How To Make Your Boss READ Your Report Thoroughly (The Audience)

Now we are in the second lesson about writing a business document. Do you still remember the first one??? You have to remember that because you will get lost in this lesson if you don’t….

Audience….you might wondering why do I need to address the audience specifically in a business document??? It is not a presentation or public speaking when I need to stand in front of the public?? So, why should I ?? If you are reading the first lesson then you will get the answer right away….pssttt…..it is in the end of the lesson…

Now, let’s focus on the real thing,,, what do you want with the audience and how do you get it. The first answer is in your plan of course …assuming you understand the first lesson….Then the problem you have now is how. How to achieve it? First, you need to capture their attention. Do you really want your hard work stuck in the middle of your managers piles of documents?? Goodbye promotion..... 

That is why, you have to grab their attention to be noticed. Capturing their attention is not an easy task but it is not impossible.

Getting to the point quickly can make the audience turn their heads straight to your document.  Stating the main point of the document first will grab their attention faster than fancy jargons. Imagine how your boss reacts when he or she reads an increasing 50% in sales simultaneously for three years or 40% production efficiency through new method. They won’t think of any other thing besides your document. So after catching their attention, you need to maintain their focus by writing valuable things related to the issue.

Valuable information or analysis will grasp the whole attention of your audience. Please make sure that after the most valuable information is stated, there are more values to come. The straightforward documents with many important values will engage the audience.  You surely can do this two steps by writing down the most important things – what do you want to say, and all the values you want to emphasize in this document…. but please do remember to left the odd things out.

I think this is all for today,,, the next session is still about audience….just wait for it!!!

written by ClaudyaLita

Writing Business Documents

Hi, our fellow readers…..long time no see….
Today I am going to address the problem that haunted not only an MBA student but also a professional.

Writing A Business Document!!

Do you often think that writing business documents is very agonizing? Is it difficult to tell your point directly without getting lost in a lot of explanations?? No worries lads, today MBA League is giving you the secret to write a clear and straightforward business documents. This is the first lesson, so you have to stay tune for the very next update……now let’s start our journey ……
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The first thing you need to know before writing a business document is what are you trying to say and the audience of the document…..most of us do not think the audience is pretty important, that is where we are wrong…Furthermore, It is pretty easy to know what we are trying to say, heck you are writing it for a reason, but it is difficult to find the essence of the writing itself.

The essence of the writing is the meaning behind those words, is it to inform, to motivate or to persuade…These three are very different in any sense, so you need to take care of your word of choice, tone and formality based on that. Let’s say don’t just give the product detail specification if you want to persuade people to buy it, you do not want to only inform them but to persuade them. For that reason, you need to plan your business documents carefully to prevent sending a wrong message.

There are four basic aspects that you guys need to grasp before writing a business document, the plan, audience, message, and word choice. Let’s talk about the plan first. Plan is not what you want to fulfill because of your responsibility, like assignment or job task, but what you want to accomplish through this document. That is why content is very important. The content is not only what belongs to the document but also what does not belong to it. A lot of MBA students forget the latter and get confused when they are trapped in the middle of the chaos they made themselves.

Basically, knowing what does not belong to the documents will make the paper more straightforward and clear. There will not be ambiguity or double meaning in it. So, knowing the content is the first thing that you need to do before planning to write a business document. The next thing you have to do is trying to meet the audience expectation through this document. If they want a thorough analysis or detailed specification just give it to them. Please remember that the document is not for you, it is for the audience. The document is a bridge for you to accomplish your purpose…

That is our lesson for today…see you tomorrow for the next lesson …the audience ; )      

ClaudyaLita

AEC (ASEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY)

Hello there folks! We finally meet again. Today we're gonna discuss about AEC or in bahasa many people call it Masyarakat Ekonomi ASEAN. What is this? So basically this agreement was made in order to enhance the competitiveness of ASEAN countries to compete along China and India to gain more foreign investment, and not only limited in trading for goods and services, AEC also took part in skilled professional labor, and this agreement requires the countries to eliminate a few rules about foreign labor acceptance, so the point is those foreigners will have easier access to work in ASEAN countries, and easier access for goods and services to be sold between ASEAN countries. How is this agreement affecting our beloved country? It literally could be both. There are few positive impact such as Indonesia right now has 250 million of potential market, but with AEC there are expected of 625 million potential market that Indonesia could target, another thing is the reduced cost for import and export tariff which could significantly lowering the cost of Indonesia’s product to penetrate even greater market.

A few negative impacts such as harsher competition for both our labor and goods & services to compete nationally due to the foreign factors, because right now our standard of labor and product and also infrastructure is still behind other ASEAN countries.

