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Ensuring your people resource is Fit for the Future.

Sat, 01 Dec 2018 17:51:52 GMT

Workforce development is a critical component of business efficiency and competitive advantage.

The strategic plan or vision of any Company or Organisation should recognise the people skills needed to achieve this and include the development pathway needed to deliver this resource within the plan.

The development pathway is probably the single most important aspect of achieving the strategic plan is having the right resources in place to achieve this – and the first place to look is to make sure you have the right people, and with the right skills.

A core element of this plan will be a good assessment of current employee resource, identify any or all skill gaps, and determine where you need to train, and where you need to recruit.

The speed of change.

A good workforce development plan also needs to incorporate change to remain up-to-date and relevant.

The use of technology, and its seemingly ever faster development and change increasingly impacts the workplace. As well as finding new ways of doing things, better global communications introduce latest ideas, tools, designs and products at a rapid rate. The implication is that in whatever field you work and operate, you could and should be using new tools to do your role.

In fact, the current rate of change is such that the likelihood is that every five years of their career a person is likely to need to retrain to ensure they remain at the top of their game. Think of it like this – if you are 30 years old now, you will need to retrain seven further times before you reach retirement!

From a business management perspective, time needs to be allocated to research and keep abreast of latest research and developments in each respective field, as well as constructing a development pathway for employees that will deliver continuous personal development, and equally ensure the right skills are available to achieve the organisations strategic objectives – a practical necessity.

Recruit or train?

Businesses need to consider the timeframe of the plan, and how quickly resource can either be trained or recruited. If the plan requires entry into a totally new area, it is likely that specific new skills will need to be brought onboard. (Consideration should also be given to potential acquisition strategy).

If existing workforce require longer term training than the plan demands, consideration should be given to utilising temporary or interim staff until such time the existing staff complete their training.

In all cases a thorough assessment of requirements, job descriptions, and performance metrics will assist delivering the best recruitment or training plan.

For consideration.

Question. When was the last time when communicating a Company / Organisation mission, vision or strategic plan, did you ask the managers and employees what skills they had and thought they would need to achieve the plan? And subsequently, did you develop a staff training and recruitment plan to meet these requirements and eliminate the skills gap?

The likelihood is that a well thought staff development and recruitment plan will also be highly motivating, as staff benefit from the investment in training and development, and ensure their skills are fit for the future. The business can achieve its aims, and the workforce is equipped to do so, increasing job stability, satisfaction and participation.

Consideration should be given to support self-learning, supporting relevant trade and professional study and certification, relevant e-learning, as well as organisation specific specialist training. And experience shows that some of the best trainers can come from within the Organisation – so investment in training personnel to become good Trainers can also pay dividends.

Cygnus Business can help you formulate your strategic plan, and work with you to provide additional resource while identifying, developing and training the right skills needed for your team to achieve.

For assistance or guidance in developing your strategic business team – please contact enquiries@Cygnusbusiness.com

www.cygnusbusiness.com

Successful business meetings in China

Sat, 17 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Essential business meeting preparation to help make your initial meeting a success.

When arranging the meeting initially, make sure agenda, (and good details about your Company), date, directions, and attendees are exchanged and confirmed. This will help ensure the right people are in attendance.

If travelling far, leave plenty of time, as this is of course a big country, and extreme weather can frequently upset otherwise excellent transport links.

Preparation and arrival

Punctuality is not just good manners – it’s an imperative. Be ready to start at least 15 minutes before scheduled time.

Business dress – smart; recommend a suit, a tie less essential (unless meeting government), smart dress etc. Be prepared to manage variable temperatures, both warm and cold.

If hosting the meeting, make sure your visitors are met on arrival (at building entrance, or reception), and escorted to the meeting room.

Make sure suitable refreshments are available, and ready to be served on arrival (tea and water).

Entry to the room and seating will typically be hierarchal, with the most senior person entering the room first, and should be sat midpoint and opposite the hosting delegation leader. Other senior people will sit next to them, and others further out. (Experience has indicated that it’s not unusual if the meeting is important for more delegates to attend than originally planned or advised – so have a few spare seats, cups etc!)

On arrival, make sure all are properly greeted (and even if working through a translator prepare a greeting in Chinese). A firm handshake is normal, sometimes accompanied by a slight bow.

