Tag: Analysis

How to Manage Your Call Center Using the PEST Analysis?

PEST analysis means strictly the Political, Economics, Social, and Technical analysis, which can be applied perfectly at any time. The following paragraphs will explain this analysis.

Political Issue

During the operation of managing your Call Center, you can apply the political issue in most of your unique programs. You may need long inclusive enforced copyrights. Thus, for your Call Center to show its political awareness, it must direct its topics to the involved clients in your origin country, which may consider a powerful source of votes during elections.

As an example, your Call Center can lead a voter registration campaign debuts at its web site. It will show how to practice the political rights online. In the site, there may be online polls, to give the users the chance to vote on some basic topics of the present days. Introducing an ad to encourage audience to vote in election will be great too.

Economical Issue

Applying the economical issue is very easy. From the beginning, you may wish to keep barriers to entry high. Thus, you can begin your entry to other markets. As an example, promoting your advertising online to be able to reach more customers in other countries will be great.

Understanding the economical elements, such as supply, demand, price, inflation, deflation, and marketing will be important. You must try to insert the existence of your Call Center into the frame of globalization.

Social Issue

Considering the social elements will be incredible. You may target to involve young people in good causes. Releasing a new web site to realize your aim will assist your management operation to great degrees. Hence, the new web site could provide young with a wide social place to get information and cooperate with others too. However, all categories of ages could recognize the basic social topics along with exchange their cultural issues, via your Call Center’s social web.

Technological issue

Following the latest technology must be provided as well.

For your information, you can get strong digital rights management. Thus, when you continue to use this tool as a comprehensive framework, you can guarantee the success of your Call Center’s management target.

You may be in a necessity for an automated system. Therefore, you can keep trace of your huge advertising sales from many proposals via scheduling and invoicing. On the other hand, you may desire to decrease the time-consuming and error-prone processes of manually entering and reconciling advertising schedules of your Call Center as well. Of course, this could provide a seamless workflow for your sales and scheduling staff.

Through the operation of management of any Call Center, you must aware how to select well your items of PEST analysis. Providing your employees with more training is advised in all times.

A Retail Clothing Store Business Plan – Customer Analysis

Your retail clothing store’s business plan requires a well-thought out customer analysis which describes what type of customers will make your store succeed.

Not Too Broad, Not Too Narrow

When choosing your customer target markets, make sure that they are neither too broad nor too narrow. The broader a target market, the more expensive and difficult to reach it and sell to it. For example, if the target market is simply “Residents of the Tri-state Area” this will tell you and readers little about the most effective means of reaching them.

Think further about who the most profitable customers within these broader markets will be and whether there are distinct groups of profitable customers worth mentioning. Profitable here refers to the total revenue that a certain customer will bring in through clothing purchases over a certain period, the customer’s likelihood to remain loyal and keep purchasing after that period, and the cost of achieving that customer through marketing and sales work.

If customer groups are too small, readers will be concerned that there isn’t enough potential revenue from the target markets for the store to show a profit. Remember that readers will not believe that you can ever achieve 100% of a market. You have to show that you will be able to break even with much smaller market shares, especially in the early days of your store.

Three or Four Segments Is Good Enough

To prove the excellence of your store’s potential, you may be tempted to write a list of target markets segments that you can target. Resist this temptation, and clearly show your focus on three or four segments at most for the short-term. If the amount of revenues that you can achieve from these groups seems limited over time, then you can go on to describe some future target markets, labeled as such, to detail the next steps the company can take when the original targets are tapped out.

Customer Values

For customers in each segment you describe, write about their specific reasons to buy from your store based on their values. Show the difference between each segment, because if two segments have the same values and needs, they could probably be lumped together as one. Don’t detail your promotion methods and product line again here as a way of explanation – those are covered elsewhere in your plan. Do be clear as to why each group listed is a good target for your clothing store.

