First off, Online or Digital Marketing advertises your business, broadening your brand reach. Thus, its strategies are critical for gaining the attention of potential customers. Also, depending on how targeted your advertising efforts are, you can achieve higher conversions. So if you plan to run your first campaign soon, you can check out Digital Marketing Tips for Beginners.

Marketing generates interest, and Sales ensures that products and services make their way to your target customers. They are focused on different end goals but still tie into one another, with one being significantly influenced by the other.

What’s the Big Difference Between Digital Marketing and Sales?

Again, Marketing and Sales go hand in hand but serve different roles. Even for a Digital Marketing Company, both follow the same core concepts.

So Sales is the process where an individual or a team sells company products or services. Thus, Sales is transaction-based and aims to fulfill a company’s sales targets.

On the other hand, Marketing is another team activity that aims to understand the marketplace from the customer’s perspective. Also, it directs the company to where it can profitably compete and ultimately where the company’s future should be.

Thus, Sales and Marketing Teams drum up customer interest and then deliver products or services into those customers’ hands.

How Big Brands do Digital Marketing

Markets are constantly changing, so it’s the marketing team’s job to stay ahead of the changes. Next, salespeople can take advantage of Digital Marketers’ efforts. However, without Males, Marketing efforts also run short. In other words, these two support each other for the benefit of the business.

Still, marketers can apply Digital Marketing to a variety of industries, and its limits are dictated by their creativity. For instance, Digital Marketing can advertise the Real Estate and Automobile Industries.

So more prominent businesses in popular industries have several advantages over Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). In addition to bigger budgets and longer-standing popularity, they also have experience. As a result, they’ve managed to create exceptional Marketing Strategies and Plans, and now they can apply to your company’s efforts.

While there are new Digital Marketing Tools and Trends to note this year, there are some concepts on how established brands do effective marketing. So, here are several tried and true tactics for marketing your brand, according to big brands:

Tell a True Story. 

Consumers love stories, so incorporate storytelling into your Marketing Strategies. For instance, Apple ran its “Get a Mac” campaign by comparing a PC and a Mac based on customer experiences and feedback.

Thus, your marketing story should be honest, use humor, and communicate what the market cares about today.

Do What Your Competitors Don’t Want to Do (Yet). 

As a Digital Marketing Company, try something radical and be willing to fail in those attempts. Your competitors mostly want to do the same old routines and play it safe because their strategy is working today.

For instance, Nokia was so confident in dominating the mobile phone industry back in 1998 until Apple released the iPhone in 2007. By 2011, Nokia’s market share fell about 90% because it failed to innovate.

Market to Your Existing Customer Base. 

Coca-cola, a leading brand before Apple and Google came into place, believed that you don’t necessarily need to find a brand-new audience to increase product sales.

Thus, to boost Sales via Digital Marketing, increase demand even among your existing loyal customers through innovation. After all, you can continually improve your existing products in new ways to fit your customer base’s needs.

Make Exciting Promises that you Actually Deliver on. 

Some product marketing schemes get people excited about trying new services and products but fail to hit the mark. Unfortunately, “71% of consumers tire of empty promises,” so if your promise is a lie, sales will drop.

So, increase your Marketing and Sales alignment by delivering on your promises. It results in high customer satisfaction rates or a better brand image.

Try New Brand Names.

If you have many products, create a completely new brand for each.

Although your company won’t have the name recognition it wants to have, it’s why Procter & Gamble was able to generate more than $1 billion for each of its brands. Some of their successful products are Ariel, Head & Shoulders, Olay, Oral-B, Pampers, Tide, Pantene and Vicks. Of course, your Sales and Marketing alignment can help you with popularizing your separated brands.

Major Pillars for Learning How to Make Sales Online

Online Marketing has several platforms, such as Social Media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), etc. Additionally, if you have various campaigns or are using several platforms, Marketing Automation can make your work that much easier. Having a variety of strategies assists your Lead Generation and increases revenue.

Aside from Digital Marketing, here are some Sales principles that marketers should learn to increase the alignment of their efforts:

Dedicate a Considerable Amount of Time to Understand Your Prospects.

Be strategic in choosing your potential customers. So many people can join your customer base — even after you narrow them down into target segments. And considering how target audiences have particular personalities, there’s a unique approach to attracting each one.

It’s Always What Your Customer Believes and Not What You Say.

Take your time to engage with your customer because they often don’t know what they need immediately.

Unless they believe your proposition, you’ll never have the chance to convert. So According to HubSpot’s research, buyers want salespeople to:

• Listen to their needs;
• Not be pushy;
• Provide relevant information; and
• Respond in a timely manner.

