Before getting to how young entrepreneurs can leverage their business using e-commerce solutions, let us first ponder on why they need to do so. To get to that, we need to first answer one basic question one needs to answer is ‘why young entrepreneurs fail?’
Knowledge, expertise and experience in their specific domain is the strength of young entrepreneurs and they start their business ventures from a basic idea. They are full of energy and dedication towards the project but soon realize that ideas and knowledge of a specific domain are not the only ingredients that make a business successful. It needs more spice to keep the business flourishing. A key part of the business is multi tasking and managing multiple departments efficiently with limited or minimum resources available to them.
Optimum utilisation of the resources is a must while having limited resources. With limited budget constraints, time constraints, resource constraints and manpower they eventually get lost in the system and the focus shifts from building the core strengths of the business. One of the most common reason for start ups to fail is because it’s started by a sole founder.
Another dilemma they face is choosing between either the skilled human resources that might be expensive for a start up to afford or go for less comparatively lower skilled human resources which will be cost effective for the business but the quality of productivity might be compromised. The compromise on the quality productivity can also be taken care of by proper training and development but this will also incur a certain cost to the company. Training and development of the required skills in the start up company is a big factor for the young entrepreneur. Another option that they have is to outsource the non-core parts e.g. transportation, logistics, administration, Human resource, Finance, etc to specialized teams and let the business focus on its core competencies and developing them further. Nothing comes free of cost therefore, this will also cost the company but not as much as hiring, training and developing employees in their own company.
According to a study by the National Knowledge India, Government of India, 63% of entrepreneurs interviewed were self-financed, nearly one in every two entrepreneurs considered skill shortage in recruitment to be a problem of average importance, while nearly one in every three considered it ‘somewhat difficult’ or ‘very difficult’ to find candidates with the right skills. More than a third of the entrepreneurs faced problems in accessing as well as retaining employees generally.Finances and resources are always a major concern for young entrepreneurs and deploying funds for getting the right skills to the company is an additional burden on the newly started enterprises.
Today’s generation of young entrepreneurs are looking for easy solutions. And the most efficient and cost effective they find for overcoming these difficulties faced by entrepreneurs is put your business online. Young entrepreneurs are technology savvy, in fact most of them leverage technology in order to give them a head start in the industry. Young blood knows the worth of going online. One should put their business online as it gives the customers 24 hour availability, better customer support is provided, low costs of setting up a website, it establishes a presence in the industry and it also increases the general public interest. Young Entrepreneurs understand the importance of putting their products and services online in order to reach out to a wider global audience without investing heavily in the physical infrastructure required to go the traditional way. It also enables them to handle their business remotely.
Plus to this the ecommerce solutions are providing a platform for these young enterprises to portray themselves for their potential customers. These startups now have many options to exhibit their products/ services through online ecommerce solutions which offer them various features to customise the presentation of their online stores. Payment gateways and other integrated features help them easy connection from various social sites where they promote their online businesses.
Another way out is to use SAAS(Software as a Service). SAAS (Software As A Service) also known as “On-Demand Software” is a software delivery model where applications are hosted by a vendor or a service provider and made available to the customers over a network, usually using the internet. In simpler words it is a storage model where a business or organization rents or leases storage space to a third-party provider. SAAS is becoming an increasingly prevalent delivery model as technologies that support web services and service-oriented architecture mature and new developmental approached become popular. SAAS has now become a common delivery model for many business applications including office and messaging. Software as a service allows organizations to access business functionality at a cost comparatively lower than buying a licensed application. Also, because the software is hosted remotely, users are able to save the additional hardware costs associated.
Benefits of SAAS model include easier administration, automatic updates and patch management, compatibility: all users will have the same version of the software, easier collaboration and global accessibility.
The reasons mentioned above are the reason why SAAS (Software As A Service) model is growing rapid acceptance among young entrepreneurs. Giant companies in the industry like Microsoft and Adobe have acknowledged the fact and are thus providing products aligned under the SAAS model.
Correct application of these interesting ecommerce solutions are sure shot hit among the young entrepreneurs who envision the growth of their start ups using tech savvy alternatives. These easy solutions will help them optimize the utilization of resources. Those adapting new ways for widening there business are foraying into the brighter future.
By Rajiv Kumar, CEO and Founder at StoreHippo.com