Marketing Strategy Plan: Key Ingredients Of A SWOT Analysis

In every marketing strategy plan, the first step in determining your current position in the market is through a comprehensive SWOT analysis. This helps you identify and improve your Strengths and Weakness while focusing on the external Opportunities and Threats that may positively or negatively affect your company.

1. Strengths

In a SWOT analysis, Strengths are considered part of the internal factors favorable to your marketing strategy plan. This basically covers areas regarding your competencies, assets, income generation, and other intangibles like customer support and positive public image and reputation, good admin – employees relationship, and camaraderie in the work place. When you define your strengths, it must reflect the present situation and have a clear plan on how you will be able to maintain and nurture it so these factors will always be the driving force of your company.

2. Weaknesses

Weaknesses can be derived both from internal and external factors. These are usually the areas in your operation that may have a negative impact on your marketing strategy plan. The purpose of creating a list of your weaknesses is so you can adjust your strategies to include improvements in these areas. Among the common weaknesses of companies are where your operation is losing money, lack of experience, skills, and or resources among others. Weaknesses can also account for a bad reputation, significant decline in the levels of trust among consumers, or simply due to the absence of any strength.

3. Opportunities

Opportunities are basically external factors that offer potential benefits for your business. When creating a marketing strategy plan, having a good grasp of the opportunities is highly beneficial. This enables you to take advantage of various factors that may have positive effects on your endeavors such as the current economic condition, cultural climate, market volume, economic demand, etc. When you know your opportunities, you can also see the actual needs of your target market that are not being met. In essence, these opportunities are actually your future strengths and must be prioritized.

4. Threats

Although threats are usually viewed as an external condition that may impede your marketing strategy plans, they can also be viewed internally. Threats can be an unstable economic condition, cultural differences, unfriendly social conditions, significant changes in political stability, new industry regulations and legislation, and the current position of your competitor. Internally, threats are often found in the workplace such as the unstable admin – employee relationship and other related conditions. As opposed to Opportunities, Threats in essence are your company’s future weaknesses and must be addressed as soon as possible.

With the help of a SWOT analysis, you can analyze your business internally against your various resources, financial standing, support, etc. When you look at various external factors, you can examine various areas of the economy, political stability, industrial regulations, demographic, social, competitions, and technology that may have a direct impact on your business.

The Sales and Marketing SWOT Analysis

The S.W.O.T. Analysis, where you evaluate your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, is well known in the business planning process. Many companies use this method during strategic planning exercises as a way to form strategies and make decisions on new business ventures or initiatives. It is powerful because it looks at both internal (strengths, weaknesses) and external (opportunities, threats) forces.

As powerful as the S.W.O.T. Analysis is for business planning, it is equally powerful in sales and marketing decision-making. By employing this traditional tool to each of your sales and marketing activities, you can take advantage of your strengths, uncover new opportunities, minimize your weaknesses, and eliminate your threats in amazing ways. That is, however, only if you can be objective. Otherwise, the exercise falls flat.

While the S.W.O.T. Analysis can be applied to decisions about business planning, product development and other strategic decision-making tasks, consider using it for the following two sales and marketing activities:

1. Deciding Marketing Vehicles: Use the S.W.O.T. Analysis to evaluate each marketing vehicle in your marketing plan. This will allow you to focus marketing efforts on the vehicles where you have the most advantage or opportunity and the most minimal amount of weakness or threat.

2. Developing Sales Presentation/Proposals: Apply the S.W.O.T. Analysis to the development of each of your sales presentations and proposals. Be sure to focus the analysis on evaluating each section based on issues specific to the customer you are pitching.

As you approach your S.W.O.T. Analysis, consider the following questions.

  • Strengths: What advantages does your company/product have that no one else has? What makes you most unique? Focus on those things that make your offer most compelling to a prospect or customer.
  • Weaknesses: Where can you improve? Where have you made mistakes in the past? What do you not have that other companies/products in your industry have? Focus on those things that most detract from your offer.
  • Opportunities: What trends lend to your strengths? What is the potential “expansion” potential over time? Opportunities are external factors that represent why your company exists or should/can growth.
  • Threats: What challenges do you face? What are your competitors doing? What is the overall competitive landscape? Threats are external forces that could impact your success, such as competition, operational capacity, cost of goods increases, etc.

