Managing Communications Knowledge and Information - Assignment Example

Managing Communications Knowledge and Information Table of Contents Task 3 1 Range of Decision 3 2 Information and Knowledge Needed to Ensure Effective Decision Taking 4 1.3 List of Internal and External Sources of Information As Well As Understanding 5 1.4 Recommendation for Improvements in the Selections and Analysis of Information 7 1.5 The Stakeholders 7 1.6 Communication with Stakeholders 8 1.7 Plan to Involve Stakeholders in Decision-Making 9 1.8 Design Strategies for Future Improvements in Decision-Making Process 9 Task 2 11 2.1 Business Overview 11 2.2 Communication Process of Christian Dior 11 2.3 Pitfalls of Communication 12 2.4 Recommendation for Improvements 13 2.5 Personal Plan to Enhance the Communication Skills 13 2.6 Information and Knowledge Process in Christian Dior 14 2.7 Organizing the Information and Knowledge of the Company 15 2.8 Recommendation to Improve Information and Knowledge in the Company 16 References 17 Task 1 1.1 Range of Decision Starting a new retail business in this changing global market is a complex procedure. It requires lot of exercise for the owners of a business along with major amount of decisions to be taken for the forthcoming set up of the retail business. With the right business plan, a new retail start-up business can achieve its expected goals. Several decision factors have been considered during the initial stage of the start-up business. All these decisions can conclude any businessperson to find their right operation path, funds along with other criteria to survive at the early period of the business in this competitive retail business world. As per the perception of a new business owner, first considerable factor is site of business, if anyone plans to start a brick-and-mortar retail operation in addition to the internet-based operations, then choosing a location is a critical step. On the other hand, capital of a business is a huge obligation for the retail business. Apparently, it can be mentioned that in a business, capital is not only one critical factor, total financing structure having a great responsibility for the owners of the retail business. In addition, various legal issues are highly accountable for the new start-up business, such as trade license, license of intellectual property along with other essential issues regarding business law. On the other hand, for grabbing the right choice at the right time for business sustainability, the owner has to incorporate information technology within business for official workings, communication with stakeholders, keeping records of sales, profits, losses, other information regarding a business and its employees. Therefore, it would clearly state that a new set-up business’s decision range is too vast and unavoidable for its owner (Stanford & et. al., 2005). 1.2 Information and Knowledge Needed to Ensure Effective Decision Taking For better understanding and incorporation of decisions within the business, an organisation named Coral-Electronics has been established. For building a successful retail business, many things are needed to be analysed with the aim of having a better understanding about market conditions as well as making effective decisions. In this competitive business world, market condition is changing in a continuous manner and accordingly, a change in market condition will have a huge difference for the business to operate. Therefore, it can be ascertained that as an electronic retail organisation, the company has to incorporate and regularly update its information and knowledge for serial improvement in decision strategy of the business. On the other hand, Coral-Electronics is needed to have an understanding about its market competitors and market conditions (Stucki, 2009). In this respect, market information is crucial for the company, as it has to competing with other existing companies in the field of electronic market. Consequently, Coral-Electronics is needed to obtain adequate information and knowledge about its competitors and market trends, Coral-Electronics would able to ensure effective decisions for the development as well as growth of the company. In addition, Coral-Electronics always needed to have effective information about the customers and market trends. The company with the assistance these information and knowledge will be facilitated with the opportunity of performing operations in a profitable manner. It is worth mentioning in this regard that knowledge and information about market including competitors, market trends along with customers are always essential to ensure effective decision making and for competitive advantage of Coral-Electronics (Stanford & et. al., 2005). 1.3 List of Internal and External Sources of Information As Well As Understanding Internal sources of information are obtained by Coral-Electronics in a convenient way. These internal sources are provided hereunder. Accounting information (trading profit and loss account, balance sheets of different fiscal years along with other finance related report of the business) Expected sales report and salesman’s report Various types of expenditure report by promotion of the new business of Coral-Electronics Transportation cost of purchasing raw materials and delivery of electronic goods Initial set-up costs for IT system within the organisation On the other side, external sources of the company are mentioned below. a. Primary Data These data are collected for specific purposes of the company from different personnel that include salespersons, dealers, and customers. This is a leisure process of collecting data, but the results from these data are very accurate and reliable (Stucki, 2009). b. Secondary Data These types of data already exist in various published or collected sources. The secondary data can be collected from sources provided below. Business-based newspapers Government publications and reports Various published surveys of the retail markets Various trade associations (Chambers of Commerce and Export Promotion Council) Publications from foreign government and