Exchange business cards (with everyone), and they must be handed over individually, using two hands, the right way around. (Recommended to get business cards printed with Chinese on one side, clear title, consider including your WeChat contact details, and keep them pristine). Handle and read the cards you receive in the same way.

The meeting itself

The meeting is a key opportunity to establish good relations, for now and the future, and essential for any next stage. Objective: establish mutual long-term trust and respect. Take the time to welcome your guests, (and respond in kind if welcomed by your hosts) and use the acceptable time to establish rapport through small talk.

Suitable topics; family is very important, your travel experiences and perceptions of what you have seen is of interest, as is asking advice.

Meetings will typically start with a short speech or statement by the most senior host person, both welcoming and statement of objectives, strategy and requirement. It is necessary to respond in much the same way, so be prepared.

When speaking through a translator, try and keep sentences short, and if necessary, break down responses into bite size chunks. This is no time for being verbose!

Try and ensure the Senior person on your team clearly leads the conversation, and where colleague experts speak, make sure the conversation is handed back to the senior representative.

Always make sure you are addressing the senior person and not the translator and remain focussed as translator is speaking – an obvious courtesy.

If asking a question, address it to the senior person, even if the response is delegated to the relevant participant. And please don’t interrupt!

Be aware that a “maybe”, or “I’m not sure” or similar prevarication is indicative of a point not agreed, or that may be needed to be resolved at a later meeting – rather than challenged openly.

Equally, try and avoid direct “No” to any response – a “Please let us take this away to look into it” enables progression.

Using Presentation material.

While visual presentation can be invaluable to communicate, don’t forget the slides role is to support and enhance what you are saying. However, it is very important to make sure that the quality of the presentation is perfect, and double checked for consistency, quality and perfect language.

Chinese is a beautiful language with over 50,000 characters to carefully select and craft elegant communication, so your PowerPoint and presentation documents need to be precise and will benefit from careful checking!

(Tip – if you are presenting using a translated presentation, make sure you have the version in your language to hand, running in parallel, to assist with guiding the conversation and keeping to the plan, and prepared to answer all relevant questions).

If providing handouts, be colour conscious, and make sure there are enough copies (including a few spare).

Taking photos via mobile of slides is very common, so be comfortable with what you are displaying!

Meeting end

Finish the meeting in the same good way it started, and make sure your guests are fully escorted all the way out to their car, and or arrange for a car as necessary.

Occasionally the guest party leader may have to leave a meeting before its finished. Don’t be fazed, as the remaining team should be able to fulfil the requirements of the meeting but do make sure the leader is properly escorted wherever needed.

NB: these tips and guidance are written based on direct experience of working with and for Chinese businesses in China and hope they can be of help to you.

If you are looking to do business in China and would like assistance or guidance in developing your business (sourcing, selling or advising) – please contact enquiries@Cygnusbusiness.com

www.cygnusbusiness.com

Can AI even out extreme trading peaks?

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Alibaba technology handled £24Bn+ in one single day

The recent Singles Day in China has set yet another record for Alibaba, who reported a gross sales value of ¥213.5 Billion Yuan (£24.3 Billion) passing through its portals.

Although sales growth rate was reported as having declined (down from 36% in 2017 to “just” 27% in 2018), this still represents a massive volume uplift in excess of ¥45.3 Billion Yuan (£5.1 Billion).

Originally set up in 1999 as a B2B portal providing direct access between Chinese manufacturing and overseas customers, the business expanded in 2003 to include the C2C marketplace Taobao, and in 2008 the B2C online retail TMall. In March 2018 the group had a reported annual turnover of 250 Billion Yuan (£28.4 Billion).

For Alibaba, who are currently estimated to have over 55% of the Chinese market, (eMarketer) the step changes in value are immense, even within an economy with GDP that continues to grow in excess of 6.5% in 2018.

With the growth in value there is of course a directly representative growth in volume of transactions, throughout the whole of the supply-chain, which impacts on every aspect of the business.

The resilience of the technology, and the capacity needed to handle such massive volumes is quite simply enormous, and again this demonstrates the integral strength that Alibaba and other e-commerce-based businesses in China are building into their systems.

With Supply Chains becoming ever more integrated, the transaction data volume needs to be handled through every stage of the process, with demands made from manufacturing right through to inventory, payment processing and logistics, and its critical that each element of the process can cope with and handle these same volumes.

