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Hospital Industry | Consulting Services

Hospital Industry | Consulting Services

Healthcare and the Hospital Industry

The healthcare infrastructure and services of a state is comparable to the immune system of the human body. A strong immune system helps individuals recuperate quickly and get back to work. In the same sense, if a healthcare system is weak, it takes longer for individuals to resume work and return to their normal lives. In the larger picture, weak healthcare systems can significantly slow the overall progress of societies and nations. The pandemic of 2020 is a glaring example of this. Countries with frail healthcare systems took longer to get their economies back on track.

From governance to execution, building and maintaining a strong healthcare system has a long list of requirements. Some of these primary requirements are government strategies and policies (legislature), the role of the executive, medical colleges, R&D capabilities, availability of skilled medical professionals, production and supply of medicines, accessibility, financing and insurance, and places where medical care is provided i.e. hospitals and clinics.

Hospitals play an important role in healthcare systems because they are the largest delivery channel of medical care. So, whether it is the private or public sector, it is important to manage hospitals with the best standards and practices of planning and operations.

Challenges – from Management Standpoint

Manpower Challenges

Hospitals are heavily reliant on the quality of their workforce. Finding talent followed up by retention is the foremost challenge. For starters, people look for specialist doctors and specialists with good reputations are rare to find these days. The few such available doctors are always in high demand and they tend to charge very high. People often complain about the limited time given for consultation by such reputed specialists. This hurts the goodwill of hospitals.

The quality of service provided by nursing and other support teams also affects the patient experience. There could be many reasons why the services of nurses and support teams can be below par. The quality of education and training comes first. Secondly, staff shortage puts additional work pressure on the existing workforce. Thirdly, nursing and care can be a monotonous job and it is natural to lose the human touch from it.

Operational Challenges

Hospitals are massive and complex organisations. There is a large workforce to be managed and monitored. There must be no lapses in the availability of medical and support staff at any given time of the day. Leaves have to be carefully sanctioned. The resignation of doctors or any senior medical staff must be reciprocated promptly with replacements.

Hospitals are also reliant on an army of machines and equipment. Quality control of these assets is an essential and perpetual activity. If there is any breakdown or need for replacement or repair, there has to be a swift mechanism to get such assets back into action.

Like manpower and machines, inventory management also has a direct bearing on the quality of services delivered by hospitals. No medicine or medical supply must go out of stock at any given time. Stock monitoring must always be real-time accompanied by robust reordering systems.

Commercial Challenges

Experts from reputed hospital consulting companies often emphasise that one of the notable commercial challenges in hospital management is offering medical care at affordable rates in the backdrop of rising costs. The reasons for rising costs in the healthcare industry are attributed to increased demand for healthcare services and medicines and medical supplies, increases in supply-side costs, and general economic inflation. Although costs have risen for all, it is the ones with better overall management that win over markets and margins.

Marketing Challenges

In an era of scepticism towards hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, building trust and credibility is a major marketing challenge for hospitals and other healthcare organisations. Veteran hospital consultants (business and management) would agree that no matter what noble words are uttered in advertising campaigns and banners, winning even the entry-level trust and confidence of the public is now a major hurdle. Being in the field of healthcare and hospital consultancy (business) for more than 10 years, YRC maintains that the primary solution for the above problem is not advertising but being authentic about value propositions and maintaining a credible level of transparency in services and pricing.

IT Challenges

Experts from the field of hospital and healthcare consulting would also agree that one of the leading technology-related challenges in contemporary hospital management is cybersecurity concerns. Hospitals often collect, process, and store the personal data of patients including medical records, financial information (cards, insurance), identification credentials, etc. Such information repositories are gold to cybercriminals. Stolen information is often sold which then are used for nefarious purposes like forging identities, deceiving insurance companies with false claims, etc. Hospitals that are not equipped with the right cybersecurity systems are more vulnerable to such cyber attacks.

Interoperability is another big issue with hospitals. It happens when the IT solutions used in a hospital are not able to properly integrate its processes cutting across departments for information sharing and execution of processes.

Future Trends

Advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) will play a greater role in shaping the management of the core (medical) and support (non-medical) functions in hospitals. For example, software solutions powered by AI and ML would be able to provide insightful assistance in diagnostics, make informed analyses and predictions, and fully automate many back-end operations.

