HR Diploma

Group 73

Final Project

E-Shopping.com

Case Study

Handed to:

Dr. Mohamed Aly

Handed by:

Heba Nabil Sara Kamel

Heba Sakr Mahi Refaat

E-Shopping.com offers customers a diverse, user friendly array of services where they have the ability of purchasing various goods through the internet using secure protocols and electronic payments or cash on delivery. Our digital channel will make it easy for shoppers to find, compare and select products using a structured approach to merchandizing and improving conversion to produce an experience rated as excellent by the majority of our customers.

Currently in Egypt, there are several dot-coms that offer same services .However; we standout with our approach of refining customer experience and & continuous innovations to offer our clients with the best.

The importance placed on our customer experience is suggested by our mission statement “provide customer with a quick and easy way of buying what they want, at the most competitive price around, and deliver directly to their door”

E-Shopping.com is a limited partnership and in our strategic planning we will tackle the following:

Environmental scanning :

- Internal Analysis. (Including structure, culture,)

- PEST&SWOT Analysis to analyse the company options.

2 - Strategy Formulation using the SWOT.

- Company's Corporate Strategy

- Company's Business Strategies using the SWOT matrix

3- Strategy Implementation:

- Implement the strategic choices through programs established that abides to the company's budget.

4- Evaluation & control

- Evaluating success and reconstructing & reshaping as needed to achieve the company's broad objectives & strategies.

Company Profile

Our company name is E-Shopping.com .Categorized as electronic commerce commonly known as e-commerce, it consist of the selling and buying products and services over electronic system; namely internet.

Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

Our mission is “provide customer with a quick and easy way of buying what they want, at the most competitive price around, and deliver directly to their door”

As we strive to become Earth's most customer-centric company, we constantly look for new ways to innovate on behalf of our different customers: individuals who shop our website, merchants who sell on our platform, developers who use our infrastructure to create their businesses, and creators of the books, music, films, games and other content we sell through our websites. We believe that our greatest contribution to the good of society comes directly from these core business activities.

In E-Shopping.com we stand distinguished in the market as we work to earn repeat purchase by:

- Providing value to customers (by offering a product or a product line that attracts potential customers)

- Providing easy to use functioning fast and reliable fulfilment, timely customer service, feature rich content and trusted transaction environment.

- Providing service and performance (by offering fast user friendly purchasing experience)

- Branding and developing a profound understanding of the customer’s experience

- Developing an online value proposition that describes the total customer experience with the firm and in its alliance partners over time, rather than [being limited to] that communicated at the point of sale.

- Letting the customer help themselves (provision of self serve site easy to use without assistance)

- Providing incentive to buy (by offering sales promotions; coupons, special offers and discounts)

- Providing an attractive site (by using the tasteful use of colours, graphics, animation, photographs, fonts and white space percentage)

- Provide sense of community (through chat rooms message boards and affinity programs)

Environmental Scanning

1. External Societal Environmental Analysis:

Using PEST analysis model

A. Political Factors

Trade restrictions on imported products from EU have massively decreased & free trade agreements between Egypt & EU are enacted.

Taxation system for the e-commerce market is still under development , many transaction are still processed without any contribution to the taxing system

B. Economical factors

Increase in exchange rate which leads to increase in prices of exported products that affects negatively profit margin.

EIU consumer price index (June 10) states that inflation in Egypt is 9.1% to reach 15% at the end of the year 2010

Cost justification; the initial development in e commerce website is relatively high.(the initial investment for creating and e-commerce website includes the cost of the hardware and software, future maintenance and training for the staff.

Quite often manufacturing firms don’t want to participate in e commerce because of the fear of losing their investments as whether the initial investment can be returned or not remains uncertain for a long period.

C. Social Factors

- The increase in population growth rate predicates a prosperous market.

- The increase in percent of educated people leads to increase in the number of internet users and the rate of using.

- Lack of knowledge and skilled personnel. Many organizations lack information technology literacy. Also many manufacturing firms have difficulty finding skilled worldwide web developers, content provider and knowledgeable professional to maintain and manage a customer hotline.(this leads to slow progress of ecommerce uptake)

- Security and privacy issues are major hurdles for the growth of e commerce business (60% of participant were not convinced by assurance of ecommerce security, as a result consumers are hesitant to transact with companies or disclose confidential data such as home address credit card numbers over the internet.)

