While it’s easy to think that strategy is only the job of the CEO or business owner, the simple truth is – everybody in an organisation can and should be thinking strategically all the time. 

Here are a few ways to sharpen your strategic thinking skills:

🔍 Be conscious of bias: we all have biases and we can take charge by examining and questioning them. 

🔍 Become a better listener: this helps you to gain new perspectives and new ways of thinking. Be open to feedback, keep an open mind and weigh everything you hear. 

🔍 Question everything: it is critical to ask questions about all that you see or are told. Collect and weigh facts, check for rationality, credibility and proof to support ideas. 

🔍 Consider the consequences: every decision has consequences. Weigh the pros and cons and the potential impact of an idea before making the decision on whether or not it should be implemented. 

Practising these steps over and over again will help you to make informed and better decisions and in the long run, thinking strategically will come naturally to you. 

The post 4 Effective Ways to Improve Your Strategic Thinking Skills appeared first on Arcane Insights.

In this post, we share 10 things we think every SME owner should know:

1️⃣ Find your best niche and stay focused on it – don’t try to be all things to all people.

2️⃣ Understand risks and rewards – be open to new ideas and different approaches.

3️⃣ Schedule meetings with yourself – to think through your plans and measure the progress towards your goals.

4️⃣ Learn about successes (and failures) of others – some mistakes can be avoided this way.

5️⃣ Build your credibility through actions, not words – be true to who you are and don’t follow the crowd.

6️⃣ Plan and manage your cash-flow carefully – separate your personal and business finances.

7️⃣ Hustle hard – but find a balance.

8️⃣ It’s never too early to invest in quality human capital and their training – this shapes your business from the start.

9️⃣ Use data analytics tools – they simplify everything and help you make sound decisions.

🔟 Find out what your customers need. Don’t assume, ask – constantly improve your processes to keep customers loyal.

Need business advice? Click here to book a no-obligation Discovery Call.

The post 10 Things To Know If You Run A Small Business appeared first on Arcane Insights.

• Market intelligence:
  Being familiar with your market is very critical. It helps to make sound business decisions and it can help you understand your position in the market, evaluate your product, know your target audience, and conduct a competitor analysis.

• Establish your Brand:
  Building a brand identity is all about differentiation: making your brand visible, relevant, and unique. Consistent, strategic branding leads to a strong brand equity and recognition.

• Build a Digital Presence:
  Having an online presence is important – 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business and according to Adaptive Marketing, 97% of consumers use the internet to find a business. Your digital presence helps potential clients find your brand before they are aware you exist and helps them learn about your reputation before deciding to purchase your product or service.

• Build Partnerships:
  Business relationships are an essential part of fostering the right partnerships to help your company grow. The right business partnerships can drive serious value in various ways – from introducing your company to new audiences, to helping you navigate challenging situations and maximize your impact. Encourage partnerships to bring out the best in your business.

• Sell Value not Price:
  This is true especially when your business is a service. A strong focus on delivering value and customer experience will result in brand loyalty. Start by asking the right questions from your potential client, so you can understand the problem and determine, if in fact, you can help them. This is what we uncover on our initial “Discovery Call”. It’s just a conversation.

Click here to schedule a Discovery Call today!

The post Overcoming SME Challenges appeared first on Arcane Insights.

Here’s 5 ways Big Data can Improve Your Small Business:

1. Creating a Customized Customer User Experience (UX)
2. Helps with Predictive Marketing
3. Supports Branding and Product Innovation
4. Enables a Robust Decision Making Process
5. Allows for an Insights-Driven Business

If you would like to talk through these steps, we’d be happy to help. Book a 🆓 discovery call today.

The post Improving A Small Business Using Big Data appeared first on Arcane Insights.

If this is you, this post will tell you 5 things you’ll need to get started.

Here goes:

1. Time is of essence: Running a business is a commitment which requires enormous time and attention. A wise friend of ours invented the 90/90 rule: “focus on a new business by spending 90% of your time for 90 days solely on it”.

2. Research is beneficial: Before you start your business, it’s important to carry out market research to understand the market, establish that there’s a gap you will be filling and know what you’re getting into.

3. Money helps: This doesn’t apply to every business as there are businesses you can start with very little money. However, for most businesses, you need to start with some seed capital to equip you with the tools you need for the business. The level of capital required to begin will depend on the nature of your business.

4. Patience is more than a virtue: Success doesn’t happen overnight and just like the caterpillar eventually blossoms into a butterfly – you have to trust the process and patiently put in the work that is required to grow your business to success.

5. Business plan is a roadmap: Writing a business plan will enable you to set goals for your business and will guide through each stage of starting and managing your business. It’s a roadmap for how you structure, run and grow your business, which helps you think through the various components of your business.

If you would like to talk through these steps, we’d be happy to help. Book a 🆓 discovery call today.