Believe that You’re the Best Person to Help Your Customers.

This is the main reason why confident salespeople are very successful. Besides, nobody wants to buy from sellers who have no confidence in their products. With a genuine belief in what your brand offers, selling products or services become smooth sailing.

Be on Time, Not Early or Late.

Being too early lets your customers think you are desperate to close the sale. Thus, customers believe they can take advantage of the situation. On the other hand, being late makes them think they’re not that important to your business. Additionally, scheduling for follow-through actions mustn’t be delayed.

Always be Prepared to Close the Sale.

Develop a course of action depending on what the customer tells you and their reactions to your response. There are a lot of ways to close the deal, so you want to practice ahead with possibilities.

Honing Your Skills Further

Whether you’re a Paid Ads, Email, or Social Media Marketer, you must always consider bettering yourself. After all, Marketing boosts Sales enablement, which means you must watch out for trends and developments in the Digital Marketing industry.

Self-improvement can help you gain new insights — insights that can help you gain more qualified leads, which result in more potential customers.

Additional Tips for Online Marketers:

• Set Your Goals Clearly. Targets are vital to keeping track of what needs to be achieved.
• Everything is a Step-by-Step Process. Fast or slow, every pace brings you closer to a successful deal.
• Identify Business Pain Points and Challenges. Realistically, your products and services have limitations. Recognize and build confidence around what you can deliver instead of what you can’t.
• Embrace Team Efforts. It’s best to do things together to achieve more, as two (or more) heads are better than one.
• Talk to the Right People. Select the best audience that can make the right decisions and carry out approvals.
• Every Step has to be Measured. Each effort has a corresponding cost, so make sure to maximize the allocation you have to its full potential.
• Do Shadow Exercises. Do mock pitches in marketing and sales as a team activity and let your teammates think of ways to shut down your proposition. Learning professional rebuttals is excellent at building confidence and strategic thinking.

In Conclusion

Your Digital Marketing Strategy is responsible for bringing in revenue. Thus, your marketing department or team must invest time and resources into shared goals. At this point, more and more businesses rely on Online Marketing to gain the attention of qualified leads.

So Marketing finds out what the market wants to provide the services or products that answer its needs. Sales and Marketing Alignment means that the results of your research bear fruit. A Digital Marketing Company from the Philippines can help you get the most out of your strategies!

The post Digital Marketing and Sales: How to Be Great at Both appeared first on Syntactics Inc..

Common Reasons Why We Need Lean Web Development

As realistic objectives, web development companies want to see only:

• 1/2 of the issues they are usually experiencing in the development phases
• 1/2 of the hours of spent by human effort
• 1/3 of the development hours
• 1/2 of the office space used for the same output
• 1/10th or less of equipment and software needed for the same output

Transitioning To A Lean Methodology

STEP 1: Remove Waste and Ineffective Processes

Everything that does not add value to the customer is considered waste. It includes these things that you control:

• Lack of client requirements as the basis for development.
• Involve team members who are not technically capable of performing the tasks correctly and efficiently. Meanwhile, bad coding, poor quality control, and inefficient project management are only results and symptoms of these.
• Failure to communicate with precise details to the clients and team.

It is essential to understand what is wasteful to eliminate misuse of resources. In other words, if you can remove a process step while achieving the same result, that’s a waste. Team members with poor technical and communication skills also contribute to waste in delivery time and productivity. If possible, identify the waste and remove it from your entire process.

STEP 2: Give team supervisors control to refine processes

Certainly, your workforce is the source of knowledge systems, decision-making, and organizational strength. They know what the issues are and what needs to do to ensure growth and continuity in operations.

Implement a working culture that establishes a great foundation for lean web development. Here are some of the strategies to do:

• Build teams that concentrate on value exchange rather than just technical skills. However, skill training is highly a priority to keep the workforce relevant and up to par with the competition.
• Delegate a level of decision-making from management to those working in operations.
• Encourages staff to recognize, report, and fix issues as they happen.
• Allows team members to multitask and expands their potential.
• Provides an environment of openness and transfer of information.

STEP 3: Learn lean web methodology and tools

Generally speaking, the best outcomes are evidence-based, not speculation. Lean.org teaches how to analyze our current process based on the five-step thought process. As an example, companies that outsource web development in the Philippines mostly expect lean practices from their developers.

