BUSINESS EXPANSION ADVISORY NOTE

Assignment Taken

ORGANISATIONAL TAGLINE-

                                                                                  NUTRIENTS HUB

                                                                            -"HEALTH IN EVERY BITE"            

INSPIRATION BEHIND THE TAGLINE-

We all know dairy foods are an important source of nutrients for growing children and teens. Milk and other dairy foods are however, great sources of protein, calcium and vitamins for people in all walks of life, including adults, seniors and athletes. Dairy products are loaded with essential vitamins and minerals, including carbohydrates, protein, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, vitamins A, D, B12, riboflavin and niacin.

 

1- MILK-

Just one 8-ounce serving of milk has 8 grams of protein, which builds and repairs muscle tissue (an equal serving of almond beverage has only 1 gram of protein). One serving of milk also meets the daily values (DV) for the following nutrients (based on Food and Drug Administration guidelines):

• Calcium (25 percent): Helps build and maintain strong bones and teeth
• Riboflavin (35 percent): Supports body growth, red blood cell production and metabolism
• Phosphorus (20 percent): Strengthens bones
• Vitamin D (15 percent): Helps promote the absorption of calcium
• Pantothenic Acid (20 percent): Helps convert food into energy
• Potassium (8 percent): Regulates fluid balance and helps maintain normal blood pressure
• Vitamin A (15 percent): Promotes good vision and healthy skin
• Niacin (10 percent): Promotes proper circulation

 

2- CURD/YOGURT-Yogurt comes from milk and therefore, it is loaded with several essential nutrients like calcium, vitamin B-2, vitamin B-12, potassium, and magnesium. An advantage with yogurt is that it is light on the stomach and easier to digest than milk. Curd is full of calcium, vitamin D, protein and healthy gut bacteria. There is no doubt that curd is full of nutrition and will benefit you if us include it in our daily diet. we can team a bowl of yogurt with fresh fruits or seeds like flaxseeds and sunflower seeds to add an extra dose of fiber along with all the other nutrients that it provides.

3- COTTAGE CHEESE/PANEER-

Cottage cheese is made from the curds of various levels of pasteurized cow's milk, including non-fat, reduced fat, or regular milk. The nutritional profile of cottage cheese varies depending on the level of milk fat used and amount of sodium added.

One cup (226 grams) of low fat (1% milk fat) cottage cheese provides the following:

• Calories: 163
• Protein: 28 grams
• Carbs: 6.2 grams
• Fat: 2.3 grams
• Phosphorus: 24% of the Reference Daily Intake (RDI)
• Sodium: 30% of the RDI
• Selenium: 37% of the RDI
• Vitamin B12: 59% of the RDI
• Riboflavin: 29% of the RDI
• Calcium: 11% of the RDI
• Folate: 7% of the RDI

It also has decent amounts of vitamin B6, choline, zinc, and copper.

Case Understanding

Our DND (Daily Needs Delivery) LLP, NUTRIENTS HUB is an app- based ordering system for dairy products and has presence in 3 major cities as of now. They are Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. We deal in three dairy products namely milk, curd and cottage cheese(paneer). In third year of operation, our entity started struggling with numerous problems in different aspects of business. They include- • Customers complaints regarding missing deliveries, wrong products, foul smell and bad taste. • Late reporting of the delivery partners to the duty in morning resulting in business and product loss. • Losses due to perishable nature of products. Moreover, as per the reports of the sales department, services sold to the subscribers of non-dense areas, especially the following have not been started yet- In Delhi- Deoli, Delhi Cantonment,Nangloijan,Hastal and Dallopura . In Bangalore- Gollarapalya, Lakshmisagara, Papanahalli, Challamakute and Jarakbandekaval. In Hyderabad- Alizapur, Hathiguda and Pashambanda. These series of events have made the customer dissatisfied with our services and have even brought them to the verge of uninstalling the app and claim refund for wallet recharge. We are hesitant to start services in the afore mentioned areas due to the uncertainty of cost recovery.

