Managing Entrepreneurial Enterprises: AAB Consulting - Essay Example

Managing Entrepreneurial Enterprises Report: AAB Consulting BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AAB Consulting is a start-up organisation that will be entering a very saturated and maturing market environment with just under 4,000 different consulting competitors in South East Queensland. AAB Consulting will be providing marketing expertise and consultation to assist in developing effective promotions, advertising or internal marketing campaigns for business competitiveness improvements and brand building prowess among competition. AAB will assist, using internal talent resources, in developing appropriate marketing literature and philosophy that gains market attention and builds loyalty. The market is currently experiencing a 2.1 percent, stable annual growth rate and provides $8 billion in annual revenues across Australia. The market potential consists of approximately 591,000 potential customers, which is roughly 30 percent of the entire regional population in South East Queensland. It is a favourable market based on cultural characteristics found within the homogenous Australian culture and one where ample opportunities for commercial development in a highly-saturated region with many resource-capable target customer groups. To ensure competitive success, the business must focus on brand-building, promotion and establishment of a human-centric leadership model of human resources to gain commitment and establish a dedicated, cohesive organisational culture that will provide legitimate excellence in service. Relationship development between AAB and the client markets are critical for ensuring competitive success in a market environment where many products are easily replicated by other consulting firms. Financing will occur utilising traditional banking systems, on medium-term loan generation, requiring monthly payback. This strategy is most appropriate for a small-sized company unable to procure adequate capital through stock issuance and where start-up costs are not substantial to ensure proper capital expenditures for many different tangible assets. The monthly break-even, as aligned with expected sales volumes for each variety of sales packages provided to customers, supports medium-term financing in this capacity. AAB CONSULTING 1. Overview of AAB Consulting Australian Acumen Brokers Consulting (AAB) is a small business designed to offer corporate and small business clients advice and opportunities to improve their marketing positioning and brand visibility. Many businesses operating in multiple industries lack the resources and or management capital necessary to establish recognised brand identities among competition and often do not maintain significantly-sized marketing divisions and personnel to assist in this process. AAB Consulting will utilise its vast knowledge stemming from several internal marketing experts to assist clients in establishing the most effective public relations medium, to develop competent and market-relevant advertising and promotion, and assist in development of integrated marketing communications to improve client market share in their competitive markets. AAB Consulting services include logo construction via graphic arts software and technologically-savvy internal personnel, establish e-commerce solutions and social media for consumer engagement, develop advertising spreads for print promotion, and establish meaningful client partnerships with various production facilities for on-air broadcast advertisement. The AAB Consulting product line includes low-cost software to enhance public relations prowess developed through strategic alliances with information technology organisations and a copyrighted do-it-yourself video instructing clients how to better produce efficiencies in the marketing function. 2. Industry Overview AAB will be operating in a highly competitive, saturated marketplace consisting of 3,958 different consulting businesses of various size and structure (IBIS World, 2012). Major competitors holding the majority of Australian market share include Accenture Australia, Deloitte, Touche and Tohmatsu, PwC Australia, and KPMG (IBIS World, 2012). Scattered amongst this existing, high profile competition are geographically-dispersed small and medium-sized consulting firms with varying expertise and consulting services both privately- and publicly-owned. Despite the highly saturated marketplace, consulting, throughout the whole of Australia, is currently valued at $8 billion with stable growth rates of 2.1 percent between 2007 and 2012 (IBIS World). Consulting is becoming a highly-valued commodity for many small business owners that simply cannot afford to procure costly marketing products or maintain the staff and support required to assist in marketing development. Demand for these services is so significant that salaries are some of the highest as compared to other dissimilar industries. Below is the approximate salary structure for talent experts in marketing consulting as provided by Cheng (2012): Undergraduate Degree: $60,000 to $100,000 Master’s Degree: $140,000 to $200,000 In order to attract necessary human capital required to sustain competitive advantages over other consulting firms, labour requirements will be moderately higher than average, which will be offset by establishing a lean procurement model and owner-level evaluations occurring recurrently to identify opportunities for cost reduction throughout the operational model. The industry demands competitive salaries within this approximate range, thus the business, in order to maintain its customer-centric successes, must make proper allotments for sizeable salaries to ensure support staff retention and motivation. AAB Consulting will be establishing its headquarters in South East Queensland, a region that has witnessed explosive population and commercial centre growth, thus providing an ample basket of potential business client markets to target. In 2010 alone, this region experienced a weekly population growth of 1,200 citizens (Queensland Treasury, 2012). In the Gold Coast region, the centre of operations, there are approximately 591,000 potential consumers, a region that witnessed a total population growth in 2010 at nearly 70,000 (Queensland Treasury, 2012). The Gold Coast headquarters maintains ample opportunities for commercial development along a well-developed business infrastructure in the region, favourable for gaining market attention and prominence and for ensuring adequate demand from potential business clientele. 