Business research
Too many things to be taken care of while starting a business. Earlier, the saying used to go as the hard worker wins the best of the accolades and there are business men who have stayed till late nights to pull up their business to a certain level. They would never believe on any one and toil very hard till the last drop of their blood would be transformed into sweat. Then, there was a revolution of outsourcing and many business men would give away all those activities which are not directly connected with the main product production to some outside parties and only focus on product innovation and penetration into the market.
In that way also, many have been successful. However, the recent economic turmoil has hit all these business es so hard that either the conventional way or the outsourcing way, sustaining itself was a big challenge. For that sake, many started searching for solutions to their problems and as such, business research became the most wanted sector of activity in these days.
As everyone knows, for any business to be successful, the marketing front of the product has to be quite strong for which the four famous P's i.e. pricing, product/service in the offering, promotion and placing of the product needs to be well decided. This is the basic marketing function which no business whether small or big can ever ignore. In addition to this, people, and provision of resources has to be further ascertained on the supply point that the above said four P's will get undisturbed supply. But then, in the modern world this simple logics will not work and to gain sustained profit, a complicate model of business research has to be evaluated.
Business research means:
Undertaking surveys through questionnaires sent to the suppliers, customers, vendors etc.
Analysing the external forces by drawing inferences on PEST analysis
Doing apt scenario planning
Estimating the five forces which act upon the particular business and taking the necessary steps for our business to grow,
Understanding the internal value chain systems and estimating the gaps in it so that continuous support functions can be ensured.
Basing on all these, many inferences are drawn and then a comprehensive standpoint of the organization's current position in the market is estimated. To this, budget and forecasting modules are to be suffixed to:
Analyse where the organization wants itself to grow in the next 3 to 5 years,
What are the plans to be followed to reach to that stage,
What are the ways to be followed for the effective communication of the goals to be achieved to the major stake holders of the organization and
The feedback of the stakeholders also has to be considered before embarking upon the plans.
In all this imbroglio, due consideration has to be given to human resources behaviour that if the organization is planning for a major shift from its methodologies, the staff have to be convinced properly which involves change management, balanced score card approach etc. So that such a shift would be gradual and result giving.
Now, when such a high level business research is done, then it is necessary that the security systems are to be upgraded so that the confidential matters do not get spilled in the market and the company needs to be every on the run to secure its key business research data. For that sake, ERP and other accounting packages have to be initiated and as of now, RFID and ITPW technologies are also on the move. More than all these, security systems are being upgraded day in and day out so that any outsider cannot have any access to the relevant information of the business research and its functions.
To fund all these functions, naturally, a lot of capital needs to be generated and that capital can be generated only if the general public or any government agency is ready to put in the required amount. How will any firm convince any third party to sacrifice their money for using into the business? They need some authenticity of the person doing the business and also they need to be confident about the commitment of the creditor. This authenticity is also generated only through complex business research processes like financial management, Project Planning, account generation planning etc. that the company can answer to the several questions which the general public raises in order to raise its confidence in the company. By answering these questions properly only, the goodwill of the organization also gets improved.
While the above said practices get more and more complicated day by day, there are still many people who just never give any adherence to such elaborate plans and policies which the organization has to follow. For them, business research is just a waste of time and employees work in an organization for the money being paid for them. Considering the ethical point of view of the employees is just non-profitable from their stand point and they treat their own employees as outsiders who are willing to help them to some extent for the salary they draw.
In the same way, they only consider their customers and respect them because they get money from them and the suppliers are always drawn down so that they quote the basic minimum prices for the raw material supplied by them. For them Return on Investment is the only thumb rule and they even never believe in outsourcing also. They just try to perform every action from a - z forgetting the important point that at some point or the other, they could be a general break down of all the systems. Then, though there would be enough cash in their hands, they would not be able to service their customers properly resulting in a loss of goodwill. As such, elaborate business research methodologies and the suggestions from such practices should be undertaken now and then to ensure sustenance of the business forever.