Based on the effects mentioned above, how do we arm ourselves? There are few basic things we could do. First of all, we need to increase the quality of our manpower and standardization of our good and services produced. With better quality we believe we could compete in AEC.

Second of all is we need to pay more attention to our SME's (Small Medium Enterprise). As for the government such rules and policy that can protect our SME's such as tax settings, easier access to obtain credits, and many others. As for the SME's, we need to be focus and passionate in creating value. The most easiest technique is to do benchmarking, to make us at least on the same level with our competitors, next step would be observe, replicate, and modified or in bahasa people refer this as ATM Theory (Amati, Tiru, Modifikasi) which seems simple yet so powerful IF we could execute it on target. Because more than 90% of business in Indonesia is still counted as SME's, so the economic condition of our country mostly supported by these Small Medium Enterprise. So it's our job to be as creative as possible, to fulfill the needs of our costumer, and remember creating a business is never as instant as a cup noodle haha ;) time and energy are needed to raise it. We never meant to scare you about AEC with this article, but we wanted to remind all of us, that the competition is out there and they are ready while most of us are still denying it. WAKE UP GUYS!!! It's time for us to shine!! Another quote for today:

"If you don't drive your business, you will driven out of business" -B.C. Forbes-

Ibnu Prabowo

Scenario Planning

Hi guys, we’re back again.

Today I would like to share with you how to make scenario planning in decision making. Do not worry, it is not like scenario for making sitcom, it is actually the way you predict the movement of your company.

Here is, the sample of making scenario planning for healthy food and beverage company, called Treatmeal

Stage 1: Orientation

The focal issues: how could Treatmeal could survive in this niche market and harsh competition of healthy food & beverages market?

Stage 2: Exploration

Driving Forces:

• Market Demand
• Mature Competitors
• Market Size
• Resources (Human & Natural)
• Permit & Regulations
• Cost & Capital
• Technology Improvement
• Import goods
• Exchange  Rate

Critical Uncertainties:

These uncertainties are raked by its importance:

1. Market Size
2. Mature Competitors

Stage 3:  Scenario Creation

TreatMeal critical uncertainties are market size and mature competitors

Stage 4: Options Considerations

Stage 5: Integration

Early Warning Signals:

1. Bigger market size through time
2. Even more harsher competition
3. Advanced Technological innovations, leads to new product creation (plenty of capital are needed)

PESTEL Analysis

Hello guys,

What is a kind of thing that we will talk about today? Something useful for marketers to analyze and monitor macro-environmental (external marketing environment) factors that have an impact on a business, PESTEL analysis. PESTEL is an acronym for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environment, and Legal. PESTEL analysis is used to determine how these factors will affect the performance and activities of the business in the long term.

PESTEL

Political

This factor determines how far the government influences the economy or certain industry.

Economic

Economic factor is about how big the impact of economic performance to the profit and business process of the company.

Social

Social factor also is known as socio-cultural factor. It is the about the shared belief and attitudes of the population.

Technology

This factor is related to innovation in technology that affects the operations of the industry favorably or unfavorably.

Environment

Nowadays, environment factor becomes popular in various industries. This factor includes all those that influence by surrounding environment.

Legal

This factor involves internal and also external analysis of company. This is about how certain laws that affect the business process of he company in a country. And also what kind of policies that company applies.

By using PESTEL analysis, we can know the condition of macro-environment of business. In SWOT analysis, PESTEL help us to determine the threats and the opportunities represented by macro-environment forces that the business usually cannot control. So, after we know the condition, we can create the best strategy for the business.

Written by Dera Hafiyyan

Marketer Sins

No, no, and no, it is not luring people to buy the products; please wake up that is what they do for a living. So, what are the biggest sins of marketers?? The sins are assuming and thinking that they can have it all.

Assuming is a big bold no in marketer dictionary, how could you assume something will go well as you plan? No one in this world has the ability of predicting the future {even though some make it as jobs, we as MBA students are pretty realistic here}. As a marketer, data has highest value in the job. The demographic condition, customer trend even the climate pattern and tradition are more reliable than assuming things without basis. So, like what we all said in previous articles, find the most reliable and valid data out there. Use all your research tools to analyze the pattern from this data then create your amazing marketing plan. Realistically speaking, if assuming can lead to a success then every product in the market should be able to tell a success story, nonetheless, the reality is far from that.

