our primary senses and videos are the best way to engage this particular sensory organ. Let us have a look at how this can be used to push your marketing campaign through the roof.

What Is Video Marketing?

The use of videos in marketing is something you will see even the biggest of players doing and for good reason. Videos are essentially a visual form of storytelling. The great thing about them is that you are able to fit large amounts of dense information into a streamlined and engaging format. Add on to this the fact that it can be utilised across many digital and social platforms and you have yourself a real winner.

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With the rise of the digital era comes the rise of more and more visual content. Video marketing is the convergence point where versatility meets marketing strategy.

Developing Your Video Marketing Strategy

There is no hard-and-fast rule about what is the perfect method for video marketing. It all depends on the needs of the business and the type of promotion that you are attempting. Having said that, here are a few key guidelines you will want to keep across the board:

Allocating resources

Before starting the shooting process, you need to establish the rough scale of the production. Is it a huge set? Is it for a global or local audience? These questions will help you narrow down the scope. From there you need to look at the quality of equipment you need to hire for the shoot, the crew to handle the set, a good editing software, and a marketing team to push the video once it is done.

Be a storyteller

You need to communicate a meaningful message, not just an advertisement. The video is a versatile format and can do much, but it too has its limits. A video is only as good as the narrative it holds within its frame.

Keep it crisp

The beauty of video is that you can fit a lot into a short amount of time. Though there is no rule saying you have to stick to a particular amount of time, the rule of thumb is that you should keep it as short as possible. The shorter the better. Audiences in general do not spend much time on a video unless it is super interesting.

Spread it and monitor

When it comes to publishing the video, make sure you hit every platform, social media account and the websites you have access too. You have a lot of tools and platforms at your disposal so use every single one. After that, all that is left to do is to track and analyse the numbers. See who is seeing it, for how long and why.

Why Do Video Marketing?

Connect with your audience

You can talk about trust and your good intentions for the audience all you want but nothing beats getting to see it for yourself. It is true what they say about ‘seeing is believing’. You could try something like a blooper reel, a live Q and A with the audience or a behind-the-scenes shoot to show the audience the human side, they will appreciate the transparency and connect with the brand more.

Better SEO engagement

Posting videos on sites like YouTube, which is owned by Google, will greatly help increase your SEO engagement if you use the right key phrases and tags.

More retention

There is a shift in audiences’ preferences these days. They seem to prefer video formats more and more. The more visually engaging, the better. This preference actually corresponds with a higher retention level. Visuals engage our senses more and so the recall is better.

The point at the end of the day is to make things easier for the audience. The less effort they have to put in purchasing a product or understanding a business, the better for you. The modern audience wants to be catered to as much as possible and a business that takes care of that is a successful one.

Types Of Videos

Demo videos

If you want to showcase your new product or service and explain to the audience how it works, then this is the perfect format to adopt.

Brand videos

This type of video is a small part of the overall marketing campaign to raise brand awareness. It showcases the business’s mission, vision, products, services and so one.

Event videos

These videos are essentially short reels that make the audience aware of any events you are hosting or are going to a part of like fundraisers, panel discussions and competitions. It is like a behind–the-scenes kind of video.

Expert interviews

Getting bytes and short clips of industry leaders who are experts in the field can lend itself to establishing your business’s authority and authenticity with the audience. Influencers are also a great option. Check out our article on influencer marketing to learn more about that.

Live videos

The live format is a great way to make your audience feel like they are a part of the action. It also presents an opportunity to interact with them instantly. This back-and-forth communication will show them that your platform is on their level. Your business will establish rapport with them.

VR and AR videos

These are relatively new and developing formats but good options nonetheless. VR or virtual reality is when an audience is transported to a digitally created space. AR or augmented reality is when that digital space is layered over what the audience is currently seeing, like a hologram in the middle of a living room. The point is they are excellent venues to give your audience an immersive viewing experience and show them that you are ahead of the curve.

The Technical Execution Of The Video

Regardless of the type of video you choose to execute, you need to follow certain steps in order to ensure a smooth and thorough process.

The plan

Before any of the actual shooting or editing can take place, you need to have a direction. Figure out the angle of the video. What is the exact message that the audience needs to hear? The more you can narrow it down the faster the shooting process will go when the time comes. When you are planning, try to think of the timeline of when you would ideally need to get it out, the budget needed and who the target audience is to name a few parameters.

The script

Though off-the-cuff shoots can be dramatic and authentic, that usually does not work for advertisements or marketing videos. A script is a crucial part of any shoot and it can save you tons of time down the line. A detailed script means a more fluid production. A good rule of thumb when it comes to scripts is that one page of a script is generally representative of one minute of screen time. So, keeping in mind that you need to keep it short, you will get an idea of how many pages to write.

