Entrepreneurship and Enterprise - Salahuddin Trust Organization - Case Study Example

Entrepreneurship and Enterprise xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Name xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Instructor xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 1.0 Introduction 3 1.1 Scope 3 1.2 Aims 4 2.0 Charity organization and community profile 4 3.0 Planning of the events 5 3.1 Innovation 6 3.2 Target market identification 7 3.3 Interactive marketing methods 7 3.4 Information gathering 8 4.0 Resource constraints 8 5.0 Implementation and Outcome 9 6.0 Statement of Income and Expenditure/Finance and Analysis 11 7.0 Recommendation 11 8.0 Reflection 13 9.0 Letter of Certification 14 16 References 16 1.0 Introduction Enterprise is becoming increasingly essential part in life and more so in the business world. Many organizations including governments, churches and institutions have come to this realization and are highly appraising the spirit of enterprising. More and more students are venturing into creation of their own jobs rather than seeking formal employment which further emphasizes the importance or entrepreneurship and enterprise studies. Enterprising encompasses issues of small businesses, entrepreneurship, micro-business, self-employment and all issues thereof. Contrary to the mid set of many people, establishment of a small business is not an easy undertaking as it requires plenty of knowhow and expertise in its running. Many successful stories of international organizations indicate input of great efforts of their entrepreneurs during infancy of the companies (Nandaram and Samson 2006). 1.1 Scope This report will seek to explore the issues underlying enterprise and entrepreneurship through an integrative analysis of the case study of the Salahuddin Trust organization. The first part of the report presents a brief profile of the charity organization and the community involved. It will further provide a systematic outline and discussion of the events and activities that were conducted during the experimental case study in support of the organization that was identified. This will be inclusive of all preparations and any sources of resources constraints. Implementation and outcomes of these events will be detailed in the report while making reference to the module themes. In addition a financial analysis of the entire project including the statement of income and expenditure will be included in the report. The report will also propose recommendations for students who might have prospects of starting their own businesses in future. At the tail end of the report will be a personal reflection of the lessons I learnt for the project. 1.2 Aims To identify the various issues involved in entrepreneurship. To relate entrepreneurial theories with personal characteristics in order to assess my strength in terms of entrepreneurship. 2.0 Charity organization and community profile The organization in question is the Salahuddin Trust a charity organization based in Central London. Salahuddin Trusts is actually an international charity organization whose main mission is to reconcile the gap between the rich and the less privileged in the society around. It serves as a bridge between the donors and the recipients. The organization is a not-profit making organization and basically relies on donations to perform its charity work in the community. This is done in accordance with the Qur’an and follows the deeds and words of the Prophet Muhammad. Some of the activities done in the organization include feeding and provision of basic needs to the poor, training the poor on ways of making income for a living, to educate the general public on the Islamic religion and to work in collaboration with other charity organization that perform similar tasks. Besides this, another aim of the organization is to foster better relations among the Muslims and the non-Muslims. The students decided to undertake a small project in order to financially support the organization in maintenance of the mosque and in support of the needy families. Students from the university usually do prayers in the mosque hence the director of the charity requested them for some donations in support of the mosque maintenance and also to be used in other activities undertaken by the organization. Salahuddin Trust was specifically selected for purposes of compliance. Being a charity organization many students would respond quickly to support the venture. In addition, the university administration would grant permission for the activities based on the fact that it was a good will. 3.0 Planning of the events Students of the group members were international students all from Saudi Arabia. Using Saudi students would be more appropriate because they would have more convincing power while marketing the product since they are more conversant with it. Several meetings were held to discuss the procedure to follow in order to meet the targets of the marketing venture. The group members conducted a marketing research that was aimed at understanding the target market. marketing research enhances communication with the customers and identification of opportunities that would realize maximum profits. Through the market research, we were able to understand the prevalence of Islam within the compass. Besides this, competitors were identified which was important in determination of prices. Group members were divided equally in order to survey the different elements of the business plan. While starting any kind of business, it is always important to have a well written plan if success of the business is to be achieved. Reports from the small groups were complied to form a complete business plan that was duplicated and a copy given to the university management for the purpose of granting permission. The products were to be imported from Saudi Arabia hence measures to achieve this had to be put in place. It was agreed that a relative to one of the group members, from Saudi and coming to London for a vacation would be requested to purchase several Sabha’s on behalf of the group. A formal requested was made through an email and after his response, money was sent to him via money gram. Meanwhile some group members printed out brochures while others sent emails to students in compass to promote the project. To avoid confusion on who is selling genuine products black t-shirts with the image of a sabha were designed and made for every group member. Tents to sell the products were erected at strategic places within the university but some were also sold in the rooms of group members. In order to achieve the objectives of the marketing project, various marketing strategies had to be adopted and in particular the 4 I’s model was employed. 