The second biggest sin with the highest level of temptation is targeting mass market. Like stated above, you cannot have it all in this life, it is either choose A or B, C or D and so on. Nevertheless, large audience true is tempting, but the product will go nowhere if targeting this market. For one, there will be a confusion of who is the right customer for the product. Next, the product will face many competitors because of their wide range of target market. Just learn from Pond’s mistake. It is a strong facial skin care brand; however, we all know what happened when they decided to diversify the product by adding hand body to the product portfolio in Indonesia.  Ponds hand body proves that even strong brand from big company cannot have all of the market.

Now, you already read this article right, this article might not sound so serious but important enough for you to not fall into these two sins.

written by Claudya

Porter’s Five Forces Model

Welcome back guys,

Today let’s talk about one tool that very important when you want to start your business and also when you have run your business, is called porter’s five forces model. By using five forces model, you can know what kind of environment that your company stands in and also how attractive the industry.  This tool developed by Michael E. Porter, one of the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness based at the Harvard Business School. He create the tool for industry analyzing with five component that are involved in company’s environment are the risk of new competitors entering the industry, threat of potential substitutes, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining powers of suppliers, and the current competition in the industry.

Porter’s Five Forces Model

Threat of New Entrants

Threat of new entrants is the ease with which new competitor s can enter the market if they see that you are making good profits (and then drive your prices down). In this component, you must consider about the time and cost of entry, specialist knowledge, economies of scale, cost advantages, technology protection, and barriers to entry. When the barrier entry is low, the threat of new entrants will be high. It makes the industry is not attractive.

Threat of Substitutes

Threat of substitutes is defined as the extent to which different products and services can be used in place of your own. The items that you must focus in this component are substitute performance and cost of change. If there are many products in the market can substitute our product, it will make the industry not attractive.

Buyer Power

The meaning of buyer power is the power of your customers to drive down your prices. You must consider the number of customers, size of each order, differences between competitors, price sensitivity, ability to substitute, and cost of changing. When there is only one customer for our product, it will make our business depend highly with the customer. So, the industry is not attractive.

Supplier Power

Supplier power is the power of suppliers to drive up the prices of your inputs. There are several things that you must consider in this component, which are: number of suppliers, size of suppliers, uniqueness of service, your ability to substitute, and cost of changing. If your supplier is only one, you have high dependency to your supplier. It makes the industry is not attractive.

Competitive Rivalry

The definition of competitive rivalry is the strength of competition in industry. In this component, you must focus on number of competitors, quality differences, other differences, switching costs, and customer loyalty. Where your business is in tight competition, it makes the industry is not attractive.

By using Porter’s five forces model, we can know the condition of our company’s industry. This analysis will be the best consideration to make decision for the right strategy for your company to face and to lead the industry. So, let’s analyze your company and chose you’re the best strategy!

Written by Dera Hafiyyan

Negotiation Culture

Hi guys,

Here we are back into business. Today I would like to share how to deal with cross-cultural people and how they do negotiation. Here some characteristics of the nation when your company is decided to do global strategy. I put example from certain countries that in my opinion give the big impact in business. So here it is,

• America

From the goal cultural dimension, American is included as individualists; they are more accepting of competitive bargaining tactics and bluffing. It is said that they may be perceived as less ethical by their International counterparts. American is significantly less accepting of misrepresentation to an opponent’s network and they are not afraid to show their real behavior instead of changing it.

Moreover, from social side, American is dispositionalism where Individualistic and egalitarian power are part of their culture and they have tendency to ascribe the cause of a person’s behavior to his or her character or underlying personality. In addition, American has culture of direct communication where message are transmitted explicitly and directly, and communication are action oriented and solution minded. They have tendency to tell things to your face, favoring direct confrontation and discussing problem freely. In expanding the pie, American exchange information directly and avoid using influence strategies when negotiating intra and intercultural.

• British/ European

British dominant attitude is basically economic collectivism; they give priority to in-group goals, and for business relationship they were bounded by formal rules and low affectivity, they reserved in manners, dress, as well as speech. British people are famous for their politeness and self-discipline. In this case, British is considered as situationalism where there is tendency to ascribe the cause of a person’s behavior to factors and forces that are outside of a person’s control. Moreover, British people are doing indirect communication and they like to add a joke and humor on their negotiations that somehow it is hard to understand by others.

• Japanese

Japanese are indirect culture; they transmit messages indirectly and implicitly. As example, Japanese negotiators are less likely to say no and more likely to remain silent. Moreover, they also exchange information indirectly and use influence when do intercultural negotiating, but adapt their behaviors when doing intercultural negotiation; however, even though they acted indirectly, they not afraid to engage in more direct information exchange (asking questions). For the influence dimension, Japanese are more hierarchy power relationship, they not challenge high status member and status implies social power and is not easily permeated or changed.