The shoot

The next step is to actually shoot the video. Set up the studio, make sure you have all the equipment and the talent is ready as well. High-quality equipment and good actors ensure a better end product. Nowadays you can get away with shooting on iPhones though. Phones have increasingly higher camera resolutions. It majorly depends on your creativity.

But no matter how good the equipment it will be a waste if you do not hire a crew that knows what they are doing. This means handling shoot schedules, visual compositions, getting the right background music, making sure to use the right lighting and so on.

Editing

People often mistake this stage as the point where you ‘fix’ the footage. No, editing is simply the stage where you put the footage together in a manner that is pleasing and logical. Sometimes mistakes might slip through and can be managed in the edit bay but there should be minimal mistakes over-all. Your script, planning and hiring of the right crew should have ensured that there were no mistakes. Do not rely on editing to fix the mistakes. This ensures a habit of maintaining a higher quality of work during production.

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Not everyone can become an influencer from the get-go. The market is saturated with video content. It needs a strong marketing strategy to back it up in order to be successful.

Challenges To Keep An Eye On

Video marketing may seem simple but as you might have noticed, there are a lot of steps and nuances that make a quality output. To achieve that quality, you need to put in time and effort with a healthy mix of good talent. This should yield the perfect recipe for your video marketing strategy.

It also helps to keep in mind that video marketing is simply a small part of the overall marketing and brand awareness campaign. Check out our article on ‘marketing’ to get an idea of the bigger picture.

The post Video Marketing Done Right: The Window to The Audience’s Soul appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How to Automate Business Processes

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 09:19:34 +0000

The Need of Automation for Business Efficiency

Working without bottlenecks is the dream of any business owner. Automation softwares can aid in efficient working without hiccups and streamline the routine tasks. To err is a human tendency, no matter how diligent he is. Hence a business automation software can help automate business processes go error free and reduce the task redundancies.

Automate Business Processes in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

An Enterprise Resource Planning automation system is designed to record and manage enterprise data. It links together the core business processes like – taking orders, scheduling operations and keeping inventory records. The ERP can automate business processes that are routine in nature, by storing data in a centralized location that makes it readily available to all the users who need to perform tasks, enabling automated communication across various departments.

Let us understand this with an example of a burger shop using ERP software. A burger shop receives hundreds of customers a day. A burger order that needs to be properly packed and delivered to the customer, goes through multiple processes like-heating and putting the patty, putting sauce and mayonnaise, putting salads, packing extra sauce sachets and tissues, checking if it is a parcel or eat here, and final packing. Let us consider these processes as separate departments within the store. Once an order is initiated, the ERP software automatically delegates action to the patty department that starts doing its job by selecting veg or non-veg patty. After they put the patty on the bread, it immediately updates information that its task is over, and now it alerts the sauce and mayo department to do the needful.

After the sauce department puts sauce or mayonnaise it updates the information about its task completion. The unfinished order then moves from the sauce department to the salad department. After putting salads, the same status is updated and lastly, the burger proceeds to the packing department that looks at the type of the order if it is a parcel or to be eaten here and handovers the burger to the customers and updates that the order is delivered and this marks the completion of the entire customer order.

The same information helps to update the inventory records after a day’s sale of existing stock of burger bread or mayonnaise packets or patty pieces. If the inventory falls short, it automatically prompts the procurement team to fill the stock gaps. Now imagine this entire process without automation, as the workers of one department will wait for tasks to be completed by those in other departments. With no proper information flow in place, there will be massive confusion causing delays and slowed productivity.

Below are some benefits to automate business processes in ERP:

Custom reports

An ERP system can create custom reports quickly and has a single platform for gathering and housing data, thus making it possible to detect bottlenecks about which department is lagging or which of them needs more improvements.

Demand forecasting

As workflow is simplified, turnaround time decreases and improves the production capability. It can also help in forecasting demand for inventory, less overstocking, and track real-time supply.

Smooth workflow

Workflow automation reduces the chances of human errors like missed orders, inventory mishaps, or miscommunication, saves time and low operational costs. It operates the business like a well- oiled machine that elevates employee satisfaction and increases the life of the business.

Finance

Undoubtedly, finance is one of the most vital functions of business. It is a function that demands plenty of know-how and mental ability. Small businesses grapple when it comes to the management of various finance processes such as tracking expenses, taxation, managing account receivables, and payables, etc. As the job demands a lot of work with numbers, a slight shift in concentration can cause multiple human errors. Imagine while preparing financial reports or while filing taxes we make a single typing error that will cause a drastic change in reports. While we sit to fix and identify the error across multiple spreadsheets and reports, we will have invested a significant amount of time. Here is where automation in finance comes to the rescue.

