Selection of Dealers

• The company does not advertise for new dealers. Whenever the need to appoint a new dealer for an area is felt the word is spread around. This is being used as the type of dealer who sell pumps and motors are mostly concentrated in a locality in every town or city
• The interested dealers are asked to present before the branch manager and the group marketing manager as to how they would be able to serve the company
• The selection is then done on the basis of following criteria:

1. Financial Strength: The capability of the dealer to be able to hold sufficient stock as per the potential of the area, both in the present and in the future, and whether he will be able to pay the companies dues in time.
2. Manpower: the strength of the workforce for handling sales, delivery, store handling, after sales service etc. the quality of the workforce in terms of educational qualifications, technical competency, and experience is also seen.
3. Contacts: As the business for these types of products is done on  the basis of contacts that form a major basis for selection and include the present customers of the dealers, experience in dealing with such customers, and overall contacts in the society
4. Floor space: Depending on the quantity of products to be stocked for the targeted sales, the floor space of the godown should be sufficient and located close to the market
5. Location: Location and ambiance of the outlet are not important.

• Feedback from the market is obtained through the market network and the present dealer network. The feedback is sought for things like authenticity of the claims and the reputation of the person to be appointed.
• Appointment is given to the elected dealers after they give a security deposit. Every dealer is required to make a deposit with the company, which works out to roughly around three months of expected sales.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Discounted Cash Flow

It is a useful conception from Discounted Cash Flows that they are future cash flows expressed in terms of their present value. The discounted cash flow technique employs this reasoning by evaluating the present value of a business’s net cash flow (cash inflows minus cash outflows). A simplified view of cash flow is “cash flow from operations,” which is net income plus depreciation charges, because depreciation is a non-cash charge against sales to determine net income. The present value of a stream cash flows is obtained by selecting an interest or discount rate at which these flows are to be valued, or discounted, and the timing of each. The interest or discount rate is often defined by the opportunity cost of capital—the cost of earning opportunities forgone by investing in a business with its attendant risk as opposed to investing in risk free securities

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Customers Criteria for Assessing Service

Customers assess service by:

1. Reliability – dependable and accurate performance of promised service
2. Responsiveness – willingness/readiness to provide prompt service
3. Competence – knowledge and skill to perform the service
4. Access – approachability and ease of contact of service personnel
5. Courtesy – politeness, consideration, and friendliness of service personnel
6. Communication – keeping customers informed, listening to customers
7. Credibility – trustworthiness, believability, honesty
8. Security – freedom from danger, risk, or doubt
9. Understanding/knowing customer – knowing customer’s needs
10. Tangibles – physical evidence of service

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Employee Rights

This issue actually spans a wide range of controversies. For example, issues have surfaced regarding the individual’s right to smoke in the workplace. As more and more organizations limit or ban smoking, this issue will continue to be somewhat controversial. Broader controversies involve issues associated with job ownership and individual rights while at work. A popular (albeit not entirely correct) assumption about Japanese organizations is that their employees have lifetime job security/ to the extent that US firms adopt this practice, the question becomes one of due process and the right to appeal in instances of dismissal or reassignment.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Organization Health

Implicit is a concept towards organizations that needs to be made explicit; namely, that we are viewing organizations as dynamic cooperative systems. Their survival involves change and adaption, as well as, economic performance and the distribution of  incentives to members.

The presentation is organized to help the exercise understand the dimensions of his job in contributing to organizational survival. We hold that the manager should have awareness of how organizations in general function, as well as, an understanding of the character of his specific organization. The organization is thus seen as a system with needs for its own security, stability, and continuity. Managers perform the functions of organizing, directing, and controlling within the system.

The criteria for judging managers (i.e., organizational health or effectiveness) are not measures such as performance, morale, lack of conflict, or profit per se. These are important but insufficient criteria. Rather, we have to evaluate managers in terms of the total dynamic system represented by the organization. In this framework, it is more important to judge managerial effectiveness upon the basis of how the organization handles its problems (i.e., adapts and changes to pressures), rather than whether or not it has problems.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Process Engineering

Although continuous improvement methods are positive starts in many of our organizations, they generally focus on incremental change. Such action—a constant and permanent search to make things better—is intuitively appealing. Many organizations, however, operate in an environment of rapid and dynamic change. As the elements around them change so quickly, a continuous improvement process may keep them behind the times.

