Mumbai, 14 November 2016 – As India forges ahead to make global heads turn and notice her on all fronts, it is time the 2 tier and 3 tier cities fasten their seat belts too to get swept away by the strong winds of progress and prosperity. To keep with the fast pace and get shoulder to shoulder with their bigger and boisterous cousins from the metro cities, it is crucial that the small entrepreneurs from these cities adopt systematic growth plan methods early on.
The SMEs in these cities do not have the liberty to hire highly qualified staff and systems, due to not only financial constraints in most cases, but also because of a dearth of availability of such resources in the 2 and 3 tier cities. There are barely any growth opportunities outlined in the traditionally run organizations here and the oldest and most loyal person tends to become a ‘manager’ who is in charge of managing every possible aspect in the business. However, to keep up with the times and competition, it is imperative for the SMEs here to still get optimum and efficient output from their limited resources. The challenge is how?
Propel, a methodology conceptualized and owned by Effex Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is designed to address this challenge. Propel, with its structured approach begins by helping entrepreneurs come up with a growth plan, which is well tested for its feasibility. The entire growth plan is made by facilitating and brainstorming with the entrepreneur in a manner that they are able to think through several crucial aspects that would make the business successful. In the case of SMEs in a 2 tier and 3 tier city, aspects of establishing a specific customer segment, the offer to those segments, the approach etc. are vital influencing factors to their growth.
Once the growth plan is ready, processes are built across all functions of the business to ensure smooth flow of work. This is done after careful considerations of all possible bottlenecks and limitations. Propel as a method suggests measurement of all key activities. Hence deriving measures for all tasks in the organization is the next step. Here is where the entrepreneur in the small city starts enjoying the benefits of optimum utilization of their resources as people start getting ‘performance managed’. People grow only if deliverables are proven in an objective manner rather than just by tenure or by the common “I feel’ syndrome.
The intricately thought through method of Propel, is not a one-time solution. It helps entrepreneurs derive solutions to business problems on their own and in an ongoing manner. Hardik Harsora, Co- founder of Effex Business Solutions, a management consulting company, said “To understand and manage cross functional, interconnected aspects of business, managers must see business as an amalgamation of multiple processes, all talking to each other and then improve the processes which they manage with the intention to improve the communication and flow of information with other processes they talk to. Entrepreneurs need to understand process excellence to be able to drive this well. There are several process excellence systems that one can employ. We have designed a process excellence system that we call ‘Propel’ which employs logic and is suitable for the Indian SME environment.”