Telemedicine is not something new but with improved communication systems like satellite internet services and AR/VR, the demand for telemedicine or remote medical attention is likely to go up. Modern-day hospitals will be equipped with such facilities.

Developments in genetics science powered by advanced technologies like AI and powerful analytic tools are already staging the road for precision medicine. This will enable hospitals to personalise medical care depending on the unique genetics and health profile of individual patients.

Modern-day healthcare organisations are increasingly adopting a patient-centric approach. The emphasis is falling on reduced readmission rates and prioritising preventive medical care. The coming years may see hospitals coming up with more wellness programs, promoting work-life balance, and providing encouragement for healthy lifestyle habits.

As mentioned earlier in challenges, hospitals will have to come up with strong cybersecurity systems. To deal with this challenge, there is always the option of taking guidance from experienced hospital consulting firms.

In healthcare and hospital consultancy, YRC takes into account the implications of technology and its impact on business and management.

Why YRC –
Hospital Consultancy Services | Health Care Consultancy Services

YRC is a retail & eCommerce consulting brand with more than a decade’s presence in the business and a scaling international presence. The team has worked with 500+ clients in 25+ verticals with a success ratio of 95%. In hospital management consulting, YRC offers services and solutions for enterprise set-up, redesigning management, operations planning, and executing expansion projects.

Business Model Development

Business model development for hospitals is different from any regular run-of-the-mill prototypes. To begin with, hospitals are sensitive institutions because of the nature of their services. Then there are regulatory standards governing the services of healthcare institutions deviation from which could bring serious adverse repercussions also on the enterprise behind them. The next factor is specialised awareness and comprehension of public health. Here, we are talking about the average and prevailing health conditions of the public in a city or state in general. This is equivalent to consumer behaviour. Coming to public health, there are some common characteristics often relatable with demographic factors. For example, if you are in a city where elderly people represent a majority of the population, the quantum of medical care and attention tends to tilt more towards those related to geriatrics. The present state of the healthcare systems, including technology applications, is another big consideration. Healthcare systems and services are also affected by the awareness levels of the public in general. Before going on to the business aspects of business modelling, it is imperative to first understand the state of public health in a given geography, common tendencies to stay healthy, and prevailing healthcare standards and solutions. As experienced healthcare and hospital consultants (business and management), YRC keeps the above-cited factors under consideration in helping clients come up with robust and relevant value propositions and developing strong and sustainable business models.

Global Talent Acquisition & Onboarding Services

When it comes to healthcare, boundaries should never be a barrier in making a medical care provider meet a medical care seeker. YRC’s global talent hunt and onboarding services work with the same motto. We, at YRC, reckon that global talent recruitment is a tough task. For starters, there are differences in the acknowledgement of specialized degrees between countries. Then there are cultural differences leaving their imprints on teamwork and internal communications. Thirdly, perceptions of their careers can be quite different between people from different parts of the world. In the same way, education and training can also vary. Last but not least, different countries have different regulatory norms concerning employment from both directions. Salary discrepancies further add to the woes. All these factors affect how potential candidates are identified, approached, interviewed, evaluated, and hired.

As a globally emerging brand of hospital and healthcare consulting services, YRC’s talent acquisition team is aware of the detailing that comes with global hiring and onboarding. In hospital and healthcare consulting services concerning talent acquisition and onboarding, we formulate the hiring strategies, map the operational details, and carry out the acquisition drives with due adherence to the fundamental standards of recruitment and selection and the laws of the land.

Preparation for NABH & JCI Accreditation

Obtaining NABH and JCI accreditation has numerous benefits for all stakeholders involved in healthcare institutions. Obtaining accreditations requires healthcare institutions to establish and maintain stringent quality standards and protocols concerning medical care and associated services, maintenance of equipment, inventory storage and handling, process transparency, documentation, etc.

Oftentimes, keeping track of the extensive range of requirements comes out as challenging for new healthcare institutions. Moreover, meeting these requirements is not a one-time exercise; the established standards and protocols must be consistently followed.

As a part of its hospital and health care consultancy services, YRC offers expert assistance in NABH & JCI Accreditation Preparation where the process consultants of YRC develop the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) aligned with NABH & JCI guidelines towards ensuring that hospitals can execute the necessary procedures for obtaining the accreditation(s) in an organised and time-bound banner. We work closely with our clients in SOP design and delivery.

