Mastering the five pillars of business management
Oct 05, 2011
HUMAN life is a natural process that goes on in phases; one must be born, crawl, walk, learn to talk, grow and die.A business, meanwhile, grows in cycles.
By Joel Ogwang
HUMAN life is a natural process that goes on in phases; one must be born, crawl, walk, learn to talk, grow and die.
A business, meanwhile, grows in cycles. It involves conceiving an idea, resource mobilisation, start, growth and death.
In short, a business is an invisible person, with the customer at its centre. Poor or rich, an enterprise needs to attract their attention and, above all, their money.
This explains why, irrespective of who you are, a vendor in St. Balikuddembe market (former Owino) will, in addition to ‘sweet-talking’ and interesting you to buy, pull you by the hand. Call it aggressive marketing!
Prudently running a business requires efficient marketing, operation backed by proper human resource management, financing, value addition, as well as leadership and governance,
All this hinges on attitude and, unfortunately, most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) lack this, says Charles Ocici, the executive director of Enterprise Uganda.
“The attitudes of our local SMEs are counter-productive,” he says. “This explains why they have failed to build and maintain a regular customer base.”
Ocici says most Ugandans have not mastered the five pillars of business, namely;
Enterprise creation: This involves generating an idea and embarking on adequate resource mobilisation to start a venture, call it equity or working capital.
Survival: This is about keeping the business afloat. It’s the ability of a business to override the roughs and tumbles like recessions or slumps caused by bad weather or events that come along the way.
Marketing: This requires awareness creation via information dissemination. It involves determining products or services to interest customers and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development.
Growth: This means a leap from one stage to the other. A business ought to generate significant positive cash flows or earnings, which increase at faster rates.
Branding. A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of these intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers. Master these pillars and your business will be a success.
Successfully managing a business is like embarking on a journey; one ought to know where, why, how and when to depart and reach your destination. Time is a crucial function.
Many people have the concept and capital (however little) to kick-start a venture. Taking it on from there or plainly growing it is a challenge.
Most local enterprises have not mastered the art of repetitive business and customer retention, says Ocici.
“If a barber is good at his job, a customer will look for him even when they change location. Retention of customers is critical, but few mind it. Our local SMEs do not,” he says.