Below are the functions in finance that can be automated:

Easy analysis

For a company to make sound business decisions it needs to analyse critical financial aspects such as budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. These aspects are built on accurate business data. Technologies like robotic process automation in finance help in sourcing, aggregating and formatting data that gives quick reports thus aiding the finance team to spend more time in gaining insights and aid in proper analysis.

Processing receivables and payables

Account receivables and payables are the lifelines of any business. Getting these processes wrong will result in miscalculations of a company’s revenue. Automating receivables will help in creating a database of customers against the pending amount of money. Also, regular reminders can be sent to customers regarding the pending amount. Automating payables scans invoices and captures information of suppliers and alerts if payment is yet not done.

Hassle-free tax payments

Calculation of taxes is a labourious task where businesses consulted experienced professionals whose charges were expensive. With automation in finance, calculation of taxes has eased, where they can upload their scanned bills, invoices, and bills, and the tool will extract all the information from the uploaded files and put it into a searchable, scannable format. As the tax date comes near, you will have all your documents uploaded and organized and this saves a lot of time.

Automate Business Processes in Marketing

For newly begun ventures, their biggest challenge is to maximize reach and awareness to the target audience about their products or services. The emergence of various social media platforms and high internet consumption has led to a rise in digital marketing in the past few years that has become the most effective way of reaching out to the target group. Understanding consumer behaviour and emotions are not easy. Marketing automation tools help to compile and utilize all kinds of data about the customers. It will help in designing marketing strategies narrowed down to that particular group of audience for your business. Here are the various business processes in marketing that can be automated:

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Using automation for digital marketing can give you a detailed report of the audience engagement of the campaigns

Email marketing

We can automate emails to our customers at strategic moments festivals to target customers. For instance, say your company is planning to offer discounts, it will be a tedious task to send emails to so many customers separately. Through marketing automation, we can send personalized emails to hundreds of customers in one go informing them of discounts. Also, reminder emails in a fun manner such as ‘the cart misses you’ can be sent to the customers doing online shopping who have left something in the cart and are yet to buy.

Content Scheduling and Posting

Automation in marketing helps you in content scheduling automatic posting and saves from the routine task of logging into every social media account separately and posting content. With this feature, one can schedule the post in the desired time where the audience presence will be at its peak. For example- usually, it is found that audience presence on Facebook is high on weekends at 11 am, then one can automatically schedule posts for Sunday at 11 am to get maximum impressions or tractions.

Communicate better

Personalization in messaging strikes a chord with the target audience, since it helps customers to make better purchasing decisions and feel better about those decisions too. AI and machine learning-enabled marketing automation tools extract the insights from a pool of data that consists of customer interactions and engagement with the content that will empower small businesses to build relevant marketing campaigns and high engageable content for each prospect. AI and machine learning-enabled marketing automation tools extract the insights from a pool of data that consists of customer interactions and engagement with the content that will empower small businesses to build relevant marketing campaigns and high engageable content for each prospect. It allows marketing to be more efficient and helps to create high engageable content. It also optimizes the media spends based on anticipated outcomes.

Get insights

With the launch of marketing campaigns, it is necessary to gauge the effectiveness of the campaign. With automation in place, we can monitor response rates, level of audience engagement of the posts on all the social media handles. It helps you to understand which social media platforms are suitable for your business where the audience presence is more hence spending less on channels where the engagement is low.

Automate Business Processes in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The customer is the king of any business. After we have created enough attention for our brand to the audience, our work doesn’t end there. To keep customers recurring to use your there is a need to nurture our relationship with them. Automating CRM ensures that every step of our interaction with customers goes smoothly and effectively. CRM systems gather information on the customer’s overall purchase history, customer info, and buying behaviour patterns that helps to create a loyal customer base.

Lead management

Due to excess work, the salespeople might forget to follow up on leads. It causes them to miss out on many potential leads, which means losing business opportunities. AI-driven CRM systems can replicate sales agents acting as the first point of engagement between the leads and the company through emails or messaging. Once the lead’s buying intention is confirmed, a sales representative can close the activity. Its tools can also generate leads from multiple mediums whenever a customer shows up with a buying intention and can create accounts based on their probability to engage and purchase. It helps the sales team to focus on the best and most qualified leads.

Customer engagement and retention

Of course, we will face some irate customers who will be unhappy with our products or services, but the challenge is to win their confidence back by addressing their problems and helping them in a quick turnaround time. AI-enabled CRM can do sentiment analysis and use image recognition technology to understand customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your product in real-time. When you get this insightful data, you can identify potential problems quickly and take action to respond to customers. It can create tailor-made experiences and interactions by determining their emotional state of mind through their text-based or voice-based words, tone, and conversation pattern.