3. How the Business Concept Works Fournier (1998) strongly iterates that brand loyalty is on the decline today, fuelled by growth in multi-industry competition, globalisation, and declining switching costs for consumers as it relates to brand defection. In marketing theory, brand loyalty is the level of attachment felt by consumers toward a particular company conception that drives favourable assessments for a favourite brand over that of competing offers and services (Kotler, Bowen & Makens, 2003). Companies in many industries that rely on the marketing function to ensure competitive advantages oftentimes, today, forget about the intangibles of business that are highly relevant for gaining market share. Intangibles include consumer relationship development, innovations, and the psychological relevancy of brand as it relates to consumer lifestyle and attitudes. Many companies simply focus on pricing and product to illustrate differentiated offerings from that of competition, which do not have long-term sustainability for gaining market share. AAB Consulting will assist in evaluating the internal dynamics and human capital capacity of business clients, subsequently translating these competencies into a viable and market-relevant marketing concept. Figure 1 illustrates the pricing structure that will be established for existing marketing-based services and products: Figure 1: Pricing structure for consulting services and products Full Package – Integrated #1 $18,000 Partial Package – Single Promotion $6,000 Partial Package – Single Print Ad $8,000 Full Package – Ad Scheme, Print and Evaluation through marketing assessment Full Package – Market Research, Competitive Analyses, and Integrated Package Development $20,000 $30,000 The pricing structure is approximate, and will be adjusted according to the custom needs of business clients. However, these prices are aligned with competitive pricing structures of major consulting companies offering blended packages or single consulting packages. Pricing is aligned with the labour and capital requirements necessary to achieve excellence in consulting service delivery and to offset the high operational costs associated with salary distribution in this industry. Business clients will work directly, interactively, with support staff from AAB Consulting and other supplementary partners required for assisting in advertising and promotional development. 4. Core features of innovation and critical success dynamics Many businesses that do not maintain the adequate capital and labour required to establish a prominent marketing presence in desired target markets require radical adjustment in the marketing function to gain ground with consumers and outperform competition. AAB Consulting will focus, primarily, on gaining attention from businesses that have reached the decline stage of the product and service life cycles that do not understand how to reposition their business model to gain market attention and loyalty. According to Dooley (2005), when products and services have reached the decline stage, inventory cost controls and cash management become complicated, which has significant profit concerns for small business owners. Sudden and unexpected declines in demand stemming from key target markets seriously conflicts the budgetary process at companies and many business owners simply do not maintain the education and experience with positioning conceptions in marketing to ensure re-stabilisation and re-growth of products and services that have reached the decline stage. This is the nature of innovation in this consulting business and also represents a critical success dynamic to gain market attention and client loyalties. The business will develop an effective value proposition that will be promoted in all advertising for AAB and published on the company’s website and other associated, integrated print promotions. The value proposition is one of the most effective methodologies for illustrating differentiation between existing competitors and translates into a psychological representation of the total value that AAB can provide (Boone & Kurtz, 2006). Below is an example of the value proposition that will be included in all marketing correspondence for desired target buyers: AAB Consulting moves far beyond traditional consulting, revolutionising the interactive experience between client and AAB. Through sincerity, sophistication and competence, AAB is able to provide affordable, proven solutions to enhance competitive advantage through marketing and bring more sustainable value to your business. Another important innovation in consulting will be the establishment of the AAB e-commerce solutions model, providing real-time IT and executive-level support for integrating e-business tools to assist in better customer relationship management and talent leadership for human capital advantages. Utilising an expert in human resources education and experience, part of the marketing package will include internal marketing campaigns designed to foster internal motivation and enthusiasm within the organisational culture of client businesses to build human-oriented advantages over competition. The talent within AAB Consulting will develop a presentable model of internal marketing with evaluation tools that will be distributed to clients, all based on valid psychological, sociological and human resources models. The trademarked AAB Consulting Model will also be utilised as a marketing innovation in all print correspondence with clients, thus representing a unique conception against other consulting businesses that provide only a singular, streamlined service without excessive interaction and client engagement. A critical success dynamic that will also assist in differentiating this business from existing competition will be establishment of a customer evaluation metric that will assist clients in understanding the actual return on investment (ROI) for all current promotional and advertising efforts. According to the results of a study conducted by Ferris, Bendle, Pfeifer & Reibsten (2010), a study utilising just under 200 executives in multiple industries, nearly 71 percent of respondents believed that an evaluation metric was the most critical success dynamic for ensuring customer satisfaction. The business will provide, at moderate cost structures, an evaluation system consisting of online data retrieval, internal measurement and profit analyses, supplemented by quantitative market research on preferences and lifestyles of buyer markets. This is unparalleled in this industry and speaks to the sophistication and competence by which this business will be positioned in this saturated market environment. 