Consultancy for Small Businesses

 

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy, especially if you are in a developing country. Small businesses give employment opportunities and livelihood to a whole category of people who want to run their own businesses and to those who depend on them. In this research paper, we are proposing a huge change in how a small business model can be perceived, designed, and executed by a new small business owner, who wants to start one or a veteran of small business. By providing the necessary resources and knowledge on how to start and successfully run a small business through a consultancy model, this research paper will bring about a huge change in the economic status of small business owners, in turn positively impacting the country and giving employment opportunities for a whole new breed of tech-savvy young people.

Goals

Consultancy: The goal of this research paper is to give an overview of the proposed model of consultancies for small businesses. This model is derived by bringing together people who have knowledge and expertise in small businesses along with those who have a vested interest in doing business with small business owners and connecting them with new small business owners who want to start a new small business or want to upgrade their already running small businesses with best practices, standards and technological advancements in the industry. The success of this model lies in the mutual economic benefits for both the knowledge giver and the receiver.

Allied business opportunities: There are a whole lot of allied business opportunities that come along with the consultancy. These businesses emanate from the Small Business Consultancy software platform required to run the consultancy, which gives insights on products that sell, helping to gauge business trends and to target specific customers ( small business owners ), with the information of their locality and proper timing which gives favorable outcomes. Training institutions provide training for small business owners and their employees in areas like accounting software and inventory management, parting with the know-how about government schemes and initiatives. Business advisors, Dealership opportunities, freelance trainers, land leases for small businesses, government policy facilitation, tax advisory, employment opportunities for the educated, quality rating by industry bodies for exports, and many more allied business opportunities are available.

Trade secrets

Before getting into Consultancy, I would like to say that it is not a place where successful organizations reveal their trade secrets and people are benefited from it. No, no one is going to reveal their secrets. But instead, they will hunt for you, so that they get economic benefits from your business, which will ultimately motivate them to make your business successful. Like, a big cement or paint company wants a dealership in your locality. They will hunt for people in your locality, where they want to open their dealership and share their knowledge on stockpiling and selling cement or paint so that they gain a market which in turn, inevitably makes your small business profitable and successful. But having said that, there may be veterans and freelance trainers who may share the secrets that are required to run a successful small business. Because parting their knowledge with you will be more profitable for them instead of keeping it with themselves or waiting for YouTube to give the paltry sum they get for posting all that they know. They will professionally train you in person as long as it is profitable for them.

Small Business Consultancy

Small business consultancy is a place where small business owners get in contact with the people who are directly and indirectly involved in running a small business. So suppose you want to run a pharmacy in your small town, the first thing you need to do is contact the Small Business consultancy for a feasibility study of a pharmacy in your locality. The business advisors who are registered with the Small Business Consultancy, associated with the pharmaceutical industry body will tell you whether it is profitable to start a pharmacy in your locality or it is saturated. Before this, there is no way for you to know whether it is right to start a small business in your locality or not. Mostly, pharmacy graduates are the ones who start pharmacies. After getting the feasibility study, you can approach banks for a loan to start a pharmacy. Banks in the Small Business Consultancy will assess your commitment, and eligibility if necessary like holding a graduate degree in pharmacy, get inputs from industry bodies and business advisors, who will interview you and provide loans to you accordingly. Banks and FinTech will guide you in government loan schemes, if any associated with the small business. Then, you can consult the business advisors for procurement of medicines. Those business advisors will facilitate the association with doctors nearby and help in the procurement of medicines from pharmaceutical companies at a cost most advantageous to small business owners of the pharmacy. They will also help in recruiting pharmacy graduates in that locality, who are registered with the small business consultancy. Training institutions associated with Small Business Consultancy will train your employees in areas like Accountancy, inventory management, and consultancy software. Logistical firms associated with Small Business Consultancy will help to procure inventory at the right time and with the right amount and deliver it to your shop, whenever needed. The aforementioned consultancy services are provided for a fee unless it is covered by competitors who want to reach out to small businesses. Competitors in turn benefited by the economics of finding a market for its products among Small Businesses.