• Chinese

Chinese people are collectivism, they emphasize social networks, and they negotiate with someone whom they believed to be a friend or a stranger from their own culture. As expected based upon their collectivist orientation, Chinese changed their behavior more when interacting with others and they perceived more external influence (situationalism). They considered as hierarchy power relationship just like Japanese, due to their preferences to use relational bargaining (asking a superior for a resolution; consulting with third parties for advice). That is why; it will be easier to persuade the higher authorities when doing negotiation with Chinese people because they concern for the collective and authority for business relationships.

Thank you for reading my entry and happy negotiate

written by Herlin

Catching the Customers Eye

Attracting customers is what we need to do as marketers. However, it is not an easy job. Marketers need to emphasize the uniqueness of the product while convince the customers that the products also have similarities with others. KFC “Jagonya Ayam” or Nike “Just Do It” is amazing slogan that makes the customers instantly think of the products when they heard it. Regardless, sweat and tears are needed to create these two or three words slogan and a tailored marketing support to kick the promotion. So, the question is how to create kickass slogan that will imprint in the customers mind.

Slogan or brand is a product of positioning. As MBA students all of us should be familiar with the term. In short, it is where we want the put the product in the market and customers eyes. Having clear positioning will ease the marketing team effort to build brand awareness, shady one will not go nowhere even with a lot of financial support like old time saying we cannot have it all, so choose one.

Even though positioning is a part of marketing, it has the formula to make it easier for the marketers to create one. The formula is:

To – mention the target customers in the first few words to emphasize the position of the products.

Brand- mentioning the brand so the customer will be familiar with it. For Example: Orang Pintar minum Tolak Angin.

Frame of reference – this is the similarity of this product with competitors or in short it is point of parity.

Unique selling proposition – emphasize of what makes the product different. This is important to hit the target right to the point not walking around the bush.

Comparison – Comparing the product with competitors, not really important if the marketers already created creative unique selling point that hit the bull’s eye.

Reason to believe – Showing why the customer should believe what the product claimed it good to be.

By using this formula, marketers can depict the right words to lead the customer imagination of how the product should be perceived. Now, how about you all use this guidance to create your own unique slogan?

written by Claudya

LST Removal

Hi there guys, we met again at last! Just a few moments ago government made a decision to remove PPnBM (Pajak Penjualan Barang Mewah) or LST (Luxuries Sales Tax) except for automotive products any thought why?

Based on our mini research, Indonesia’s economic growth are on a sluggish phase. In the first quarter of 2015 Indonesia’s economic growth is 4.71% which is slower if we compared to the same quarter in 2014 which is 5.14%. If this trends continues to happen, Indonesia’s economic condition might be in jeopardy. So how could this be happen? Again we analyze and search for a credible information, and it turns out that there are two main culprit. Firstly is the government itself, due to late ratification of Indonesian Revised Budget (APBN-P) which just finalize on February makes the states expenditure not optimal. Secondly is the private sector, the investor tend to perform “wait and see” because Rupiah’s exchange rate towards US Dollar recently fall sharply & there was a really chaotic condition on the new police head, in addition our export volume is decreasing this period.

So how to counter this miserable trend? There are many ways to overcome this problem, and we wanted to underline 2 ways, first is country competitiveness in all aspect, such as human & natural resources and technology. Why and how competitiveness could resulted in positive economic growth? Simply imagine you are the only humankind who can produce electricity, so if anybody in the world wanted to get electricity will buy it from you. How could this happened? This is what it’s called competitiveness, because nobody could produce the same until some period of time. But as we know human being is a genius creature, either they will construct new source of electricity or they imitate existing product, the ultimate goal is reaching “Sustainable Competitive Advantage”. In this case we could say we keep the technology blueprint for ourselves using patent and keep the human capital happy with tons of incentives, and monopolized all the natural electricity source from the water to nuclear. There you go! A completely sustainable competitive advantage, but again this is the extreme example so it could easily understand☺. Secondly is according to the government, is removing LST (Luxuries Sales Tax), so more people will buy stuff, and hopefully the economy will move towards positive growth. In other hand this could leads to overconsumption syndrome, BUT! This policy is made to help our local industries, so they could compete, and in addition it will give them better position in the market. So that’s all for today folks! We’ll see you again soon! Stay awesome people!!

Quotes for today: "Opportunities don't happen. You create them." -Chris Grosser-

written by Ibnu

PURCHASING DECISION

Have you ever wondered about how to do systematically purchasing decision, here is the steps which is written by one of MBA authors, Claudya. 