The post 5 Things You Need To Start A Small Business appeared first on Arcane Insights.

However, in discouraging times, such as when a pandemic hits and economies start to deflate around the world, it can be tough to remain positive and find ways of growing your small business.

How to translate your winning mindset into small business growth

Inarguably, small businesses are probably the hardest to take a hit, post-pandemic. As a small business, you now need to be very careful about how you plan your cash flow, or what kind of remuneration your employees receive, for example.

While a volatile economy can destroy many opportunities for growth, it can potentially create just as many. There are actually a number of ways small businesses can better prepare for the future, prime themselves for growth, and come out stronger during economic turmoil.

Know how to keep customers happy

Existing, loyal customers are far more to likely to give you sales opportunities during a pandemic than new ones. This places extra responsibility on your shoulders to keep them happy – which means communicating any changes in business in a prompt manner. This may include managerial decisions to keep customers informed, changing hours of operation, flexible service or value offerings which are available for a limited time, and so on.

Communication is key, and it’s even more important at a time like this, because you want to your existing customers to remain loyal – helping you stay on the path to growth.

Give your customer base a boost

It’s time to hustle and get creative! During an economic downturn, you really need to be doing everything possible to offer your customers something that your competitors aren’t. In fact, opportunities are abound to even pull customers from your competitors.

Many small businesses tend to halt cash flow towards marketing altogether in challenging times, which can be a mistake. It’s quite likely that your competitors have cut down on their ad and marketing costs – and this actually presents you with an ‘open season’ to gain a market share by continuing to advertise and market. But naturally, it’s going to be within reason.

Just a few fantastic and cost-effective ways to market can range from implementing PPC campaigns to optimising content for search engines and revisiting your website to deliver a superior user experience. It’s really a time to look inwards !!!!

Grab that pencil sharpener

A time such as the pandemic we’re currently going through is a good opportunity to sharpen the pencil, so to speak, and reflect on your key business strategies.

Start focusing on the things that you couldn’t seem to find the time to do so when things were ‘normal’. Gather, understand and process key data to make important strategic decisions.

For instance, you can use certain kinds of software to check online reviews about your business, update listings across more than 50 sites and monitor online reputation.

Try out these insightful tips and set coordinates for “business growth”.

The post Translating your Winning Mindset to your Small Business Growth appeared first on Arcane Insights.

Functionality wise, a quick reminder on how the hats work:

o Blue hat is managerial. Organises, defines the outlines of the situation or idea, analyses and returns to summarise at the end.
o White hat is objective, neutral and only looks at facts and data. Highlights knowledge gaps.
o Yellow hat looks on the bright part and highlights the benefits and value.
o Red hat relies on emotions – listens to intuition/gut feel.
o Black hat looks on the opposite part of the yellow hat by highlighting drawbacks, and is critical and cautious.
o Green hat is the creativity generator – allows for outside the box / fresh thinking, improvements and reiterations.

A few tips:

1. Use the colour of the hat and not its function: e.g, it’s time to put on our yellow hats or it’s time for white hat thinking.
2. Set a time for each hat and in a group setting – ensure everyone is wearing (figuratively) the same hat at the same time.
3. Ask 3-4 questions (more if you have the time) per hat to ensure that everyone is focused.
4. Always begin and end sessions with the blue hat.

The post Time to Put On Your Thinking Hats 2 appeared first on Arcane Insights.

The process for making decisions of this nature has to be rigorous and deliberate as ultimately, we will have to live with the outcomes.

One useful tool that I rely on, to improve quality of my decisions and to broaden the thinking behind them is “De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats”. Using the concept of parallel thinking, this technique allows you analyse the issue at hand from six different angles, as illustrated in the diagram below. It’s easy to learn and adopt, fosters fresh thinking and is excellent for team brainstorming sessions. You may want to give it a try at this time when we are all dealing with so much uncertainty and complexity.

We’ll explore De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats in part 2 of this post next week.

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Although the nature of the economy has changed, strategic partnerships remain a useful option for small businesses looking to drive growth. Here is some information about the types of strategic partnerships that are available and how your business can use these types of relationships going forward.

A strategic partnership is a mutually beneficial relationship between two businesses which aren’t in direct competition with each other. These partnerships usually involve businesses sharing one or more of the following:

• Customers

• Industry knowledge

• Resources

• Marketing resources

• Events

• Data

The primary goals of strategic partnerships are usually to improve your customer offering, offset costs, or expand your customer reach.

By combining resources, both businesses become stronger and more resilient. Strategic partnerships often provide new growth opportunities, something which is particularly useful in this difficult business climate.

There are several types of strategic partnerships, but the most useful options for small businesses are:

1. Strategic Referral Partnerships

A referral partnership involves each of the business partners referring customers to the other. It is a very common form of partnership amongst small businesses.