- The absence of touch and feel on web sites is always a big issue for online service providers.

D. Technological factors:

-The rate for rate of technological change is increasing rapidly worldwide

- Security problems and challenges as technical issue (although many protection technology such as firewalls data encryption and virus detection are available, no one can claim that security is no longer a problem)

- Bandwidth is a major issue in developing ecommerce business (it determines the speed and the capacity for communication)

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

A - Strong organizational culture.

B - Financial status is healthy

C -Gaining market share

D-sense of community; E-Shopping.com makes its community a priority at all the times, we provide function as User Review; feedback forum for customer to provide their comments so we make sure we stay in act and help to stimulate sales)

E –direct consumer communication

G–constantly revamping our site to make sure it is the easiest, fastest and most fun dot.com on the web so users want to come back again and again.

H –ability to compete with other companies locally and globally

I –wide variety of products offered on E-Shopping.com gives us a competitive advantage over other online auction sites.

J - E-Shopping.com doesn’t have stores or warehouse, we don’t hold any of our own inventory. This keeps cost down and doesn’t have any threat of having to liquidate the

Weakness

A -High overhead costs due to our business model.(phone calls, time consumed)

B – E-Shopping.com is depending on external delivery companies to carry out the delivery function, this leads to uncontrollable service level problems and potential cost increase in line with the wider transportation industry (rising fuels and increased vehicles taxations)

C- Coordination problems, mainly because there are different departments with different backgrounds and relatively far locations involved in the process.

D –high costumer expectations, customer demands same level of service from a business of limited number of employees as they would from industry giants

E –lack of ability to fully monitor illegal activity on site; there is no real accurate way to measure illegality on our website.

Opportunities

1-changing life style of people .internet is being used more and more each day to pay bills, shop, talk to families and phone orders

2-internet use continues to grow; according to inter word stats there are 17,060,000 connected to the internet.

3-global exposure; adding e commerce to a business allows the company to sell its products to a bigger market.

4- Retail sales on internet have seen a rapid growth world wide over the past 8 years and the growth is expected to continue at high rates.

According to Arab advisors group latest survey

- Egypt internet users spend an estimated US$ 2.1 billion on retail e-commerce in 2009

34.6% of adult Internet users in Egypt use e-commerce

- Egypt Internet users who utilize e-commerce to be around 2.36 million, which is around 3% of the total population in Egypt.

4-high availability 24/7 business allows company to take orders around the clock and hence taking advantage of the lack of time that the working class is facing including males and females.

5- Total Credit card holders in Egypt is about 2 percent of the population

Threats

1-arising competition from competition arising from other means of shopping or ordering ex: TV shopping, online shopping, phone orders & store visits.

2-The low barriers and the comparatively low overheads allows for relatively easy entry into the market, this increase level of competition and cause reduction in prices and profit margins

3-Fraud; some consumers are leery of doing business online out of concern of fraud and misuse of their financial data (this alienates n entire segment from conducting business on line)

4-Privacy concerns, some customers prefer not to give any personal information over the internet fearing the information might be abused.

5-The relatively new trend of e-commerce in Egypt and the time it may take us to gain the users’ trust and generate the required profits.

Internal Analysis:

Organizational Culture:

Our company believes that a strong culture should not only promote survival, but it should also create the basis for a superior competitive position by increasing motivation and facilitating coordination and control.

We adopted a mix between the Brand Harmony Culture, which makes employees strongly believe in the product,

objectives and strategies of the company and the Leadership Enriched Culture which inspires employees and makes them view the company and its objectives as an Extension of themselves; so all of them are proud of every success the organization can achieve.

All in our company work as one unit towards the success of the organization and there is no limitation for the innovation and creation at all levels, so they all feel one family that seeks to make big success story. Our people define a culture that’s exciting and real. We’re real people with real ideas doing real work.

Our business model is a little unusual. We don't build cars or computers, but we build something just as important; communities. We've created a place where people can come together, exchange ideas, share experiences and expand their own businesses. It makes our users feel like they're part of the family and that feeling goes double for our employees. We're literally changing the face of commerce every day and we're learning as we go. Succeeding together and challenging each other to constantly refine and improve our way of working.

Our people are the reason we've come this far. And the reason we'll succeed tomorrow. So as we grow, we'll try our hardest to retain the fun, community feeling as this makes our culture so unique.

