Are you among the very many, that wishes to be an entrepreneur? Or maybe you have a dream and want to venture out on your goal! The reasons for wanting to set up a business are endless. In this age and time where it has become very glaring that the pension plans set-up by various governments around the world is not going to hold water—owing to the constant increase in inflation and the volatile global economic platform.
Not ever before has the requirements for financial independence and stability has been on the rise like it is now. What this potentially instigates is the fact that people need to have one form of business or another. But how do we go about setting up a business and sustaining it?
There is nothing practically as complicated as owning a business because it not only entails handling and managing resources but also involves the management of people—which my friend is a challenging task.
You need wisdom, knowledge, patience, intelligence, and a well-learned skill to be able to navigate the world of entrepreneurship. You can decide to ply the route of self-learning, which involves a lot of pitfalls and deadly mistakes that if sustained, may or may not be easy for a comeback. That is why nothing beats getting a diploma in business.
Are you doubting Thomas? Or do you feel you can do without a diploma in business…..! Well then, let’s explore why getting a business education is a no brainer.
Strategy:
It is tough to maintain a competitive advantage over your competition because that’s what the evidence shows. The Kauffman Foundation did some analysis some years ago of the fortune 500. The Fortune magazine each year (starting from the ‘1950’s) produces a list of the 500 largest firms by revenue.
What Kauffman foundation did, was to find out how many of those companies stayed on the list as time transpired. They found out that between 1995 to 2010, half of those companies on the list were no longer there—in less than fifteen years the index had dropped by half.
So how do you sustain your business and keep it from going down? It involves strategy. A.G Lafley former C.E.O of Procter & Gamble along with Roger Martin wrote a book called “Playing to win,” in which they defined strategy as choices of where and how you are going to compete.
By implication, this means three things for a company—what the company should do, what they shouldn’t do, and how to create an advantage over the competition. Now, as simple as it sounds, it is a lot harder to formulate and execute.
Why is strategy so important?—borrowing wisdom from A.G Lafley—strategy is vital because resources are scarce and limited, so one has to come up with a plan that can use the limited resources to maximize production while maximizing profit.
Business strategy is what gives you a competitive edge over your competition, and it is what protects a company’s structure from both internal and external threats. If you have a successful business in which your customers and investors alike are happy—guess what?—people are going to imitate you and come after your venture.
We now live in a world where information is readily available. Anyone can go on the internet and find out what you are doing and try to imitate it. Not only that, there are consultants out there dishing out information to your competition—for the right pay on how to topple your business.
Mergers and Acquisitions:
Mergers and acquisitions are part of daily life in the business world, and In fact, it seems no day passes without news of a new deal. It is either a big firm–is–buying out a small firm with a range of fantastic new products to sell or two large firms are coming together.
The critical thing to note is that while some mergers or acquisitions work out well, others don’t. As a business owner, it vital that you armed with sufficient knowledge of how mergers & Acquisitions works, because if at some point you need to expand your business and the only way of doing that is by a merger or acquisition, it will be easy for you to make a well-informed choice that protects the interest of your company.
Making business rules:
Many organizations function with different rules. Some may be legal, and others may be rules invented by the organization. Regulations set by a company are usually the most important because they represent the vision of the ‘firm’s best thinkers. Many establishments design a unique set of business rules that guides their area of core competence to differentiate them from their competitors—it could be in areas such as customer relationship management or product marketing.
It’s a common phenomenon to find enterprises with hidden business rules that are not known or are not accessible because of inadequate business know-how. It is quite unearthing to think that the standards used to propagate a venture are hidden from those who use those systems and for those that want to make a change in the system.
And when this is the case, people or system developers make presumptions that may be incorrect and inconsistent, leading to human or electronic behavior that is not well planned, not effectively focused on a common goal and certainly not capable of changes and remodeling.
All in all
Planning-planning-planning!!! An excellent business diploma will help anyone looking to go into any form of enterprise to not only make a good plan but to also have the empowerment required in successfully executing it.
So what is the value of a business plan? Thousands of dollars? Maybe so. The merit of a game-plan is the choices it influences and ultimately how much money it puts in your account.
A good plan helps a business to allocate resources, focus on critical objectives, and prepare for problems and opportunities. In light of critical-objectives—a well laid out plan should have market share objectives, sales objectives, and profit objectives. Objectives/goals should be concrete, measurable, and specific (such as a percentage of gross margin, sales or profit targets, and growth rate.)
