How will be 2020 for Armenian businesses, what challenges there will be and what opportunities will occur, what news Samvel Gevorgyan will have for business founders and managers?
About all above mentioned Gayane Avdalyan has talked to “BSC” Business Support Center founding director, the author of “Your own business in Armenia”, business management expert_consultant Samvel Gevorgyan. The interview is published in Banks.am on an exceptional principal.
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– From the very beginning of 2020, we have started to operate actively, especially through your social pages by calling to work, act and always strive ahead. The entrepreneurs are in the main target. What is the reason for all of these?
– I want to mention right from the beginning that according to the statistics the 5% of the world’s habitants are engaged in an entrepreneurial activity. The same is in Armenia, if we consider the number of registered organizations and entrepreneurs. Though, the intentions have been changed into the growth of this number, as the opportunities to own a business are huge now. Technological development creates new opportunities for innovations in various fields and allows to freely implement them.
From another point of view, the founders of entrepreneurs take a huge responsibility with the decision to launch a business: a responsibility for their present and future, families, staff members, investors. The physical and psychological heaviness of this responsibility is so huge, that they should be ready to distribute it among others. This point is challenging enough.
– Specifically what challenges we are talking about?
– First of all, we talk about making a decision that a business founder should be engaged in strategy development by getting rid of operation, daily problems which consume most of the time and energy.
Second thing, a system should be built, where everyone has their role and responsibility for reaching a result.
And the third one, such controlling mechanisms should be created that could discover, solve the occurred issues and will continue the development.
– Making such decisions and implementing them requires a lot of effort and willpower.
– Such decisions become actual, as the year creates a new environment for a business, when working in old methods becomes risky, and innovations are accepted with difficulty. Naturally, the needs of a business also changes. How to face to obstacles and overcome new challenges? What tools will be implemented to satisfy business needs this year? Finally, what is the definition of a business growth: sales growth, enterprise expansion, doubling sales, products or services?
– Let’s start from the end: What you enumerate are results and consequences. We should start from the foundations.
– Business growth is the availability of ambitious strategies, the powerful staff that should implement the strategic plan and availability of effective business processes that are directly related to the strategy, and the right direction for the employees to be directed. As a result, we will have an expansion of a business, new markets and, for sure, a profit’s increase. Business needs are coming from this point: to have trained, educated, motivated and purposeful staff members, to evaluate the risks and opportunities of the external environment, to have the vision of the future, to define the mission of the company. This is a need, which should be satisfied. Otherwise a business will lose competitiveness and will be sorted out from the market.
The classic pyramid of Maslou about the needs of individuals can be directly used for businesses. A business, which is on the foundation of the pyramid, just keeps its existence; the ones being on the top of the pyramid constantly develop. As you go higher, the innovation and creative opportunities of a business grow. In a modern world it is not a privilege, it is a need. However, there is one essential fact: business owners and top managers should be ready for all these. In the purpose to climb the steps of the pyramid and to be ready for every level, I, working with a lot of entrepreneurs as a coach, have discovered the enormous potential they have, and the energy they have directed to business’s further development.
– You got ready for 2020 with a great responsibility. The witness of it is the news about what we are going to talk now. It is about launching your own website. Why did the need to have such a platform arise?
– News will be more than ever this year. It is all because the changes are coming too fast nowadays. From one point, the tastes, preferences of people, platforms they use, and accordingly the opportunities change fast. From another point of view, there is a demand of individual approach. Consequently, this year I will have several platforms, which will create opportunities for the customers to choose the one, which is more preferable for their taste and style.
First news is my own website samvelgevorgyan.com, where there will be presented a business management solutions suggested by me, trainings, business books. In the website we will have a page, where there will be stories, analyses, and modern tools for business management. Moreover, the website will have a portfolio with an archived footage about my activity, as well as constantly updated educational and motivational updated videos.
– Who is the website for and what problems is it solving? Also, from the business point of view, is it important for you to be recognized by your website’s audience and to be in direct contact with them?
– Yes, for sure. Business owners, enterprises’ top directors and the managers of essential departments are the main target, with whom I have always worked, on this website I will give content specially created for them. Since the founders of businesses are primarily interested in the development and growth of enterprises, in the website they are provided strategic, business problems diagnosis and planning, sales and further growth system input and other beneficial tools, which will help to raise the business in several levels.
Second, business growth is possible only through the staff which is qualified, dedicated and has high professional abilities. I will suggest such a multi-faceted toolkit, through which business owners and directors will be able to expect higher proficiency from workers. Moreover, I have solutions for inputting such systems both for salary and bonuses, depending from the company’s operational field and size, in order to drastically reduce the outflow of employers, increase their professional abilities and contribute to the long-term development of the company.
Third, there will be valuable advices for the private sector on starting a business in different sectors of Armenian economy, advices for opportunities and risks, business profitability. Furthermore, during the last 25 years, being in 915 communities of Armenia, I have collected a huge data about business ideas, about starting a profitable business on this or that community. There are dozens of interesting offers only in “Business face of Armenian marzes” article series, which was published on Mediamax’s Banks.am website. The website also provides a direct communication tools with the audience, up to the date and time of a meeting. Entrepreneurs value their time, and besides calling, e-mail letter writing there are more efficient time-saving tools.
– You talk about new opportunities. In your forecast, how 2020 will be?
– It is not a secret that we live in an interesting, constant changing and big challenges containing period. Armenian business takes a new breath. The accelerating process of generating new ideas, the emergence of new businesses, new training and consulting approaches provide ample competitive opportunities for orientation and finding solutions.
Overall, 2020 will be a year of changes. The approaches of Armenian business will be changed. We can say also that the ideology in different directions and levels will change, first of all towards business management. Marketing’s role will grow, not only from the point of view of planning, but also in situational quick solutions finding. There will be more successful businesses, which will engage the workers in business management, new idea generation and implementation levels. The owners will work on more strategic directions than on operational ones.
The second direction that will have serious changes will be investments engagement, investors working philosophy. From the level of desires there will be a transition to more pragmatic approaches, clearly understanding the expectations of investors, the subtleties of working with investors and expected results.
The third direction, where I forecast positive changes, is about export approaches, when it will be not a onetime action, but a possible, planned system with a concrete toolkit. Those companies will win, which will respond fast to these changes.
To sum up, this year there are big expectations in investors’ engagement for Armenian businesses, export size increase and as a consequence Armenian businesses being on the list of leaders in the global business community.