International agencies (UNO, ILO and IBRD) Source: (Stanford & et. al., 2005) Suitability and Reliability of These Sources in Relation to the Business Start-Up From the perspective of a new business, Coral-Electronics is needed to assess the internal and external sources in a suitable manner. The new business has to formulate as well as implement business processes on the basis of data gathered from external sources. To build a successful retail business, Coral-Electronics must know about its market competitors, changing trends of market, customer behaviour and competitors in retail electronic market. The data are to be obtained by the company through primary data and secondary data collection methods. With the help of primary data collection, Coral-Electronics identifies the real information related to the business scenario from the perspective of the customers, dealers and salespersons. It is more like a market survey, which is crucial at the stage of starting-up a business. Secondary data have been collected from published information valuable for understanding the changing trends of the market. In this regard, primary and secondary data are collected to build a reliable as well as sustainable effort towards the business. Additionally, internal sources are used to track the repetitive growth of Coral-Electronics, which in turn aids in making a comparison with market trends and competitors obtained from external sources. Respectively, both internal and external sources are determined to be suitable as well as reliable as start-up information for the company (Freeman & et. al., 2010). 1.4 Recommendation for Improvements in the Selections and Analysis of Information Coral-Electronics is a retail electronic business organisation, which is at its initial stages of growth. From the perspective of a new start-up business, Coral-Electronics has to be efficient on the selections of information. Internal and external sources are crucial for business sustainability, but it must be suitable and reliable for the business. In this context, Coral-Electronics management can generate a market survey on customers, dealers and salespersons for formulating viable and relevant measurement about market trends with the help of pilot testing to avoid errors and risk factors. Coral-Electronics utilises secondary sources, but it must be related to the respective subjects and up-to-date information of the market. Apparently, Coral-Electronics compared these elements with its own report generated from internal sources to assure future prospects in the competitive market (Henley KM Forum, 2010). 1.5 The Stakeholders The stakeholders are essential to build a successful business. Coral-Electronics identifies some of its stakeholders for the decision-making process. The stakeholders are customers, partners and employees of the company. The stakeholders are considered important for making decisions and ascertaining that the company is able to perform operations in accordance with organisational objectives (McDonald & Hammer, n.d.). 1.6 Communication with Stakeholders Communication is essential for the growth of Coral-Electronics. Sharing information with the stakeholders will ensure in building awareness amid stakeholders, so that they are able to have an understanding about the performance of the company. Communication is appropriate for quality maintaining and clarifying the problem areas with the stakeholders. This would help to build a strong business relationship within the organisation (McDonald & Hammer, n.d.). Contact Methods Coral-Electronics has selected various methods that can be used for communicating with stakeholders. Some of these methods are business seminars, surveys, workshops about electronics and its future, video presentation with lectures, e-mails, meetings along with some informal ways like sporting events as well (McDonald & Hammer, n. d.). Methods of Building a Strong Business Relationship The methods of building a strong business relationship has been provided hereunder. Mutual Control: One party always has the right to influence all other parties towards a right goal Commitment: In a business, commitments between stakeholders are always needed Satisfaction: Satisfied stakeholders are profitable for the growth Exchange Relationship: one party is in benefit for the other party, this relationship must be maintained with the stakeholders Communal Relationship: All the stakeholders are helping each other and share benefits, because they are concerned about ultimate welfare of organisation Source: (McDonald & Hammer, n.d.) 1.7 Plan to Involve Stakeholders in Decision-Making As previously mentioned, stakeholders are essential for the organisation and its decision-making programme. Meeting is one of the most common ways to involve them to share their ideas with each other. Coral-Electronics also organise some seminars with video presentation about market orientation of the company and its future prospect in this competitive market. Additionally, develop some surveys about the thoughts of stakeholders as well as generate some business workshops within the company’s premises (Svendsen, 1998). These workshops about the electronic industry and its prospects help to understand the strategy to retain in this business and increase the interest of the stakeholders about the company. Some informal ways like, sporting events between stakeholders can also form a communication path among them. Through all of these planning, stakeholders are interested to participate in the decision-making process of Coral-Electronics (McDonald & Hammer, n.d.). 