For many businesses today, there are many challenges that come along inhibiting success. It is, therefore, important to know the pitfalls that one can run into and the possible solutions. Some of these challenges are:• Lack of Integrity
• Resource management; borrowing cash
• Increased Competition and Selection
• Customer Loyalty and Marketing
• Uncertainty
• Regulations
• Risk management and problem-solving
• Finding competent staffThese are the main challenges that every business faces or will face. It will only be wise to have a prior understand what they are and hence find a proper way of solving them. No one starts a business to fail but at the same time, challenges are not meant for failing but to sharpen, strengthen and inspire growth. This article goes deeper into each of these setbacks and offers practical solutions for the same.Challenges and solutions1. Lack of IntegrityLack of integrity can put a business on its knees. With the standards of living going up the roof, workers trying to meet their quarterly goals and be successful at the same plus get that little overtime bonus, the temptation to cut corners is so great.Information is omitted or given in terms of doing what it takes to get ahead. There is head to head competition among employees, and soon the entire staff is infected. This behavior goes up the ladder whereby the managers and directors are also involved.For integrity to improve, there is a need for work policies to change. There should be no room for any minor or major misconduct. Staff should be trained on how they are expected to conduct themselves. Different kind of systems can be used to deal with problematic employees namely, counseling, warning, and termination. The greater the misconduct, the greater the action taken. Those who show high levels of integrity should be rewarded so that other employees can be won over to good virtues.2. Resource management; borrowing cashMoney is everything, and that is a statement that will be heard for a very long time to come. Many businesses are making a profit but what draws them back are heavy expenditures and borrowing. It is quite common to see many businesses, especially small ones, fail to manage cash flow.The main solution here is to ensure that there is enough capital or cash saved up to meet business obligations as they rise.Cash management becomes vital during the fluctuation period, as cash is flowing in more slowly into the business and moneylenders are less than willing to extend the loan repayment period. For the growing small business, tackling taxes and business the proprietor may handle accounting but dealing with the professionals is even better. Business books get more complexed with every client that walks in and employee you add. Having a professional bookkeeper will ensure your business succeeds where others are failing.Borrowing money from lending institutions only adds injury to the cash flow situation since these institutions have the power to dictate the lending terms and policies.3. Increased Competition and SelectionIt has never been an easy task to start a business, however, gone are the years when it took long procedures to start a business. Today you can purchase a host domain name online and register a business with just a few clicks. Nevertheless, staying in business is a much more convoluted subject. While business expertise was once a time consuming and expensive endeavor, nowadays you can find experts online who you can consult and get assistance from on any difficulties encountered. There are user-friendly interfaces and even support teams to help you set up an online store, get marketing materials and business cards, all at a very pocket-friendly price.The simplicity of starting a business creates a much wider level of competition. You are likely to find different businesses competing to come up with the best product while others concentrate more on their selling point instead product manufacturing. This contributes to increased selection, which makes it more challenging for businesses of all sizes to maintain customers who with a click of a mouse can change suppliers. It is a battle of marketing, focus and perception. Business owners who master these changes and provide a good customer experience will more likely be on the winning team.4. Customer Loyalty and MarketingAlong the same road of increased competition and selection to a potential customer, emails, social media, texting and other communication modes are making it easy for individuals and businesses to get their messages out to customers and hence sell more.The conservative fluctuation period is also causing a decrease in client base. Customers are forced to be conservative with their pockets and as a result, the normal business growth of new clients is not taking place as quickly as it should. Executives and business owners are forced to spend more time figuring how to go an extra mile in order to keep the existing clientele base. The same time, trying to figure out how to reach new customers in a cost-effective way without necessarily competing chiefly on price, this always leads to a race that ends at the bottom.Figuring out the best channel for marketing is the key for individuals to be successful in the current business world. How do you reach your clients with the right message and where can you find them? Once you get a new customer, how do you keep them and when do competitors of all sizes and types, trying to convince them that they can provide it cheaper or better, constantly barrage them? Identifying what your clients want and giving them a satisfactory experience will make a huge difference in your business’ future.5. UncertaintyEveryone including business leaders is usually uneasy with uncertainty. Because of economic struggles and global debts, uncertainty is more common today than in the past years. The sorrowful news is that uncertainty leads businesses and individuals to a short-term focus. Because of uncertainty, businesses tend