Monthly Archives: March 2011

Advocare International Business – Scam or Is It A True Business Model

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Here’s a company that focuses primarily on health care supplements. The company’s range of products includes products for weight loss, health management and professional supplements amongst others. Its estimated that within the US itself, people spend upwards of thirty-three billion on healthcare products. With the massive demand for these products already present, Advocare International with its product line that’s shown to work is a forerunner in the health management vertical. Since 1992, when the company began operations, Advocare International has grown in an organic manner, with a focus on building a strong distributor base as well as a spread of active consumers.

The system marketing plan used by Advocare International relies completely on direct selling through network marketing. Network marketing works around enabling individuals to make very small investments in a ‘starter’ package comprising of Advocare International products. The company provides the essential knowhow and the appropriate training towards enabling these individual distributors to reach out to people who would require the products and supply them with the products directly. Once individuals have become distributors, they get to purchase products at a discounted rate and then resell the products to earn revenue. Also, the distributors may go o to recruit and train other individuals who become distributors by investing in a ‘starter’ kit. These individuals too, begin selling the product, the income benefits of which go both to the individual making the direct sale, as well as to the distributor that introduced the distributor to the opportunity. In this manner, various levels of distributors make a residual revenue as well as avail of bonus from time to time.

This system of providing commissions to distributors at multiple levels is managed through an ingenious system that the company owns as the distributorship business plan. You may ponder the fact that if so many people are being paid off, wouldn’t the company just be better off by lowering the price of the product and retailing it directly. The answer to this would be an unequivocal – no. It has to be looked at from the point of view of the regular marketing and distribution methods.

In a traditional marketing and distribution method, a product is taken from the site of manufacture and sent through various levels of distributors and storage centers until the product reaches a retail store shelf. All this routing, storing and selling through a point of sale builds up the cost of the product. What really makes the price of a product is the advertising required to create demand for the product. You see, if people do not know of or driven in some manner with the urge to buy the product, it wouldn’t be bought off a store’s shelf. Creating an effective advertisement is a costly affair. The cost is dramatically multiplied when you look at the number of times the advertisement must be repetitively run on TV, radio and through printed media – just so that the product remains in the focus of the consumers. Now, the same money that it takes to create and maintain advertising is instead passed on to various levels of distributors, in reward for their effort to go out and sell the product directly, thus enriching the consumer that actually buys the product.

Free Beauty Salon Business Plan Tips

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Here and there on the web you will find business plan samples and templates advertised as free for your beauty salon business plan. Generally, working off of such a “free” business plan is no shortcut towards creating a successful plan and here is why:

Customization Needed

For any template or sample plan there is a need to customize the plan to your specific business. This can be a much longer process if you are starting from a lower quality template or sample plan. You are more likely to find a better quality plan by paying for it, even if it is only $50-100.

Additional Guidance

Generally, the creators of a free plan will not have an organization behind them able to give additional consulting and recommendations on how to craft your beauty salon’s plan. Getting help like this is very important for all small business owners. It can prevent you from choosing the wrong strategy or opening in a location without a large enough customer market for your salon. A business plan consultant can help answer these types of questions if you are unable to, but you cannot get that kind of help for free.

Reputation, Not Price

When choosing a sample or template plan to work off of, you should consider the reputation and credentials of the creator of the plan first, before the price that is being charged. A free plan can potentially hurt your chances of success if it shows you an incorrect business plan model. If you use a plan with basic mistakes in its format, style, or content to show funders, you will generally not get a second chance. They will not want to work with someone whose plan is not clear, concise and convincing, regardless of whether it is because of the entrepreneur’s own ideas or the business plan template they used.

Project Management Intersects With Business Analysis

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Business Analyst skills are important to have on the project team, and not a bad thing for a Project Manager to have! In either case, the business analysis function is one that needs to be managed with care and the wisdom of experience. This entails putting the business analysis function into perspective.

Consider the roles that business analysts typically play: requirements management, systems analysis, business analysis, requirements analysis, or consulting. One key concept within the framework of a project is that the business analysis process does not just happen once. It is not just executing on a task in the Work Breakdown Schedule. It is a task that takes continuous monitoring, and it starts at a high level near the beginning of the project.

Here are some key timeframes within the project lifecycle where business analysis comes to the forefront:

1. Enterprise Analysis and Making a Business Case – Each project must fit into the plans of the organization as a whole. In depth familiarity with that plan, and understanding where the subject project fits into that is a key step in building the business case. The business case must align with the strategic objectives of the organization.

2. Requirements Planning – Developing requirements is a challenge in part because of the time dimension. Requirements planning needs to describe a phased approach that forecasts and schedules how the requirements will unfold. It thus should have, as an output, a schedule for various time-based requirements gathering and documenting tasks.

3. Requirements Management – Managing requirements as they evolve is an important task. In some organizations there is a formal Configuration Management function. There are many Configuration Management business applications out there for requirements. It is important to understand the degree of complexity, the expected level of change or evolution over the course of the project, and the risks involved related to requirements change developments.

4. Eliciting Requirements – Drawing requirements out of various stakeholders is as much an art as a science. The science part provides a framework, usually in the form of ways the structure questions, common pitfalls, and how to document. However, it is an art to develop rapport with varying stakeholders and probe deeply to uncover the core needs.

5. Requirements Analysis and Models – The documentation of requirements is important to assuring that everyone is “on the same page”. Often this requires developing sophisticated architectures, drawings, mathematical models, and prototypes that consolidate requirements input and reflect back to stakeholders the proposed solution. This provides further subject matter for conversations around the continuously unfolding requirements.

6. Communicating and Implementing Requirements – With a given set of requirements, the business analysis function must assure stakeholder buy-in, but also must ensure that those who will implement the requirements are equally “plugged in”. One challenge is to ensure that the stakeholders are in clear and in agreement with what will be implemented, and the implementers are clear on what they need to do. Due to the detailed and often technical nature of the work, work packages at the implementation level are well removed from the stakeholder, so the business analyst servers to bridge that gap and “broker” that relationship.

The Project Management and Business Analysis functions do overlap, but are distinctly different. The Project Manager is concerned with the totality of the project, and is concerned mostly with ensuring progress against schedule, risk management and mitigation, and delivering of the product of the project on time, within budget, and to specified quality standards. The Business Analyst focusses on defining the product of the project and ensures it meets the targeted business needs. This job is a project lifecycle function and does not end until the stakeholders verify that the product meets their requirements. A combination of Project Management and Business Aanalysis skills is quite valuable, and only benefits the project, program, organization, and professionals in their careers.