Source

For web development, we can arrive at these suggestions:

1. No customer is willing to accept any website errors. Therefore, lean pushes designers, developers, and quality specialists in an ‘error-proof’ practice cycle, in which it is hard to do wrong, and any feedback is focused on enhancing quality — from the customer’s point of view.
2. Don’t develop something more than is required, or until it is needed. Although this generally refers to production, it can be used for the development of websites. To prevent waste, designers, developers, and quality specialists need to address and outline their respective areas of specialization needs, problems, and opportunities.
3. If you have the right equipment for lean web development, observable efficiencies can be achieved. With this, some companies outline the equipment in each business, so you know if anything is lacking at a glance.
4. Sadly, with web designers, developers, and quality specialists, the waiting game is a common issue. Everybody needs to honor their commitments and the needs of the team to deliver the product of quality on time. On the other hand, clients must also realize and commit to fulfilling their deadlines.
5. Consider defects as waste. To emphasize, each feature must conform to customer requirements, including design, programming, and quality assurance.

Embrace Lean Web Development

In summary, we need a change in mindset, staffing, and methodology to build a lean environment. But once you make the change, you can understand that real value design and development not only improve internal efficiency and advantages but also offers more useful products to your clients at less expense and more rapid times to the market.

The post Lean Web Development: Why Start It appeared first on Syntactics Inc..

You’ll need to specifically tailor each marketing campaign for a target audience’s niche segments and carefully select content, photos, and even placements focused on that demographic.

In this article, we listed our top seven tips for Facebook advertisers who wish to attract effectively more online visitors to their ads.

Smart Tip # 1 – Think about color psychology before you create the ad.

If you do not use the psychological influences of various colors, you miss a critical driving force every Facebook Ad pro uses.

According to a Management Decision report, color affects 90% of all the snap decisions we make. Here are some suggestions:

• Older adults are blue, purple, and green; yellow, red, and orange are more for the younger demographic. When we grow up, our tastes appear to be darker and cooler than the exiting longwave colors.
• Demographics is not the only basis but also appropriateness and how the colors fit your ad. Most of our biases in marketing towards appreciating other colors are linked to how well the color is in line with the product.

As an example, HelpScout emphasized in their article and gave suggestions on what color to use for a particular emotion or mood. In the tech companies sector, the same form of color psychology is noticeable. Apple, for example, is neutral, calm, and receptive to design.

Source: www.helpscout.com

Smart Tip #2 – Hit the Emotional and Logical Feels

Everybody thinks we are beings who behave reasonably, but that’s only partially true. When it comes to buying stuff, our emotional side has plenty to say, although our logic can hold us back. In short, appealing to our audience using marketing ads may help you appeal to a consumer’s emotional and logical aspects.

With this, feature something that describes the distinctive characteristics of a product or service. Afterward, include why such features are so useful to the audience.

Smart Tip #3 – Pick Images That Get The Attention

Well, if you want your ads to be clicked on, you need to capture the user’s attention so that they can look at your content. It all comes down to the image of your ad. The right picture makes a huge difference.

Carefully find an image that stands out from the rest. You may also use contrasting colors to help separate the focus of the picture by adding visual contrast. You can do so without appearing spammy and ensuring that anything your viewers see correlates instantly with the setting. Also, ensure that the photo is not too crowded and uninteresting so that people don’t lose their attention quickly.

Smart Tip #4 – Show Reputation and Credibility

Here, trust and credibility are essential. Without these two, you will never convince the user to purchase your product, to give out their mobile or email address, or even establish a relationship.

While this is supposed to be common sense, we see ads all the time that don’t seem credible and jump right away, turn us off as spammy, and uninteresting. So when wearing the shoes of an advertiser, it should be of top priority to establish your credibility.

This tip is the most challenging one compared to the rest, as it may require time and consistency to develop. With this, our suggestion is to turn to Facebook paid marketing experts to run your credibility campaigns to make long term objectives.

Smart Tip #5 – Use the Power of Freebies and Discounts

You can’t deny it. People are always drawn to freebies and discounts. It’s one of those trigger words that makes everything around it more attractive — free coffee, 75% travel discount, free food, 50% off on select items — you name it.

It can be an incredibly useful technique when used in advertising. It sets you apart from the majority of ads on Facebook — which ask people to pay money for products.

However, capitalizing on free psychology doesn’t mean you have to give away your product for free. You could make it part of a special offer that comes with the purchase of your product.

Also, freely providing useful information is the easiest and most effective way to spread your content and show people that you are a reliable source of information.

Smart Tip #6 – Make The Message Urgent

We hate nothing more than losing a chance because we were just a little late. It’s the principle of aversion to loss: If we miss something, we feel bad. Losing is much worse. We will not allow it to slip through our fingertips when we see an urgent opportunity arise.