For businesses developing new e-commerce solutions and tools to assist their business growth there is a certain attraction in partnering with Alibaba and its own technology providers, due to both the ongoing continuing investment and volume capacity capability, but also because of the growing investment in AI and every aspect of the supply-chain expertise. Large product ranges, multiple vendors and fast changing demand patterns require maximum efficiency throughout every aspect of the supply-chain and enabling vendors to have good visibility of demand significantly contributes to better fulfilment.

Increasing use of AI to provide live-time focussed information enables sellers to manipulate product offering and price driven by demand, availability and competition, all of which adds to the ability to further influence marketing decisions and consumer spend, and feed demand data back into the supply chain.

Future trend?

Although the technology is proven capable of handling current and future transactional volume growth, and best in class performance, there are aspects of the Supply Chain, delivery logistics and manufacturing that are suffering from this spectacular sales volume peak.

Delivery centres and delivery vehicles are literally buried under the volume of orders requiring fulfilment, and for most of November all aspects of these operations are under severe strain. For any organisation, having to handle volume fluctuations that can often be as much as 10 times the annual average daily rate is a real challenge.

Perhaps in future the better use and application of AI in this arena will be used to spread out the consumer spend over a much wider period, creating demand at multiple frequent events throughout the year, and the future success of e-commerce will be judged on using this advanced technology being able to achieve similar overall levels of business growth that are profitable, sustainable and manageable, rather than on a single day.

China is committed to developing a world class leading AI business sector with a market value in excess of 1 trillion Yuan by 2030, having invested ¥162 Billion in 2017, and ¥258 Billion in the first half of 2018 (Tsinghua University). China Money Network recently published their top 50 AI Companies, including 14 “Unicorns” – start-ups with a valuation in excess of ¥6 Billion.

Alibaba currently invests in many different AI businesses, and stated in 2017 a ¥95 Billion investment plan over the next three years as part of their research programme called the Alibaba Academy for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum and Outlook.

Contact Cygnus Business to help develop clear #B2B e-commerce strategy and business requirements for your business.

Cygnus Business - working with growing companies to improve business effectiveness, enhancing sales and profitability. www.cygnusbusiness.com . Are we LinkedIn ?

Essential Mobile Apps for your China business trip

Sat, 03 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Making sure your Mobile Phone / Laptop is set up and ready for working in China

There is nothing worse than arriving in China and realising you can’t access your data or communicate easily, and these tips will hopefully help you land on the ground fully up to speed

Check your mobile provider covers China and is cost effective. (e.g. Vodafone Worldwide charges reasonable day rate for full access to contract data and calls).

You should set up your tech gear locally before you depart for China, as you are unlikely to be able to access your local language versions of Apps etc over there.

Key Apps & services

You will need to set up and load a VPN App to phone / laptop. (Recommended VPNExpress or Astrill). Make sure it’s loaded and tested before you leave. This is essential for enabling you to access (English) home language websites / emails when abroad. It also provides good data protection (and never use open public WIFI without this).

Language. Choose your language translation provider and download full dictionaries for offline use - Google translate is good. (Within China also use Baidu for good alternative translation).

Communication and contact – Load WeChat. Used everywhere, it’s a good way of establishing communication, building your contacts, and enables in App translation of messaging. You can also VOIP call and message, and if your payment card has been loaded – enables payment nearly everywhere. It also provides access to QR code scanner. (If you don’t preload WeChat, make sure you have a good QR code scanner loaded, as it can provide quick access to good information when travelling).

For shopping and market place analysis; load the T-Mall and or Taobao (Alibaba) Apps and set up login to facilitate local product and price research, as well as buying supplies where needed (Good for occasional access to imported products).

IFly – Chinese character keyboard. Enables you to switch between English and Chinese on your mobile keyboard

For Travel

Download and set-up your airline Apps – obvious but extremely useful.

For train travel (and hotels / airlines) load the CTrip App. (Trip.com). This enables immediate access to live time train ticket reservations (with ability to load passport details, cancel and credit). Very Efficient.

For Hotel booking – Booking.com works well particularly in cities – good for convenience & predictability. (Local sites can generate better value!).

Didi – the Chinese equivalent to Uber, good for getting taxis and cabs, but remember that only taxis will accept cash payment, Didi cabs will expect payment by WeChat, and everyone can score you (your profile) on payment success etc!

Payments.