Layout Design & Equipment Planning

The quality of layout design and equipment planning has several important implications for hospitals. To begin with, it affects patient experience concerning medical care and attention, waiting times, the physical environment, and privacy to name a few. In operations, a well-conceived layout design and equipment planning helps in streamlining workflows, optimising space utilisation, ensuring smooth navigation of people, equipment, and inventory, incorporating the standards of workplace ergonomics, reducing the scope of errors and mistakes, etc. Accreditation bodies may also dictate many spatial requirement standards.

Hospitals are complex physical setups featuring extensiveness in terms of the number of departments, floors, assets and equipment, diagnoses and treatment centres, offices, waiting rooms, consulting rooms, bigger workforces, 24×7 shifts, emergency services, pharmacies, housekeeping, logistics, cabin categories, etc. It can be overwhelming for new or upcoming hospitals to smoothly execute their layout design & equipment planning exercise.

YRC provides layout design & equipment planning services for new hospital setups. Working closely with clients and based on the hospital’s services, operations, and specialisations, the team maps the equipment requirements. In hospital and health care consultancy services, YRC also maintains that equipment planning has many important implications for the layout design of hospitals. The quality of layout design and equipment planning plays a crucial role in helping hospitals obtain the desired accreditations.

SOPs / Process Consulting

Hospitals are massive and complex organisations. Without process orientation, a hospital may not be able to render its services properly while keeping its back-end operations intact. For instance, clarity in operational definitions helps in better comprehension of roles, responsibilities, and flow of work. This facilitates teamwork and reduces the scope of doubt and ambiguities in everyone’s sphere of work. When it comes to inventory management in hospitals, having well-defined processes helps ensure that medical supplies are always available. Or where coordination between medical and administrative functions is concerned, a robust process framework helps build the right operational integration.

SOPs are one of the most powerful tools that help organisations become process-oriented. SOP development and implementation assistance is a core component of YRC’s process consulting services. Planned and proven methodologies are followed in the design and delivery of hospital SOP solutions tailored to meet the unique operational requirements of clients. Two important SOP application examples in hospitals are

  • Admission procedure in hospitals (admission process hospital)
  • Discharge procedure in hospitals

Process Compliance Audits

Process compliance auditing is necessary to assess the extent of an organisation’s actual practices with its internal policies and external standards and regulations. Some of the specific reasons to carry out process compliance audits in hospitals are:

  • Ensuring that the conditions required for the safety of patients are always maintained
  • Meeting compliance requirements
  • Eliminating wastes and redundancies
  • Making processes more efficient and effective
  • Improving the experience of patients
  • Lime lighting the areas for training and education

Here, YRC helps hospitals and healthcare organisations build the roadmap of planning and executing process compliance audits covering:

  • Defining the scope of audits
  • Forming the audit teams
  • Identifying documents, manuals, etc. to be evaluated
  • Identifying the roles and positions to be observed and interviewed
  • Creating checklists, survey questions, determining the methods of observation
  • Procedure of document review and analysis, interview plan, observation schedule
  • Report preparation and presentation of findings, analysis, recommendations, CTAs

Training Content Development – Compliance & SOPs

Poor content can make an education go wrong. The same fundamental applies to staff training and development endeavours as well. Training content should not be vague and cover irrelevant topics. It should strictly focus on the actual requirements of jobs, roles, or positions. In the case of hospitals, the significance of employee training is on another level. What is at stake here is not the run-of-the-mill customer experience but the medical care and attention to patients and adherence to regulatory compliance and internal policies and operational requirements. YRC’s team of healthcare and hospital consultants (business and management) understands the nature of the seriousness involved in designing training programs for hospitals and other healthcare organisations. Here is a snapshot of what revolves around developing training content at YRC:

  • Establishing the training objectives (compliance, SOPs, patient experience, technical knowledge, communication) in SMART format
  • Identifying the target audience, assessment of their present knowledge and aptitude
  • Collection of expert content on individual subjects
  • Content development to meet training objectives and trainee requirements, use of principles of Instructional Design and other contemporary training standards
  • Delivery of training (video, simulation, booklets, online and offline instructor-led, OJT, vestibule, etc.)
  • Modify content to improve engagement, adding activities and assignments
  • Pilot run, improvise
  • Conduct of training, sharing of assessments

ECommerce/Online Healthcare Services Setup Consulting

Also referred to as telemedicine, there has been a significant rise in the demand for eCommerce or online healthcare services in the last couple of years. It allows medical care seekers to remotely connect with hospitals and eliminates needless travelling and waiting time. On the other hand, hospitals also get access to a larger base of medical care seekers. There are many other two-way benefits.