1.8 Design Strategies for Future Improvements in Decision-Making Process It has been previously mentioned that there are various processes of communication in between the stakeholders of Coral-Electronics, but there is a need for improvement in terms of future sustainability of Coral-Electronics. Coral-Electronics must enhance its personal networking to widen involvements in the decision-making process. The company can design its own website and personal e-mails for the stakeholders to communicate in an advanced way. Coral-Electronics also improves its promotion campaigns through social networking sites that include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter along with other sites that can assist in reaching maximum number of customers as well as generate brand awareness. In this competitive global world, Coral-Electronics must adhere all types of new communication system for widening the involvement of stakeholders along with enriching the decision making process for the betterment of the company (McDonald & Hammer, n.d.). Task 2 2.1 Business Overview Christian Dior is a French company headquartered in Paris, France. It was founded in 1946 by Christian Dior. The company deals with luxurious products and services such as clothes, footwear, fragrance, beauty products and departmental stores across the country having huge number of employees. The company believes in serving quality products to huge customer base that are loyal towards the company’s products. For several past years, the company leading the world of fashion by providing wide range of products with greater value to satisfy the customers’ needs. They also opened a finance company with the name of Christian Dior Finance (Pochna, 1996). With creative and innovative ideas, the company provides attractive outfit and other fashionable products for its customers and make the company best among others in the fashion industry. As it is a limited company, it has to follow the legal requirement of the government. It also has board of directors and right amount of share capital as per the government prerequisites. As it is registered with the Paris Trade and Companies Register, the company has to maintain an ethical work structure under which the company can make better use of its resources. Under the mission statement of the company, it plans effective strategies and enhance the product quality to increase its customer loyalty as well as its sales percentage (Pochna, 1996). 2.2 Communication Process of Christian Dior Communication process is the process by the help of which the company can coordinate different kinds of resources to produce the products and enhancing the relationship among the resources. Different kinds of components such as sender, receiver and communication channels are required to make the communication process effective to collect the feedbacks and perform as per the internal and external changes to serve best quality products (Guffey & Loewy, 2010). Christian Dior has efficient strategies for the communication mix. Communication mix includes promotional activities, which are the main sources of attracting and spread awareness among the people about the products and their quality. Different types of events and exhibitions are conducted by the company to increase its sales percentage as well as revenue percentage. Basically, the company produce products, which have high ranges and only the financially stable people can consume the products. In this regard, the company have to enhance the quality of the products to keep the customers satisfied, as they have a good knowledge of the products and believes only in the quality. Effective customer relationship management and digital communication strategies are helpful in direct marketing of the company. The company also trained its employees to boost the level of the personal selling to create after sales relationship for customer loyalty satisfaction (Guffey & Loewy, 2010). 2.3 Pitfalls of Communication Though the company has effective communication strategies, but there are many pitfalls existing in Christian Dior with the employees, customers in relation to product quality. These problems have occurred due to the gap in the communication process of the company. The increasing gap between the company results to major problems with its employee as well as customers. The employees are unable to communicate with the seniors of the company about the problems and other inconvenience owing to which turnover has been a major problem within the company. As the company’s structure is large, so it is not possible to communicate with all employees and share their thoughts and solve their problems regarding work performance or others. In this respect, due to ineffective communication, the employees are unable to perform their operations in a productive manner. In addition, the company has been unable to implement the strategies and customer relationship management to satisfy the customers as per their needs (Burtis & Turman, 2005). 2.4 Recommendation for Improvements They have faced some issues regarding the composition of the makeup cosmetics, which should be eliminated by implementing the manufacturing audit that impose effective control over the manufacturing process to check the quality and enhance them for creating unique products. For mitigating the communication gap within the company, Christian Dior has to scrutinize the current situation and set the future objective, which can improve the performance quality of the organization as well as the employees. Effective communication strategies should be followed by the company and it should empower the employees with the responsibility to avoid the communicational gaps or risks (Worth, 2004). 2.5 Personal Plan to Enhance the Communication Skills As an employee of the organization to improve my work performance in the company, I have to follow some codes of the organization and build up the communication skill with daily practises. At first, I need to have an understanding about the objectives and the general codes of the organization, which will help me to understand Christian Dior’s structure and its work practices. I have to improve my listening skills, as this would help me to interact with people and understand their words as well as the objectives quickly and act accordingly. To communicate with people, I have to work on language skills, so that I can express my thoughts and ideas for the betterment of the company as well as increase my communication skills. Along with that, I have to keep my conversation brief and specific while interacting with people. I should build up an effective body language to avoid misconception in any situation. I should have control over my emotions and act as per the responsibility, which is provided to me. In these procedures, I can improve my communication skills to bridge the communication gap within the company and perform my responsibility, which in turn also improves my inner quality (Guffey & Almonte, 2009). 