About a quarter of the world’s population use the Internet. That’s approximately 1.7 billion people. How many will come to your site the moment it launches? Zero.
It will take some time before the search engines are able to index your site and allow the possibility of driving some visitor traffic there. But even when your site does get indexed, that’s no assurance people will even have the chance of finding it.
So unless you apply SEO, your chances of improving those traffic numbers from zilch would nearly be zilch too. Traffic is a fundamental prerequisite in eCommerce. Before any store, virtual or otherwise, can ever hope to make a sale, the first step is to get noticed by the potential customer.
Our SEO specialists can drive your pages to the top of search results so that potential customers can see results leading to your site first.
Depending on the product or service you’re offering, getting to be ranked high on the search engines can be extremely labour-intensive. Basically, it’s the kind of job you’d rather not keep in-house but its the kind of job our team would be happy to take charge on.
Different products and services have different SEO requirements. We won’t recommend an SEO package if we think it will only translate to unnecessary spending.
These are the essentials of our SEO packages:
Targeted keywords and keyphrases. We’ll conduct extensive research on your product line and your product competitors to get hold of the best targeted keywords and keyphrases. If your competitors missed any important keyphrases, we’ll find those as well.
Strategically planted backlinks. We’ll concentrate our backlinking efforts on relevant backlinks to achieve top search engine rankings. As an added bonus, relevant backlinks drive in traffic that really matter as this is made up of visitors with the highest potential of turning into buyers.
On-site SEO. Certain issues arising from the mere makeup of most eCommerce websites are making on-site SEO tweaking more challenging. In fact, not all SEO consultants cater to these specific problems. Our specialists, on the other hand, pay special attention to issues regarding pagination resulting in keyword cannibalisation, product pages, landing page optimisation and the like.
Selection of SEO packages. While you’re still starting out, you may want to try our basic packages first. Then once you see traffic pouring in and revenues begin to build up, you can up the ante by upgrading to our premium packages.
For many Organisations, making use of paper based forms, is a common practice and method for collecting data and recording transactions. Whether it be for producing Quotations, Invoices or even getting sign off on completed jobs.
Paper based forms and documents have been the main stay of office communication and productivity for over 200 years. Paper-based forms are used to create anything from Invoices, Receipts, Purchase Orders, Contracts to the humble internal memo!
Paper-based forms radically improved productivity, efficiency and compliance by enabling people to create paper based instructions and enabling others to add additional information as required.
Over the past 3 decades or so, modern business environments have gradually been evolving towards the concept of the Paperless Office, resulting in the humble Paper based document migrating to a Digital Counterpart. The ease of availability of various Word Processing and Spreadsheet software products and cheap and easy data storage capacity have resulted in the Proliferation of thousands if not millions of files and documents being stored somewhere on the Company’s IT infrastructure.
People often create Digital Templates of forms that may be printed off and supplied to staff to complete using Pen and Paper or electronically. The data collation and reporting is often process
Often when conducting Operational Reviews, it is commonly found that the processing and analysing paper based forms is the least productive, efficient and profitable areas of business, although it is often vitally important.
Benefits of using digital forms for data collection
The ability to collect and analyse data effectively is increasingly important to businesses. Companies gather, examine, process and build reports on large volumes of data. Traditionally, they have deployed mail surveys, telephone interviews, door-to-door interviews as methods to collect information. With the ongoing digitisation, these procedures have become old fashioned.The digital transformation is changing many business operations at a high speed and a great deal of processes that were executed manually are now accomplished using digital methods.
Technology has had a major impact on how to approach data research and has provided researchers new tools that have transformed and improved data collection and analysis. The pace of change requires companies to be able to react quickly and adapt themselves to changing demands from customers and market conditions.
A mobile workforce management software is key to managing an efficient field workforce.? Managing a staff of people can be tricky in any industry. Try keeping track of employees on shifting jobsites, many whom are paid hourly or temporary workers. The added pressure of ensuring the right workers get to the right sites at the right times, but they also need to track hours, parts used, vehicles and equipment assets.
In a previous post, we defined what is an operational review and why they play a key process in the continual evolution of successful businesses.?
Operational reviews allow the organization members to evaluate their performance, according to the procedures, resources properly, timescales and budgets.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at how to implement an operational review and the steps typically undertaken to help you and your organisation to implement an operational review.
What the steps in a Operational Review Process
There are typically six steps in an operational review that range from preparatory work conducting interviews and collecting documents to the presentation of the final written report.
An audit should be customized to meet a organisatons specific needs, so standard steps can and should only serve as a guideline.? Management and internal and external auditors should adjust the process to address the company’s particular goals and objectives.
Initial Management Meeting
Understanding the problem is the first crucial step of an operational review. This is one of major areas of discussions when the audit team meets with the management, and department heads will be asked to identify any specific areas of concern. Once the problem is identified, it would be easier to come up with workable solutions.
Conduct Interviews
The next step in the evaluation is carried out with experienced teams doing interviews and keeping close observation. Each team essentially watches how employees carry out their responsibilities. This is considered a key part of the process.
When doing the interview, it is also vital that the observing team gains the employees? trust and confidence. Likewise, the staff must be assured that whatever transpires between the team and the employee will be kept confidential. Management must therefore guarantee anonymity to anyone who offers critical information, lest employees withhold vital information and render the data gathered inaccurate.
Systems Review
Employees and management practices will be reviewed by the assessing team according to the standard policies and guidelines of the company. The effectiveness of the controls in place as well as their appropriateness to the current operating conditions will also be evaluated.
Reporting
A documentation of the data gathered and the assessment of the evaluating team, will be submitted to the management after the review process. Flow charts and written narratives of departmental activities are usually part of this report. This is also where observations and recommendations of the team will be presented to the department heads concerned.