In eCommerce or online healthcare services setup consulting, YRC provides a full range of enterprise solutions for setting up and expansion of online healthcare service centres. This includes market research, hospital business model development, financial and commercial evaluations, functional strategies, operations planning, incorporating hospital IT solutions (hospital automation software and hospital analytics solutions etc.), hospital franchising, and audit and control.

BI Dashboards Development

Business Intelligence dashboards (BI dashboards) are digital platforms that display quick synopses of KPIs and other identified data points. BI dashboards can be understood as digital display boards, often within software applications, that help users keep an eye on vital performance parameters.

BI dashboards are extremely useful in hospital management. YRC helps identify and customise BI dashboards for administrative and operational functions (non-medical) in hospitals. The service objective is to help hospitals manage their resources more efficiently and make timely and informed decisions in routine functioning as well as for planning and strategy. For example, demographic aspects may be analysed for better marketing and service outreach.

New Hospital Setup Consulting

In new hospital setup consulting, YRC’s services are similar to eCommerce/online healthcare services setup consulting highlighted earlier. The services include market research, business model development, financial and commercial evaluations, functional strategies, hospital operations planning (hospital standard operating procedures), incorporating hospital IT solutions (hospital automation software and hospital data analytics solutions etc.), franchising, and hospital audit.

To know more about YRC’s hospital consulting services, hospital set-up, management, and expansion or to speak to one of YRC’s hospital consulting experts, please visit the company’s website: https://www.yourretailcoach.in/contact/

Disclaimer: The content provided on this page/blog is intended to offer general information and insights into healthcare business management ONLY. It should not be construed as influencing and/or substituting any professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and/or any established medical standard, process, or practice in any manner whatsoever.

Let’s Talk!

    FAQs

    Which are some of the world’s best hospitals?

    Here’s a list of ten hospitals often held in high regard globally:

    •         Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA
    •         Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
    •         Toronto General Hospital, Toronto, Canada
    •         The John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, USA
    •         Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
    •         Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany
    •         Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset, Sweden
    •         Hôpital Universitaire Pitié Salpêtrière, Paris, France
    •         Sheba Medical Center, Israel
    •         Universitätsspital Zürich, Switzerland

    Disclaimer: This list does not constitute any guidance or reference for medical treatment or consultation in any manner.

    What is patient experience?

    The word ‘customer experience’ in the context of business and marketing is common. In the case of hospitals and healthcare systems, the term ‘customer’ is not the right word for the stakeholders (patients/people proactively seeking medical care) who receive the services. The corresponding term is patient experience. It points toward the quality of experience delivered to patients in their journey of accessing medical treatment and care. It encompasses all touchpoints in the patient journey including advertising, promotions, booking appointments, in-patient services, OPD services, bill payment, post-treatment care, etc.

    How can hospitals and clinics improve patient experience?
    •         Reduce waiting time
    •         Provide timely and accurate information
    •         Offer a safe, relaxed service environment
    •         Emphasise the element of empathy
    •         Staff training, avoid manpower shortage
    •         Be transparent about medical and administrative processes – waiting, diagnosis, tests, results, treatment, billing, insurance, etc.
    •        Deploy a feedback mechanism to improve services and system
    What are the advantages of having a Hospital Management System (HMS)?
    • Streamlined workflows, aid in automation, improved cross-functional communication
    • Centralization of patient records and improved information-sharing
    • Increased accuracy in billing
    • Better staff management, duty allocation
    • Availability of analytics for better financial management, marketing, etc.
    • Stronger protection from data leaks/mismanagement and other cyber threats
    How can hospitals create and maintain a good reputation?

    Although the answer to this question can be extensive, here are four fundamental areas hospitals should consider focusing on for creating and maintaining a good reputation.

    Vision – How the management body of a hospital sees itself and its greater role in society plays a pivotal role in shaping its policies and practices. If the vision is primarily driven by commercial interests, the same shall have a clout over its functioning. If the vision is to become a place of care and healing without compromising on the essential commercial aspects, the same shall be reflected in its services and values delivered.