3.1 Innovation Innovation mainly involves the product being sold out. This entails identification of the product or service. Prior to the commencement of the project, group members brainstormed ideas concerning the most appropriate product. The product that was identified by the students was a traditional, Islamic item that is a prayer tool for Muslims. The item which is beadlike and ornamental is worn round the neck is mostly made in Saudi Arabia and sold in and out of the country. 1000 pieces of Sabha were purchased each at 0.2p and the expected retail price at the university ground was £1.00. As a religious item, it is handled with much care and respect. According to the marketing plan conducted, it was clear that competitors within the town posed as a major threat to the product. In order to acquire a competitive advantage it is crucial that an entrepreneur adopts strategy that overtakes the deals of his competitors. A comprehensive market study was conducted to determine the kind of products offered by competitors and at what prices they offered them. The outcomes of this field study revealed that prices of the product needed to be a bit lower than the competitors so as to maintain them. Besides this the Sabha needed to be redesigned in terms of shapes and color such that they would fit the taste and preferences of all customers. An innovations team was assigned this task. The entrepreneurial model of marketing requires that source of the product be well secured such that stocks will never run out at any given time (Stokes and Wilson 2010). Close contacts were therefore made with the sellers of the Sabha in Saudi Arabia. 3.2 Target market identification The target group is central to any entrepreneurial venture as it determines success of the entire process. It requires identification of the precise target group so that strategies can be formulated to reach them (Anderson 2006). The major target groups of the Sabha are the university students. This was concluded after taking an in depth study of the Muslim religion in the university. The target audience is male students and more so first year students who have a close attachment to religious matters. Besides making profits out of the activity, it will be good platform to affiliate the students to the Islam religion. Customer relationship development is critical during identification of the target group. Good relationships will not only attract more customers but will also foster a sense of trust and credibility. This is best achieved by creation of networks with customers. Social networks such as facebook and twitter are the most common forms of interactions and were actually utilized during this project (Anderson 2006). 3.3 Interactive marketing methods Contrary to the classical principles of marketing, the entrepreneurial principles constitute of more interactive approaches. Promotional methods could be either personal or impersonal. Personal methods are preferred by many entrepreneurs as they enable the entrepreneur to stay in close contact with the market. They include direct selling, telephone and internet, retail selling and exhibitions and trade shows. On the other hand, impersonal methods include media advertisement, direct mail, public relations and brochures (Landstrom 2010). The team settled on use of brochures and emails to reach out to the target group. Although brochures don’t provide direct contact of the entrepreneur and the customer they are effective promotional methods since they provide a detailed description of the products and/or services. Emails are also adequate since the customer and the entrepreneur can freely interact by exchanging comments and queries via the internet. Internet is also free for all students which will enhance communication (Nandaram and Samson 2006). 3.4 Information gathering Sustainability of a business not only depends on financial input but also on input of knowledge into the venture. The entrepreneur should constant explore ways of quality of the products or services he offers. This can be achieved through literature in books, magazines or the internet that provide current trends in the market place (Down 2010). 4.0 Resource constraints There are three basic constraints in any given project: cost, time and scope. These also happened to be the problems that were identified in the project. Costs may differ depending on the nature of the project and they include mechanical, material, risk and labor costs. Besides the major cost of purchasing the products, other costs that were incurred during the project include printing costs, tent hiring costs, t-shirt printing among other subsidiary costs. This was indeed a major constraint since the project was funded by the group members themselves. Time is a paramount to the successful completion of a project. Although a schedule for the different activities, some events had to be cancelled or postponed especially if they collided with lectures. Scope is another constraint that was encountered during the project. Scope is defined as a collection of all the resources and tools that are required to achieve objectives of the project. 