to shy off from long-term planning for short-term benefits.While this might seem like a better choice, failure to plan five to twenty years ahead can end up destroying the value of the business in the end. Businesses must learn the art of balancing short term goals and long term goals. Usually, short term goals should be small steps leading towards the bigger goal. The ever changing market speculations by business analysts in the news usually leave a bitter taste in the mouth of business owners. The end result is executives and business owners raising prices, and thus, clients stop spending on the business. You need to get back to work with what you have and not media speculation.6. RegulationsA change in the regulations is always a major concern in certain marketplaces, but unexpected energy, financial and environmental policy is wrecking mayhem for nearly every business today. Whether a demand from stakeholders or clients to become environmental friendly or an imposed policy to increase costs due to the new carbon taxes, environmental consideration is among the biggest problems that businesses face. And we don’t have to give too much pressure to the issue of financial regulation and reform though we do have some suggestions about how to prepare to face that problem if you are a brokerage house or bank.The challenge to be solved is to comprehend the meaning of regulation in your marketplace, its effect on your business, and how to develop the skills which are required to deal with the challenge. Two main areas of regulatory problems and difficulties are health care and taxes. Lawmakers are still arguing over what is called the fiscal cliff, the combination of millions of dollars in budget cuts and tax increase. Even if the congressmen reach a conclusion, it is most likely that it won’t be understandable enough to the point of being required the following year.Health care has also been another problem for businesses. For instance, the new Affordable Health Care Act (ObamaCare) is so complicated that local and state governments won’t understand what to do, and businesses will have to sacrifice resources and time to understand the law hence hiring professionals to break it down for them to implement it effectively.Many businesses do not know whether they will have to continue with the national system, or the state system will be creating exchanges. Additionally, they do not know what that will mean for their costs. For some business enterprises, that information will aid them to conclude whether it is cheaper not to provide insurance and just pay the government fine of two thousand USD per employee or whether they will provide insurance to their employees and avoid the penalty. Companies that have nearly close to fifty workers may opt not to recruit more employees in order to remain outside the law’s radar.7. Risk management and problem-solvingA major problem faced by nearly all companies is assessing, identifying and mitigating risks, including the financial and human capital. The need for a more sophisticated challenge solving competency among current business controllers is limiting the possibilities of their ability to effectively deal with risks facing their businesses. This is the main reason business managers tend to land from the frying pan into the fire, depending on who among their executives they are trying to put away and in most cases the ever changing business environment is what starts these fires.So what is the challenge to be solved? We believe, to achieve more in the future, organizations must conclude that problem solving is the main path to business success then develop a strong problem-solving ability at all levels. As organizations continue to identify the challenges, they will have the right problem-solving techniques to know how to best maneuver them.8. Finding competent staffWithout exception, every business owner has faced the major business challenge, which is, finding the right staff, ensuring they buy into the business’ vision and retaining them. I firmly admit that I have no magic formulae for this challenge. In fact, if business executives can come up with the right formula to engage and recruit the right staff members, they would have made millions.A small organization is like a family and in most cases, they can dysfunction or work well. In large organizations, the main challenge in human resource is how to fit in the workplace and office politics, but when it comes to small organizations, it is skills and personality. When you work in a small firm, each individual’s personality can have a huge impact on the productivity and harmony of the business.The main goal is to learn how to deal with each staff member’s personality, find out what drives each staff member and shape your management accordingly. In spite of unemployment, many businesses try to find the ideal staff members with the precise skill for the business. Many upcoming manufacturing jobs require individuals with hi-tech skills. They include vacancies at the production sites where computers and machinery are used to build products like machines and airplane parts. Some skills require several years of perfection and training. Because of technological advancement, business executives are struggling to find the right high-skilled individuals to fill positions in their firm; that is individuals who have the right IT skills, deductive reasoning skills, and problem-solving skills.Final thoughtsWithout the right skills to identify and solve problems that arise in business, many businesses end up failing in fulfilling their core mission and vision. It is then the obligation of business owners and executives to make sure that all these challenges are looked into and come up with the right formula to solve them. Moreover, it is not only the obligation of the business executives but also all other members involved in the business to make sure that some, if not all the challenges, are dealt with in an appropriate and ethical manner.