Values

We have a set of values that moves all the company's functions and employees;

- Integrity: we are truthful and behave with honesty.

- Reliability: we do what we say, when we say we will.

- Openness: we promote sharing of knowledge and experiences by being open in our relations with others – listening and sharing relevant information and views.

- Innovation: we proactively take opportunities to improve our methodologies in the production, after sale services and customer solutions through new approaches.

- Respect: we recognize and respond to customer's rights, interests and values.

- Continues Improvement: we strive continuously to improve our products and services and develop ourselves through training the non-skilled employees and assess the skilled ones for providing suitable promotions.

Organizational Structure

Our organization is structured in functional strategy way such that every entity in the organization except the top manaegment is subordinate to a single other entity.

The general Manager is primarily responsible for the company, functional managers provide technical expertise and assign resources on an as-needed basis.

Each functional area upholds and contributes to individual business-level strategies and the overall corporate-level strategy. This involves coordinating the various functions

and operations needed to design, manufacturer, deliver, and support the product or service of each business within the corporate portfolio.

General Manager

Content Manager

Portal Development Manager

Sales Manager

Operation Manager

Creative Manager

IT Manager

Finance Manager

Marketing Manager

HR Manager

Web Editors

Portal Development Executives

Sales Executives

Call Center Supervisor Designe

rs

Web Developer

Finance Executives

Marketing Executives

HR AssistantsCall Center

AgentsLawyer

Portal Development

Responsible for planning projects related to the portal and supervising the execution with the aim of pertaining the business direction of the product as well as satisfying its users.

Business Development

Is concerned with business development, sales, customer/partner relations, in accordance to the product market needs

 

(B)   Content Department

Responsible for content acquisition, aggregation, publishing, in addition to syndication

Prepares various types of content to suit the needs of the different nature of portals

Sets content guidelines and strategy in accordance with the portals’ development direction

 

(C)  IT Department

Executes on-line advertising activities for the products

Monitors online network for performance & fix technical problems that might arise.

Administrates technical tools used for products in terms of functionality & performance

Performs any modifications, adding new feature or solving problems for the products

Manages internal & external technical suppliers, sets technical strategy for all products

 

(D) Creative Department

Sets Creative Guidelines for each website

Sets the Media (online ads) guidelines for all the online network in addition to designing and monitoring house ads and their related media planning

2-strategy formulation

Corporate strategy: to grow (growth Strategy)

Corporate strategy refers to the overarching strategy of the diversified firm. Such a corporate strategy answers the questions of '' which business should we be in?'' and '' how does being in these businesses create synergy and / or add to the competitive advantage of the corporation as a whole? ''

At a corporate level we in ( E _ shopping ) decide to expand our business through adopting concentration growth strategy, ( vertically by increasing the amount of our products ) / ( horizontally by having more presence in new segments ) , so we will increase the amount of existing products and to develop and enter to an untapped segment of a domestic market through expanding the product's distribution channels for example ( supermarkets and malls online ) a new channel for distributing our products and services .

So , growth strategy is focused on reinvesting in our customers by improving the buyer experience and seller economics by enhancing our products and services , improving trust and safety and customer support , categories and geographies , implementing innovative pricing and buyer retention strategies , and including amore effective pricing and shipping policies and soon. In order to

achieve our growth strategy goals, we will apply some strategies such as:

_ Acquisition: through increasing the number of newly registered users on the E _ shopping Marketplace.

_ Activation: through increasing the number of registered users that become active buyers or sellers on the E _ shopping Marketplace.

_ Activity: through increasing the volume and value of transactions that are conducted by each active user on our E_ shopping marketplace.

Business Strategy

Business overview:

E-shopping has opened its virtual doors to world web wide in 2002.we seek to be Earth's most customer centric company for 2 primary set of customers; consumers (buyers) and sellers.

Uًwe serve our consumers through our retail website and focus on selection, price and convenience. For our sellers, we offer programs that enable sellers to sell their products on our website and their own branded website and fulfill orders through us. In addition we make revenue through co branded credit cards agreements and other marketing and promotional services, such as online advertising.

- We generate 2 types of revenue:

1-net transaction revenue

2-marketing services and other revenues

Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to the customers.) The products offered on our customer facing website primary includes merchandize and content we have purchased from resale from vendors and products offered by a third party seller.

The vast majority of e-shopping revenue is for the listing and commission on completed sales.