Inducing scarcity and urgency could mean capturing the attention of your audience with an eye-catching deal that they just can’t get through. Use words like Limited time Only!, Rush!, or Hurry! can excitement and gravity.

Smart Tip #7 – Offer Value To Your Audience

If you plan your advertisements to illustrate and provide awareness not only to your bid but of your brand or product instantly, you will be well-known. The value may justify why users should buy, after all, and sometimes relates to the above-mentioned logical reasons. Also, it should show they should choose your products over your competitors and why they need them.

Step Up Your Facebook Ad Marketing Efforts

To sum up, regardless of what options Facebook marketing strategies you choose, always monitor and review the data and feedback you can gather. Digital advertising, as it continues to evolve, entails experimentation, so don’t give up if you’re not going to be successful first.

The post Smart Tips for Facebook Ads: The Top Seven appeared first on Syntactics Inc..

The pandemic already has an economic impact. Enterprises had to respond. It’s no bad thing yet. Tom Chapman, angel investor, and fashion entrepreneur said: “Business must remain agile, regardless of its sizes. They will question preconceived operating methods.

So if your company shows remote work capability right now, you’re going to cross the bridge over troubled waters. While many businesses would have trouble during the COVID-19 outbreak, big companies such as Google and Amazon, following their work-from-home model, would not be hit hardest.

However, smaller firms and those that were not ready will be affected. While the government has already announced support steps, each company must still carry itself. For every industry, it is vital to be able to respond quickly towards business continuity.

Hire-Virtual-Assistant Model Proves

As more people chose to separate themselves and do social distancing, business people have to manage employees from home, which may be different and not always a comfortable experience. The traditional approach of handling people in the same location will never be the same as following a remote work model for the following reasons:

1. Their homes may not be suitable and conducive to work.
2. Unpreparedness to establish and follow a work-from-home model.
3. Trust and productivity issues.

Source: Freepik

On the contrary, this is where VAs, especially those in the Philippines, shine the most. These people are experts in a remote work setup. All virtual assistants are very independent and can work from home anytime with their equipment ready. This setup could help organizations because people have to work around coronavirus.

Things To Keep In Mind 

Have the company ready to communicate online.

Ensure the right remote operation procedure is in place. Online task planning, calling, scheduling, and texting, and other forms of communication or monitoring will all play a significant role over the next few months.

There is a chance of communication breaking down and staff losing vital details if the team is no longer in one place. When your team works from home, clear expectations are also extremely necessary. It’s a good idea to know what you want and give it a deadline for what you want.

Hire a virtual assistant or more. 

Not all will be able to work from home due to several factors, and not everyone is excited to bring the work home. To keep the operations going, it’s necessary to take steps and ensure business continuity by securing the workforce that can perform with your new model. Company-approved collaboration tools allow them to stay on track and save you time to lead the company forward and away from micro-management.

Choose the technology to help you collaborate. 

Google documents are one of those innovative solutions that have been around but are still a perfect way to create a cohesive piece of work for colleagues. There are so many online tools and applications that have recently launched to help companies deal with the coronavirus and remote work.

Build trust and wellbeing with online workers. 

The wellbeing of your employees and virtual assistants is a further underestimated advantage of remote work. If your employees work from home, there are areas of quality of life improvements.

Hence, you will be happy in your position when you trust them to do business without looking over the shoulder. As a company owner, this helps you. You will leave the workplace and feel relaxed, realizing that the employees care for their jobs and are just as productive at home.

Floating Above the Pandemic

Lastly, it is necessary to note the good given all the doom and gloom surrounding the virus. Your organization would continually profit from responding to the unexpected. Hiring virtual assistants in the Philippines might even dramatically boost your productivity. The employees will come from the other side with more know-how and more trust between the workers and the employer.

Besides, who knows, maybe more of us will continue to operate from home when coronavirus is entirely under control. Today’s innovative technology is sufficient to make this setup possible.

The post Hire A Virtual Assistant: Persevere Amidst Coronavirus appeared first on Syntactics Inc..

Source: https://www.ft.com/

As such, four management phases will happen in the inevitable sequence to a company when extreme conditions force employees to work from home:

Phase #1 (1 month): What do we do now?

1) Management and the ICT department need to immediately meet together and collaborate quickly. They must understand better what the current remote working paradigm in place in their organization can do and cannot.

2) Determine how much of the workforce can work from home and establish policies on how to make the whole work-from-home or outsourcing model work.

Phase #2 (2-4 months): Let’s try and assess if this works.