    Putting patient care over revenue and profit – In recent years, hospitals, in general, have gathered a bad reputation of alleged overindulgence in revenue generation. If this is to change, the emphasis has to be placed on being patient-centric as distinct from commercial overindulgence.

    Emphasis on patient experience – Focusing on patient experience is one of the best approaches for hospital management. On one hand, it deals with the needs of patients and the requirements of medical care and attention. On the other hand, it helps create patient satisfaction which is a good outcome from a business perspective.

    Quality of staff management – Medical care and attention is one such occupation or profession where the quality of being humane is critically important. It is relevant to not just medical care seekers but also staff. An understaffed or under-trained workforce can rarely perform at its best. This eventually shows up in their work and extends to hamper patient experience. HRM should be treated with importance in hospitals.

    Disclaimer: The content provided on this page/blog is intended to offer general information and insights into healthcare business management ONLY. It should not be construed as influencing and/or substituting any professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and/or any established medical standard, process, or practice in any manner whatsoever.

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    We work only for Visionaries.

    PROCESS AUTOMATION

    The idea of having Ecommerce Consultants on-board from the beginning itself points towards reducing the involvement of the promoters in daily operations. Ecommerce Businesses willing to be a brand reaping profits & sustaining the competition must ensure that most of their processes should be automated. The more the manual intervention, the more would be the errors.

    In Ecommerce business, you get only 1 chance to impress the customer & if you mess up there, you lose the customer for long.

    Process automation in respect to all the activities pertaining to customers from order receiving to order fulfilment is a must for a seamless experience for the customers.

    Task Management is another grey area where most deadlines fail as 90% of the tasks are assigned manually & are forgotten, unheard, misunderstood or mistaken.

    YRC Team of Ecommerce Management Consultants helps to make maximum of the processes system-driven to ensure minimalistic manual intervention.

    VIDEOGRAPHY & PHOTOGRAPHY

    No matter how good your product is, the customer would know only if it looks good.

    Photography includes the following steps:

    • Cataloguing your products
    • Cataloguing your images
    • Backup your images (A few cloud storage solutions include Dropbox, Google Drive, Bitcasa, Apple’s Cloud Storage etc.)
    • Choose the right camera & lens (You may also outsource the photography to a third party agency)

    DIGITAL MARKETING

    Digital Marketing includes SEO & SMM. SEO i.e. Search Engine Optimization includes activities like back-linking, meta tags, blog-writing etc. to ensure your website ranks on the 1st page on Google Search.

    Next comes SMM i.e. “Social Media Marketing” which as the name suggests including promoting your products on all the social media sites, email marketing, influencer marketing & several other BTL activities.

    These activities are going to be recurring & would decide the traffic on the website, the conversions, whether the right target market is tapped, the likes, the views, the orders, the reviews & much more. YRCs Ecommerce Consultants create a budget for digital marketing right from pre-launch to launch & for each month thereafter.

    Building digital marketing strategies in coordination with the agency, selecting them to signing them off would be the role of YRC.

    This ensures seamless coordination, detailed interactions & desired execution as it is always advisable to work with a single agency than multiple of them.

    IT INTEGRATION

    Selection of the right software for smooth functioning of back-end operations right from production to webstore display would be suggested and integrated by YRC Team.

    YRC’s Team defines SOPs of Product Movement, maps it with the locations & people. They then create a blueprint of all the features required in the software & help in shortlisting & selection.

    IT Integration involves connecting your offline inventories with real-time online webstore so when a sale occurs, inventories get deducted real time across offline as well as online platforms.

    This helps in accurate inventory management, maintaining the MOQs, re-order levels & achieving the optimum inventory levels.

    Some popular software include unicommerce, viniculum for your front-end website management & Genisys for your entire back-end Purchase, Production, Accounting, Invoicing etc. management.

    WAREHOUSE & LOGISTICS PLANNING

    • How many cities or countries you wish to sell in?
    • Where should your Warehouse be located?
    • Should you have one warehouse in each country or city?
    • Should you be having your own delivery team in your base city?
    • Would the 3rd party vendors be reliable? What happens when they lose or misplace your product during delivery?
    • How should I manage the logistics if my goods are coming from different countries?
    • How should the goods be stored and barcoded?
    • How much space do I require for warehouse?
    • I am sure several such questions must be haunting you while you think of starting your own fashion ecommerce brand.