5. External market influences impacting business success Michael Porter (2011) described five different forces stemming from the external environment that maintain significant, potential hindrances to achieving competitive success. These include threat of substitutes in the market, threat of new entrants, consumer and supplier buyer power, and competitive rivalry between established competitors. This analysis focuses only on the primary risks to the business driven by external market forces. In this industry, buyers maintain considerable power and are able to force transparency and backward integration into the business model. Why is this? Many consulting businesses focus on pricing differentiation to illustrate the value that the consulting business can provide to existing and future customer segments. Because pricing is so transparent both online and in print literature promotions from competition, the business should be focusing on non-price positioning to gain market prominence. When consumers hold high buying power, they can easily defect to other brands that they perceive as being of higher value, which translates into lost demand and lost revenues. AAB Consulting must focus on establishing a positioning strategy focusing on competence and premium services to ensure sustainability and establish barriers to customer brand defection in this industry. There are significant threats of new market entry for new competitors, as the capital requirements necessary to establish a relevant consulting business are not substantial. At-home workers operating consulting businesses, blended with bricks-and-mortar competition, continue to flood the market with innovative entrepreneurs attempting to establish consulting services. The business leadership at AAB must be ever-diligent in evaluating the competitive market to identify potential barriers to new market entry, which includes but is not limited to intellectual property protections. This industry also allows for many different substitutes, which poses financial risks to the business model. For instance, there are many advertising and public relations industries that provide similar products and services, however without the intensive interaction between client and business that will be part of the AAB Consulting business model. The business must be ever-competent in establishing new methodologies for differentiating the business model so that there is a clear, market-perceived distinction between AAB Consulting and the traditional advertising and PR organisations in the competitive environment. 6. Risk management There is a substantial risk to this business borne of cultural issues both internal and external. Many companies that will be clients of AAB have unique, internal organisational cultures. These include a broad range of top-down, authoritative hierarchies of executive leadership that forbid shared decision-making as well as more flexible, decentralised structures. Each of these unique business cultures will determine the level of engagement that AAB can and will provide to each client group. “While we acknowledge that global communication, technical innovation and industrialization can create a milieu for cultural change, a convergence among cultural values is by no means assured” (Dorfman, Hanges & Brodbeck, 2004, p.709). This acknowledgement by Dorfman, et al. (2004) illustrates that in order to make meaningful cultural connections among very diverse organisational cultures in the client professional environment, there must not be reliance on solely communication and innovation, but there must be supplementary utilisation of cultural knowledge within a business context. The business will create a cross-cultural competency training program for use within the AAB environment, illustrating such conceptions as Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and other trusted business research describing the phenomenon and risks of organisational culture disparity. Training will be a control methodology to ensure that cross-cultural knowledge is disseminated throughout the business model and is allowed to translate to consumer-perceived cultural connections that enhance relationship development. A further risk to this business model involves the supply chain, impacting procurement. Though this business will not heavily rely on tangible procurement of materials to achieve market success, instead relying on human capital advantages, there are many supplies that will be required to sustain this new business concept. These include, but are not limited to, signage, in-house assets (e.g. chairs and decor), office supplies, and technologies. According to Copacino (1996) in order to realise efficiencies in the supply network, businesses must establish alliances throughout the supply chain with various vendors critical to meeting business needs. The business will be sending representatives to important vendors who will proactively involve suppliers with changes occurring within the AAB Consulting procurement model. To ensure timeliness of delivery and efficiency of procurement on a lean philosophy of purchasing, such alliances will be critical for ensuring supplier power is reduced in the supply network and ensure more stable cost controls. A final risk for the business is the ability of competitors to replicate existing services and products in this industry. Though AAB Consulting will be establishing the aforementioned innovations, to include better client engagement and trademarked evaluation tools for differentiation, AAB must protect the unique service and product offerings provided to multiple business clients. According to Nandan (2005), the only non-replicable asset of today’s businesses is a solid brand identity, ensuring more protection against competitive risks. Thus, AAB Consulting must focus on brand-building as a competitive strategy, utilising logo presentation for effective psychological connection establishment with key profitable markets and building a recognised brand personality. According to Aaker (1996), brand personality must consist of terminology that illustrates human-centric aspects of business, including sophistication and competence in order to satisfy markets. The business will be working consistently to establish a brand personality that illustrates the core values of AAB and its internal staff, focusing on corporate social responsibility and expertise to distinguish from competing forces. A solid brand ensures that mimicking competitors are unable to devastate competitiveness through service or product replication efforts. 