Once the remote workers have the technology and equipment to perform their tasks, management must now face the challenge. The question remains: How do we fine-tune the performance of these remote workers?

Using company-approved collaboration tools would need to be implemented professionally. Examples are video conferences or team calls in the morning, reporting and spot checks, etc.

The mindset is now different. It is not a “We can use this technology” but a “to keep the company running and avoid losing our jobs.” Due to COVID-19, infrastructure companies like Google have stepped up to offer ways to make their tools even more useful for teams following the outsourcing model.

Phase #3 (4-6 months): Well, this looks promising.

Once the whole COVID-19 pandemic has passed, everyone is ready to work at the office again. Management can see now that remote work (outsourcing model) is possible. Within a few weeks and months, the company has established policies and procedures that are currently in place. Collaboration tools are tested to be very useful, and the remote work model does not hinder the performance of the staff.

With business processes in place and the bumps in adoption ironed out, there will be an opportunity for management. Perhaps several employees might request to do work-from-home instead of the regular setup.

Phase #4 (Beyond six months): I’m sure we can adopt this.

When the top-level management realizes that remote work can indeed be a viable model, here are some questions they may raise:

1) Why should we pay for all that office space and other operating expenses if we have an option to cut them?

2) Do we still need to hire people locally to do the work, or can the jobs be outsourced?

3) If the outsourcing model is again like doing remote work for our existing employees, what are the pros and cons?

4) Other countries like the Philippines offer lower labor costs compared to locally-hired people. Should we start outsourcing?

Outsourcing as a solution and a future model

To conclude, the outcome of all these scenarios is that all psychological, technical, business processes and even HR barriers that hinder the remote work model will be broken. In the longer term, several businesses will grab this opportunity to adopt an outsourcing model especially in the tech industry which will mostly hire dedicated web development teams with countries like the Philippines to cope up with financial burdens and business continuity. Hence, there will be a need for cost-cutting responses to this pressure, and outsourcing to the Philippines can be the best option for your business. This scenario is just one of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and there will be many others.

The post Outsourcing Model: A Business Solution To COVID-19 appeared first on Syntactics Inc..

Nonetheless, after hitting the number one ranking at search engines, most companies sometimes question if doing the little things in local SEO is still relevant in their internal activities. Assuming your website is completely optimized and competitive, here’s what’s at stake once you quit SEO:

You’ll notice in the first few weeks or months that your ranking remains relatively constant. Your traffic will probably stay the same. However, this pattern won’t stay long.

Why businesses have the urge to stop

The root of this fear in doing SEO is the thought that businesses might just be wasting their time and monetary investment on it.

You need to spend money at the start of every campaign with the hope of bringing more traffic and leads. But with little results with the first few months, companies get worried that they might not be able to justify the investment if they continue to run the SEO campaign.

Be reminded of the importance of SEO and its benefits.

Let’s go back and understand why we started doing the SEO campaign in the first place:

1. Prospect clients are actively searching for the services that you offer.
2. They want to find the right company to provide the services.
3. These prospect clients are intentional and most likely capable of paying for such services.
4. Once at the top ranking list, your company has the opportunity to bring in leads and sales for the long term as prospect clients easily find you when they search.

However, stopping SEO will only incur the following changes:

• You cease building trust and reputation: Businesses in competitive markets that show little or no digital confidence in the global and local markets mostly end up losing significant opportunities and potential profits.
• You quit improving your website: When you continually optimize and create targeted content for your site, web crawlers re-investigate your site. This activity, in turn, leads you to re-index, evaluate and identify your website for optimal search engine results. If you stop performing these tasks, the improvements end.
• The competition never stops:  Just because you decide to quit doesn’t mean your competitors will follow the same. Eventually, your organic position and search engine ranking will be taken over by other companies from page three or four, who continue to work hard and invest.

What business owners must realize about SEO

Depending on the authority of the website, website age, and the strategies deployed, SEO starts to kick in between 3 and 9 months. And because of several factors, the results may vary.

Case in point, check out Trustmary.com’s experience to never stop SEO activities. After five months of running an SEO campaign, there was a 732% growth in the number of unique visitors. Admittedly, the executives consider the results to “provide an excellent base from which to continue, towards hundreds of thousands of visitors.”

Source: trustmary.com

Renew confidence in your SEO campaigns

First, your company is working with experienced SEO experts. These are people who:

• Live, breathe and work SEO.
• Consistently raise their expertise to be on top of the latest SEO trends. They understand the consequences imposed by Google, what strategies work, and what don’t. Experience leads them to gain positive results on different clients.

