In today’s fast-paced business landscape, staying ahead of the competition requires embracing the latest technologies to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive growth. Salesforce offers a powerful suite of tools and capabilities designed to empower businesses to thrive in the digital era. However, as a business leader, you understand that with great power comes great responsibility.
In today’s business landscape, where customer expectations are soaring and competition is fierce, staying ahead requires more than just offering a great product or service. It demands a strategic approach that optimizes your sales processes, nurtures collaboration within your organization, leverages data-driven insights, and prioritizes exceptional customer experiences.
As businesses grow and become more complex, manual processes can become a bottleneck. Process automation is a solution to this problem, allowing businesses to streamline operations and increase efficiency. But what exactly is process automation, and how does it work? Here is a beginner’s guide to process automation.
Process automation is the use of technology to automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks and processes. By automating these tasks, businesses can reduce errors, increase efficiency, and free up employees to focus on more important work.
Process automation can take many forms, from simple tools like email autoresponders and social media scheduling apps to complex workflows that involve multiple systems and teams.
Process automation involves several key steps:
The first step in process automation is to identify a process that can be automated. This process should be repeatable and involve a series of steps or tasks that can be performed in a consistent way.
Once the process has been identified, the next step is to map out the steps involved in the process. This can be done using flowcharts, process diagrams, or other visual tools.
There are many automation tools available, ranging from simple automation apps to complex workflow management systems. Choose a tool that is appropriate for the process you want to automate.
With the tool chosen, the next step is to build the automation. This may involve configuring settings and rules, creating triggers and actions, or writing scripts.
Once the automation is built, it’s important to test it to make sure it works as expected. This may involve running tests, monitoring performance, and making adjustments as needed.
Process automation offers several key benefits, including:
In conclusion, process automation is a powerful tool that can help businesses streamline operations and increase efficiency. By identifying processes to automate, mapping out the steps involved, choosing the right automation tool, building the automation, and testing and refining the process, businesses can reap the benefits of automation and stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment.
Digital transformation refers to the process of using digital technologies to fundamentally change how businesses operate and deliver value to their customers. It’s about rethinking business models and processes in the context of an increasingly digital world. In this blog post, we’ll explore what is digital transformation, and why your business should care.
Digital transformation involves leveraging technology to create new business models, products, and services, and to optimize existing operations. It involves using data and analytics to inform decision-making, and embracing new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to drive innovation.
At its core, digital transformation is about using technology to create value for customers and stakeholders, and to build a more agile and responsive business that can adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs.
There are several reasons why your business should care about digital transformation:
Digital transformation can help businesses streamline operations and automate repetitive tasks, freeing employees to focus on more important work.
Digital transformation can help businesses better understand and serve their customers, resulting in a better overall customer experience.
Digital transformation can help businesses respond more quickly to changing market conditions, and to adapt to new business models and processes.
Digital transformation can lead to the creation of new revenue streams, as well as increased customer loyalty and retention.
Digital transformation can help businesses stay ahead of the competition, by enabling them to operate more efficiently and effectively.
In short, digital transformation is essential for businesses that want to remain competitive in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape. By embracing new technologies and transforming their operations, businesses can create new opportunities for growth, and better serve their customers and stakeholders.
Digital transformation is about much more than just adopting new technologies – it’s about fundamentally changing how businesses operate, and how they deliver value to their customers. By embracing digital transformation, businesses can become more efficient, responsive, and customer-focused, and can create new opportunities for growth and innovation. If your business hasn’t already started thinking about digital transformation, now is the time to start.
President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into a law on March 11th, 2021. Officials of the administration and leaders of various associations have claimed that the $ 1.9 trillion plan should be transformational. The key will be to fully utilize all provisions of the American Rescue Plan for Small Business.
I had the opportunity to attend a White House Briefing organized by Small Business For America’s Future, Business Forward & other partner organizations. The briefing included a conversation with Bharat Ramamurti, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. The conversation focused on American Rescue Plan for Small Business. One highlight was that spreading the information was most essential for the success of this law.
I have tried to put together all relevant information and benefits of the American Rescue Plan for Small Businesses & Startups. Let us start with some highlights:
UPDATE: PPP LOAN DEADLINE EXTENDED TILL MAY 31 2021.
Paycheck Protection Program commonly known as PPP is a loan offered by the Federal Government. Purpose of this loan is to incentivize small businesses to continue paying wages to their staff. The scheme comes with a high possibility of loan forgiveness if the funds are utilized as desired.