BCS Solution Summary

A series of steps have to be taken to - 1- Improve existing consumer’s buying experience online and offline through- • Upgradation of application infrastructure for reviews and filing complaints. • Ensuring quality, timely and correct delivery of products. • Introduction of Return policy mechanism. • Improving delivery partners’ performance and productivity • Rewarding customer’s loyalty towards the business. • Encouragement of delivery partners by rewarding good performance. 2- Expansion of business operations to non-dense areas • Establishing additional warehouse facility. • New hiring of employees and delivery partners • Training and development of workforce. • Utilising digital marketing tool for establishing brand awareness. • Attracting new customers. MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLE – Develop many small, maverick ideas, not a few large ones.

Solution

Management Principle- Shift resources from product innovation to customer and business innovation.

1- IMPROVING CONSUMER’S BUYING EXPERIENCE ONLINE-

 

1.1- Introducing a Mechanism for filing complaints on the app

 Providing the facility for filing complaints on the app itself will eliminate the customer’s struggle of looking up for contact details of the business to file complaints or not filing one due to the hassle.

1.2- Introducing A mechanism for giving feedbacks/reviews on the app

This facility will not only let the customers know that they are heard and valued by the business but will also help us to know what we are doing wrong, what needs to be done, what the customer want, about the performance of the delivery partners , our product and thus improve our services.

1.3- Rewarding customer’s loyalty

 Providing coupons, discounts, exciting offers from time to time to our loyal customers will encourage our customers to stay engaged with us for long time by anticipating new and exciting offers and discourage any thoughts of uninstalling the app. An example of such offer could be buy any of our product for 6 consecutive days and get seventh day’s supply free.

2- IMPROVING CONSUMER’S BUYING EXPERIENCE OFFLINE-

2.1- Ensuring Timely, Quality, Correct and Complete delivery

A mechanism has to be introduced in the app which indicates completion of delivery when the customer gets his account’s bar code scanned by the delivery partner’s bar code scanner. This will indicate that the customer has received the delivery, checked them and are satisfied with it.

2.2- An Effective Return Policy

The customer should be able to easily apply for a return or change of product in case of bad, incomplete, wrong or foul-smelling product delivery. An effective return mechanism should be built in the app that allows the customer to apply for the return of dissatisfactory product withing 4 hours of delivery, state his reasons behind the same and track his complaint status through the app only.

MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLE – Make operational excellence in the existing customer base, your cornerstone.

2.3- Improving performance of employees-

A number of efforts need to be taken to improve the performance of the delivery partners and increase their efficiency. This can be achieved by-

MOTIVATION- lack of motivation in the delivery partners has brought down their efficiency and productivity. Their slackness is evident in their late reporting at work, frequent absenteeism and wrong or missing deliveries of product. We can use effective measures to boost their morale and motivate them to work to their best abilities. Such measures include-

• Training and Development of the delivery partners to improve their skills, knowledge and productivity.
• Provision of proper counselling to figure out reasons behind their slackness and low productivity at work and help them overcome it.
• Introducing rewards, prizes monetary or non-monetary incentives to reward delivery partners with good performance. A few of such examples are- conferring the BEST DELIVERY PARTNER OF THE MONTH title to the best performing delivery person of the month.
• An effective incentive plan to motivate employees to perform to their best abilities by introducing monetary incentives such as bonus to the employees earning a certain number of good feedbacks from the customers or surpassing a certain number of deliveries in a day. Ex- A bonus of rupees 65 over the base per day wage to a delivery partner who gets a feedback of 3 stars, 70 to the one who gets 4 stars and 75 to one getting 5 stars.

 

MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLE- Target growth as a discipline to be pursued at all levels throughout the company.

3- BUSINESS OPERATIONS EXPANSION

In the past, we have been hesitant of targeting the aforementioned non- dense areas of the three metropolitan cities – Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad due to the uncertainty of our cost recovery, but if we do not target our potential customers in those areas, we will end up losing them to our competitors. Thus, there is a dire need of expanding our business operations to meet their demands if we want to-

• Tap the available opportunities in the market by addressing the demands of those non dense areas
• Not lose out on our market share to our traditional competitors or the new entrants.
• Ensure optimum utilization of our resources.

