Factory Business

• Communication is King: Uncertainty can often breed fear; so if times are tough, keep the lines of communication open with clients, team members and those connected to your business. When in doubt, talk it out.
• Fire Bad Customers: This tip may seem edgy or counterproductive, but the reality is that customers who are not a good fit for your business will only drain your time, resources and mental energy. Take a hard look at overly needy, overly “frugal” or chronically slow responding customers and replace them with clients who will help your business grow.
• Be Innovative: Though “innovate” may seem like an overly-used buzz word, being innovative in your business is the key to continued success. Look for opportunities to expand into new markets or partner with complimenting businesses. “If you don’t like change, you will hate extinction”- Ross Shaffer
• Keep Your Chin Up: Attitude is critically important in maintaining and growing your business and brand. A positive attitude and outlook spreads throughout your team and will ultimately be transferred to your customers and clients. A bad attitude or bleak outlook will do exactly the same – but faster.
• Keep Tabs on Your Market: Know your market in-and-out, and

• The Venture: Brief description of the business, its location and scope;
• Description of the Business: What business is to be established? What products or services are to be offered? What is the target market and its size? What is the best way to offer the products to the market? What are the critical success factors for the business? What are the possibilities of growth of the market under study? What are the positive and negative points of the business?
• The Market: What is the big market and the best segment status to compete? What is the size of the segment and its growth possibilities? What is the geographical distribution of the market? What are the seasonal fluctuations for demands? What is the estimated value and the location of the business? Highlight the positive and negative points of this market.
• The Competition: What are the direct competitors to the business? What other substitute businesses or products will compete with the product? What is the size of competitors? What analysis can be drawn about the competitors? What is the company’s price strategy? What is the distribution strategy? What is the technical assistance strategy for the company’s products

The problem is that we no longer do business in a bubble. Therefore, your competitive advantage can be enjoyed only for a short period of time. Modern business strategy must be a continuous process evolving with new competitive advantages. One must build their business on the basis of moving from one competitive advantage to another as smoothly as possible. This is a continuous process and one that is critically important to long-term success.

In general, you can only depend on new innovations giving you an edge for a year or two. For example, lower cost of base elements and new configurations can last a short period of time, sometimes as little as one-quarter of a year. These are tangibles that will impact your current edge. There are intangibles that must be paid attention to as well including how you are perceived by your customer base. This includes issues like how satisfied your customers are, how strong your brand is nationally and in some cases, internationally, how strong your distribution channels are and whether they can be expanded. The best part of the intangibles is they are far more challenging for your competition to duplicate without a significant

The inspection by FDA investigators sounds scary if your own internal auditing processes are weak and faulty. But, to understand FDA procedures and how to successfully pass their audits, you need to first understand the role of FDA investigators. The job of the FDA is to make sure the health of the common people is protected. It’s also their responsibility to ensure that the products launched in the market are effective and safe for the people to use and that there are no probable side effects of any new drug developed.

So, it’s obvious that their focus is upon sanitation, purity, quality, and a particular identity of the drug being developed. It also reflects why GMP or good manufacturing process has acquired so much importance for the FDA. There must not be any violation of the Food and Drugs Act. Furthermore, they are also supposed to make sure that no counterfeit or diverted drug is sold in the market.
Start your own auditing

However, you need not be scared of an FDA audit as there are simple ways you can improve the quality of your processes. The first such step is to start your own auditing.

Start off by taking a good hard look at your organizational chart. Are there measurements in place at each level that are satisfactory in proving performance? If not, take a moment to establish what is important to the organization, customers, and you in each area. Create measurements that will be regularly reported to you so you can monitor performance areas. I suggest creating the measurements in collaboration with the individual responsible for reporting to ensure that the specifics of the calculations meet your goals. If possible, perform historical measurements to show a history of years, months, and/or weeks. Make sure you include a trendline and are able to note occurrences that lead to sudden increases or decreases in productivity.

Once measurements are in place, analyze the roles of individuals and ask yourself: is this position necessary in this format or can we make improvements to individual responsibilities for efficiency? If you are overstaffed, address this immediately. If you are understaffed, work to hire and train suitable staff and show a minimum of three to six months productivity up to your standards prior to moving forward with your growth plans.

This is also a great opportunity to identify individuals from your succession planning resources

To survive and thrive in today’s business environment, it is therefore essential for Solopreneur consultants and other business owners to make an annual assessment of their venture’s business model and evaluate how the organization can deliver the right services in the right way and demonstrate to clients that the value provided improves the bottom line and makes clients look smart to the higher-ups.

The business model is the blueprint for the process your organization follows to connect with clients, deliver services and make and sustain a profit. The business model reflects what you believe about what clients need and value; the way in which those needs ought to be addressed; the types of solutions offered; and what clients will pay to obtain those solutions. Additionally, the business model shows organization leaders how to make the enterprise function efficiently for both leaders and clients. Perfecting it is the cornerstone to success (along with a healthy dose of good fortune!).

One direct way to reality-check your business model is to take a good client to a restaurant for some combination of libation and/or meal at the conclusion of a project, when the client’s trust in you is high

Starting your business off by investigating the requirements of operation is one of the first things any business owner should do. Several businesses require licensing and certification. Check with business associations or trade associations for the type of business you are seeking to start to find out if any such requirements exist for your business. For example, if you are looking to open a restaurant, you need to you need to contact the “food and drug administration.” If you are opening a grocery store and intend to sell seafood, you must acquire a license from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and could incur a criminal charge if you are found operating without a license. If you are looking into entering the lending business, doing things such as “second chance” financing, or mortgage loans, make sure you check the federal and state requirements to understand the regulations regarding that business.

Failing to obtain the proper licenses for your business can doom you from the start. Many of these requirements come with stiff monetary penalties and sometimes criminal charges for failure to comply. Generally, these types of liabilities are not negotiable and ignorance of the law is no

Asking the right questions ensures the right solutions are applied to the right problems. For example, you are a wannabe farmer who was recently inherited a herd of cows. With no farm experience, you do not know where to begin so you go to a farmer’s conference. In the conference you focused all your efforts on increasing your knowledge of how to make your cows produce more milk. You did this because research showed that milk consumption was up and it was the most cost effective way to increase revenue. You go back to your farm to try all the processes you have learned. After one week of no result, you call one of the conference gurus to express your frustrations. The guru out of compassion comes over to your farm and discovers your cows are all males: Males do not produce milk!

This wannabe farmer failed to ask the most basic question of his business, “What am I working with?” As silly as this may sound, failing to ask the important questions causes entrepreneur to do silly things. As a consultant, I have had clients call me thinking they had one problem only to find out