5.0 Implementation and Outcome In order to ensure that an individual or a group have engaged successfully on its intrapreneurship and enterprise, it is necessary have an analysis of its implementation as well as the outcome of the project (Johnson 2010). This section is initialized by bringing out of some products for students to have a glimpse of. While some of us thought the price was expensive, most students were engaged in purchasing the good for the sake of supporting the project. From this it was noted that, implementation and outcome it was necessary to let students know about our product on offer therefore brochures were distributed regarding our various products. These brochures were viewed by many students where they asked about the products and later bought them (Bolton and Thompson 2004). There are several measures that are important in ensuring that the implementation and positive outcome of this project are achieved. The students were engaged in entrepreneurial marketing so as to ensure that student received relevant information regarding the goods as well as the charity project. Bolton and Thompson (2004) maintain that, being it was a project that was being initialized within the school and one involving charity work it was necessary to use entrepreneurial marketing as opposed to classical marketing. Most of the student participating being entrepreneur, it was arguably important to come up with the idea and later finding a particular market for the product as opposed to engaging in a market assessment before commencing in new product development (Handy 1997). Here, it is necessary to focus on customer as opposed to innovation that is why the students engaged in distributing brochures regarding the products and creating time to answer question regarding the products. Here, in targeting customers there is no immediate need to confirm top down theory which includes segmentation, positioning and targeting rather for a small business like this which is widely involved in charity work it is preferred to practice bottom up targeting (Harford 2011). Bottom up targeting is whereby fewer customers are served who are later expanded by way of identifying various market opportunities as well as attracting initial customers. Since we are all students bottom up targeting was the best option because it is more flexible and few resources is required to generate the marketing process (Handy 1997). According to Kirby (2003), it is necessary to consider the price of the various products on offer and the targeted group intended to purchase the commodity. Initially the students thought the prices were expensive to begin with but due to entrepreneurial marketing student found the prices reasonable. Further, the knowledge created through the charity process made customer but more so as to boost the noble cause. The outcome created by this project such as well reception by customers as well as customers accepting the price was due to a well established entrepreneurial marketing mix (Kirby 2003). The used marketing mix was largely generated through interactive marketing where the student entrepreneur this activity had strong preference for personal contact as opposed to mass marketing so as to reach a larger number of customers (Wickham 2001). A good and strong example of the usage of interactive marketing is whereby participating students sung old songs about Sabha as a way of attracting more customers. Interactive marketing also ensured that Muslim students bought the goods for their prayers whereas other students bought it because it was from a different culture (Southon and West 2002). 6.0 Statement of Income and Expenditure/Finance and Analysis Salahuddin Trust Charity Centre Financial Statement of Income and Expenditure Project Title: XXX Student Group Project Start and End Dates: 5th November 2011 to 1st January 2012 Operating Fund Sales (each revenue) Cost of sales Gross Profit Total Income 204 24 180 Expenditure Personnel(students participating) Training of counterparts Contracts Other direct costs Total operating expenses Firm Commitment Expenditure Budget 10 0 0 0 10 Unspent Allocation (net profit 170 This is to endorse that the above statement of income and expenditure is accurate and that the expenditure was incurred in connection with the named and approved project for which the above said allocations were received. ……………………………………. ……………………………….. ……………………. Name and title signature date 7.0 Recommendation Engaging in charity work requires a lot of commitment so as to see a successful implementation of the project as well as ensuring that positive outcomes are achieved. Successful implementation of such projects requires great integration of various theories. The following recommendation will be helpful for students running such a live project in future. Communication and team work play a key role in ensuring that a live project implementation is successful. It is necessary for the involve student to indulge in constant communication between themselves. Constant communication bring the team members involved in a particular designed live project ensuring that all member are able to work in an open and integrated method. For instance, the use of Fishers works in a live project. Fishers work ensures that each individual have a particular designed network which largely provides social support within a group as well as ensuring that individuals are rewarded accordingly. Due to heavy resources involved in live project, it is necessary for team members to engage in activities that are reduced in prices. For instance it is more applicable to use top up as opposed to bottom up. Bottom up is considered to be a more flexible marketing which requires fewer resources thus a better option for students (Jarillo 1998). For starters, it is more important to focus more on customer development as opposed to innovation. It is important to ensure that the targeted customers are familiar with the kind of project one intends to carry on. For instance, like the Sabha project distribution of brochures ensures that many customers are able to obtain the desired knowledge regarding the live project. A good entrepreneur is one who is able to work in a more integrity manner and open so as to ensure that a good customer relationship is maintained. For any live project that involves charity work, it is important to ensure that employees are guided by the principle of openness in funds as well as integrity. 