Conclusions :
The student gives much consideration in buying the product , he spends a lot of times searching for information.
He buys the product that offers the best offerings according to his perspective.
There is a high posibility for him to buy another product from similar brand if the products satisfies him.
Buying electronic devices is an action that takes a lot of time to ponder. The customers really give their attention to the specification and quality.
They will not buy it because of habit. Thank you for reading this entry

The Balance Sheet (Part 1)

Hi! Welcome back guys! Today is our Finance Day. Our topic now is the balance sheet. Balance sheet is one of the major financial statements used by accountants and business owners. The balance sheet presents company’s financial position at the end of a specified date. Some explain the balance sheet as an accountant’s snapshot of a firm’s accounting value at point in time.

The function of balance sheet for company is:

• Exhibits the true financial position of a firm at a particular date
• Financial position can be ascertained clearly with the help of balance sheet
•  Provides valuable information to the management for taking better decision through ratio analysis
• Balance sheet helps in knowing past and present position of company.

5    It is a mirror of a business

The balance sheet has two sides, which are left side where the assets placed, and the right side that contains the liabilities and stockholder’s equity. The balance sheet states what the company owns and how it financed. The accounting definition that underlies the balance sheet and describes the balance is:

Assets = Liabilities + Stockholder's equity 

Let’s discuss more about the three items above.

1.     Assets

Asset is a resource with economic value that company own or controls with the expectation that it will provide future benefits. Assets split into two types, which are:

• Fixed assets are those that will last a long time. Some fixed assets are tangible, such as machinery and equipment. Other fixed assets are intangible, such as patents and trademarks.
• Current assets are those that have short lives, such as inventory. Product that your firm has made, but has not yet sold, is part of inventory.

Liabilities and Stockholder's Equity 

Liability is a company’s legal or obligations that arise during the course of business operation. There are two category of liabilities based on how long company’s must repaid, which are:

•  current liability : short term debt (must be repaid within one year)
•     long term debt (not must be repaid within one year)
•  Stockholder’s equity is the portion of the balance sheet that represent the capital received from investor in exchange for stock, donated capital, and retained earnings. In other words, Shareholder’s equity represents the difference between the value of the assets and liabilities of the company or we can call as a residual claim on the firm’s assets.

The picture following is an example of balance sheet.

The next meeting, we will talk deeper about how to create the balance sheet. So, don’t miss it guys. J

Written by Dera Hafiyyan

Purchasing Decision Process

In marketing class, MBA students have to act and think like marketers. That is why, as a marketer, they need to understand the potential customer thoughts that lead to their purchasing behaviour. The first step to analyze the customer behavior is by understanding their thoughts when buying a product. For that reason, students have to understand the concept of customer purchasing decision process and comprehend each step of the process. Furthermore, a good marketer understand that each process has different weight depends on the product category. In this journal, we will not discuss about the concept but the five steps of purchasing decision and how to put the right importance for each of them.

The five steps of purchasing decision process are:

Problem Recognition ->Information Search->Evaluation of Alternatives ->Purchasing Decision->Post Purchasing Decision

This writing will explain the process through an example for each product category per week, it is approximately for three weeks.

In the first example, we will analyze the purchasing decision process of an ordinary product less than Rp. 5000.

The customer is a maid who wants to buy garlic for her personal consumption. (please check our picture bellow)

Written by Claudya

Business Model Canvas (2)

Hello, friends! We are back again this week and right now we are still discussing about Business Model Canvas (BMC), and we are in BMC part 2. If some of you still wondering what BMC is, please find the BMC part 1 here, you will get some brief description about it. So, last week we have had two blocks explained which are Customer Segment and Value Propositions. This time we’re gonna go to Customer Relationship and Channels.

First we will have information about what is Customer Relationship. In this BMC, Customer Relationship is the effort of the company to pursue the increasing of company’s success and to get survived to their business. The company can create their type(s) to build the relationship to the customer, such as make a community so all customers in many distinct backgrounds can meet up and also with the company. Another type, for example how to make a relationship in a personal assistance, the company can make this kind of assistance to the customer during the sale or after the customer gets the product/ service or maybe do both. The company also can make prioritized-customer assistance, the most engaging effort to set of customers by offering sales representative to answer and take care all of these preferred customers.

For the second block we will discuss now is Channels. What is this for? The channels block is the way how the company can deliver their value proposition of their product/ service to the customer. Many things can the company do to deliver it, whether through their own channel (store) or through their partner channel or do both. Channels also need some consideration to the efficient and cost effectiveness.

Well, that’s all for BMC Part 2, make sure you won’t miss Part 3 in next session. Hope you guys enjoy this method and able to apply it into your business!

By Bonnie