For some Credit cards purchases an additional commission fee is charged. Margin on each transaction is phenomenal since once the infrastructure is built, incremental costs on each transactions are tiny – all we do is doing is transmitting bits and bytes between buyers and sellers.

Advertising and other non-transaction net revenues represent a relatively small proportion of total net revenues.

Our financial focus is on long term and sustainable growth in free cash flow. Free cash flow is driven primarily by increasing operating income and effectively managing working capital and capital expenditure.

Increase in operating income primarily result from increase in sales through our website and efficiently managing our operating costs offset by investments we make in longer term strategic initiatives which generally requires to hire additional software engineers ,computer scientists and merchandisers.

To increase product sales, we focus on improving all aspects of customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery time, increasing selection, increasing product categories, expanding product information, improving ease of use and earning customer trust.

E-Shopping Marketplace:

Our primary business segment is our Marketplace segment. It provides the infrastructure to enable online commerce on E-shopping platform. We seek to create online platform that provides individuals and business of all types and sizes to broad market. We have aggregated a significant number of buyers, sellers and items listed for sale which in turn resulted in vibrant online commerce environment. Our goal is to create, maintain and expand the functionality, safety, ease-of-use and reliability of our online commerce platforms while supporting the growth and success of our community of users.

We seek to attract buyers and sellers by offering;

Buyers:

Trust

Value

Selection

Convenience

Entertainment

Sellers:

Access to broad market

Efficient marketing and distribution

Opportunity to increase sales

Access to a large buyers' base

We believe that our market place platform makes more efficient markets because:

- Our online community of users can more easily and inexpensively communicate, exchange information and complete transactions;

- Our Marketplace platform makes available to our users a wide variety and selection of goods; and

- We bring buyers and sellers together in a more cost-effective manner than many traditional intermediaries and available alternatives.

E-shopping Marketplace platform overview:

Our Marketplaces platforms seek to bring buyers and sellers together through fully automated and easy-to-use online websites that are generally available throughout the world at any time. The platforms include software tools and services, some available at no charge and others for a fee, that are intended to allow buyers and sellers to trade with one another easily and efficiently.

Key Services for Buyers and Sellers

We have developed a number of features on our platforms in the areas of Trust and Safety (including our Feedback Forum, Safe Harbor Program), Customer Support and Value-Added Tools and Services, as well as Loyalty Programs (for both buyers and sellers). These features are designed to make users more comfortable dealing with unknown trading partners and completing commercial transactions on the Internet.

Fraud is a significant risk factor in e-commerce business. In this; we have developed ‘Trust and Safety Programs’ which are particularly important to reassure customers since online services are prone to fraud. For instant, our SafeHarbor Program provides guidelines for trading and user dispute resolution. Our SafeHarbor staff investigates users’

complaints of possible misuse of e-Shopping platforms and takes appropriate action, including issuing warnings to users, ending and removing listings, or suspending users from listing items for sale.

Also, Our Feedback Forum encourages users to provide feedback ratings and comments on other users with whom they trade. Users’ profiles, which include these feedback ratings and comments, can be viewed by any of our other users. The Feedback Forum has several automated features designed to detect and prevent certain forms of abuse, such as a user leaving positive feedback about him or herself through multiple accounts. As a customer-focused company, we no longer allow sellers to leave negative feedback about buyers and supply sellers with tools that give them the ability to enhance the buyer experience. Feedback Forum can help establish credentials of sellers and buyers.

We stress the importance of developing our “Value-Added Tools and Services” which are “pre-trade” and “post-trade” tools and services to enhance the user experience and to make trading faster, easier and safer. Also, Software tools are provided, particularly for frequent traders including Turbo Lister, Seller’s Assistant, Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro, which help automate the selling process.

These tools and services may not be available at our competitors and this makes it a distinctive competency as we are superior to those of competition.

E-Shopping differentiation strategy:

Our vision is to be Earth's most centric company, achieving customer loyalty and repeat purchase has been a key to our

success. Many dotcoms failed because they succeed to create awareness but not loyalty. In E-shopping we achieved both and that’s what differentiates us from our competitors.

We work to earn repeat purchases by providing easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable fulfillment, timely customer service, feature rich content, and a trusted transaction environment.

Key features of our websites include editorial and customer reviews, manufacturer product information, Web pages tailored to individual preferences, such as recommendations and notifications, secured payment systems, image uploads, searching on our websites as well as the Internet browsing. Free shipping offers are used to encourage increase in basket size since customers have to spend over a certain amount to receive free shipping.

