By: Sayed Anwar MIB (2012-2013)

Introduction
The introduction of Better World Books was the idea of Xavier Helgesen, Chris Kreece Fuchs, and Jeff Kurtzman, three 2001 graduates of the University of Notre Dame in which they came up with the idea of selling books online with a parallel mission of non-profit as mission to fund

literacy initiatives around the globe

This idea of approach created social, economic, and environmental value for all stakeholders in order to create value based company. To create base for the company, the company acquired its growing inventory of used books

from two primary sources: 1) The Campus Collection program 2) The Library Discards and Donations program, working with more than 1,600 college campuses and about 1,000 libraries nationwide.

Better World Book (BWB) started selling books through a variety of established online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay and its own retail site known as betterworldbooks.com Every order was shipped carbon neutral with offsets from Carbonfund.org, from these orders and sales, t he company donated 7% to 10% of its revenues to various global literacy initiatives, l i k e partnering with Books for Africa, National Center for Family Literacy, Room to Read, World fund, and Invisible Children which were for welfare of the societies

By donating and selling used books, BWB helped to keep away millions of paper waste from going to waste. The books that did not sell were recycled. BWB also had a Carbon Neutral Shopping Cart, through which, the company collected two to five cents on the cost of each book from every customer at on its website. The collected money was used to buy carbon offset to compensate the environmental impact of shipping by the company and its literacy partners. In the financial year 2008, BWB earned revenues of US$ 21 million and had a revenue target of US$ 31 million in fiscal 2009. The base of company was innovative idea & technologist which led the company to grow so fast in very short period of time. Over this period their growth rate was tremendously impressive and during the period of internet boom they captured the idea & market. This is the reason they kept on investing more funds in developing new technologies for operations to finance. Considering the bright talent in young people, as the company was founded by young graduates they also prefer hiring new young minds for new positions. Better World Books have capacity to grow more and more in business environment. The business of with some suggestions over different aspects led business to improve its revenue from $30M to $75M over the period of next 3 years.

Core Values and Mission

1. Customer Focus We are driven to provide customers with a highly-valued experience, and one that allows them to align their actions with their values. We want to be their favorite marketplace and their favorite partner, so we incorporate their input into everything we do.

2. People Matter We seek out talented people who work hard and invest in them. We respect each individual, reward achievement, and celebrate team success.

3. Do the Right Thing We strive to do the right thing at all times, with all people and all issues.

4. Foster Innovation We look for new ideas and bold moves while we embrace and create change.

5. Passion for Literacy We are committed to the cause of literacy. Every person should have the chance to achieve their potential and participate fully in society.

6. People, Planet, Profit Were more than just a business. We equally consider our shareholders, our customers, our employees, our community, our planet, and the lives changed by our common cause. Through our business we strive to enable people to make sustainable positive changes in this world. Thanks to you, were well on our way

Business Model
The working on technology in order generates big revenue by increasing sales. BWB currently collects books from 2 different resources: 1 is campus book drives & another is through a chain of libraries nationwide. The remaining copies they donate to different NGOs. The company made efforts to achieve social, environmental, and economic sustainability. It directly donated books and gave financial support to literacy initiatives worldwide. Moreover, a percentage of each sale was given separately to the individuals, libraries, or colleges as well as literacy partners chosen by them. BWB did not advertise in the media about collecting and selling books; awareness about its business model was mainly spread through word of mouth. The company made efforts to achieve social, environmental, and economic sustainability. It measured its performance in three areas - PEOPLE, PLANET, and PROFIT Today the company sells used books on major sites like Amazon.com and ebay.com as well as its own website. Just six years old, the company earned $31 million in revenue in 2009 and has prevented over 33 million books from entering landfills to date. As part of its expansive social mission, Better World Books is a certified B-Corp, a movement to expand the legal structure of corporations to include employee, community and environmental interests when making business decisions. we can recommend that current business model is contributing to the vision of the company and is in tandem with the core set of its values, there can be questions raised on social cause of the business to be reduced to support the goal of revenue and in extreme economic crisis, however the longer run model suggest that the CSR visibility and such initiatives are helping BWB for their vision

Strategy
The strategy to make the revenue to 75 million USD should stick to core values model of the company, as the social cause and people cause cannot be forgotten to increase the revenue even during economic downturns. The economy reels and enterprising individuals who apply business practices to solving societal problems are gaining support from public and private sectors. The growth model of BWB indicates extreme positive signs of growth in spite of economic downturns of recessions and hence a similar business model should be applied while keeping technological, economic and competitive advantage as flexible to adapt to market situations. As BWB have created its brand with green operations, it can partner with big Bookshop chains in order to increase sales. Considering the mutual benefit for both parties we can assume that by partnering with some bookshop chains & Supermarkets & Also independent book shops it can make presence in more than 70% market. To gain more investment and support from organizations promoting literacy across the world like UNESCO and other social responsible organizations like CRY and others can contribute to companys capital in terms of subsidies and support programmes in turn of advertisement on books and other media concerning methods to create awareness and other social causes. Expanding overseas to new developing economies like India, China, Brazil, Mxico, Malaysia etc. countries shall be considered keeping the EU economic crisis in mind, however advantages from crisis should be taken in terms of more donations and cost cuts by various school, colleges and library institutions.