Second, the SEO return of investment (ROI) is very high, and the potential benefits to your business are challenging to ignore.

Final thought: Persevere

In conclusion, assuming this is your first SEO campaign, and you’re probably worried that you haven’t seen any significant results, this is entirely normal and common when starting.

More or less, you’ll start to notice results in rankings usually at the 5th month, so it’s best to stay firm with the schedule and never stop the SEO activities. With that, here are our suggestions:

1. Trust in yourself and your SEO provider in the Philippines; and
2. Stick to the long-term plan.

Besides, it’s only a matter of time before you reach your rankings if they do it correctly. After that, your company will be reaping its benefits for many months and years.

The post Never Stop SEO, Else These Will Happen appeared first on Syntactics Inc..

PxTrack.tech provides you with a convenient, easy-to-use, and centralized system. With access to the cloud, you’ll be able to access it anytime, anywhere. Here’s how to set it up on your device:

Initial Set Up For Your PxTrack Patient Tracking System 

Before everything else, enter your username and password to log into your account. 

Step 1: Setting Up The Doctor’s Information

Take note that this is a crucial part of the initial set up stage. In short, you will be using this to generate your printouts.

• At the left-hand side of your screen, go to the Admin menu and click on the Doctor button.
• Fill up all the fields that require your details.
• Click Save.

Next, proceed to this next step in the setup process:

Step 2: Setting Up The Clinic’s Information

• At the left-hand side of your screen, go to the Admin menu and click on the Clinic button. Take note that only a maximum of 4 clinics can be displayed on your print-out headers (e.g. Medical Certificate, Consultation form, Prescription and etc.).
• In the same way that you filled in the fields in Step 1, input your Clinic Code. 
• Check the “Use this Clinic on the Headers” box if you choose to display that specific clinic info on your print-out headers.
• Continue filling up all the remaining details. 
• Finally, click Save.

You’ve reached the end of PxTrack’s Initial Set Up. You may now proceed to use the software. Meanwhile, we understand that reading a set of instructions may not be the same as seeing it done step by step. Watch the video down below for a visual guide. 

Stay tuned for a blog post on how you can track your patients’ records!

The post Setting Up Your PxTrack Patient Tracking System appeared first on Syntactics Inc..

In the retail business, 43% of retailers ranked inventory management as their #1 biggest day-to-day challenge. Additionally, 43% of small businesses still do not track their inventory and continue to use a manual process. As tight competition seeps in, those who have the goods have the advantage.

The need to ensure stock availability

Source

Many businesses fear stockouts. 21% of buyers shift to another store to buy their favorite brand if it’s out of stock in the previous store.

Since businesses face the risk of stockouts, damaged reputation, and reduced profits anytime, preparations should take place as soon as possible. To meet demand, some companies will mostly resort to storing high quantities of each stock holding unit (SKU).

However, this decision may not be a good idea as it will negatively impact your stock turnover rate. There are other ways to effectively manage your stock availability and handle well this issue without risking company resources.

Strategies to cope up with the demands.

Use a modern inventory system and equipment to avoid inaccurate data.

Implementing a cloud-based inventory system should be the first step to avoid discrepancies and allow transparency. It is not only time-consuming to keep track of items using pen and paper, but it can also lead to errors.

Hence, it’s most beneficial to use a POS or inventory system that changes inventory stock levels automatically as you push up your sales, so you don’t have to worry about updating your database manually.

Another recommendation is that you can make use of RFID technology. It enables merchants to monitor and search for items using a handheld scanner. Using RFID makes monitoring faster and easier for inventory managers to track down the items and their stock availability status.

Manually checking items takes too much time and costly if it allows errors to happen. Also, these strategies are useful if you have multiple locations as they will enable you to manage various warehouses from a single primary location.

Regularly perform physical stock availability checks. 

If you don’t track them and update them, you can’t have precise numbers. While modern equipment and inventory systems can effectively monitor your stocks, you still need to control the number and quality of the actual items you have.

This is when a physical inventory check needs to happen. Set scheduled time to print the current inventory. Afterward, compare that what is on paper coincides with what is in your warehouse.

Implement demand forecasting

This strategy involves anticipating demand, as the term indicates so that you can determine what products you want and when.

By using your judgment and stock factoring, past sales, and other indicators such as seasonality, economic conditions, etc., you can try to predict the demand on your own. Analyzing these statistics will give you an insight into how the target market would receive the goods on a particular timeline. It also gives you an insight on when you should make sure your stock availability is just right.

There are also software solutions online that can aid inventory managers analyze and create a demand forecast.