    • No matter the purpose, using the S.W.O.T. analysis can force thoughtful, strategic, and creative thinking. And, when used properly, the S.W.O.T. Analysis not only helps you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, but it also helps you determine your strategies for addressing each.

    Website SWOT Analysis – A Real Life Example

    Do you wonder what is happening to your Internet Business? Why is that you cannot get traffic to your website; the conversion rate is too low; or opt-in visitor is too few?

    I was faced with a similar situation lately and I attempted to use what I knew about SWOT Analysis into my Internet Business. I use the same technique to perform a SWOT on a website and had surprisingly discovered some valuable facts for my Website

    In this article, I share with you my real-life example of my Website SWOT Analysis. You are invited to use it as a reference to your won Internet Business.

    Below is a sample website SWOT Analysis performed on my own Total Quality Management website I published in year 2001. It was written based on a knowledge-based approach. The ranking for this website is on Google page # 9 and has a PR=2. After 8 years published, it has never moved up to within Google page#3. Some of you may know that my newly published 3 months old SWOT analysis Blog has ranked Google page#1 for the last 3 months. This success story has prompted me to wonder why my Total Quality Management website page ranking is so far behind.

    My objective is to move my Total Quality Management website to Google page# 1 – 3 and I performed a Website SWOT Analysis using the SWOT Analysis template and example as my guides. Below are sample my Website SWOT analysis:

    The SWOT Factor – Strengths

    S1 – 8 years old website – matured

    S2 – website contained focused practical examples and case studies of Total Quality Management

    S3 – website ranked Google page#1 on Google.com.my with single keyword – “tqm”

    The SWOT Factor – Weaknesses

    W1 – design of the website is not professional

    W2 – website content remain static for several years

    W3 – navigation of the website is not comprehensive

    The SWOT Factor – Opportunities

    O1 – online research on Total Quality Management has high demand

    O2 – availability of TQM case studies and report are limited on website

    O3 – online website builder software are commonly available

    The SWOT Factor – Threats

    T1 – website with fresh contents and blogs have moved up to top Google page

    T2 – visitor to this TQM website is very low (from awstat)

    From the four SWOT factors, I continue to evaluate the seriousness and impact of each factors as a way to prioritize as I continue to use the SWOT template to formulate strategies. Once the strategies are formulated, then only I can take action. I encourage you to take this sample as a case study for your own Internet business or website and Application SWOT Analysis

    SWOT Analysis is No Magic 8 Ball

    Q: A key investor in my business has suggested that I hire a consultant to do a SWOT Analysis to help plan for the future. I try not to argue with my investors, but I’m not so sure I need to have this done. What do you think?

    — Laurie B.

    A: Laurie, before you call in the SWOT team to deal with this investor (sorry, couldn’t resist that one), let me tell you exactly what a SWOT Analysis is and how it can not only help you plan for the future, but get a gauge of how your business is doing today.

    SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT Analysis is a written exercise that can help you clarify and focus on the specifics that make up the four areas that most affect your business. The purpose of a SWOT Analysis is to help you build on your business’ strengths, minimize and correct the weaknesses, and take the greatest possible advantage of potential opportunities while formulating a plan to deal with potential threats.

    Think of a SWOT Analysis as a checkup for your business. By spending a little time examining the internal and external factors that affect your business’ health you can better gauge the present state of your business and identify things that may adversely affect your business’ health in the future.

    It’s a good idea for every business to perform a SWOT Analysis on occasion, especially if you are doing strategic planning, contemplating a change in direction or formulating new strategies for distribution, marketing and sales.

    Should you hire a consultant to perform a SWOT Analysis for you? Speaking as a consultant who has been paid to perform SWOT Analyses for companies in the past, I can honestly (and yes, without bias) say that depends on three factors: (1) the size of your company; (2) how in-depth the SWOT Analysis needs to be; and (3) how much of your investor’s money you’d like to spend.