Competition

Competition among stakeholders is what drives the economics and sustainability of Small Business Consultancy. If there is no competition or if there is no loss in staying out of this consultancy, no one will seriously take this Consultancy. Small Business Consultancy will be a marketplace for stakeholders who depend on small businesses for their survival and the business opportunities it provides for them. Competition will be among companies who will depend on you. Like, suppose you want to open a dealership in your locality, all the companies looking to open a dealership will compete for you. Or suppose you want to open a garment store, all the companies who want to sell their clothes will compete for you. If you want to open a website for your small business, all the software companies who want your business will compete for you. They will teach you how to run your business by every means because that is what their business is and that is how they earn money. Even if you are an old metal recycler, competitors will connect you to the right firms that give you maximum profit.

Software platform

Small Business Consultancy Software Platform will be one of a kind revolutionary software platform that will change the way small businesses are run across the globe. It will bring together the whole ecosystem of people who are involved in small businesses. The software platform is run by an Industry body or a private firm with board members who are eminent personalities, with a for-profit lineage. It should be profit-making so that it survives using the best practices of modern businesses and is up to date in strategy and technology. It will log in users like new and existing small business owners, big organizations who want to do business with them, fintech, banks, employment facilitators in small towns and rural areas, training institutes and freelance trainers, and research organizations which gives insight to governments and others on the latest trends in small businesses for a fee, small producers who want to market their products in small business stores, logistics companies who will help transport goods between producers and small business owners, advertisers who want to promote their products to small businesses, regulators and government organizations like tax departments, land lessors, policymakers, quality control boards, food safety boards, exporters, importers, Technology partners who operate software and online presence, innovators, dreamers and a whole lot of stakeholders.

Stakeholders

We will get into the details of stakeholders who are involved in the Small business consultancy software platform.

New and Existing Small Businesses

Small Businesses that are planning to open business or existing businesses that need to upgrade their mode of operations can become members of the Software Platform and benefit from it. These businesses form the main block of the consultancy software platform. By facilitating the services provided to them, the whole software platform works. They should provide a small membership fee to become a member and avail its services. Let’s take an example of a photo lab. If someone wants to start a photo lab, first he has to contact Business Advisors who deal with photo labs. They will guide you through the feasibility study, and the budget necessary for making a photo lab small business. They will then facilitate employment in your firm with the help of skilled employees available in your locality through employment facilitators, who can be as big as an employment website like naukri.com dealing with lakhs of employment seekers, or just an ITI [ Industrial Training Institute of Indian government ]. If you want to employ your own people, Training Institutes will train them and certify them according to their skills and make them ready for your photo lab business. Then Business advisors will help you get loans from fintechs and banks. After that, they will connect you to large organizations like Konica and help you obtain instruments that are best suited for your business and your employees, at a competitive price. The price and service by Konica will be best because it involves small business customers like you, who will fill a big chunk of orders along with your peers in the same field, influenced by your feedback and validation.

Small businesses validate the services provided to them in software platforms. It can be the usual mode of writing reviews, which can be sophisticated further by uploading photocopies of vernacular language handwritten text on white paper. Small business owners put ratings and may also add a small length of voice recordings. Grievances can be communicated through this platform in forums, or they can contact the stakeholders through emails or simply through phone calls provided in the software platform.

Large Organizations

Large Organizations like Xerox, which is synonymous with photocopying in small businesses in India, can gain a large share of the market by exhibiting their products to a large pool of small business owners, who want to start photocopy centers. This can help such large organizations to sell high-quality products, with product reviews and after-sale maintenance services being rated. It will give exposure to a lot of their new technologically advanced photocopy machines and the reliable services their products provide. It will also help large organizations compete with each other and bring down the costs, at the same time giving a high-quality product to small business owners to start their venture.

Small Organizations

Small organizations usually compete with their ability to produce one-of-a-kind products that stand apart in the crowd. This consultancy software platform gives visibility to such unique and exclusive products produced by them. Small businesses can get access to any of such unique high-quality products produced anywhere in the country on a single software platform. Small organizations get market access to their products across the country with the lowest cost required to attract small businesses to sell their products. Homemade products, cottage industries products, art and artifacts, toys, and such products can be marketed to small businesses through this software platform.