7. The economics of the business model Figure 2 illustrates the expected operational costs associated with sustaining this new business concept, including administrative costs and tangible facility costs. Figure 2: Expenditures (Monthly) for AAB Consulting in Year One Figure 2 illustrates the average purchases occurring along the supply network, averaging an estimated $6,000 monthly after initial inventory purchases of $20,000 at start-up. Delivery and travel are significant in this industry, requiring multiple travel itineraries occurring monthly for client engagement and support services. As illustrated by the expenditures in Figure 2, labour payments represent $15,000 monthly to sustain the human capital support required to meet client demands. Average monthly operational expenditure is approximately $46,000, representing the monthly break-even for AAB Consulting. Figure 3: Estimated annual revenues for Year One operations at AAB Integrated Package #1 $18,000 x 15= $270,000 Partial Package #1 $6,000 x 10 = $60,000 Partial Package #2 $8,000 x 10 = $80,000 Full Packages 1 & 2 $20,000 x 8 = $160,000 $30,000 x 8 = $240,000 Total Annual Projected Revenues $810,000 As illustrated by Figure 3, total annual revenues are estimated at $810,000. With all operational costs of doing business at approximately $500,000 annually, the profit potential for AAB Consulting in Year One is $310,000, representing an estimated margin of operations at 28 percent, moderately higher than industry average in consulting. The volume of packages provided annually is realistic and measurable over time, representing the expected demand for all lower-priced and higher-priced services offered. 8. Challenges to improving target market demand for AAB Goodson (2011) strongly reinforces that in order to gain market loyalty, the business must establish working relationships with the buyer markets. “That means being trustworthy and transparent” (Goodson, 2011, p.1). Even though there is a powerful interactive presence at AAB as it relates to client engagement, there must be more transparency occurring regularly to gain market attention. The business will be establishing a social media presence that will be promoted on all print and online literature, including linkages to such sites as Facebook and Twitter. Dedicated, internal support staff will work with contracted and/or in-house information technology specialists to develop effective social networking capabilities. Such features will include an interactive blog (which will provide valuable market demographic and attitudinal data), virtual avatars for interactive engagement, and appropriate communications aligned with the value proposition. Transparency in the social media environment will give the brand much more market visibility and also allow adjustments to be made to the operational model based on testimonials provided by clients. This will also serve as a risk management tool and control methodology to ensure excellence in service and allow for flexibility in service design and delivery based on real-time consumer sentiment. Attracting customers and gaining target market attention is critical to ensuring sustainability and growth of this business model. Guerrilla marketing will be utilised as one strategic opportunity, taking the business into the environment in which most target consumers work and maintain their lifestyles. Experts dressed appropriately as professional consultants will attend professional trade shows with promotional merchandise and free consultation advice (as appropriate for business protectionism) to promote the company. Street guerrilla teams will maintain periodic presence with similar, low-cost promotional merchandise all sporting the business logo (cups, keychains, etc.) with advice on how AAB can improve business and marketing performance. Metrics will be utilised in these efforts to measure return on investment as another risk management tool and determine the volume of potential business clients that sign up for short-term discounted pricing and expert consulting services. CRM software and social media will also enhance relationship development and management, thus giving AAB a competitive edge further through dedicated focus in this area. Determining labour-related productivity is also a challenge when attempting to introduce efficiency and human capital competency into the business model. In most industries, productivity is measured by known output divided by the volume of resources consumed (Apostolides, 2008; Jain & Daga, 2009). However, AAB maintains many intangible factors of production that are not aligned with legitimate manufacturing systems, which include HR prowess, understandings of human psychology, innovation production, and brand identity. The business will require establishment of a measurement tool that identifies intangibles of service competency, such as the 360 degree feedback system, to ensure that employees are properly engaged with clients against the pre-determined set of internal values and principles that drive business excellence. It is necessary to ensure proper ROI for all investments to maintain an evaluation system that can bridge tangibles of business with intangibles to determine strengths and weaknesses of the internal cultural model. Time to market with new innovations is also a critical success factor, as well as a challenge to AAB Consulting. According to Kalyanaram (2008), pioneers as a first market mover often have critical advantages over late movers in the same industry. This is because consumers are widely risk average and will often assess early entrants with late entrants using unfavourable evaluations (Kalyanaram, 2008). The business must be utilising respected product and service life cycle templates to determine the longevity of innovations on the market and how long the business can expect