Troubleshooting

AI-based CRM can give different sales scenarios where the deals were rejected and closed. They provide useful insights and make intelligent recommendations during various stages of the sales funnel to advise sales representation on the next best course of action to close the deal. It can also help them to identify which buyer has the intent to buy and speed up the sales cycle.

Automate Business Processes in Data Security

When it comes to safeguarding vital company data, small businesses are under the impression that they are not prone to cyberattacks, due to which they do not implement any such systems as well. According to a 2019 study by Accenture, 43% of cyberattacks worldwide are targeted at SMBs. Hackers take undue advantage of the same and hack the data in an encrypted format only to ask for some ransom amount in return. With increasing digitization, such cases have seen a spurt.

Detection and monitoring

As your teams grow, it reduces the visibility of IT activities as we generate large amounts of data, and detection of threats from such large data volumes becomes impossible. SOAR (Security Orchestration Automatic Response) driven security automation helps to detect the threats by speedily analysing large volumes of data, where it can detect any suspicious behaviour even though the network traffic is high. Once it identifies the attack, it alerts the security team who takes actions by removal of the malware or by installing security patches. It helps to reduce the time and effort needed to complete security tasks. Apart from SOAR, there is UEBA (User Entity Behaviour Analytics) to detect abnormal behaviour of devices, servers, etc. For example – Suppose if a particular user downloads 20 MB of files everyday but suddenly downloads Gigabytes of files then it is a case of deviation from normal, UEBA detects this and alerts the team immediately.

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The right partnership between man and the machine allows for a greater income in the day-to-day. It also allows for the elimination of excess labor costs, since it is easy to optimize the work of the employees.

Automate Business Processes in Human Resources

Human beings are complex creatures. Managing employees by a human is a daunting task since they are different individuals belonging to different ethnic backgrounds, energies, mindset, and mentality who come together under a roof to work. Many processes in HR take a significant amount of time like selecting resumes, managing attendance records, payroll management, etc. All these processes can be easily automated to free the HR managers from the menial tasks to focus more on employee well- being. After all, happy employees create happy customers.

Sort Resumes with ease

Imagine you are the HR manager of a company where you have posted a job opening on a job portal. After you receive hundreds of resumes you are likely to get overwhelmed for sorting the resumes for interviews. Sorting resumes become a tedious task. AI in HR automation has eased the process of screening resumes from a large applicant pool. AI tools in HR conduct its search based on keywords the HR specifies like- 2+ years of experience, B. Tech, SAP skills needed, etc. and it produces a list of candidates that fit the description. Once we have the list of potential candidates, AI uses keyword analysis to determine suitable candidates for interview based on the content of the resume and narrows the list. Automation also helps in tracking and monitoring applicants, creating job requisitions, and posting them out to job boards and social media platforms.

There are certain downsides of AI-based hiring as well. When we specify too many keywords it means creating rigidity, which might result in overlooking candidates who might have non-traditional backgrounds but would be perfectly qualified to do the job. It might lead to the cancellation of resumes by the AI tool for the candidates whose resume doesn’t have the keywords.

Payroll

Calculating payrolls manually from spreadsheets has a high chance of errors causing underpaying or overpaying of employees. With automation, payroll calculation becomes easy as it automatically transfers the data about total hours worked by employees multiplied by the daily amount into the system. Rather than separately entering taxes, deductions, overtime, and commissions, the tool will calculate it together and send the correct results.

Timesheet

Maintaining manual timesheets and calculation of payroll from the sheets is a gruelling task. There are chances that employees might manipulate in-time and out-time. By automating the timesheet, HR no longer has to risk their eyesight to guess employees’ handwriting. Validations and auto-filled fields are put together in the automated sheet that ensures employees enter the correct information every time. Once submitted, the timesheets are sent to HR for approval. If there is any change in timings, it gets updated automatically.

Performance appraisal

Performance appraisals are an essential function that is primarily on human interaction. It is also infamous because performance appraisals are said to be biased. Technologies like AI and Big Data can automate this function to eliminate human bias and ensure that it is in the best interest of the employee. It works by combining the KPIs (Key performance indicators) of a particular job that can be fed into the AI-enabled tool to determine high and low performers. Automation eliminates the biases of a manager towards one employee. With this more transparency is induced in the appraisal process.

When a business is in growth mode, automating functions that are redundant and require human intervention can make a significant difference in the functioning of a company, allowing it to focus on core functions.

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