Review Results
While the operational review is being conducted, it is important to take into account the vital factors that affect the company: the people, processes, procedures, and strategies. These four factors can determine the company?s progress in the future.
Key Areas of focus in operation reviews
At a minimum an operational review should include the following key ares of assessment
Management Control
Responsibilities, authority, and the scope in which an employee has the freedom to act must be clearly defined and documented. A complete and specific job description for instance, would give the employee a clear perspective on how he acts and functions within the company.
Boundaries should be set not only to benefit the employer but more so the employee as well.
Moral and Ethical Guidelines
Moral and ethical guidelines are just as important to ensure for a smoother employer?employee relationship. Otherwise, personal issues such as work ethics, work attitude and personal values may post problems in the long run if such guidelines are not drawn properly before relationships are established.
Processes and procedures
Evaluating processes is only beneficial if the company itself updates its processes and procedural manuals regularly, or at least when needed. Such protocols may need revision and some steps may be obsolete already. Improving a company?s processes and procedures doesn’t always entail cost. In fact, improvised procedures may even be cost-effective and could make the processes more manageable.
Communication and reporting standards
Gaps in communication could result in serious lapses in internal controls, putting the company and/or its assets at risk. This is where the importance of timely and clear communication comes in. Likewise, reports must be useful, and the flow of information and how it is processed must keep pace with the company?s growth.
Information technology (IT) and security controls can also be included under the communication clause. Proper IT security policies must be in place, state-of-the-art protection techniques employed, and everything be documented, periodically updated, and continually monitored.
Strategic planning and tactics
No company can ever be complete without its strategies. It would unwise for any organization to proceed without first knowing where it stands and what direction it wants to take. Strategic planning draws such a map. It must be aligned to the mission and vision of the company, and should also coincide with the organizational goals set. Strategic planning deals with these three key questions:
What do we do now
Whom do we do it for?
How can we overcome competition
Without clear strategic direction, expectations would likely differ between ownership and management.
Contingency planning, testing and recovery
Contingency plans must be up-to-date, and are essential to the organization. If one course of action fails, the company should have plan B, C and so on. In addition, an organization should be prepared to respond to interference’s.
This includes establishing a formal process to review transactions processing during both disruption and recovery.
Presentation of Report
Based on your objectives and our findings, we will develop detailed recommendations to improve your company?s performance and productivity. Our written report will include a list of both short-term and long-term projected improvements and courses of action, to be mutually agreed upon by both parties.
To ensure the achievement of the improvements we outlined, our team will also assist in the implementation of these modifications.
The plan has three levels of recommendations: one for executives, another for management, and a third one for staff.
The executive summary concentrates on your company?s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to its entirety. It includes recommendations for any needed changes in policy or governance.
The management plan is based on employee feedback and includes areas of immediate improvement as well as identification of potential problem areas. Concerns from the bottom level management can now be forwarded to the top level management in formal writing. Better working relationships may evolve from this, thereby setting the work environment for a higher productivity ratio.
Lastly, the staff report deals with topics like charting the hierarchy of the organization, and discussing in detail specific control objectives that are critical to the company?s mission. Part of our goal is to encourage personnel to pay close attentions to such changes, if any, as these efforts are essential if they want to bring about both organizational and personal success.
If you would like to further discuss how our operational review services can benefit your company, please feel free to contact us at your convenience to schedule an initial consultation. We?ll be more than happy to assist you.
Six Sigma is an industrial business strategy directed at improving the quality of process outputs by eliminating errors and system variables. The end objective is to achieve a state where 99.99966% of events are likely to be defect free. This would yield a statistical rating of Sigma 6 hence the name.
The process itself is thankfully more user-friendly. It presents a model for evaluating and improving customer relationships based on data provided by an automated customer relations management (CRM) system. However in the nature of human interaction we doubt the 99.99966% is practically achievable.
Six Sigma Fundamentals
The basic tenets of the business doctrine and the features that set off are generally accepted to be the following:
Continuous improvement is essential for success
Business processes can be measured and improved
Top down commitment is fundamental to sustained improvement
Claims of progress must be quantifiable and yield financial benefits
Management must lead with enthusiasm and passion
Verifiable data is a non-negotiable (no guessing)
Steps Towards the Goal
The five basic steps in Six Sigma are define the system, measure key aspects, analyse the relevant data, improve the method, and control the process to sustain improvements. There are a number of variations to this DMAIC model, however it serves the purpose of this article. To create a bridge across to customer relationships management let us assume our CRM data has thrown out a report that average service times in our fast food chicken outlets are as follows.
<2 Minutes
3 to 8 Minutes
9 to 10 Minutes
>10 Minutes
45%
30%
20%
5%
Table: Servicing Tickets in Chippy?s Chicken Caf?s
Using DMAIC to unravel the reasons behind this might proceed as follows
Define the system in order to understand the process. How are customers prioritised up front, and does the back of store follow suit?
Break the system up into manageable process chunks. How long should each take on average? Where are bottlenecks most likely to occur?
Analyse the ticket servicing data by store, by time of day, by time of week and by season. Does the type of food ordered have a bearing?
Examine all these variables carefully. Should there for example be separate queues for fast and slower orders, are there some recipes needing rejigging
Set a goal of 90% of tickets serviced within 8 minutes. Monitor progress carefully. Relate this to individual store profitability. Provide recognition.
Conclusion
A symbiotic relation between CRM and a process improvement system can provide a powerful vehicle for evidencing customer care and providing feedback through measurable results. Denizon has contributed to many strategically important systems.?