Another element we have that differentiates our business from competitors is that we focus on customer satisfaction metrics. Each site is closely monitored with standard service availability monitoring, site availability and download speed. This focus on customer has translated to excellence in service we scored the highest customer satisfaction score ever recorded in any service industry, online or offline in Egypt.

The importance we place on customer experience and usability is suggested by our mission statement which places customer experience as its core together with choice and price. To refine our customer experience we developed a clear, online value proposition (OVP) or online customer value proposition for the target audiences.

Our OVP is" to be Egypt's biggest selection'; simple tag line which is prominent on the home page and in offline

communications accompanying the URL yet clearly explain the essence of what E-shopping provides

Development of a clear customer value proposition is now an integral part of customer-centric marketing, customer-relationship management and branding. E-shopping success is due to matching value propositions to segments successfully. This benefited our business as:

It helps distinguish our site from its competitors (this should be a web site design objective);

It helps provide a focus to marketing efforts and enables our staff to be clear about the purpose of the site ;( offering biggest selection in Egypt)

Because our proposition is clear, it is used for PR and word-of-mouth recommendations about the company

As we are relatively new in the e-commerce business, a further practical reason for developing an OVP is that customers expect it! New visitors to a site, particularly of a company they are unfamiliar with, will seek out a tagline or graphic that explains what the site can offer (WIFM – or what’s in It For Me). Users decide quickly (often within a few seconds) whether to stay or leave a site. Our tagline here plays a big part of encouraging the customers to stay as it promises they will find what they need.

Our competition:

We see the environment for our products and services as ‘intensely competitive’. We view our main current and potential competitors as:

- physical-world retailers, catalog retailers, publishers, vendors, distributors and manufacturers of our products, many of which possess significant brand awareness, sales volume, and customer bases, and some of which currently sell, or may sell, products or services through the Internet, mail order, or direct marketing.

- Other online E-commerce sites.

- A number of indirect competitors, including media companies, Web portals, comparison shopping websites, and Web search engines, either directly or in collaboration with other retailers.

- Companies that provide e-commerce services, including website development; third-party fulfillment and customer-service.

we believe the main competitive factors in our market segments include "selection, price, availability, convenience, information, discovery, brand recognition, personalized services, accessibility, customer service, reliability, speed of fulfillment, ease of use, and ability to adapt to changing conditions, as well as our customers’ overall experience and trust in transactions with us and facilitated by us on behalf of third-party sellers".

Human Resources Strategies

Managing HR effectively has become vital to organizations within the fast paced business environment. The HR department in any organization is a crucial part of the operational strategy, as it can directly affect the overall results of the organizations. An efficient HR department

should be able to access, predict, forecast, design and implement its strategies in direct sync with the business goals and the organizational strategies for a mutual and coherent environment.

HR Department now acts as a strategic partner of the business in the way it works to ensure that the long term and short objectives and goals of the organization from financial and human capital perspectives are perfectly aligned and harmonious. HR specialists are more important in business strategies today the changes in the present economic cycle of recession. The aim is not just only to see through recessions, but more importantly to ensure that employees are still committed to the organization.

HR acts as the mentor to its employees – guiding, training and educating them in the way of the industry and the organization. Well trained and competent employees, who are able to showcase themselves and their organization to the customers in a more effective manner, help in increasing customer satisfaction and overall clientele, by adding credibility and reputation to the business In this, HR department should act as a service provider for the employees, and treat employees as its customer15 base – treat the employees the same way you would like them to treat their customers, and the whole paradigm of customer satisfaction and delivery becomes easy to adopt and adapt. Thus, effective HR planning and development practices bring quality and loyal workers who are committed and passionate about the success of their organization.

Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment is the first and the foremost step in the overall HR function. Hiring the right people is a key success in E-shopping. The importance of hiring the right people is shown through our strategy "n minus 1" which means less people are employed than required. This policy reinforce that hiring the right people is more important than hiring to fill an empty position.

We believe in recruiting extremely intelligent staff favoring intelligence over experience. Our recruitment strategy includes sourcing people from elite universities. Our recruiters visit these universities in search for the most brilliant, driven students. E-shopping is from the first companies to offer jobs to elite graduates at campuses and career fairs in Egypt.

