Amazon - شبكة المحاسبين العرب

الخميس, 16 سبتمبر 2021 10:16

تسويق شركتك: الاستراتيجية الرقمية حتمية

غيّر عام 2020 كل شيء عن كيفية عمل الشركات، بما في ذلك كيفية تفاعلها مع الجميع من الموظفين إلى العملاء ومن البائعين إلى المجتمعات

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المحتوى بالإنجليزية Marketing your firm: The digital strategy imperative
By David M. Toth
May 12, 2021, 9:00 a.m. EDT
5 Min Read
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2020 changed everything about how businesses operate, including how they interact with everyone from staff to clients, vendors to communities. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a digital transformation that changed the way people purchase consumer products, goods, and services. Until 2020, only 15% of companies prioritized digital transformation. In 2021 however, 77.3% of CIOs rated digital transformation as a top priority, pushing cybersecurity to second place.

Firm leaders of today and tomorrow looking to succeed in an increasingly virtual market must lean into the momentum that has been created since the beginning of the pandemic, take those learning experiences and data points, and uncover new paths to revenue growth.

Digital presence is nothing new and has lived as a function of marketing for a long time. But as client acquisition becomes more complex and anomalies like those of the Paycheck Protection Program and CARES Act have proved to firms that opportunities do exist through virtual experiences, a sound digital strategy must find its place as a pillar of your firm’s 10-year vision.

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The ability to remain competitive in 2021 and beyond is now dependent upon an approach that engages your target audience in tailored and unique ways, either pushing them through a thoughtfully designed qualification process or grooming unqualified leads to become clients of the future. Key tools to a successful plan include:

The evolution of your website into a sales tool;
Leveraging content to answer your audience’s pain points and challenges;
Thought leadership to establish expertise and positioning in key channels;
Comprehension of the “new” client journey;
A tactical approach to keyword strategy and search engine rankings;
Leveraging email marketing that has been a proven tactic in our toolbox for 20-plus years;
Defining the conversion funnel for your firm as it relates to managing each touchpoint;
Identifying digital champions inside your firm; and,
Technology adoption across marketing and sales.
As digital strategy evolves to become an immediate and impactful portion of the client experience, the prospect-to-client journey you create (read: your digital strategy) will require the same level of attention in a virtual environment as it would in-person. The above tools combine to provide rich insight into each visitor’s online movements, interests, and interactions, allowing your firm to curate a personalized, guided experience from the moment they walk in your virtual “front door.”

In fact, prospects and clients already expect and demand a frictionless journey, shifting the traditional focus of business development from relationships in the market to virtual experiences online. Providing a frictionless experience to your prospects and clients requires your firm be able to capture data, automate their interactions, and gain insight from the time they get to your website to the time they interact with your colleagues in the local community. The ability to centralize this information into one dashboard removes the hurdles and unnecessary complexity from a rapidly evolving process.

New opportunities

Geographic boundaries have vanished, but new boundaries related to the virtual buyer’s journey and the pandemic have sprung up between firms and prospective clients. This shift has created a digital strategy imperative. Every facet of the prospect-to-client relationship is now critical to maintaining a data-driven approach to measure what must be managed.

And there are big opportunities to be had. Implementation of a digital rainmaker strategy grants firms the ability to establish meaningful relationships while building a book of business that extends beyond any one individual. Opportunities generated through a broad, sophisticated digital strategy will create an output of higher conversion rates (and more time dedicated to clients and billable hours) for partners, ultimately yielding increased cash flow and profitability for the firm.

So, what are the foundations of a sound digital rainmaker strategy?

1. Data is king. So is content. You may have seen some headlines recently about the way data is going to be collected and stored by internet giants like Google, Facebook, YouTube and Amazon. Their methods are evolving rapidly to put the user first and protect their data. What does that mean for your digital strategy? Data collection will be much more critical at the firm level versus relying on third-party sources. Attention will become a commodity and competition for users’ time on the internet will be more challenging. Strong, relatable content that shows thought leadership will pave the path to establishing an authoritative voice and a strong following.
2. Focus on one vertical at a time. Developing a source of qualified leads through digital marketing of specific verticals and practice lines is the best way to create success stories for repeatable growth. Trying to tackle and embrace the entire firm's transition to one of digital culture will have its challenges. Embracing a model that is generating traceable, repeatable, and sustained revenue comes with focus, leadership, and the ability to identify digital champions within the firm. Who will be the next partner to champion video, thought leadership creation, and a podcast with 40,000 monthly subscribers?
3. Data flow drives decisions. Visibility and accountability at all levels is critical and data flow, analytics, and dashboards connecting the path from marketing inception to sales conversion provide the insight needed to know what’s working and what isn’t. Data-driven growth is integral to the future-ready firm.
4. Adoption at all levels is critical. Why do only 30% of digital transformations succeed? Because, according to McKinsey, adoption must be endemic — and that’s a hard nut to crack. Adoption that starts at the top level and becomes part of the firm's strategic plan, goals, metrics, and key performance indicators at all levels is more likely to succeed and produce the greatest return on investment.

As client acquisition becomes ever more challenging and complex, as client experiences trend toward virtual and away from in-person exclusively, and as the prospect-to-client expectations continue to evolve, this imperative will become ever more critical to your success.