People

Peoples are the most important in business and its development. BWB needs people who are having attachment with the companys vision & policies. BWB should invest in hiring new talent and long term people. As currently they prefer newly graduate young minds with good spirit. The company offers a good benefits package to its full time workers, and supports its part time employees toward having a path to full time employment and benefits, says CEO David Murphy. He also said that as healthcare premiums have gone up, the company has worked to assume a significant amount of the financial burden to help lessen the impact of higher contribution costs for employees. The company has developed an extensive scorecard by which it tracks its social environmental and financial metrics for its continuous improvement, as well as surveying employees annually to get their input. Considering the growth of company & requirement of software systems & maintenance regularly, BWB should build their own strong Software team which can fulfil their requirements immediately & keep in sync with business needs. The recent economic recession encourage the company to test of its core values. Some of its area was hard hit by the recession, with deep losses in its manufacturing base. The company met this challenge by stretching to avoid layoffs. When reducing the workforce by 42 was all but inevitable, the CEO and Co-Founders took a 20% pay cut, VPs took 15%, managers 10%, and floor employees took 5% (without a loss in benefits). Management promised employees that if they hit their target by the end of the year everyone would get a bonus.

Capital and Shared Ownership

The company has received an investment from investors. If there is a liquidity event, the partners expect significant rewards for investors, management, and all employees who hold options. BWB shares equity with its employees, including warehouse workers earning, through its incentive stock option program. All employees receive an initial grant of stock options after one year, followed by subsequent awards based on performance. While the director of the company notes some challenges in educating employees about the benefits and risks of sharing equity. BWBs social cause has proven business track record that will help in getting funds. There are unique ideas & business growth will depend on the ideas after its implementation. Capital investors will be happy to invest as they can see the possible growth of market by entering into new business. Due to the unique structure, the non-profit partners and Better World Books employees often the last consideration in conventional corporate deal making will always have a seat at this companys table. Although Murphy says that he cannot empirically tie the firms employee engagement practices to better financial results, he points to the companys turn from unprofitable to profitable during difficult economic conditions as evidence. Over the past year, our business has done better than ever during a time when we easily could have had losses and high employee attrition, he said. Instead, we held together and the fact of shared cuts. Hence we can recommend that there can be creative solutions for engaging both employees and other stakeholders in company success, also support from organizations promoting literacy across the world like UNESCO and other social responsible organizations and others can contribute to companys capital in terms of subsidies and support programmes in turn of advertisement on books and other media concerning methods to create awareness and other social causes

Technology

Starting technology department will be a very strategic move, considering the future growth of company that will lead to avoid many copyright & security issues. Also as it is growing fast they always need to update their systems to keep up with new changes in business. The current marketing opportunities immerged on basis of technology like online marketing on Ebay and Amazon and social network like Facebook and Twitter. BWB can consider of this media to market their books and increasing sales using these sites as they drive majority of audience on internet. Millions of users of Google & Facebook can be easy market for advertisement. Also they can consider of Referral based marketing strategy which can lead to generate traffic to site with little share of profit. Investment in technology should be focused and should enhance existing competitive gauge in the industry, also in term of economic should be taken on lean in existing softwares without sacrificing the upgrades as per the need of the hour and trend and user friendliness portals for both customers and companies. The current outsourced partners contracts should be renegotiated with BOT model to minimize cost and invest same in various other technological advancements to generate revenue and hence tie ups with various manufacturers of same for preinstalled e books and cost associated projects can be initiated instead of directly entering into an existing competitive technology market.

Operational

As the number of collected books will grow, further BWB will need more warehousing space, which can lead to further investments which lead to increase in workspace and requirement of more skilled resources, and with the advancement in technology will lead to further expansion of work force.
In the seasonal time the textbook business increases, during this time which the warehouse staff

gets increase. These employees sorted each incoming book by conditionacceptable, good, very good, like newand attached stickers, including a code to identify its source. They scanned each books bar code to enter information into a database, organizing the books as they came in. An Increase in the core activity incremental, new investment in publishing house and website development for renting books will create operational complexities for department of coordination between renting books department and conventional department, hence as the complexity will increase the reduction in waste mechanism will be required to ensure minimum efficiency and productivity losses. Not only in terms of internal operations , also as any organization grows similarly book collection programmes and other activities operations will lead to further complexity , hence same can be outsourced up to an extent for cases of remote book collections. With overseas expansion the need of bringing books to a central system or warehouse and then delivering to customer should be minimized further with more distribution centers and widely spread small warehouses also keeping the point of customer delivery as close as possible to the warehouse delivering same.

References www.betterworldbooks.com www.google.com/images

Jim Meenan, $4.5 Million Boosts Mishawakas Better World Books, South Bend Tribune, April 8, 2008. Christina Hildreth, Old Textbooks See New Use; BWB Donates to Literacy Charities, South Bend Tribune, June 6, 2006