Rather than search for one particular skill set, all E-shopping, asks of potential employees is that they be "smart". We are fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done. So, we put a lot of focus in our hiring processes when we are interviewing to try to determine first and foremost does the person have the skill set and the potentials to do the job from a background standpoint in addition to academics and credentials. And also are they going to be good culture or team fits. Team-building and bonding is one of the essential feature of a job at E-Shopping.

Our recruitment process is based largely on a series of interviews with a series of different interviewers. Through a

range of interview topics from programming and web developing questions to general logic puzzles to personality checks, so as to be able to size up how skilled and intelligent a person is.

The interviewers try to avoid "trick questions" they do aim to ask "unusual" questions that are not geared towards any particular skills or experiences in an effort to measure how well a candidate does on something they haven't worked on before.

One of the factors considered in recruiting staff is that the recruiter should be from the same functional area so they would have better judgments on qualifications needed for the jobs.

Also, candidates should not be deceived about the negative elements of a job. The recruitment process also goes further than just informing the employee about the negative aspects, instead it actually tests the employee on the negative aspects, putting them under the same type of pressure they would be put under on the job.

The number of new and skilled employees required cannot be sourced only from universities and not all positions can be filled by fresh grads. As we are relatively new, we still need more experienced older staff to ensure and maintain our growth and success and to provide a strong model and example for the younger generation to follow. Thus, our recruitment process remained active by "head hunting" the best staff. These staff are found, monitored and recruited by other specialized recruiting agencies.

In E-shopping, we actively recruit suitable employees and focus on the right type of person rather than the right type of skill level. We use HR for competitive advantage basing our success on having the very best people in the industry

and inspiring them to remain the best. And that’s what leads to our unique and distinctive recruitment practices.

Compensation and Benefits:

Since our employees in E – shopping are the backbone of our organization, our greatest investment _ our most important asset, we, in E- shopping believe that motivation often is the driving factor behind employees` performance and this motivation can come out from a strong and effective compensation and benefit programs so, we try to build a fair and attractive compensation and benefit package which will attract, retain and motivate our employees. E - Shopping compensation and benefit programs are comprised of two main components which are:

Direct compensation (pay system):

_ Base salary : is the single largest component of our compensation package and because the base salary is the most common point of comparison used by employees , so we decide that salary should be tied to a persons` skills and experience and subsequent increases need to be based on an employees` performance , value and contribution to our organization .

_ Annual incentive plans: which is the distribution of monetary reward based on the completion of previously identified goals or objectives (for example: bonuses, merchandise prizes…).

_ Long _ term incentive plans: a reward system that we designed to improve our employees` long _ term

performance by providing monetary rewards that are not necessarily tied to the E - shopping share price.

_ In addition to the previous components we will use some pay programs of selected employees (key positions).

In direct compensation (benefits):

_ retirement plans : E - shopping will offer their employees retirement system that is based on a partnership between E - shopping and the employees in order to have a financial secure and comfortable retirement so, E- shopping and its employees should work together t achieve this goal .

_ life / disability insurance : another benefit that E - shopping will offer to their employees is that they will provided with basic life , business travel accident insurance and long term disability insurance benefits .

_ Medical insurance: E - shopping provides several comprehensive and cost effective medical and dental plans where E - shopping and its employees share the cost of coverage but employees also have the opportunity to cover eligible dependents.

_ Unpaid leave and time off: it includes vacation time, sick leave, holidays, and so on, which will help our employees in E - shopping to make a balance between their personal needs and work life.

_ Flexible work schedule: E-shopping supports flexible work arrangements that are appropriate for the job and location. So, the employees may telecommute, work part time, job share, adopt alternative start and stop times or make other arrangements that meet our employees social needs as well as and our organization needs .

_ other benefits such as transportation, discounts on E_ shopping products and so on.

_ Perquisites: E- shopping offers the key positions or some of its selected employees some perks such as (car access, stock options…).

Training and Development:

Our Company has found that investment in human capital in the form of training and development yields high returns. We believe that the company that recognize the value of its employees and place a new emphasis on education and training are becoming more competitive, successful, and profitable as a result.

The quality of our employees and their development through training and education are major factors in determining long-term profitability of the company. If we hire and keep good employees, it is good policy to invest in the development of their skills, so they can increase their productivity.

Training often is considered for new employees only. This is a mistake because ongoing training for our current employees helps them adjust to rapidly changing job requirements.