PPP loans were originally being offered till March 31st, but both the House & Senate have passed the PPP extension act. This has also been signed by the President pushing the deadline to May 31st.
The American Rescue Act opens PPP to more underserved business with the following changes.
This is a low interest loan designed to help businesses take care of their running expenses and other fixed liabilities. This is targeted at businesses who have suffered severe loss of revenue because of the pandemic.
All small businesses including qualifying agricultural businesses (less than 500 employees) and nonprofit organizations in the United States are eligible for this loan. Following are some highlights.
This is a grant, not a loan, designed to rescue venue operators that were in operation as of February 29th, 2020. The grant can be equal to 45% of gross revenue up to a maximum of $10 million. You must be one of the following to be eligible for this grant:
These funds can be used as working capital, running payroll and to take care of fixed expenses including marketing expenses.
IMPORTANT: Venue operators who have availed PPP will have this grant reduced by the loan amount.
SBA is authorized to pay six months of principal, interest, and any associated fees that borrowers owe for all 7(a), 504, and Microloans reported in regular servicing status (excluding Paycheck Protection Program loans). This debt relief to borrowers was originally dependent on the loan being fully disbursed prior to September 27, 2020 and does not apply to loans made under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
Refer the official website for more details: https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-options/sba-debt-relief
This will be offered as a direct grant to restaurants and other qualifying food businesses. More information is awaited and expected within the next 7-10 days. The administration is hopeful to start accepting applications within the month of April 2021.
This program is designed for SBA to engage with states, local governments, SBA resource partners, and other organizations in targeted outreach for small businesses underserved communities.
SBA is implementing this initiative by building upon its extensive network of resource partners across the country. To ensure the Community Navigator Pilot Program reaches communities across the country in the coming months, SBA will soon be announcing a new grant funding opportunity that will be open to proposals from SBA resource partners, states, tribes, units of local governments, and other nonprofit organizations.
When I started working on the concept of Vision Fulfill Digital Consulting, one the first obvious questions I wanted answer was “What problem will I solve for my clients?” Like in most cases these days, my quest to find answers started with a Google search. Search results came back with a bunch of blogs listing various small business challenges & problems.
Some articles were remarkably interesting & informative reads. But most were written with the goal of projecting what the writer or publishing platform had to offer to small businesses. Almost none of them were written from a small business owner’s point of view.
I have tried to put together a list of 5 challenges that truly matter to a small business and what a small business owner can overcome effectively. After all, we should only focus on what we can control and take everything else in our stride!
Maintaining a positive cash flow is the biggest ask for a small business owner. It is also the most important factor that makes a difference between success and failure for small businesses. A big number of businesses shut shop not because they are making losses but because they do not have cash to pay their bills.
The simplest definition of cash flow is “The difference between money coming in and money going out in any accounting period.” I prefer a 30-day accounting period so I can track cash flow monthly.
Small business owners have limited time with modest budgets and fewer resources at their disposal. They can end up neglecting customer acquisition & retention without foreseeing that it can be the start of the end.
In a nutshell, always Delight your customer by giving more than he expects through your quality, service levels, messaging & communication.
Innovation is also important. You may not have the bandwidth to invest in research & development. But continue to innovate your value proposition, service & quality for your customers.
Building a capable & dedicated team is a major challenge for small business owners.
The challenge is to first identify candidates who are not only capable & dedicated but also as compassionate and flexible as you because of the demands of a small business. The next challenge is to convince them to take the risk of joining a small business and then retaining them with the company.
Build a core team for which you should:
As operations take over Brand Building, just like business development, can take a back seat because of limited resources & budgets. But that can throw a business into an ever-growing cycle of obsolescence.
This is a happy challenge to have but a double-edged sword. It is common for businesses of all sizes to fail during a growth cycle. But small businesses have limited resources to fall back on and are more prone to this syndrome.
Government regulations, taxations, healthcare are some common small business challenges but do not find a place on my list. That is because:
So, my approach is to engage a capable service partner who can align with your values and take care of all legal requirements while you focus on the actual job at hand.
Over the last few years, some CEO and start-up founders have experienced success, while there is a subset of these start-ups that don’t succeed at all. Certain factors are consistently observed in the start-ups that have failed. Today, in this blogpost, we will briefly discuss why some start-ups fails while other succeed.