In order to ensure our complete recovery of cost and also earn profits, we need to bring together a robust-

• Marketing plan to raise brand awareness in the non-dense areas and attract maximum households to become our customers
• Human resource management plan to hire and train more workforce to provide services in those areas.
• Financial budget and plan to raise funds for expansion of our business operations in those additional areas and to plan our expenditure in different areas.
• IT and app infrastructure upgradation to attract new customers and retain the existing ones by improving their online buying experience.

                                 For achieving our goals of business expansion through reaching more and more households we need to incorporate a series of steps in our action plan such as-

3.1- A WAREHOUSE FACILITY – one physical warehouse facility for every 5 non dense areas is necessary to ensure timely delivery of products, minimisation of wastage of time, fuel and other resources in transportation. It is also crucial to ensure better management of inventory stock, monitoring of operations and thus improve productivity.

3.2- NEW HIRING- we need to hire more delivery partners and employees as we look forward to extend our business services substantially. In order to ensure that our old target locations don’t suffer adversely due to our expansion of operations, we need to make sure that there are no abruptions in the functioning of our existing workforce.

3.3-TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW WORKFORCE- it is crucial to train and develop our new workforce in their jobs if we do not want to face the repercussions we did with our existing workforce. Also, as they will we serving in the areas with low competition and not much online shopping scope, it becomes more important to provide our best of our services and turn maximum households into our customer and a loyal one.

MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLE- Use selective acquisitions and alliances to catalyse growth.

 3.4- OFFERS AND DISCOUNTS FOR NEW CUSTOMERS- announcing exciting offers and discounts for people who download our apps and create new accounts on our apps, exciting offers for customers who make a certain number or more than certain number of purchases in a week can improve our app engagement substantially. One such example could be GET 50% OFF ON YOUR FIRST FIVE DELIVERIES OF ANY OF OUR PRODUCT.

3.5- EXTABLISHING BRAND AWARENESS- In order to aware more and more households about our DND business and establish a strong brand awareness, we need a robust marketing plan with mechanisms for-

3.5.1- ENCOURAGING REFERRALS- encouraging the existing customers to refer the app to their friends and family will help us establish our brand awareness substantially within a shorter span of time among a larger population. Offers such as REFER THE APP TO YOUR 10 WATSAPP GROUP AND AVAIL 50% OFF ON ANY OF OUR RODUCT can go a long way in spreading a word about our business.

3.5.2- DIGITAL MARKETING-in this digital era, where everybody is surfing internet for most parts of their days and we ourselves are an internet-based business, there could be no better tool for us to create brand awareness of our business and market our app to people than Digital Marketing.

• Using display digital marketing to advertise our app on other similar popular sites, blogs and even apps can make a big difference.
• We can also use one of the most powerful tools of this modern era, social media, to our advantage. Social media marketing is capable of spreading awareness about almost anything out there, in a matter of hours to a massive population.
• Featuring positive testimonials in the display/social media marketing campaigns can immensely help in building a positive image of the image. A positive brand image is essential as there are a considerable number of potential customers looking up the internet for services like ours but just waiting to get that green signal from people who have experienced it.

 

 

Conclusion

If we want to have a strong foothold in the market and keep increasing our market share there is no way we can afford to lose out on the significant business expansion opportunities available in addressing the demand of the non-dense areas of the 3 metropolitan cities. Addressing these area’s demand will indeed increase our costs- both fixed and variable , raise the requirement of other resources and would require a far intense and efficient plan and performance by us in the future as it will increase our operations easily by 30-50 percent of what we have now, but if we make optimum utilization of the loan acquired by us for the expansion, have a robust action plan for raising and fulfilling demands in those areas, we can certainly multiply our revenue up to 3 times in the future while simultaneously getting ahead in the competition. As much as it is important to make new customers, it is also crucial to retain the ones we have now as they are not only the kingpin of our market but also the brand ambassadors of our services in the market.

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