Pay attention to consumer trends

Yes, there is considerable analytical data based on the demand forecast. However, consumer trends in your market still are unpredictable. Are there new products to which people gravitate? Are there styles that make a return?

Take note carefully, act immediately, and prepare to meet the demand with your corresponding stock availability before competition arises.

Equip Your People

Invest in your employees’ better training. Make sure they don’t just know how to operate the entire flow but execute it with efficiency. If possible, have the training done by a reseller, technology partner, or consultant to ensure proper and appropriate training.

However, it’s not just about training your employees to be efficient workers. There are times when the management must spend to boost their morale. Happier employees are self-motivated and work smarter to produce better results. Therefore, companies should continue to find ways to empower them to meet demands and ensure stock availability.

Streamline Processes

Processes drive the entire flow altogether. With that, you need to create a critical process flow that details out the supply chain and assign key people to monitor every step.

Who is responsible for the items received? Who should line the shelves? At what stage, and who is responsible for reorganizing products?

Have it all on record. It makes both you and your co-workers understand and execute the flow properly.

Communicate well or build great relationships with your suppliers

Failure to deal effectively with or interact with suppliers can result in missed or delayed orders, which may lead to out-of-stock items in your inventory.

To avoid this, work well on your communication, to begin with. Get all the orders and deadlines ready, then make sure everyone is on the same page. Also, you should be prompt and let your suppliers know as soon as possible about any issues you encounter so they can react quickly.

For example, if an item sells faster than expected, do not wait until the inventory is low before any action is taken to restock. Call your suppliers and schedule your next order. The availability of your stocks matters.

Consider sharing data and predictions with your suppliers as well, so you can collaborate on both consumer ordering and timing.

Management is the key.

Overall, effective inventory management and stock availability is the core element of a retailer’s success. When you streamline the process and organize inventory accurately, the rest of your supply-chain activities will fall into place. Without proper management, you welcome a series of unfortunate events such as shipping issues, out-of-stocks, overstocks, etc.

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When you intend to cope up with increased orders and take advantage of higher demand, here are a few practices to manage demand and get ready ahead before it happens:

Best practices to manage product demand

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Anticipate demand spikes anytime. 

If you want increased sales and higher volumes of visitors, you need to identify where future demand peaks will occur.

That means proper analysis and communication. You will have to be able to monitor demand and predict how the demand will change over time for your goods.

Refer to past sales data. 

Next, use your previous sales figures to identify activity peaks in the past. The statistics will speak volumes of information that you can use as a reference for your forecasting. Also, you can identify patterns in your sales data and identify periods.

You can, for example, select sales spikes for events like Thanksgiving Day or Christmas and use them for next year’s event to measure sales volumes. Seasonal trends such as these also show which your stocks are mostly under pressure.

Pay attention to industry trends. 

In comparison to your statistics, market information and patterns are also worth looking at. These can include general trends in sales as well as media attention and product releases. Monitoring reports for media attention in the industry is an excellent way to predict trends. An example of these would be product attention seen on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Know your manufacturing and product lead times.  

Your inventory management will be affected by lead times. The lead time is the time it takes for a raw material or product to begin and complete an entire production process. It includes the starting location of the order, the purchase of materials from suppliers, the production, and the final product shipment.

With this, long lead times call for advanced purchasing of raw materials on customer demanded products, while short lead times can be managed efficiently. Multiple suppliers are necessary when dealing with long lead times when demands climb fast.

Overall, the objective should be to streamline the processes and reduce the lead time for better inventory control of all your products.

Streamline order fulfillment.  

An inventory management software can help manage the operations, including tracking, order management, and smart, more quick restocking of your products on demand. The visibility of the entire supply chain will streamline any possible challenging aspects of your management controls.

In addition to useful software management tools, improve picking, packing, and shipping methods on the ground. Automation can also be a key to surpassing delivery targets or limits.

Wisely consider automation.  

Speaking of automation, carefully find the potential bottlenecks of the entire operations for analysis and improvement. Adding extra employees, overtime, or even extra shifts to handle demand peaks is not practical or productive. When seasonal demands like Christmas come along, you need to be able to handle the orders efficiently.

Besides, automation should provide the opportunity to produce more numbers for you to deliver even to additional clients. Take a look at how Amazon has embraced automating their boxing process.

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Improve demand forecasting. 

Forecasting is complicated since you need to consider so many factors. However, you can start by monitoring customer order data (tail end of the supply chain) and manufacturers’ order history (for your inventory buffers). You can use those as a basis for creating short-term forecasts.

Consider also macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product, overall local stock market, and more. You can link their movements to any change in end-customer demand. Natural occurrences, weather conditions, and calamities can also affect the sales of a product.