A real world example of a referral partnership would be a car tyre sales business partnering with a local car repair shop. When the car repair shop notices that a customer requires new tyres, they are directed to the tyre shop and vice versa. The two businesses share customers, which provides opportunities for growth.

2. Strategic Marketing Partnerships

A strategic marketing partnership involves working with a partner to co-brand products or services in combined marketing campaigns. Food companies and technology companies often use this type of relationship to reduce marketing costs, increase customer engagement, and boost sales.

3. Strategic Supply Chain Partnerships

This is a coalition of two or more businesses in the same supply chain. The businesses in the partnership work together to create more value than they would if operating independently.

Some of the activities businesses can perform together include manufacturing, marketing, sales, distribution, product development and research. This is a more sophisticated form of partnership, but it can be very advantageous for small businesses involved in manufacturing.

4. Strategic Technology Partnerships

This is a partnership that a small business makes with an external technology provider. In return for exclusively working with the technology company, the business receives cheaper rates and access to new technologies to improve workflow. Small businesses can save money and improve their operations by entering into technology partnerships.

5. Strategic Financial Partnerships

A strategic financial partnership is similar to a technology one, with a focus on financial activities instead of technology. Your business can form alliances with accounting agencies, banks, lenders, and finance professionals to achieve better outcomes.

One recent example of this type of relationship is the partnership between Nigerian-founded Fintech, Flutterwave and Uber. Flutterwave is providing access to their Pan-African network of remittance partners, so Uber can deploy its cash digital wallet feature for their customers. Both companies benefit from this relationship.

6. Strategic Integration Partnerships

This type of partnership involves combining the different technologies, products, or services from a variety of businesses. The partners remain independent, but share the benefits and risks involved in their joint venture.

A large-scale example of this approach would be the Nike and Apple creating products (shoes and phones) which could integrate with one another.

Small businesses can use a similar approach whenever there are complementary products or services in the same market. For example, a fruit shop could form a partnership with a local chocolate factory to produce a line of chocolate coated fruits.

Businesses can also share infrastructure or occupy the same space in order to reduce overheads and operating costs. In many cases, this approach can help both businesses generate more sales. Since they share customers they can attract more customers to their shared space as it will be more convenient for their customers to shop in a single location.

Are Strategic Partnerships Still Useful in The Emerging World?

The shakeup of the global economy has presented many challenges for small businesses. Businesses that are able to quickly adapt to these challenges have the greatest chance of success.

Strategic partnerships give small businesses an opportunity to diversify their operations, become more agile, and improve their financial stability. Small businesses can use partnerships to improve their products or services and interact with consumers in new ways, which may be critical to survival in the coming years.

Partnerships provide an excellent opportunity to improve the financial position of small businesses and make sustained growth possible. Here are a few useful tips for using strategic partnerships:

A. Understand your market

Perform extensive market research before entering into a strategic partnership. This will help you understand what strategic fits are available, where opportunities may lie, and what new offers your customers may be interested in.

B. Look for competitive advantages

Strategic partnerships that give you a competitive advantage over other small businesses are particularly valuable. Look for relationships that can reduce your marketing costs. Alternately, look for partnerships which will provide a significant technological or financial boost or access to markets

C. Be creative

Some of the best strategic partnerships are not obvious. Take Uber and Spotify for example. One company is a ride-sharing service while the other is a music streaming service. Not the most complementary partnership at first glance.

However, both companies realised that customers wanted to listen to their favourite songs while travelling. Spotify added the ability to automatically play a user’s playlist when entering an Uber vehicle. This improved the value of both services for their customers.

As you can see, there are many benefits to strategic partnerships. Despite the current economic turmoil, it is still a good time to look for these kinds of business relationships.

First published in ThisDay Newspaper on Sunday, June 14 2020 https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2020/06/14/strategic-partnerships-as-growth-tool-for-small-businesses/

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A few tips (well, 10+1) for successfully facilitating an engaging virtual workshop:

1. Goes without saying that preparation is essential. No matter how many times you’ve been a facilitator, you won’t regret putting in the prep work.

2. Ensure the agenda and session guidelines are circulated ahead with clearly defined responsibilities.

3. Encourage video participation for optimal engagement.

4. Use the whiteboard feature for brainstorming.

5. Although we didn’t need to, the breakout rooms feature on zoom is also useful for smaller group discussions.

6. Keep an eye on the clock. It’s very easy to get carried away as we are all in comfortable / familiar surroundings.

7. Be conscious of energy levels and take body breaks when needed.

8. Use the recording feature to send to participants after.

9. Be fully present – no distractions.

10. Clarify action plans and next steps.

11. Reward yourself with a nice glass of wine (or whatever you enjoy) after.

Hope you find this useful.

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