Snehal Singh-373 Ebt.docx

E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY (Tutorial-2)

NAME: SNEHAL SINGH PRN: 16010324373 BATCH: 2016-21 DIV.: D SUBJECT: E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY

PROBLEM: A group of women from Self-Help Groups formed a small business to sell their designer sarees and dress materials. The business has been going fine offline. These women own smart phones but do not extensively use social media. Devise a detailed digital media plan to boost their sales online by carefully considering their challenges.

INTRODUCTION: What is Women SHG? A woman SHG is a grass-root level voluntary alliance wherein women belonging to same socio-economic strata of the society contribute a fixed amount for a particular time period until the group has enough capital to start its own lending process. These funds are then utilised for lending to other women to help and empower them through support, encouragement and financial assistance so as to allow them to achieve their personal and professional goals for a better future. Women SHG is therefore, a noble initiative in developing countries like India, especially for the upliftment and welfare of the women in the society. Methods of empowering Women SHGs  Make rural women aware of their basic rights.  Help rural women in getting employment.  Boost self-confidence and enhance social status.  Increase community participation of the rural women.  Spreads awareness about social issues. Importance of internet in business

One can understand the importance of the internet in business by the invention of Digital Marketing and different e-Commerce models like Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, etc.

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E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY (Tutorial-2) The Internet is providing great benefits for business communication. The internet is the easiest way for a business to connect with customer and clients. Internet is now the backbone of offline business to sell online. And the internet is a heart for online business. In order to prepare a digital strategy, it is important to know about the current situation or scenario of the business. Internet now in 21st century is a great means of communication and the definition of communication in today’s world is not restricted to the interaction between two persons, communication has changed its meaning with the changing world and reaching of information from one place to other is also now a kind of communication. Online platform is such a kind of communication which makes everyone aware of the buzz going around. Internet is in role of business successor, it helps business to grow, achieve goals and become successful in this competitive market. Marketing is important in business and in this case internet is the first and most important tool business owners are looking for. The biggest advantage of doing business on internet is that it helps you grow based on customer’s data and information. Since, the capital of Women SHGs has a limited budget and online advertising industry is very big, and our plan will be that after 4-5 years when the growth of website will be at peak we will start advertising other SHGs on our websites and thus collecting money and increasing the capital and turning it into a big-business.

CURRENT SITUATION: In the current situation, SHG is a very small scale business that is doing its business offline by selling their sarees and dress materials, these group of women own smart phones but are unaware of the power of social media and its marketing strategies. They are doing well offline, but are now willing to expand it, so below are the strategies and plans laid down to give their business a strength by creating an online platform. 1. Goals and targets to achieve through online platform are- The setting up of online platform for online women will help them to build a brand which will give them popularity firstly in their region and then slowly and gradually in their region then to state and over a period of time in all over the country. By building online platform the middlemen will be removed and thus the cost of material consumed will come down and ultimately cost of the product will get reduced which will directly affect the consumers, as in, it will increase their spending capacity and thus more customer will

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E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY (Tutorial-2) be attracted, which will lead to increase in sales, thus expanding the scope of business and gaining popularity. Online platform will help the SHGs to earn extra profit and directly reach direct customers sitting anywhere around the world. The indirect benefit of this to the group of women will be that once they will learn the use of technology, they themselves at later stage can make the best use of it by innovating it in a fancy way, which can be the Unique Selling Point (USP) of their business. 2. Strengths- The first step of every business enterprise would be to identify itself strengths and weakness that will help the business put them to use in the right way to enhance business sales. There is a huge diversified market that the business can see potential in and if the product matches the market conditions, the SHG can succeed. There is a huge demand for indian products in the foreign market in the form of exports and the advantage of this can be taken in order to generate revenue. Since SHG’a are supported by the government through various schemes, there is low investment and less capital requirement. As there is a diversified culture, the customers are always read to try varied products and hence there will be acceptance of traditionally produced goods by SHG’s. As a result of liberalisation schemes by the government, the barriers of entry are low and sources of employment are more now. The retail infrastructure is supportive and can be used to enhance sales in the market by promotion through online modes. 3. Weaknesses- Every business has its own set of strengths and weaknesses which need to be identified and worked upon. Some of the major weaknesses are the inadequate information about the current market trends and inadequate information of new technology. These are the basic aspects of the functionality of every enterprise and the SHGs need to continuously find ways to get access to them. Since there is very little capital raised, there is lack of infrastructure and communication facilities. Also, there is unawareness about the international market requirements and hence the target market is restricted to manufacturing a global produce. Since there a set of middlemen involved, SHGs are in an unfavourable situation as there is lack of coordination between government and private bodies. The women working in SHGs may not be well trained and hence there is lack of skilled labour. There is no platform available to promote their products and an online marketing plan will be the perfect mode to enhance the sales of business enterprise. 4. Challenges- Since offline market is a time consuming process, and there is a lot of competition in the regional market with scattered sellers selling their own home-made

