Overview of Features
The Business
Center, a subsite of Growth Online, provides original content in the area of business management
and success. The articles were written by the Growth Online and
affiliates' staff. Here is a brief overview of the feature articles and services
offered at The Business Center. (Note: Like all of Growth Online,
content and services provided at The Business Center are free to the world community.)
A
company's success is ultimately determined by what it truly wants.
That is normally expressed through a strategic plan. The Business
Center provides an article that describes the parts of, and how to develop a
strategic plan.
(Please click underlined items to go that Business Center article.)
Moreover, when a company develops its strategic plan, it is essentially
following a fundamental process of business growth and accomplishment.
That
process
is explained in one of the more
compelling articles at The Business Center.
To
develop a strategic plan to undertake the process of growth in a
company, the
firm needs to know what it is that it actually
wants, including what it is that it really believes in. These are expressed in
the plan as
(1) objective goals (e.g. "increase sales 25% in the fiscal year"),
and as (2) subjective goals, which
are essentially business values. The Business Center provides
an article on the power of
business values to dramatically increase profitability and
success. (One great business value that a firm can subscribe to is its
willingness to do anything for the satisfaction of its customers. We
call this "Customer Delight."
Another, perhaps even greater value, is a company's deep and abiding
concern for the well-being of its people. These are two of the
greater business values amongst dozens that Growth Online has
identified.)
Once the company knows its values, it can develop and implement them
through the
strategic plan. Still the plan needs the details of how to
accomplish its goals, whether objective or subjective (i.e. values).
The strategies are the specific to accomplish the goals of the plan.
The Business Center provides a number of
business strategies to implement in your plan. The strategies
are divided into five areas -- market, products and services,
organization, people, and finance, which reflect the five
fundamental engines that make up a company. (It is also very
important to understanding the nature of these
five
growth engines in determining the success of your company.)
Though developing a plan, implementing values and strategies are
essential for the future direction and rapid growth and profitability of the company,
perhaps the fastest way for a company to improve itself is by truly knowing itself.
It can do so by determining its strengths and weaknesses, and then developing a plan
of action to improve itself in those areas where it is now lacking.
To that end the Business Center offers a comprehensive
business evaluation
system.
Included are survey statements
for each of a retail,
manufacturing, wholesale, and service-type businesses.
(Once the
company determines its strengths and weaknesses from the survey
results, it
can consider which elements (goals, values, strategies) it wants to
implement in its future plans.)
Though the five growth engines of a company provide one perspective of a
company, there are many other ways we can understand the nature of any
business. E.g. a company
can be understood in terms of its organization, such as its structure, systems,
and activities; it
can be understood relative to the
industry it belongs to; it can even be understood relative to the
role it plays in society Growth Online provides dozens of mini
thoughts on the fundamental nature of
the company at our
Business Theory
section of the our knowledge base. These are perhaps our most
penetrating insights into the nature of a business, including its
power to infinitely succeed.
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Center