Business Advisors

Business Advisors are those who are going to guide you through the process of building your own small business. They may be consultants who worked in a similar industry before, having gained knowledge in the field, and registered themselves as Business Advisors. They may also be from Business Advisory firms, who train their employees as Business Advisors who in turn work for Small Business Consultancy. They may also be representatives from large organizations, who provide Business Advisory services to Small Business Owners to promote their products. Whatever the case may be, Business Advisors will be rated based on the experiences customers get from them, in this case, customers being Small Business Owners. Business Advisory is a whole new kind of job, which requires patience, persuasion, connection, and sincerity towards customers, in this case, Small Business Owners. They may not be sophisticated enough to understand all the jargon you put forward. Simple gestures and reassuring words can go a long way.

Industry body

Industry body is the association of the same kind of industries. Like Furniture industry body. It represents all the people involved in making and selling furniture, from carpenters to shops selling furniture. Carpenters look forward to selling their products to small businesses that give them maximum margin. Small businesses look forward to finding carpenters who give good quality and return on investment by selling their products. There may also be industry-driven furniture sales, repairing, and installation. All these people constitute an Industry body. This Industry body should guide the new small business owners who come into the business and help them establish a successful business that is beneficial to all the people in that Industry body. It should represent the issues they face with the government and get resolved as soon as possible. Government schemes which promote modern technology in carpentry should be made best use by the members of industry bodies.

Technology Partners

Technology partners are those who provide technical and technological advice along with its implementation. For example, if you want to start an imitation jewelry shop, you need to have an online presence, where you display the kinds and varieties of artificial jewelry available in your shop. Technology partner builds a website for you and guides you in the technical details of billing and inventory management. They will also guide you in displaying jewelry inside the shop and marketing flyers required to jump-start the small business.

Fintechs and Banks

Fintechs and banks help small business owners in obtaining a loan for them with the help of Business Advisors and Industry bodies who recommend loans for budding business owners who are committed and fit to run a small business. Business Advisors will also monitor progress and provide help, if necessary, needed by the small businesses. The amount of data created in the Consultancy Software Platform is a huge opportunity for data scientists to gauge the growth and to do the technical analysis required to understand the small businesses in operation in the country. This huge data also helps fintechs to find the best people, businesses, locality, and products required to provide loans at a competitive price.

Employment Facilitators

Employment facilitators can be as sophisticated as India’s biggest job portal Nakuru.com or it can be the Government Industrial Training Institute and Employment Exchange. It can also be a Small Business Consultancy Software Platform itself. Employment facilitators connect the probable candidates to the small business owners in their locality, for them to choose. To make things easier for small business owners, there can be certificate courses and workshops conducted by large organizations and training institutes, which are tailor-made to the specific needs of employees of small businesses. Small business owners can verify the credibility of their employees with those certificate courses.

Training Institutes and Freelance Trainers

Training Institutes help small business owners and their employees gain knowledge in their areas of importance. For example, if you want to open a saloon, training institutes will train you on grooming, doing facials, bridal makeups, and all the necessary training you require to run a saloon. Freelance trainers are people who have mastery over a specific ability and part it with small businesses for a fee. For example, a cook who is excellent at preparing sweets especially rasagollas can bring you the expertise you need to run a successful sweet shop. They don’t mind transferring their trade secrets, as this is going to fetch them more money than running a shop by themselves.

Research Organizations

Research organizations help all the stakeholders in the Small Business Consultancy Software Platform to gain expertise and knowledge so that they can gain more from this Platform. Research organizations help Small Business owners to get an insight into the kind of business they can venture out and in turn maximize their profit. They help Business Advisors to learn more about the advisory they give and explore things that have the most impact on their customers. For example, business advisors can foresee the trend in the buying patterns of an average household, and advise the small businesses to go for such products. Research organizations help industry bodies to urge the government for initiatives like foreign country trade policy and to obtain favorable tariff structure along with signing Memorandum of Understanding with cross-country organizations to transfer technology. Research organizations help fintechs and banks to obtain information about customers who are more reliable and who provide good returns on the loans offered by them. Research organizations help Small Businesses to locate places for import and export of products.

Logistic firms

Logistic firms help in the delivery and sourcing of goods to locations, routing through paths and warehouses that are efficient, low-cost, and time-managed. Bringing together all the logistics firms under one umbrella can reduce the time and cost of logistics firms. B2B delivery can be made universal, as long as small businesses are concerned, helping them to market low-cost products that are infeasible for them to procure under normal circumstances. For example, A small business owner’s product sold in North India may not find sellers in South India, because of the logistical costs associated with it, making the product costlier, ultimately making it incompetent with South Indian products.