2.6 Information and Knowledge Process in Christian Dior As the company has the problem of communication within the company, the system of storing information and knowledge about the company is venerable. The company also served its products in across the country and thus, it is very important to organize information and knowledge structure of the company, so that stakeholders can understand the objectives and future goals of the company. As the structure of the company’s information system is not appropriate to receive feedback of the customers, the company faces problems in meeting the needs of the customers. The resources of the company such as financial, human or other resources should be coordinated with effective communication skills in which Christian Dior lacks. Accordingly, the company faces the problem with employee management, which affect individual performance of the employees. The employees have their own culture and values, owing to which the company has diverse culture among the employees. In this context, the workplace culture of the company is based on diverse culture and on the other hand, increases conflicts among the employees and management of the company (Hartmann & Kern-Isberner, 2008). 2.7 Organizing the Information and Knowledge of the Company Organizing the information and knowledge of the company is an important aspect for using information for the betterment of the company. The company should prepare an effective database management to create an organized information structure, so that every department of the company can use information as per their requirements. Initially, the company has to gather information from different sources and use the feedbacks of the employees and customers to have an understanding about in effective performance and products’ quality. After gathering the information, the company should classify the information as per the necessity of the data in various departments, so that information can be used quickly when it is required. Subsequently, the information should be linked with similar kinds of information by sorting them effectively (Prabhakaran, 1997). An effective database maintains the integrity of the information about the company. It formats the information, so that unnecessary parts of the information could be removed and improve understanding among the employees and other staffs about the usefulness of the information in terms of performing operations on the basis of organisational requirements. The database system stores information in an organized manner, so that only office and management staffs can use the information. It could be riskier and chances of fraudulent acts can be occurred, as stakeholder can use the information from the database. In this respect, effective database provides security in the processes of using the information. Accumulating information helps the organization to take efficient decision for the company quickly along with that the company can understand where special care should be taken to minimize the risks or losses. So, database management helps the organization to increase productivity of the end users and take necessary actions for the betterment of the company (Prabhakaran, 1997). 2.8 Recommendation to Improve Information and Knowledge in the Company There are many ways to improve efficiency of the information and knowledge of the company with the help of advanced technologies. Electronic database can improve the structure of the information and knowledge systems of the company. It increases the searching speed than the normal database system, as it has the strong electronic server, which helps to search the information quickly. Electronic database does not have rigidity in the structure, as it is flexible to adapt any kind of changes in the information systems and helps the users to use upgraded information as per their requirements. It maintains consistency of the data and creates coordination among the data to make it useful for the users. It can be used by various members of the organization at a time and thus, it saves time for accessing data. It reduces redundancy of the information as well as reduces the cost burden of data storage, classifications and retrieval. Electronic database can be redesigned or rewritten throughout its life and will still provide accurate information about the particular organization (Prabhakaran, 1997). References Burtis, J. O. & Turman, P. D., 2005. Group Communication Pitfalls. SAGE Publications. Freeman, R. E. & et. al., 2010. Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art. Cambridge University Press. Guffey, M. E. & Almonte, R., 2009. Essentials of Business Communication. Cengage Learning. Guffey, M. E. & Loewy, D., 2010. Business Communication: Process and Product. Cengage Learning. Hartmann, S. & Kern-Isberner, G., 2008. Foundations Of Information And Knowledge Systems. Springer Science & Business Media. Henley KM Forum, 2010. Communication. Developing Knowledgeable Decision Makers: A Personal Reflection and Coaching Guide, pp. 10-22. McDonald, S. & Hammer, A. E., No Date. Stakeholders. Information and Communication, Vol. 3, Iss. 1, pp. 1-8. Pochna, M. F., 1996. Christian Dior. Arcade Publishing. Prabhakaran, B., 1997. Multimedia Database Management Systems. Springer Science & Business Media. Stanford, C. & et. al., 2005. Introduction to Retailing. Juta and Company Ltd. Stucki, A., 2009. Theoretical Foundations. Internal and External Factors Influencing the Implementation and Diffusion of the Open Innovation Models, pp. 2-20. Svendsen, A., 1998. The Stakeholder Strategy: Profiting from Collaborative Business Relationships. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Worth, R., 2004. Communication Skills. Infobase Publishing. Read More