Visa & Mastercard are very rarely accepted anywhere in China (though Visa debit will provide access to most main bank ATM’s for cash withdrawal).

Recommend getting an American Express card, which is more widely accepted; can also be interfaced with some of the Apps for in app payment.

If and where you want to set up payment cards within Apps, it is easier to set these up when in home country before travelling.

For banking – main banking apps through VPN work well, but be careful if changing VPN countries quickly, as bank might query / hold for access from these quick country changes.

Laptops

Make sure all software updates and checks are run and up to date before you travel – nothing worse than switching on and wasting hours when travelling.

Make sure the laptop also has full VPN and software protection.

If you are downloading programmes or films for travelling, do this before travelling (enabling access through VPN to download an episode can be very time consuming).

Pre-set your WIFI hotspot with your Mobile – through VPN, and make sure the PC version of your mobile Apps are also downloaded.

Set up and download the Microsoft Chinese character keyboard – essential.

NB: these tips and guidance are written based on experience from the perspective of a UK based British Citizen visiting and working in China. Other nationalities should and must check their own requirements.

If you have any other great tips, please let me know and I will add and credit them here on next update.

If you are looking to do business in China and would like assistance or guidance in developing your business (sourcing, selling or advising) – please contact enquiries@Cygnusbusiness.com

www.cygnusbusiness.com

Black Friday UK - a £1 Billion Returns Problem

andy.craig@cygnusbusiness.com (Andy Craig) — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 19:22:22 GMT

Is the increasing use of Mobiles exacerbating the great return problem?

Over the last weekend in the UK – the “Black Friday Weekend”, estimates of sales volumes indicated a total spend of approximately £2.3 Billion on Friday alone, and circa £5 billion over the whole weekend through to Monday.

The increasing use of smartphones, enabled by both larger screen sizes and better mobile interface with retailer websites, resulted in a marked increase in purchases made by mobile, with some estimates showing mobile purchases ahead of those made by desktop for the first time; and a substantial overall majority of website visits being made from mobiles.

At first glance, this looks promising for retailers as sales were ahead of prior years, and the proportion of onlines sales continued to grow – all warmly welcomed by stock markets and traders alike.

But underneath, the news that an estimated 20% of all purchases will be returned by customers is a frightening statistic. The negative implications of this activity are massive. Not only is the sales bubble affected by many low margin special offers to entice customers - lowering the overall margin achieved during this single weekend, but the cost of handling and processing such volumes of returns will be many times the value of the margin originally achieved.

For all sellers the cost impact for handling returns for any reason cannot be underestimated. Each returned item will have to be checked for quality, in many cases repacked, and then if ok, put back into stock on an individual basis. Many products are likely to be writen off, or sold off at a loss, as they can no longer be regarded as being in pristine condition for resale. The actual cost to the reseller of processing a return is also significant.

The hunting down of the original transaction and processing of the financial credit is time consuming, and the time taken to return a single item back to its stocking or retail space location is typically twice the cost of picking it originally.

From a vendor management and replenishment perspective, it is unlikely that many retailers would have a single supplier that accounts for 20% of their merchandising range. Yet with a volume of returns running at this level, companies will need to consider treating their product returns process as their single biggest priority vendor – albeit that the goods are booked in and restocked in a single item basis, and not in pallet quantities.

Overall, it is not difficult to believe that the cost to the seller of receiving and restocking a return will typically be somewhere between two to three times the orginal cost of stocking, selling and despatching the product.

There is also a substantial environmental impact. The returns volume not only accounts for 20% of outbound delivery mileage, but of course is doubled for the return mileage, whether goods are returned by carrier or by additional customer trips back to the shops. An incredible, substantial negative carbon footprint impact.

For all businesses, understanding the true cost of returns, and and working methodically to reduce the cause of returns is of paramount importance. Indicatively, a reduction in returns could financially significantly outweigh the advantage gained by increased margin from incremental sales growth – by a factor of two plus.

Three thoughts for consideration

Is the quality of data available for and through mobile devices is a contributory cause of additional levels of returns? Would be interested to hear of anyone who has measured returns level by channel by cause over recent months – comparing the “Black Friday Weekend” against the current norm.

There must be a consideration for retailers to consider charging a small re-stocking fee for non fault returns to defray the cost and possibly encourage wiser purchasing habits.