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Beating The Market Is Harder Than You Think
The world is oversupplied with oil, U.S. interest rates are rising and international prospects look dim, with slowing growth in China and persistent troubles in Europe and Japan. How should investors react?When asset prices decline, people naturally want to take action to alleviate the pain. Yet sometimes no action is the best reaction. Trying to avoid the next market meltdown or identify the next hot market is a siren song for all investors, but even professional investors are collectively unsuccessful when they try to time buying into or selling out of particular investments. For the 15 years ending December 31, 2014, only 19 percent of stock mutual funds and 8 percent of bond mutual funds survived and outperformed their indexes, according to data from Dimensional Fund Advisors and the Center for Research in Security Prices at the University of Chicago.Knowing a bit more about how the markets work can help you understand why maintaining a consistent, diversified approach to investing is the right philosophy for achieving long-term success, regardless of the crisis du jour.Understanding Valuation PrinciplesThe basic theory behind investing is easy to understand: Buy low; sell high. However, determining what an investment is worth, and thus which investments are underpriced and which are overpriced, is not as easy as it seems.U.S. Treasury Regulations define “fair market value” for federal tax purposes as “the price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or sell and both having reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts.” Essentially, this describes what happens in the stock market every day. Two independent parties reach a mutually agreed-upon price at which to trade an investment.This definition also encapsulates one of the theories of valuation: An investment is worth only as much as someone else is willing to pay for it. If people are enamored with tulip bulbs, Beanie Babies, tech stocks, real estate or gold, they might pay ever-higher prices that seem to have little rationale. The buyers of a seemingly overpriced asset might just be hoping they find a greater fool who will buy it from them at an even more inflated price. The possibility that they are, in fact, that greater fool scares many investors.On the other hand, there is another theory of valuation that says each investment has an intrinsic value, which can be determined through due diligence. Most investors consider this intrinsic value when they try to price an investment based on the current value of its future cash flow. However, this second method is not as robust as it sounds, because it still relies on the investor’s assumptions. The future cash flow of most investments is not certain, regardless of how much research an investor performs. As a result of this uncertainty, any valuation can be justified based on a given prediction, though thoughtful analysis should still result in a more accurate assessment of intrinsic value.Market EfficiencyEach investor makes certain assumptions about the future and has reasons to buy or sell an investment. Every time a trade occurs, it is another affirmation that two parties agreed on an appropriate fair market value for the investment at that time. In this way, the market incorporates the collective wisdom of all investors’ different predictions of the future.The degree to which a market’s prices are accurate and its mispricings are unpredictable is known as a market’s efficiency. Efficiency varies by markets. Markets with more participants, a freer flow of information, better-informed participants and more trading tend to be more efficient than markets that lack these features.But markets are not perfect, and mispricings occur from time to time as a result of many investors either choosing to ignore intrinsic value or incorporating incorrect assumptions in their fundamental analysis. These mispricings tend to be random in efficient markets, and it is hard to know when your viewpoint is smarter than the collective wisdom of the market. You should only attempt to outperform an index if you believe that you, or someone you hire, can secure a sustainable advantage versus other market participants.Avoiding The Temptation To Time The MarketMany of us think we are smarter than the average investor, so we should be able to outperform the market. We read headlines about the hedge fund manager or other star investor who profited handsomely by accurately predicting the last unexpected event. The next time you hear about these predictions, remember this quotation from Malcolm Gladwell: “If you make a great number of predictions, the ones that were wrong will soon be forgotten, and the ones that turn out to be true will make you famous.”One investor may get several predictions wrong before getting one right and may be too early with his or her prediction. In hindsight, we will recognize such clairvoyance, but before the unexpected occurs, multiple experts would likely predict wholly different scenarios. The majority of professional investors underperform the market, and those who consistently outperform may do so by chance.While experts who have a contrarian viewpoint that is ahead of the market might outperform the market as a whole, individual investors will have a much more difficult time succeeding. If you expect a recession based on something you read in The Wall Street Journal or heard on CNN, it is likely pointless to trade on that information, because that possibility is already incorporated into the current market price of investments. Similarly, if you read a story about a company’s breakthrough product, it is also too late to buy that stock. Trading based on your own theories should only result in excess profits if your viewpoints are more accurate than the market’s view as a whole.If I expect gas prices to go up next week, I will fill my tank today, even if I have plenty of gas. If I expect prices to go down, I’ll roll into the gas station on fumes next week. Markets work the same way to incorporate people’s expectations of the future.If a region, sector or company is likely to produce higher output in the future, the stock market often takes notice of this and prices the expectation into the current valuation. The stocks go up, even though the good news or growth has not yet arrived. So if investors already anticipate substantial growth in a country, that market’s future returns might not exceed those of a slower-growing economy, since the faster growth was already accounted for in the original market price. An investment is most likely to outperform when its prospects or earnings exceed the market’s expectations.Under these circumstances, growing a portfolio is not as easy as identifying the market with the highest potential for growth in future output, and investing accordingly. One of the biggest mistakes investors make is trying to trade based on a very accurate prediction for which the market has already accounted.Investors can get a little more information about how expensive a company or market is by looking beyond recent stock market movements. Just because markets have declined does not mean their value cannot fall further. Nothing in the laws of math or the markets prevents an investment that has fallen 50 percent from declining another 90 percent. For this reason, you should not concentrate your portfolio in an area that has had recent trouble with the hope of it bouncing back.Experienced investors often look at certain valuation metrics to give them an idea of how expensive an investment is. The most widely known of these measures is a stock’s price-to-earnings ratio, but there are several others, including its price-to-book value, price to cash flow and dividend yield. These measures provide more information than just looking at a market’s recent moves, and they can be compared across time and across markets to determine a market’s relative valuation. However, again investors as a whole might be correct to seemingly over- or underprice a market, and it is hard to know when the market is wrong.You can find substantial support to prove that almost any valuation is right, and probably just as much to prove that it is wrong. Cheap markets can get cheaper, and frothy markets can get more expensive.Those who invest in the market do so with the aim of maximizing their profits. Unless you think you know something of which others in the market are unaware, think twice before changing your portfolio. Markets quickly incorporate new information into prices, and you are unlikely to be trading ahead of the crowd.