     

    At YRC, our warehousing and logistics experts can help you devise a strategy for all of the above mentioned queries and much more.

    We design the layout of the Warehouse considering the inward, goods processing, software entry, barcoding, outward, goods return, scrap storage, goods stacking & much more.

    Logistics route plan is devised considering the manufacturer to your warehouse and from there to last mile delivery locations.

    UI & UX DESIGNING

    This Step involves 03 distinct parts:

    Part 1: Choosing the right Platform:

    From several platforms available in the market right from Shopify to magento, woocommerce, prestoshop, wordpress etc. you must choose the one that fits best for your business

    Part 2: UX Designing:

    “UX” denotes User Experience, which if put in simple language is building the functional requirements of the website.

    UX Designing includes designing the features required in the website, customer journey map, website features, the browsing features, navigation features, ecommerce order management process flow, checkout cart features, catalogue management, ecommerce payment system, cross selling features & much more.

    “As per statistics, 68% of the customers abandon the carts before payment”

    An interesting UX ensures the customer sticks on to the website for a longer time.

    Part 3: UI Designing:

    UI stands for User Interface, which means designing the look and feel of the website. UI includes using the right colours, elements and the entire aesthetics of the website.

    A good User Interface ensures the user completes the task that he has come for. It navigates the user through the journey of the brand in the simplest but most effective way.

    The UX designer maps out the bare bones of the user journey; the UI designer then fills it in with visual and interactive elements.

    If User experience is the bare bone, user interface wraps it up with an attractive cape.

    At YRC, our team if experts can help you develop the entire User Journey to ensure it is engaging!

    SAMPLING & PRODUCTION

    This step follows the “Designing” Phase, whether you have an in-house design team, freelance designers or an outsourced design company. It is one of the most exciting phases, as here you see your designs turning into products & your ideas turning into reality.

    In most start-up cases, production is outsourced i.e. brands tie-up with the established manufacturers/ job-workers to get their products manufactured.

    Sampling involves multiple 04 Stages, Fit-Sample, Prototype Sample, Pre-Production Sample & the Production Sample.

    Prototype Sample is the first sample provided to the buyer. It can be in any fabric/ colour. This sample is just to understand whether the product design looks equally great in reality.

    Fit Sample, as the name suggests is prepared to check the fit of the garment i.e. the various sizes, length, width etc.

    Pre-production is made by the actual production line. Here the stitching quality and other aspects related to manufacturing are checked. This is the last stage where rejection can be accepted.

    Production Sample is made before the production which is the replica of what is going to be finally produced.

    Once you are through with all this, you are good to go ahead & get your goods manufactured.

    PRODUCT DESIGNING / SOURCING

    Product Designing or Sourcing is the heart of the Ecommerce Fashion Brand.

    Product Designing / Sourcing can be done in several ways, as follows:

    • In-house Design Team
    • Freelance Designers
    • Outsourced Design Team
    • Ready Product Sourcing (From Manufacturer or Wholesaler)

    At YRC, we evaluate your business strategy & business model to arrive at the decision, which of the above ways would be best-fit for your business. In certain cases, product sourcing may be a combination of the above.

    These are the people who are going to build your brand! Whether they are the designers or merchandiser, your brand look is going to be in their hands.

    If you are designing each garment from the scratch, the sourcing would play crucial role in developing design identity of your brand.

    Sourcing includes fabric, trims, lining & all the raw material required to build the garment.

    BRANDING

    Branding is the “Look of the Brand”, right from logo to tagline, the colours used, the brand story, the brand communications on social media, the packaging & all the other aspects which speak directly or indirectly to the customers. Branding constitutes the look & feel of the brand & hence must be thoughtfully planned to match with the product that we are selling.

    Branding must appeal to our target audience. Example : A golden colour logo depicting finesse, art, richness, premium, however beautiful it may be individually cannot go with a brand selling affordable kids wear products. So, your logo must be in-line with your brand positioning, whether you are an expensive brand or a luxury brand or a value for money brand, it must be depicted from your “Branding”.

    It is an integral part to attract the target audience.