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الخميس, 16 سبتمبر 2021 10:08

أمازون والضرائب العالمية

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المحتوى بالإنجليزية A U.S.-driven effort to reach a global accord on taxing big tech companies’ overseas profits is getting bogged down over ensnaring one firm in particular: Amazon.com Inc.

A Treasury Department proposal, which was distributed to other governments earlier this month and has been seen by Bloomberg, would subject about 100 of the largest and most profitable companies to greater taxation in countries where the firms’ users and consumers are located, as opposed to the countries where they’re headquartered.

The idea is that the new rules would apply to any large companies that exceed certain numbers, yet to be determined, for their annual revenue and profit margin. Before Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this month jump-started efforts that the Trump administration had opposed, the talks focused on digital and “consumer-facing” businesses — definitions countries had struggled to reach agreement on.

An employee takes a package from the conveyor belt at an Amazon.com Inc. fulfillment center in Kegworth, U.K.Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
The global talks, led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, are trying to address many countries’ concerns that tech giants — and other multinationals — aren’t being properly taxed under the current system of rules. The OECD effort seeks to replace the digital services taxes a growing number of countries are enacting to capture more revenue from companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

But Amazon’s unusual status as a low-margin tech giant is emerging as a sticking point in negotiations. Seattle-based Amazon recently reported a global operating margin across its businesses of 5.5 percent; that compares with Facebook’s margin of 45.5 percent and 27.5 percent at Google parent Alphabet Inc.

The U.S. proposal called for including only “the largest and most profitable” multinational corporations. It didn’t call for specific numbers, but both revenue and profitability thresholds would have to be set high to capture just 100 companies.

Two Italian government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Amazon should be covered and there’s no reason why a global tax accord can’t capture companies with narrow profit margins but high revenue. Italy, the euro area’s third-biggest economy, has imposed a 3 percent tax on companies with overall revenue above 750 million euros ($903 million) and revenue from digital services in Italy above 5.5 million euros.

A European Commission spokesperson said Tuesday that while the U.S. proposal offers a “promising opportunity” for progress toward a deal, “we should not forget what the initial policy rationale was: a fairer taxation of the digital economy. It is essential that any proposal on the table also addresses this challenge.” A French finance ministry official said they are still examining the U.S. proposal to determine if it would cover all digital multinationals.

The U.S., however, has long opposed an agreement that singles out a particular slice of the economy, such as rules that only affect digital companies, and the new Treasury proposal is intended to make the plan’s scope more quantitative and objective.

U.S. officials are aware that other finance ministries are trying to get low-margin companies captured within the profitability threshold, according to people familiar with the matter, who said Amazon is the target of these discussions. The U.S. continues to oppose efforts to target any single company or sector, said the people, who asked not to be identified.

The U.S. Treasury and Paris-based OECD declined to comment. Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Not ‘discriminatory’

“We’ve made it very clear to our European counterparts that we will not support a tax that is discriminatory toward American companies,” Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, said earlier this month on CNBC.

No matter how successful an accord might otherwise be in reshaping tax collection and satisfying calls for multinational firms to pay their fair share to governments, failing to apply it to Amazon — led by the world’s richest person, and a regular target for progressive U.S. lawmakers like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over its low tax bill — would risk public opposition to ratification in the U.S. along with European nations.

“Ultimately, it must catch Amazon, otherwise it will be deemed a failure,” and countries might unilaterally introduce their own measures, said Tommaso Faccio, an official at the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, a group advocating for overhauling global taxes.

Negotiators are considering the U.S. pitch as nearly 140 countries work to find consensus on both the profit reallocation plan and a global minimum tax, and present it to Group of 20 finance ministers in early July. President Joe Biden recently proposed raising the U.S. minimum tax so the country can collect more revenue from multinational firms and help pay for a $2.25 trillion infrastructure and jobs package.

Business lines

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has consistently set low profit targets, preferring to invest in the business, which also reduces the company’s tax obligations. Amazon had 2020 sales of $386 billion, more than Facebook and Google combined, yet it paid less than either company in income taxes. Amazon’s retail business, which includes warehouses around the country and delivery services, costs more to operate than digital advertising businesses run by Google and Facebook.

One method under consideration for including Amazon in the rules would be to allow taxation on specific lines of business, rather than just companies as a whole, according to the people familiar with the matter. For example, if the rules considered the lucrative Amazon Web Services business — with an operating margin of 28 percent — separately from the company’s lower-margin retail arm, countries could still see some of the company’s profits reallocated.

While the U.S. isn’t completely opposed to targeting business lines, it prefers any such practice to be limited, the people said.

In public consultations on previous iterations of the OECD plan, companies have argued that business-line segmentation will become overly complex.

Or, negotiators could also find a different way of setting the revenue and profitability thresholds that does capture the company, Faccio said. That would also risk making the rules more convoluted, after the U.S. proposal sought to simplify what had become an overly complicated determination of which companies would be covered.

“The administration clearly saw the need to inject momentum,” and decided to limit the proposal’s scope in an attempt to get an overall agreement by July, said Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network. “But the politics will look less smart if the most high-profile companies in terms of public concern about tax abuse turn out to be excluded.”

— With assistance from Spencer Soper, Laura Davison, William Horobin and Nico Grant