Brainstorming The Ideas for Influencing Your Mobile App Audience
Once the app is downloaded, you have little time to take a sigh of relief, and then again start focusing on making things easier for the them till their goal is achieved.
According to the AppsFlyer, an app marketing company, the global uninstall rate for apps after 30 days is 28%. Entertainment apps are most frequently deleted, whereas apps based on Finance is least frequently deleted. No matter which app category you belong to, your strategy should be to remain in the mobile phones of users for a long time, and not just sit around but to fulfill your purpose as well.
If we analyze the encounters of users with an app step by step, it can help us unveil the critical factors that influence mobile app audiences, so that we can work upon those and achieve our purpose. Here are the details:
Step1. Finding Your App in Appstore
For this, we have to first find out what exactly users type to search an app. Based on a research, it has been found that 47% app users on iOS confirmed that they found the app through the App Store’s search engine and 53% app users on Android confirmed the same.
What have been their search queries? Interestingly, as the per the data provided by the TUNE research, 86% of the top 100 keywords were brands.With little scope for non-branded categories, most of the keywords were either of games of utility apps. Common keywords in the non branded category are: games, free games, VPN, calculator, music, photo editor, and weather.
Leaving brands aside, if we analyze the user-type of a Non-branded category, we will get two types of users:
1. Users are informed, and they know what they are search
2. Users are exploring possibilities, have no precise information in mind.
If you are a mobile app development company, targeting non-branded users, then your efforts must be directed to creating apps that compel these two types of users. To do so, we have to analyze once they are on an app store, what keywords they use to search. Regina Leuwer, with expertise in marketing & communications, bring some light to the subject. She reached out Sebastian Knopp, creator of app store search intelligence tool appkeywords, who shared with her the data of unique trending search phrases. And according to that data, in 2017, there were around 2,455 unique search phrases trending in the US.
Now, if we study these data to get information, we will find that name of the app is critical to attract the attention of the users.
If your app belongs to non-branded category, then make sure your app name is similar to the common search queries but also unique in comparison with your competitors. So that when your app name is flashed, they click it on to it, finding it purposeful and compelling both.
Step 2. Installation
Remember your users are on mobile devices has limited resources, from battery to storage and RAM to Internet. Everything is limited. So better create an application that is easy to download or say get downloaded with 5 minutes. One critical advice here:
1. Keep the application file size small.
If you are a developer, use APK Analyser to find out which part of the application is consuming maximum space. You can also reduce classes.dex file and res folder that contains images, raw files, and XML.
Step 3. Onboarding
After the user has successfully downloaded your mobile application, don’t leave anything on assumptions. Guide them properly. This you can do through an onboarding process, where users can learn the key functionality and where to begin with the mobile app. Below are the 3 things you need to keep in your mind when creating an onboarding process for your users.
Short and Crisp: The entire guidance of features and functions should be completed within few seconds, with easy options loud and clear option to skip.
Precise Information: Don’t introduce them to the app. They already know what they have downloaded. The objective to inform about the key functions and features.
Allow Users to Skip: Let the tech-savvy users skip the intro. Your app is to meet their requirement and not to have a friendly session.
Step 4. Purpose and UI
Here, the stage is set for your app and it is the golden chance for you to impress your users. What is needed here is the collaboration between purpose and UI of the app. It totally depends on the problem-solving capability and ease of use of the mobile app. Interface design plays the critical role, allowing the users to access features of the apps easily and quickly to perform the task for what they have downloaded the app. When it comes to interface design, make sure that the design is interactive and task-oriented. Here are some factors that you must take care off while creating mobile app interface:
1. Usability: The Mobile phone is an epitome of convenience and if your users find it difficult to use your app, then there is no way there are going to make the space for it in their mobile phones. From screen size to the color of the app, there are many factors that are equally critical and need attention.
2. Intuitive: To create an intuitive User Interface, you have to read the mind of the users, and develop a model based on that. The next should be precise, clear and ‘obvious’ in an interface.
3. Availability: Key features should be hidden in the drop down menu or even if so, it should be obvious for the user to look into the drop-down. An intricate work of design and research is required to make essential features available for the customers and they don’t need to navigate here and there.
If you need more help with the user-interface and innovative ideas for a mobile app, write to me [email protected] and I promise to get back to you with interesting mobile app designs.