And if many of the returns anticipated will not take place until after Christmas, (and stock technically not available for sale or resale for four weeks), the financial reporting of many businesses whose year finishes at the end of December could be substantially affected by the necessary provisions needed for anticipated credits and stock value increase in the new year.

Contact Cygnus Business - to review the cost impact of returns within your business.

Cygnus Business - working with growing companies to improve business effectiveness and grow sales and profitability. www.cygnusbusiness.com . Are we LinkedIn ?

Great Product Data – Making Product Search a Success

andy.craig@cygnusbusiness.com (Andy Craig) — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT

With mobile search so popular - mobile acccess to great mobile optimised product data is essential

If a consumer already knows the product they are searching for, they are likely to follow two broad approaches to Search. They will either use a generic search, and start searching for supply by brand, product name or type, or by specification, before selecting their chosen outlet. Alternatively, they will select a favoured or preferred supply site, and search for the required product within this.

If the product is totally new, or new to them, and therefore unknown to the consumer, the route to purchase is through discovery. It can be browsing at a favoured store, link advertised via a similar product, recommended by an influencer (how to, best value, ambassador) or simply advertised.

In all cases, comprehensive quality product data and content, accessible, optimised and delivered to all channels will assist in ensuring the customer has the best possible opportunity to find, check out and purchase your product. Where a product is new, ensuring product data and index terms are consistent with established products will ensure they will appear as choices within comparable product ranges. Good flexible use of a data management system can facilitate the maintenance of additional terms and data enabling selected products to appear in additional promotional views – usually for a pre-determined (and funded) time.

A single product data management system will also significantly reduce the possibility of conflicting or incomplete data appearing in different channels – reducing customer journey loss, and ensuring your enhanced data enabled maximum return for all search enquiries.

Within a retail or trade sales environment, a combination of sales staff product knowledge, packaging information and the physical product itself (including prime aisle locations for new or promotional product), can often provide all the information needed to make the purchase.

Great product data, delivered seamlessly across all channels, is likely to enhance and create a similar experience for the virtual consumer.

Ryan Young in his excellent article on digital trends and content marketing for 2017 http://bit.ly/2eC8Kg1 - identifies aspects businesses should consider when planning, maintaining and developing their product data and e-content delivery for the year ahead. Without doubt, the increasing use of video clips to both attract attention, communicate and explain is identified as being a priority consideration. To that I would add in-house hosted video content enables each clip to finish with a further call to action – keeping the sales process on course and in-house!

So while great product data can enhance the ability to find products, and convert to sales once found, clear loud advertising of new products on the front of the web shop remains a much overlooked and obvious way of advertising new products to both returning customers and new visitors.

Lastly, the importance of mobile search cannot be over-estimated. Google currently estimate 35% of all searches are initiated from a smartphone. It may be worth checking product search on your website from your mobile to check how well your data is optimised for smartphone use. And then we recommend checking your own web stats to see visit by type of device – you may be surprised.

Contact Cygnus Business to review your Omni-channel product content strategy

Cygnus Business - working with growing companies to improve business effectiveness and grow sales and profitability. www.cygnusbusiness.com . Are we LinkedIn ?

Why a good Omni-channel approach needs great product data

andy.craig@cygnusbusiness.com (Andy Craig) — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Creating advantage for manufacturers and final resellers

In the consumer journey between discovery and purchase, good product data is critical to all stakeholders, driving increasing sales and conversion rates, with both manufacturers and the final sellers having the all-important role to deliver product data excellence.

Good product and content data is an essential ingredient in enabling customers to identify, find, evaluate, select and ultimately buy a product. Manufacturers and final sellers who can deliver this, and provide a consistent Omni-channel experience will create advantage and minimise lost sales when compared to those that deliver a disparate multi-channel approach.

Why is the Omni-channel approach important? Research indicates that consumers (both b2b and b2c) already do and increasingly will, use a combination of approaches to buying. Outside of a physical store visit, a search for a product or service will typically include a PC and tablet, but increasingly is likely to start with a mobile phone. Each consumer touch point should deliver a consistent seamless experience.

The likelihood is if the consumer experiences either different or conflicting product information, or even cannot easily find and continue their buying experience across channels, they are likely to leave and go elsewhere. Having the capability to deliver consistent content that is optimised for each channel, enhances customer experience and reduces visitor fall-out.