Purpose of Training and Development

Reasons for emphasizing the growth and development of personnel include:

- Creating a pool of readily available and adequate replacements for personnel who may leave or move up in the organization.

- Enhancing our company's ability to adopt and use advances in technology because of a sufficiently knowledgeable staff.

- Building a more efficient, effective and highly motivated team, that enhances the company's competitive position and improves employee morale.

- Ensuring adequate human resources for expansion into new programs.

The company has shown specific benefits from training and developing its employees, including:

- Increased productivity.

- Reduced employee turnover.

- Increased efficiency resulting in financial gains.

- Decreased need for supervision.

Employees frequently develop a greater sense of self-worth, dignity and well-being as they become more valuable to our company and to the society. Generally they receive a greater share of the material gains that result from their increased productivity. These factors give them a sense of

satisfaction through the achievement of personal and company goals.

The Training Process

our company uses the below models to trace the steps necessary in the training process:

Organizational Objectives

Needs Assessment

Is There a Gap?

Training Objectives

Select the Trainees

Select the Training Methods and Mode

Choose a Means of Evaluating

Administer Training

Evaluate the Training

Our business have a clear defined strategy and set of objectives that direct and drive all the decisions made especially for training decisions.

A well-conceived training program helps our firm to succeed. A program structured with the company's strategy and objectives in mind has a high probability of improving

productivity and other goals that are set in the training mission.

Formulating a training strategy in our company required addressing a series of questions.

Who are our customers? Why do they buy from us?

Who are our competitors? How do they serve the market? What competitive advantages do they enjoy? What parts of the market have they ignored?

What strengths does the company have? What weaknesses?

What social trends are emerging that will affect the firm?

The purpose of formulating a training strategy was to answer two relatively simple but vitally important questions: (1) what is our business? And (2) what should our business be? Armed with the answers to these questions and a clear vision of its mission, strategy and objectives, our company identified its training needs.

Identifying Training Needs

Training needs can be assessed by analyzing three major human resource areas: the organization as a whole, the job characteristics and the needs of the individuals. This analysis will provide answers to the following questions:

Where is training needed?

What specifically must our employee learn in order to be more productive?

Who needs to be trained?

We Begin by assessing the current status of our company how it does what it does best and the abilities of our employees to do these tasks. This analysis provided some benchmarks against which the effectiveness of a training program can be evaluated. Our firm knows where it wants to be in five years from its long-range strategic plan.

Second, we considered whether the organization is financially committed to supporting the training efforts and the answer was yes.

Next, we determined exactly where training is needed. It is foolish to implement a companywide training effort without concentrating resources where they are needed most. An internal audit helped to point out areas that may benefit from training. Also, skills inventory helped in determining the skills possessed by our employees in general. This inventory helped our company to determine what skills are available now and what skills are needed for future development.

Also, in today's market-driven economy, we remiss not to ask our customers what they like about our business and what areas they think should be improved. In summary, the analysis focused on the total organization and told us (1) where training is needed and (2) where it will work within the organization.

Once we have determined where training is needed, we concentrated on the content of the program. Analyzed the characteristics of the job based on its description, the written narrative of what the employee actually does. Training based on job descriptions went into detail about how the job is performed on a task-by-task basis. Actually doing the job enabled us to get a better feel for what is done.

Individual employees are evaluated by comparing their current skill levels or performance to the organization's

performance standards or anticipated needs. Any discrepancies between actual and anticipated skill levels identified a training need.

Selection of Trainees

Once we have decided what training was necessary and where it was needed, the next decision was who should be trained? An employee is expensive, especially when he or she leaves our firm for a better job. Therefore, it was important to carefully select who will be trained.

Training programs was designed to consider the ability of the employee to learn the material and to use it effectively, and to make the most efficient use of resources possible. It is also important that employees be motivated by the training experience. Employee failure in the program is not only damaging to the employee but a waste of money as well. Selecting the right trainees is important to the success of the program.

Training Goals

The goals of the training program was related directly to the needs determined by the assessment process outlined above. Course objectives clearly stated what behavior or skill will be changed as a result of the training and should relate to the mission and strategic plan of the company. Goals included milestones that helped to take the employee from where he or she was before to where our firm wants him or her in the future. Setting goals helped to evaluate the training program and also to motivate employees. Allowing employees to participate in setting goals increased the probability of success.