    Larger corporations are most likely to hire professional firms to perform such analyses, primarily due to the complex nature of big business. Some corporate SWOT Analyses can run on for several hundred pages. Typically, a consultant will charge up to $100 or more per hour to perform a detailed corporate SWOT Analysis and most large companies consider this money well spent as a good SWOT Analysis can reveal otherwise ignored factors that might increase the company’s bottom line or help avert future losses.

    For a smaller business, however, a professional SWOT Analysis can be an exercise in overkill. For your money you will get an impressive, detailed report that will make for great show at your next investor or board meeting and a wonderfully expensive door stop the rest of the time. I don’t mean to belittle the value of a professional SWOT Analysis for small businesses. It’s just that smaller companies can learn as much from their own efforts as that of an expensive consultant.

    You can perform a simple SWOT Analysis with a #2 pencil and a fast food napkin, but to get a truly accurate view of your company’s SWOT factor I suggest you do things a bit more formally (and without the aid of condiments). I recommend that you involve all the key players in your business, including management, employees, your attorney, accountant, even your spouse. My wife often gives me insights into my business just from listening to me talk at dinner. Sometimes we business owners and managers can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s good to have someone else point out things we might miss.

    Here’s how to perform a simple SWOT Analysis. On a piece of paper draw a vertical line down the center. Now draw a horizontal line through the center of the page. The paper is now divided into four quadrants. In the first quadrant (upper left) write the word “Strengths.” In the quadrant next to that write “Weaknesses.” Drop down to the second tier and label the first quadrant (lower left) “Opportunities” and the remaining quadrant “Threats.”

    Now just fill in each quadrant accordingly. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors that affect your business. Opportunities and threats are the external factors. Let’s look at a quick overview of each.

    Strengths are those things that make your business stronger. Strengths might include: a product or service that sells well; an established customer base; a good reputation in the marketplace; a good track history; a high traffic location; strong management; qualified employees; ownership of patents and trademarks; and any other aspect that adds value to your business and makes it stand out from the competition. Strengths should always be gauged by the strengths of your competitors. If your business does something well just to keep up with the competition, it is not a strength. It is a necessity.

    Weakness are the antitheses of strengths. Weaknesses are those areas in which your company does not perform well or could stand improvement. These are the areas of your business that make you susceptible to negative market forces and aggressive competitors. Weaknesses might include: poor management; employee problems; lack of marketing and sales expertise; lack of capital; bad location; poor products or services; damaged reputation; etc.

    Opportunities are those things that have the potential to make your business stronger, more enduring, and more profitable. Opportunities might include: new markets becoming available or old markets that are expanding; possible mergers, acquisitions, or strategic alliances; a competitor going out of business or leaving the marketplace, making their customers open to you; and the potential availability of a desired employee.

    Threats are those things that have the potential to adversely affect your business. Threats might include: changing marketplace conditions; rising company debt; cash flow problems; a strong competitor entering your market; competitors with lower prices; possible laws or taxes that may negatively impact your profits; and strategic partners going out of business.

    Once you have filled in all four quadrants, you can use this information to create strategies that will help you make the best of the information learned. For example, once you have identified your strengths you can better use them to determine which opportunities to pursue and to help reduce your vulnerability to potential threats.

    Now that you know your weaknesses you can formulate strategies to overcome them so you can pursue opportunities. Knowing your weaknesses can also help you establish a defensive plan to prevent your weaknesses from making your business particularly susceptible to external threats.

    Whether you use a consultant or create a SWOT Analysis on your own it is important to remember that a SWOT Analysis is a subjective analysis tool that can be strongly influenced by the opinions of those performing the analysis. For small businesses especially it is imperative to keep the analysis simple and to the point. Don’t overanalyze and don’t immediately take the results as gospel.

    Remember, it’s an analysis tool, not a magic 8 ball.

    Here’s to your success!

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