supplementary revenues to be produced from these unique competitive conceptions. Figure 4 illustrates the viable life cycle model used as an analysis tool for ensuring early entrant status to gain market attention and loyalty. Figure 4: Product Life Cycle Model Source: Avacafe.com. (2013). http://avacafe.com/wiki/photographysbzn/industry-life-cycle Currently, AAB Consulting will be entering the market using products and services that are largely homogenous against competition, thus providing no immediate advantages. However, upon release of innovations related to service excellence and competency (the evaluation and engagement tools unique to this industry), the business will have opportunities for expanding the longevity of services to avoid market decline. By understanding the challenges and benefits of product and service life cycles, the business can consistently work to create unique strategies so that demand does not wain from expected demand levels. Having a template by which to measure the relationship between externally-driven demand ratios and internal competency in product and service delivery will ensure appropriate operational and strategic methodologies are developed to maintain market share during the first year of operations. The business must also reduce risks by measuring opportunity costs associated with each new strategy promoted internally. “Cost of capital is the opportunity cost of investing in an asset relative to the expected return on assets of similar risk” (Timme & Timme, 2003, p.1). During operations, the procurement model may demand implementation of a technological system designed to facilitate more effective communications and software proficiency. The business must determine what opportunity costs are incurred by selecting this strategy over alternative strategies that could, also, improve business position or profitability. Under most economic models, measuring opportunity costs means assessing what areas of business performance must be sacrificed in order to focus on new asset procurement in another area (Boyes & Melvin, 2005). Measurement of return on investment and the cost of capital are critical to maintaining a budget-conscious business model that also maximises business efficiency in multiple areas of marketing and operations. Since marketing is a critical success factor for this business as a differentiation tool and positioning tool, capital expenditures in this administrative function must be accounted for properly. The business must assign one leader to become the designated strategic management accountant, a role in which the manager examines competitive positioning, competitive pricing, and internal operational components to decide the most effective cost allocation in key areas (Wu, 2007). The assignment of a strategic management accountant is able to link operational budgeting issues with current strategy, helping the business to understand cost drivers and establish effective actions related to the entire value chain. Strategic management accountants differ from traditional accountants as they are forced to take a holistic view of the entire organisation, determining which costs are relevant and which can be removed from the operational model as aligned with corporate strategy. This reduces the cost risks to the business and will also improve divisional efficiency by removing redundancies and maximising effective capital allocation in flexible business units and business objectives. 9. Adaptable strategies to maximise opportunity As illustrated, one of the most significant benefits and advantages for AAB Consulting is the internal competency and education of client-centred labour needed to sustain this business model. Therefore, the leadership model by which AAB operates will be imperative for ensuring effective, cohesive cultural development. The business will select two distinct HR strategies to improve the psycho-social relationships between management and support staff. First, the business will adopt a transactional leadership philosophy, one in which there are clear distinctions between expected performance and potential consequences for non-compliance (Antonakis, Avolio & Sibasubramaniam, 2003). Transactional leadership often takes a laissez-faire approach to leadership, in which individuals are allowed to maintain their own autonomous functioning with minimal supervision so long as compliance is achieved and performance meets corporate expectations. Transactional leadership will provide incentives for meeting and exceeding performance guidelines by establishing bonus structures upon meeting achievable goals. Under management and leadership theory, transactional leadership can inspire high performance as individuals are given rewards aligned with individual performance. In Australia, the professional culture, homogenously, is largely individualistic, demanding rewards and recognition be aligned with individual performance and not group functioning (Hofstede Centre 2012). The internal dynamics of leadership and human resources, to retain human capital advantages, must be allied with appropriate theory and cultural recognition of the local host culture to ensure that productivity and motivation are enhanced against corporate principles of ethics and performance. Unfortunately, to ensure controls, the business cannot establish a hard approach to human resources, which usually focuses on alignment of human resources to specific, financially-driven methodologies in strategic development. Authoritarian style of leadership would ensure compliance, however the long-term psychological consequences of such controlling management can be significantly-negative. A stable democratic environment can only exist and thrive when the values and beliefs of all organisational members are shared and cohesive (Weingast 1997). It cannot be overstated the potential risks to maintaining competitive advantage through human capital development as the degree of professionalism and enthusiasm illustrated to many business clients will determine brand strength and ensure future profitability through word-of-mouth advertising from existing client markets. The business will be adopting a performance management system, in which goals and objectives are aligned with vision and mission, and where opportunities for financial incentives are present by meeting these identified objectives. 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