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E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY (Tutorial-2) products without middle men, often getting low sales, because of not proper supply chain, i.e., MANUFACTURER-----WHOLESELLERS------RETAILERS----------CONSUMERS Sometimes, they on their own manufacture the products, collect all the raw materials and sell their final products at very small scale, often not fulfilling the demands of the market as sometimes the demand is more and the supply is less, and vie-versa. They lack skill because they don’t have technical education in the field and as our rivalry business country China, U.S.A., European countries have developed technologies and new machineries and develop their products at a cheaper rate and it is made more effectively and efficiently with less materials and less manpower. These countries has better government schemes to do trade and provide financial-aid as compare to countries like India. Our country lack in research and development so we are unable to develop new technologies and work accordingly.

THE PLAN: The plan for the very beginning will be to teach the group of women how to use technology and then teach them all the basics about the programming and coding, after that a very attractive websites will be build based on the products they sell. A professional photographer will be hired to take the pictures of the products they sell from all the sides and the details of the products will be given, where the product has been made all the details of the materials, ratio of the fabric in that particular cloth, where it has been made or manufactured. At later point of time research will be conducted on a large scale in the form of questionnaire, so that the products sold can be as according to the demands and choice of the customer. The main motive behind this will be to create awareness between people which will be the talking point for its customers. Goals will be achieved in two parts: (i) Short-Term goals and (ii) Long-Term goals. Short-Term goals in the initial years will be to create awareness and loyalty among the customers. Meanwhile, we will also be conducting training programmes for few weeks so that they get skilled and can increase their production Long-Term goals will be to achieve the target set by the Self-Help Groups, and also to adapt the new technologies and machinery and hire skilled labour and employees and increase the production to meet the end supplies. The objective behind the plan is to change the SHGs to make a brand so that its traditional products get government recognition and there is a hope that government also provides some financialaid. The main challenge behind is to create the website which should be very attractive, easy to use with simple user interface. 4

E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY (Tutorial-2)

PROMOTION: Promotion is an important aspect of every venture as customers are made aware of the availability of the product. Promotion can be done through advertisements in newspapers and magazines. This is because newspapers go to every doorstep in the country and there is no way that the brand can go unnoticed if execution is done in an attractive manner. The cost incurred will be worth the promotion as the brand will not only reach a limited population but anyone and everyone is made aware, even if every person might not want to buy the product as awareness is key to the establishment and reach of a product. Also, the online space has to be tackled which will be done through websites that are doing potentially well for themselves. The self-help group can tie up with brands like Westside and Lifestyle where the products can be promoted on the shelves of these stores as a part of their corporate social responsibility of helping small businesses grow. This way, the customer base will increase from a rural to urban base too.

MAINTENANCE: The website will be a 3 tier architecture maintained by the professionals of resource persons and technical experts. The developers will be expert in coding. It will be protected by firewall encryption which the most secured encryption so that the customer paying online can’t be the victim of cybercrime. All the marketing, PR & Media of the website will be handled by a professionals.

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E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY (Tutorial-2) CITATIONS: 1. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/digital-strategy-guide 2.

https://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/925-digital-marketing-mediaplan.html

3. http://www.klientsolutech.com/importance-of-internet-in-business/ 4. https://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/Andhra-Pradesh/2016-06-28/SelfHelp-Groupproducts-go-online/238124 PICTURES: Some of the designer sarees which will be displayed on website are as follows:

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E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY (Tutorial-2)

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