Day 06: Offline business processes
By now, you will have understood how you will build your business online. You are almost now ready to monetize your passion.
The online business model creates a marketing and management system for your business. It makes you ready to start marketing and selling your products or services.
The offline business model takes care of the product or service delivery. Digital products are mostly automated into the online model making the whole business automated. If your products are digital, then your whole business can be automated online. However, for physical products, you need an offline system of delivery. The offline business process includes:
- Getting the product or service from the supplier
- Storing and handling the product or service.
- Delivering the product or service to the customer
There are several points that you need to note when developing your offline business model and processes.
- Identify an accessible supplier of your products. The supplier should be from your locality or near the market
- The supplier should have enough stock of products. It’s frustrating when a customer orders a product and you find that it is out of stock. Also keep on updating your website to reflect what is available.
- Get a supplier who is prompt. The faster you get the product the better.
- Ensure that the cost of transport from the supplier to your store and further to the customer is minimal.
- You can order a product beforehand but it’s always cheaper to collect it the day you are delivering to the customer so that you can save on storage costs and reduce the risk associated with handling.
- Have somebody ready to deliver the product or service. Ensure that she deliver it with ultimate professionalism.
- Have an agreement with your supplier that you can always return or replace your products. For instance a customer might return a shoe because it’s not the right size. This also goes for refund incase the customer need to be refunded.
- If you need to have credit facility, discuss it with your supplier on the terms of payments.
- You can also discuss on the mode of payments with your supplier. Sometime, if you are sure of payments upon delivery or you have been offered a cheque, you can write a cheque to your supplier.
- Creating a good relationship with your supplier is good for your business. It ensures that you still delivery even if you have not received the payments from your customer.
The offline business model is basically based on the operations processes. Once you get an order online, then you need to prepare and deliver it to the customer. This part you will need to do it yourself. Or hire someone to do it. It’s the human part of the business. It’s also the part that creates the greatest impact to your customers. So ensure that this part is well done.
At this stage, we are done with the business setup. You already now have an online business.