8.0 Reflection At a more personal level, it is quite evident that this live project has taught me a lot both in terms of being entrepreneurial and when dealing with people on a community level. Evidently, within the course of the project there were both emotional and psychological issues while working in a team. Based on emotional, the fact that the directors of the centre asked for assistance for the maintenance of the mosque and helping of poor family it really touched my heart that there are people who are in need of dire assistance especially on basic needs. Emotional issue that arises also while marketing the product to assist in this live project is the fact that students came out in large numbers to support regardless of the religion one followed. Product customers were both from Muslim and Christian religion. I believe that working as teamwork should not discriminate on the kind of religion an individual is rather it should involve working with all member to ensure successful implementation as well as positive outcome. I believe that as student besides our normal studies it is necessary to ensure that we give back to the community what we have been taught. It is within our belief that engaging in community services enable student to have a professional idea even while still continuing with our studies. I came to learn that the success in the implementation as well as positive outcome involved in this live product largely depends on teamwork. I believe that strong teamwork is established well through maintaining stronger communication among all members as well as the intended customers. The idea of getting into the ground whereby student were engaged in wearing clothes of the same color in the name of finding funds to help these needy people gave me the knowledge that not all individual can afford for the many things that I usually take for granted such as food and shelter. On the psychological part, the work involved was a lot since it required great mental skills in order to ensure that all things have been put into correct measures. Being the chairperson, having to establish a follow up for each respective person was stressful since I was always on my toes trying to find each person to do his/her part. However, the psychological part was not that hectic as it enables me to develop skills that will ensure that in future I will be able to lead individuals. There were some activities that I liked and other disliked while working in this live project. For instance, I enjoyed very much working to help these needy people as well as ensuring that the mosque is well refurbished. The part that I disliked most is facing up with customer from other religion who had a negative implication on helping Muslim brothers which is so discouraging. Based on my selling and marketing skills, I came to understand that the roles within sales and marketing are constantly changing thus it is important to seek for high leveled skills as opposed to developing new ones. From various entrepreneurial theories, I realized it is important that I retain my marketing and sales people through my well developed and established skills. This project made me understand that the role of having both sales and marketing skills is to largely procure a line of transaction involved in various organizational products as well as ensuring that good customer relationship are build and maintain for future involvements. The various marketing and sales skills that I largely accumulated while working in this project are, negotiating and influencing skills, decision and problem solving, selling as well as customer service. 9.0 Letter of Certification XXX Student Group 1234 Kingsway Street London This letter is to notify that XXX Student Group Worked in a live project at the Salahuddin Trust Charity Centre for the period 5th November 2011 to 1st January 2012. While at the centre they were involved in mosque maintenance as well as helping various poor families. Through our strong working relationship, the management has came to appreciate the attention to detail that XXX Student Group showed in their work and we are deeply sadden by their departure. As a management of the centre we know he will do a great job in any placement within the organization. Sincerely, Joseph Meredith Project manager Salahuddin Trust Charity Centre References Anderson, R. 2006. False myths and indigenous entrepreneurial strategies. Journal of small business and Entrepreneurship. Volume 19, issue 1. Bolton, B, and Thompson, J.2004. Entrepreneurs – Talent, Temperament, Technique. Oxford: Elsevier Bridge, S., O’Neill, K. and Cromie, S. 2003. Understanding enterprise, entrepreneurship and small business. Basingstoke: Palgrave macmillan. Down, S. 2010. Enterprise, entrepreneurship and small business. London: SAGE. Handy, C. 1997. The New Alchemists, London: Hutchinson Harford, T.2011. Adapt: why success always starts with failure London: Little Brown . Jarillo, C. 1998. Wit, B and Meyer, R. (eds). (2000) Strategy, Process and Content ,2nd Edition. Thomson: Thomson Business Press Johnson, S. 2010. Where Good Ideas Come From: the natural history of innovation. London: Allen Lane Kirby, D. 2003. Entrepreneurship, Berkshire: McGraw Hill. Landstrom, H. 2010. Pioneer in entrepreneurship and small business research. New York: Springer. Nandaram, S. and Samson, K. 2006. The Spirit of entrepreneurship exploring the essence of entrepreneurship through personal stories. New York: Springer. Southon, M. and West, C. 2002. The Beermat Entrepreneur. London: Pearson Education Stokes, D. and Wilson, N. 2010. Small business management and entrepreneurship. Hampshire: South Cengage Learning. Wickham, P. 2001. Strategic Entrepreneurship, A decision making approach to new venture creation and management. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall Read More