Training Methods

There are two broad types of training available to our businesses: on-the-job and off-the-job techniques. Individual circumstances and the "who," "what" and "why" of our training program determine which method to use.

On-the-job training is delivered to employees while they perform their regular jobs. In this way, they do not lose time while they are learning. After a plan is developed for what should be taught, employees are informed of the details. Timetables are established with periodic evaluations to inform employees about their progress. On-the-job techniques included orientations, job instruction training, apprenticeships, internships and assistantships, job rotation, and coaching.

Off-the-job techniques included lectures, courses, special study, films, television conferences or discussions, case studies, role playing, simulation, programmed instruction and laboratory training.

Orientations are for new employees. The first several days on the job are crucial in the success of new employees. This point is illustrated by the fact that 60 percent of all employees who quit do so in the first ten days. Orientation training that our company gives emphasize the following topics:

- The company's history and mission.

- The key members in the organization.

- The key members in the department, and how the department helps fulfill the mission of the company.

- Personnel rules and regulations.

Our company sometimes uses verbal presentations or written presentations. No matter what method is used, it is important that the newcomer understand his or her new place of employment.

Lectures & courses present training material verbally and are used when the goal is to present a great deal of material to many of our people. It is more cost effective to lecture to a group than to train people individually.

Role playing and simulation are training techniques that our company uses to attempt to bring realistic decision making situations to the trainee. Likely problems and alternative solutions are presented for discussion. The adage there is no better trainer than experience is exemplified with this type of training. Experienced employees can describe real world experiences, and can help in and learn from developing the solutions to these simulations.

Audiovisual methods such as television, videotapes and films are the most effective means of providing real world conditions and situations in a short time.

Job rotation involves moving an employee through a series of jobs so he or she can get a good feel for the tasks that are associated with different jobs. We use this method in training for supervisory positions. The employee learns a little about everything.

Apprenticeships develop employees who can do many different tasks. They usually involve several related groups of skills that allow the apprentice to practice a particular

trade, and they take place over a long period of time in which the apprentice works for, and with, the senior skilled worker.

Internships and assistantships are usually a combination of classroom and on-the-job training. They are often used to train prospective managers.

Programmed learning, computer-aided instruction and interactive video all have one thing in common: they allow our trainee to learn at his or her own pace. Also, they allow material already learned to be bypassed in favor of material with which a trainee is having difficulty. After the introductory period, the instructor need not be present, and the trainee can learn as his or her time allows.

Laboratory training is conducted for groups by skilled trainers. It usually is conducted at a neutral site and is used by upper- and middle management trainees to develop a spirit of teamwork and an increased ability to deal with management and peers

Trainers

Who actually conducts the training depends on the type of training needed and who will be receiving it. On-the-job training is conducted mostly by supervisors; off-the-job training, by either in-house personnel or outside instructors.

In-house training is the daily responsibility of supervisors and employees. Supervisors are ultimately responsible for the productivity and, therefore, the training of their subordinates. These supervisors are taught the techniques of good training. They are aware of the knowledge and skills necessary to make a productive employee.

We used several ways to select training personnel for off-the-job training programs. In-house personnel helped in developing formal training programs to be delivered to our employees off line from their normal work activities, during company meetings or individually at prearranged training sessions.

The company also used many outside training sources, including consultants, technical and vocational schools, continuing education programs, chambers of commerce and economic development groups.

Whoever is selected to conduct the training, either outside or in-house trainers, it was important that the company's goals and values were carefully explained.

Training Administration

Having planned the training program properly, we had to administer the training to the selected employees. It was important to follow through to make sure the goals are being met. Questions to consider before training begins include:

Location.

Facilities.

Accessibility.

Comfort.

Equipment.

Timing.

Careful attention to these operational details contributed to the success of the training program.

The company ensured that the training program administrator should follow these steps:

Define the organizational objectives.

Determine the needs of the training program.

Define training goals.

Develop training methods.

Decide whom to train.

Decide who should do the training.

Administer the training.

Evaluate the training program.

Following these steps helped to develop an effective training program to ensure that the firm keeps qualified employees who are productive, happy workers. This will contribute positively to the bottom line.

Evaluation of Training

Training is evaluated several times during the process. Employees are evaluated by comparing their newly acquired skills with the skills defined by the goals of the training program. Any discrepancies are noted and adjustments were made to the training program to enable it to meet specified goals