Ideally, the factors that affect a business make up its environment. These could be internal factors such as human resources, management, and company culture. They could also be external factors that affect the business directly or indirectly.
In some cases, the business can have control over some factors such as the customer base, company image, and competition. On the other hand, the business has no control over some factors that affect it such as politics, climate, economic status, and technology.
All in all, for a business to grow, the environment in which it stands is something not to be ignored. Clearly, a good understanding of the environment is bound to bring in an array of benefits. The following is why the environment is important to growing a business.
Jump to:
#1 Beating the competition and identifying opportunities
When a business is wary of the competition, what they are doing, and how they are doing, it becomes easy to identify the areas that the competition poses a threat. This enables the business to up its game in this regard. A business might think of reviewing the prices, enhancing the packaging, improving the products or offering incentives to the customers, or any other approach that will give a competitive edge against the competition.
In addition, it becomes easier to identify areas that have opportunities for growth. It could be a space that hasn’t been filled by anyone, or a business strategy that is yet to be rolled out by anyone. When a business constantly scans the environment, it can easily identify such opportunities before everybody else.
#2 Enhancing business processes
Streamlining business processes is important for the smooth run of any business. If done properly, it yields happy employees and satisfied customers, while the executives have an easy job managing the business, all of which are crucial in growing a business. If a business is cautious about its internal environment, it becomes easier to identify areas that need streamlining. It becomes easy to decide the areas that need automation, the tasks that need to be done with as well as those that need customer support outsourcing.
For instance, if you are looking to grow your business overseas, let's say China. payroll management is a complex task that takes a lot of time and energy, which could otherwise be used elsewhere. However, outsourcing this task to a company, takes away the need to understand tax and labor laws, especially when you have international employees. Just be mindful of late paycheck laws california and elsewhere if you're outsourcing, as it's still your responsibility to pay your employees on time, even if you're not the one managing pay.
You can only identify such needs by assessing all the processes in your business.
#3 Flexibility in business Dynamics
The business world is dynamic and keeps changing rather rapidly. For a business to grow in such an environment, it becomes necessary to be agile in its operations. It must be flexible enough to bend as the business demands bend. In order to do this, a business needs to be intentional in acquiring knowledge about the changing environment.
It then must prepare on the best ways to handle the changes. It might mean retraining employees, acquiring more knowledge in management, learning to use new technologies or adopting new marketing strategies among others.
#4 Enhances image building
As said earlier, a business that is conscious about the environment is able to change as the business demands change. Some areas in this regard are customer demands and social needs. If a business is able to provide the customers with what they need at any given time, it becomes the to-go-to brand for the customers. In addition, by clearly staying alert on the needs of the people, it is easy to put up a CSR program addressing these issues. All these efforts play a great role in building the corporate image of a business.
#5 Provides business resources
A business needs the environment in order to do business. Ideally, it requires raw materials, labor, finances, tools and other resources to be able to put a product in the market. After producing the product, it needs customers to consume it. All these input and output resources come from the environment. Saying that a business fully depends on the environment is not a far-fetched sentiment.
Conclusion
As we have seen, staying conscious about the environment brings benefits. On the other hand, failing to do so yields the opposite. Business opportunities bypass you, it becomes hard to beat the competition or stay on par with business dynamics, which can lead to a poor business image and unhappy customers. All these have detrimental effects on business growth.
Read also:
Leave a Reply