From an ROI perspective, the investment in data can be as important as the investment in the “shop” front end. Choosing a product data management system designed to deliver an Omni-channel experience, combined with enhanced or personalised product content, will enable successful businesses to further differentiate their offer from competition.

The manufacturers role:

From a manufacturers perspective, to invest in the tooling up for a new product is a considerable investment, only made after careful analysis and approval. A core objective of this decision is to maximise sales, ideally to the stage where there is a ready demand for initial stock, and with end customers waiting for it to roll off the line!

In the same way that the manufacturer is taking the time to brand, package and develop the product, equal care and investment should be made to ensure a complete set of marketing and product content collateral is developed and made available. The manufacturer should be looking to ensure the dataset would deliver consistency across all media channels, using the best mix of rich media including images, drawings and particularly video available. This dataset will facilitate final sellers to quickly take on board distribution and start selling – achieving the core objective.

This product data should be used to populate the manufacturers own website, as well as being made available to pre-determined and carefully vetted future resellers and stockists. As a consideration, if the manufacturer has not got significant downstream stocking distribution in place, then a complete set of product data would at least enable marketing and direct sell activity through Amazon (itself a great opportunity for immediate access to market).

While important to all manufacturers (future growth and recognition), their own website data is critical for manufacturers with known brands, where customers are likely to approach their website first – as the definitive source of accurate complete product information, before going on to where can I buy this. (This last element having its own set of problems).

There are other significant benefits to the manufacturer. They are ensuring the best possible quality product data is available and to be made available to re-sellers. This eliminates the chances of data deteriorating through re-creation, potentially by people with lesser knowledge.

It also provides the manufacturer with a value added sell. If the manufacturer is providing perfect quality date, then the distribution supply chain is saving money by not having to replicate, create and distribute the data – a margin upside to the distribution chain. To the manufacturer, margin retention is achieved through only having to pay for the process once – and by eliminating funding requests for final seller data replication.

In conclusion, if the manufacturer can provide quality data, it should be able to be easily uploaded into leading product data management software, (as it is into Amazon), and for a larger manufacturer, the investment in a multi or Omni-channel product data management suite could also offer the benefits of remote access and punch-out support.

The role of the Seller.

The Seller has two objectives and two opportunities to benefit from the great management of product data.

The objectives: To try and capture as many consumers who are searching for the product now stocked or sold, to come to your business and buy, and secondly, for those consumers who are either already customers, in store, or already “on site”, to find and add these products to their basket.

The Seller has a further opportunity to benefit from enhancing their product data – which is by creating value added differentiation. Where several Sellers have access to the same great manufacturers product dataset, differentiating the dataset enhances sales opportunity and can create valuable USP’s. Such differentiation could include additional images or rich media, client photos of product in-situ, in-use, in action; or market sector specific application.

Where a Seller invests in their own product data management system, they have the ability to control their data, enhancing and differentiating where needed, to create advantage. Sellers can add further index and search terms, enhancing the consumer browsing experience, place products in multiple departments in line with other products, and include products within links and alternative suggestions.

Different Sellers operating in different market sectors will also have different focus to bring to the same product – addressing potentially different buyers, utilising reference to appropriate relevant legislation, and identifying specific applications or uses that are pertinent to their specific sector.

Better segregation and management of product data also enables better use of promotional activity, and for new products in particular can work well with manufacturers to increase visibility, advertise, unlock promotional funding, and grow sales. Undoubtedly, the business that invests in improved data can create a competitive gap - to their advantage.

In conclusion, a Seller in control of their own product data has the ability to create differentiation, adding valuable USP’s to increase customer traffic, retention and grow sales. Utilising data provided by trade distributors or channel specific software houses can potentially provide fast access to a wide range of good data, the identical dataset will also be available and used by your competitors – potentially leaving price as the only differentiator.

And finally – how important is mobile? Chances are you may be reading this on mobile. Either way, it’s worth picking up your phone, search for and check out your own website and business and see how it performs. And then we recommend checking your own web stats to see visit by type of device – you may be surprised.

Don’t forget – more consumers used mobile than any other device when visiting websites over this years’ Black Friday, and over 35% of all searches originate from a mobile!

Contact Cygnus Business to help understand and develop product differentiation strategies for your business.

Cygnus Business - working with growing companies to improve business effectiveness and grow sales and profitability. www.cygnusbusiness.com . Are we LinkedIn ?