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Question answered in Quora - How has doing business changed from the 80's to now?


Big time, a paradigm shift has happened.

1 - Internet & Mobile tech has taken over everything. Whatever business you are in, if you are not online, you are losing 50% of sales right away to begin with

2 - Today's business is not about selling, it is about adding value, solving people's problems, back in the 80s customers heard about the products in the store for the very first time, but now customers have done enough research, analysis, even window shopped, gotten their hands on & even tested and clearly know which product is the best and how does it work and to what degree it meets their requirements by the time they get their hands on the product at the store, so your product really needs to add value in a significant way and that is only possible by clearly knowing what your target market is and how you are helping them solve their problem

3 - And this young millennial market are so technology savvy, if you are not extending your product in the form of an app or through some online medium in some fashion it is not going to engage them very well

4 - Globalization - wherever you go you are going to engage with people from other countries and other cultures that are helping you with services or manufacturing or could be your potential customers - so incorporate an aspect of multi culturalism in your corporate structure. Soon no company will have their own office space, it will be people from all over the world working for different companies sitting from their home offices and collaborating through monitors and video conferences via high bandwidth internet connections

5 - Everything has accelerated, the speed of messaging, the speed of manufacturing, the speed of distribution, the speed of delivery, the speed of everything

These are some very very high level points to think about. Having said the basics are still the same, business is done through trust, winning the confidence of your customer, through relationships etc. The delivery channels and the pace has changed quite a bit.

Also check out my book Puga Sankara's Supply Chain Blog - that is a must read before spending Hundreds & Thousands of $$$ on your MBA or Masters Degree to get the best ROI or before starting your Entrepreneurial journey.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Puga Sankara is the co-founder of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology consisting of Smart Gladiator Wearable Scanguns, Tablets, Mobile Tech & Apps for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. So far, Smart Gladiator Wearables have been used to ship, receive, and scan more than 100 million boxes. Users love them for the lightweight, easy-to-use soft overlay keyboard, texting&video chatting ability, data collection ability etc. Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 17 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at puga@smartgladiator.com or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com

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