Advertising agencies targeting Small Businesses

Advertising agencies can target Small Businesses to promote their clients’ products. It should be done in an ethical and mutually beneficial manner so that it is a win-win for all the stakeholders. For example, a new consumer product release from Tatas can be advertised to its potential buyers ( small business owners ), who will put them for sale in their stores. As long as it makes a profit for both the Tatas and the small business owners, it is recommendable.

Regulators and Government agencies like Tax departments

Regulators can control the proper functioning of the platform, with its stakeholders disclosing the trade deals they make in the platform, with the government for the government to perform as a watchdog and give necessary impetus to the growth of the economy and its small businesses. Government agencies like the Tax department may provide online and easy filing of taxes, without many tangles, because of the data they have about small businesses. This will bring huge amounts of businesses under the tax net, that weren’t taxed earlier, ultimately bringing development to the nation and its business community as a whole.

Land lessors

Land leasing and renting available for small businesses can be brought under the ambit of a Software Platform, which will help small business owners easily locate land for their businesses.

Marketplace for B2B and it’s advisory

This is going to be a huge marketplace for business-to-business transactions. There will be a huge availability of brands, small and big, along with their business advisors guiding small business owners in procuring their products. Suppose you are a small departmental store owner in a small town. You will get information about a huge amount of products and innumerable brands that have good market acceptance in your area. They will provide all of the services like logistics and advertising their product in your store, in a cost-effective manner, beneficial to both you and the big businesses.

Exporters

Export of products that have a unique value can be done with the help of consultancy. This platform will reach customers across nations and promote products with a wide reach. Businesses across nations can buy products produced by small businesses like cottage industry products, art and artifacts, and similar products.

Quality Control Boards

Quality control boards will work along with small businesses making sure they don’t produce products that are detrimental to the consumers. Accreditation helps in the export of quality consumer products, thus promoting trade across nations and establishing a trade relation that promotes Brand India in the global economic bloc.

Food Safety Boards

Food safety standards and certifications are a must for products of Small Businesses. This ensures no harm is done to people who consume it, bringing more trust and market for products of small businesses.

Artificial Intelligence and Data Models

It will be a state-of-the-art technological platform, which will be run for profit, so that it expands to new areas of competence which will help small businesses to grow and benefit from its research on emerging technologies and advances like Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. The data collected in the software platform will help organizations pinpoint their areas of interest and the opportunities available there so that they nurture the small businesses operating in that field. AI models will predict future advancements and opportunities along with a feasibility study of economics involved in that area. Loan disbursement by fintech can be streamlined with data collected in this software platform, predicting accurate favorable conditions for a small business to thrive in a particular area.

Employment opportunities

This Small Business Consultancy Software Platform gives employment opportunities not just for small business owners but also creates opportunities for a whole ecosystem of knowledge workers. In small towns and rural areas, there are educated people with enough knowledge to run the day-to-day business requirements of small businesses and to operate the software platform. These educated youth will get a boost in their income, bringing prosperity to educated youth in those areas. There are also skilled workers like pharmacy graduates who benefit from the employment opportunities provided by this consultancy. Employment in allied businesses is a huge opportunity and brings detailed knowledge about the exact state of small businesses across the whole country. These allied businesses require well-educated smart people, who are well-versed in the latest technology and advancements. This will create opportunities for a new age of smart engineers. Creative thinkers, solutions providers, knowledge sharers, and freelance trainers who provide consultancy services in this software platform also gain employment opportunities.

Conclusion

Thus Small Business Software Consultancy will provide a huge opportunity for growth and development in the country, especially in small towns and rural areas. It will bring a facelift to the whole small businesses seen across the corner of your street.

In God, We Trust

Lord Krishna in Bhagavat Gita says He can make any change in the universe just by looking at it. With the small amount of intelligence we possess, we can change a little part of this world. But God has infinite intelligence. We don’t have the intelligence even to understand what is infinity. God can change anything in this universe with His intelligence. God has created this wonderful and beautiful universe with perfection with the help of His infinite intelligence. If you believe that some ad hoc natural occurrences have created a perfect universe, you will be a fool. Such theories are nonsense. Let us pray to God that He showers us with His love so that we can make progress in economic as well as spiritual fields. In God, We Trust. Thank you.

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