The problem with a focus on continuous improvements is that it may provide a false sense of security. It may make organizational members feel as if they are actively doing something positive, which is somewhat true. Unfortunately, ongoing incremental change may prevent a company from facing up to the possibility that what the organization may really need radical or quantum change, referred to as work process engineering. Continuous change may also make employees feel as if they are taking progressive action while, at the same time, avoiding having to implement quantum changes that will threaten certain aspects of organizational life. The incremental approach of continuous improvement, then, may be today’s version of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is imperative in today’s business environment that all organizational members consider the challenge that work process engineering may have for their organizational processes. This is because work process engineering can lead to “major gains in cost, service, or time,” as well as an organization in preparing to meet the challenges technology changes foster.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Online Retail Selling: Barriers to Success

i.            Increasing consumers’ comfort levels: Online retailers need to improve convenience and value for customers and assist them in overcoming their concerns about security and trust.

ii.            Resolving technological limitations: The ability for online retailers to deliver unique experiences is linked to technology improvements. The internet is still constrained by lack of bandwidth and problems with reliability.

iii.            Rapidly scaling internal operations: Online retailers face the challenges of managing significant growth, internal organizational change and developing and scaling their customer service and fulfillment infrastructure—all while the technology is still evolving.

iv.            Engineering comprehensive convenience: Customers identify many convenience problems with today’s online environment. Among them are the need for customers to reenter personal data on different sites, the vide variation in customer service across sites and the lack of coordination between online and offline retail environments on the part of retailers using both channels.

v.            Resolving channel conflict: many offline retailers believe that there is a risk of cannibalizing sales through existing channels by going online. Many manufacturers fear alienating their existing distribution partners by providing an alternative channel for customers to purchase. These perceived channel conflicts are keeping some traditional retailers and manufacturers from joining the Internet.

vi.            Developing low-cost distribution: Distribution system can be expensive. Online fulfillment systems are still developing and there is a disconnect between what is required and what is currently offered by existing offline systems.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Entrepreneurial Challenge

We have experienced such an explosion of entrepreneurs in last two decades. There are many reasons why people are willing to take the risks of starting business. These reasons generally include the following:

• Opportunity: Many people do not have necessary skills for working in today’s complex organizations. They do have the initiative and drive to work the long hours demanded by entrepreneurship. They are willing to sacrifice to see that their children have a chance of a good life. The same is true of many corporate managers who leave the security of the corporate life and try running businesses of their own.
• Profit: Profit is only one reason to become an entrepreneur, but an important one. The profit potential of entrepreneurship is fantastic.
• Independence: Many entrepreneurs simply do not enjoy working for someone else. They do not like the stress and demands of business.
• Challenge: Entrepreneurs are excitement junkies who flourish on taking risks. They seek achievement more than power.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Information: The Corporate Power

The explosion of the general public’s use of the Internet or World Wide Web was mirrored by business. In the 1990s, business connections to the Internet increased from 1,000 firms to an estimated 21,000 or more by 1996. Experts predict this growth to increase rapidly into the year 2000.

The Internet can provide firms with many advantages. For example, developing a marketing strategy that relies on the Internet can benefit firms by replacing electronic mail systems, providing a global reach to customers, selling products and services in cyber space, and creating on-line databases, media lists, and other marketing tools. Firms discovered that customer service was enhanced with the Internet.

Use of the Internet became one of the hottest new strategies in the securities trading industry. Brokers had more information available to them to assist their clients since resources were available electronically. In addition, Internet-based brokers can be reached anytime from any computer with a secure Web browser, making them more accessible to their clients.

Paperless libraries dramatically changed the way information was stored and significantly reduced costs to businesses. Rather than printing information on paper, firms documented information on CD-ROMs, videodiscs, and the Internet, where it was stored and retrieved at less cost.

Supplementing the Internet as a communication tool are intranets, private or limited information network systems cordoned off from public access by software programs called firewalls. The corporate use of intranets exploded as companies found that these information communication systems were very expensive.

Satellite imaging was another technological advancement that showed promise for integrating technology into business. For decades, governments used satellite imaging to spy on their enemies. In the 1990s, companies were finding other uses for this technology.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

The Workload

The workload may vary from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, season to season or from department to department or job to job. Workloads may be as simple to measure as, “We need one security guard on duty every hour of the year,” or as complex as, “We manufacture and ship over 300 different customer products, and our customer orders come in at the last minute.” Companies that do not routinely measure their workload practice backward scheduling, fit the workload into their current schedule even though that schedule may be the wrong one. The result is often a big gap between the master schedule (the one that’s posted in the employee handbook or printed in the union contract) and the actual schedule (the one that is really worked). Many companies become experts at backward scheduling and are able to stretch their master schedule to the limits, keeping customers satisfied, but the negative impact on productivity, safety, overtime, and morale can cost millions of dollars every year.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.