    ORGANOGRAMS & SOP’s

    Organogram is the “HR Blueprint” of the business which is created at the onset, to map out the team required across each function at various stages of the business. At the launch, only key people need to be got on board to ensure the project gets started & at this stage, all of them need to multi-task. Similarly, certain financial as well as operational goals are set for addition of the further team. Example, for the operations team, we hire 1 operations manager during the pre-launch phase & we add 1 more only when the business kicks-off & we reach a volume of selling more than 1000 pcs/ month or a turnover of more than 0.1 million USD.

    SOPs are Standard Operating Procedures, a bible to run the entire organization right from Sales, Purchase, HR, Order receiving to Order fulfilment, Inventory Management, Accounts, Warehouse, Logistics, Supply Chain, Production & all the other relevant functions for the business. Business must be organized from its first day of operations; only then the tasks can be delegated.

    At YRC, we design the organization structure, the processes, and approximate time taken to execute each process, job profile of every member within the organization, their KRAs, KPIs & the Reporting Structure.

    CRITICAL PATHWAY

    Critical Pathway Analysis (CPA), is a project management technique which cannot be overlooked while launching an ecommerce fashion brand. Brand launch process is cumbersome with multiple inter-dependent & time-bound tasks involved, which need to be tracked to ensure the project remains on track.

    CPA outlines key tasks across the project, their turnaround time (TAT) & the dependencies of tasks upon each other. It identifies the sequence of tasks, their interdependent steps from inception to completion, their criticalities, and their dates of onset, target dates of completion along with the key responsible person for the respective activities. Critical Pathway helps in understanding the unimportant & not urgent tasks which may jeopardize the execution of the project because of an unexpected snag! It also maps out the potential bottlenecks which might be posed because of the dependencies of tasks upon each other & cases where the next task cannot be commenced before the completion of the previous one.

    CPA detects the minimum & the maximum time involvement of a particular individual or team to execute the task, thereby arriving at the overall deadlines associated with the project.

    At Your Retail Coach, we design the Critical Pathway & review it periodically to ensure the project is on track & the progress is measurable.

    BUSINESS STRATEGY & BUSINESS PLAN

    Business Strategy includes the vision, mission, goals, business model, business plan & strategy for all the functions within the organization.

    Business Strategy is a well-defined plan that outlines who, what, where, why, how & when for the company; for example, who would be the target market, how to attract the target audience, when to launch new products, where to operate from, how to handle competitors, what would be the USP, what would be long term goal of the organization & several other answers to the 5Ws of Strategy.

    Business Strategy aligns the organization towards a common goal. Business SWOT helps company to identify & overcome their weaknesses & focus to sharpen the strengths. Business strategy forecasts future risks and helps business in building skillsets to overcome the potential threats.

    YRC’s Business Plan focuses on creating a “Blueprint” of the business, thereby deriving the feasibility of the concept & gauge whether the opportunity is lucrative to invest time, energy & effort. Business Plan creates cash flow understanding i.e. building inflow & outflow cash projections from Week zero to week 60 i.e. 05 year projection. Business Plan calculates the capital investment, operating costs, one-time costs, recurring costs & all the other numbers relevant to obtain the breakeven sales, return on investment, return on capital, internal rate of return & several other ratios. Business Plan is also one of the important requirements if you are targeting the “Investor Route”. Fund raising becomes extremely transparent & channelized. With business plan panned out clearly, the business will know until what point must it be stretched & where to stop, which reduces the probability of unplanned investments.

    MARKET RESEARCH

    Starting the concept of Ecommerce Fashion brand with Market Research ensures we get detailed understanding of the industry & this research report also acts as a social confirmation for your concept. Market Research helps in understanding the target locations, their population, potential online buyers for your product, competitors for each category, and top selling products of the competitors, competitors’ price range, offers & their responses & much more. Market Research helps in thorough understanding of your brand position as compared to our competitors. It helps in identifying gaps in the market, in your category along with the scope of the said product in the desired market. This will help in validation of your concept & prevents you from making the same mistakes as your fellow brands, eventually saving your time, energy & efforts. This phase is also a make or a break phase, as the market research study may at-times come up with some eye-popping numbers & statistics which might compel you to re-think on your product or category that you are planning to sell or alter your entire concept itself!! Market Research Reports analyse the competitors’ webstore for their traffic, conversion & sales. This is extremely valuable information to derive our inventory budgets & projections, which takes us to our next phase.