Lastly, always look out for what your competition does, their issues or their offers, and take advantage of every situation to get leverage.

Staffing matters.

Your product is an output of several people working together to piece all raw materials or components into its final form. Not everything is automated, and your staff handles almost all aspects of the production.

If they underperform, the production drags, and the company loses the capacity to deliver required targets on time. A failure to meet the expected outcome results in customer dissatisfaction and opportunity loss for profitability.

Final Advice: Communicate with the management, marketing, inventory teams

To conclude, thorough preparation is the key to manage product demand spikes. Make careful but quick steps to track and manage every aspect of your plan if you are unable to map out the surges.

The goal is to have enough stock available to meet demand but not be left with a post-surge stock surplus that you cannot sell anymore. Follow each recommendation above and schedule implementation at the proper time. Indeed, timing is everything.

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Before we talk about the supply chain complexity, let’s break it down first. The supply chain is a network of organizations, people, operations, information, and resources involved in moving a product or service from manufacturer to customer in business and finance. Supply chain activity consists in transforming resources, raw materials, and components into a finished product delivered to the end customer. 

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Check out the supply chain diagram above. The black arrow represents the materials and information flow, while the gray arrow shows the flow of information and backhauls. Its major elements are (a) the initial supplier (seller or factory), (b) the supplier, (c) manufacturer (where production happens), (d) the customer (retailer), and (e) the end customer.  With this flow, the complexity starts to happen.

Where is the complexity in the supply chain?

The scope of the supply chain grew as manufacturers, suppliers, transport modes, and geographic areas expanded. With that, let’s understand first the market constraints that impact the chain:

• The main concern is the cost reduction, which is a requirement as they are continually being called upon to; 
• Meet global competition. Considering the Internet and technology nowadays, manufacturers can directly contact the distributors or suppliers with ease.
• Next, we have to face the challenges of a competitive market environment such as adapting to changing customer expectations at performance; and 
• Improving their ability to reduce product delivery times.

Because of these recent market constraints, the supply chain must change from cost-oriented into demand and value-oriented objectives. The new objective priorities based on the Geodis study are now:

#1 Ensure OTIF (On-Time, In-Full) deliveries.  

#2 Improve product availability or delivery.

#3 Improve end-to-end Supply Chain visibility. 

#4 Optimize inventory costs. 

#5 Reduce transport and warehousing costs.

However, 70% of the firms in that study reported that their supply chain is very or extremely complex. In other words, the complexity occurs on so many levels, and too many factors have to be considered. Here are some of those that contribute:

• Too many supply chain decision-makers within companies’ organization.
• The addition of more inbound and outbound partners into the overall process.
• Decentralized organizations: Companies broken down into regional and local business units make it even challenging to monitor and manage data.
• Multiplication of transportation and operational flows, especially in those decentralized units.
• Excessive outsourcing to multiple players, joining an increasing trend
• Same day delivery demands, etc.

How to ride on the existing supply chain complexity

There is no denying that the chain visibility remains uncertain and is still variable, mainly focused on direct partnerships. Certainly, the ambition is to have improved end-to-end visibility to address complexity which should lead to:

• Collaborating closely with partners and reducing disputes
• Better risk anticipation using data analysis
• Increased overall supply chain flexibility
• An extended degree of control over processes
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Higher profitability 

Top areas of improvement in visibility are before and after the production stage, and the complete lifecycle of the product. The perspective allows the supply chain to streamline the entire process and simplify operational activities to achieve high efficiency.

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Moreover, there is also a need to embrace new skills and technologies to manage data in different ways and avoid supply chain complexity.  Data Analysis and Internet of Things (IoT) head the list. They allow the supply chain to be drawn through many features, including real-time flow management, track & trace, and financial control. Also, a reliable software management tool or inventory management system must be used to generate a relevant analysis of the entire flow effectively.

To support their reliable and robust processes, Cloud Computing and Info security must be considered also as key technologies. With the scope of supply chain activity becoming wider and more strategic, the nature of the information to be managed is becoming more sensitive indeed.

It’s about accepting the supply chain’s uncertainty. 

In conclusion, trade flows have grown significantly amid globalization and rapid digitalization. The supply chain has hit unprecedented levels both in size and scope.

Now almost unanimously recognized as a source of competitive advantage for companies to grow, supply chain management at a strategic level has been placed by the best global players.

Finally, the supply chain complexity remains a significant challenge for all companies, especially as customer expectations and business growth goals rise. The response is how complexity can be overcome effectively.

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