Management Team, Talents or Skills of the Team Members and Organizational Chart - Essay Example

Business Plan

Organizational Plan

• Management Team, Talents or Skills of the Team Members and Organizational Chart

The management team of the new tech startup business of Garmin will comprise an owner or a manager, an administrative head, a technical executive, salesperson and a finance or account officer. The owner or the manager should have the skills of managing the operational functions of the business and ensuring that the predetermined organizational targets are achieved within a specified time. The salesperson of the organization must possess the skills of communicating to interact with the customers and sell them the products successfully, ensuring customer satisfaction and strengthening their relationship with the brand. In the similar context, the talents or the skills of the administrative head will include managing the operational works of the business such as calculating salaries of the personnel and preparing team reports. Correspondingly, the finance or the account officer should be able to handle accounts, finances and cash transactions during buying and selling of the products. The technical executive should have the skills of finding appropriate technical solutions, if certain products are found to be defective. A simple organizational chart is designed below for the new tech startup business.

Fig.1: Simple Organizational Chart

Source: (Prepared for the Study)

• Application of McKinsey 7-S Model to the Business

The elements of McKinsey 7-S Model include ‘strategy’, ‘staff’, ‘culture or style’, ‘structure’, ‘shared values’, ‘skills’ and ‘systems’ (Alshaher, 2013). The new tech startup business of Garmin will follow the strategy of low price products and services to attract the potential end users. The operational systems of the company will not only focus on selling products for sports or automotive, but will also emphasize on conducting performance appraisal of the employees. The staff members will be recruited based on their skills and talents that can bring significant benefits to the organization. A collaborative leadership style or culture will be followed so that the employees can work mutually towards attaining the organizational goals. The shared values of the organization will be maintaining integrity and respecting people involved in the business. The existing skills of the employees will be developed by offering them sufficient training in repeated instances.

• Description of the Business-Level Strategy and How It Fits with the Corporate-Level Strategy

The business-level strategy of the new tech startup business will be keeping its product and service costs low during the initial years. This business level tactic fits with the corporate-level strategy of the business, as it is expected to generate superior level of customer value, which in turn, raises competitive advantage as compared to the competitors. Apart from this, the other business-level strategies of the new business will be utilizing its human resources efficiently for addressing customers’ needs and maintaining coordination amid them.

Prior to executing the stated strategies, the owner of the new business will require taking decisions so that these do not affect the performance of the organization in terms of productivity and profitability. This decision-making feature eventually fits with the corporate level strategy, which focuses on how the entire organizational performance will be developed as per the market or industry needs.

• Supply Chain for the Prospective Organization

The supply chain for the prospective organization will be based on those suppliers and entities that comply with the appropriate regulations, laws and standards of human rights. The organization may bring value in this design of supply chain by obtaining the required products from the suppliers within a specific time and delivering final products to the end users whenever required. This may support the company to create customers’ value and raise their satisfaction level. The model of supply chain, which may follow by the new business, is portrayed hereunder.

Fig.2: Supply chain model

Source: (Prepared for the Study)

• Main Partners and Suppliers, Their Locations and Contingency Plan

The main partners and suppliers of the new tech startup business will be Asus, Suzuki, Nokia and Sony. The locations of these partners and suppliers are Japan (Suzuki & Sony), Finland (Nokia) and China (Asus). The new business might face certain contingencies while performing its operational functions that include human errors and equipment failures among others (Childs & Dietrich, 2003). Therefore, the contingency plan to prevent failure of operational functions will include checking the materials used in the equipment and keeping back-up of valuable data in hard drives.

• Procedures to Optimize Operational Effectiveness and Ensure Firm’s Leanness

The operational effectiveness will be optimized in the new tech startup business by automation and simplification. Automation will ensure reduced time for performing various functions including storing data and updating employees as well as customers’ records. On the other hand, simplification will aid in managing the existing operational infrastructure of the new business (Zigiaris, 2000).

The leanness of the new business can be ensured by simplifying the work procedures starting from procuring materials from the potential suppliers and delivering the final products and/or services to the end users. Apart from these, the techniques including automated workflow and adopting effective decisions will ensure that the business is lean in nature. These practices of maintaining lean may support the business to develop its overall productivity (Collinson & Jay, 2012).

• Identification and Discussion About the Primary and the Support Activities

Considering the operational plan from a value chain perspective, the primary activities of the new tech startup business will be obtaining product materials from the suppliers, marketing along with selling products, maintaining relationships with the clients and offering post-purchase services to the end users. On the other hand, the support activities of the organization will include ensuring automation in the operational procedures, retaining skilled personnel and developing existing IT infrastructure (Sople, 2012).

• Income Statement

Table 1: Income statement for 3 years

• Financial Break-Even Point

The financial break-even points of the new tech start-up business for 2016, 2017 and 2018 have been presented below.

Table 2: Break-even points for 2016, 2017 and 2018

From the above tabular representations, it is apparent that the break-even points of the new business are decreasing over the three years period. This shows a positive sign for the business in having a less difficult time to reach at a point wherein revenue becomes equal to costs incurred for performing business operations.

• Identification of Possible Sources for Obtaining Investment Capital

The new tech startup business will require additional investment capital for ensuring smooth operational functions. Therefore, the banks could be one of the possible sources for the business from where it can raise money with paying interests on a yearly basis.

• Use of Financial Information for Crafting Business Strategy

The new tech startup business will follow the business strategy of low price products. The objectives of the business for executing this strategy are raising product sales and profitability. Therefore, for crafting the stated business strategy, the firm may use the financial information of Gross Profit, wherein it can gain a detailed information about product sales, gross profit or loss, sales returns (if any) and cost of goods sold (COGS). As per the income statement designed for three years, it is projected that the business will experience gross loss of $200 in the first year. However, in the second and third year, the business is forecasted to earn gross profits of $1050 and $1540. After facing gross loss in the initial year 2016, it is projected that the business will intend to raise product sales and earn gross profits in the subsequent years by designing a well-developed business strategy.

• Use of Financial Ratios to Measure Organizational Performance and Determine Success

The key financial ratios that will be used to measure the performance of the new tech startup business are liquidity, profitability and efficiency or activity. Liquidity ratios denote the capability of an organization towards meeting its long-term obligations. For instance, the current ratio will help in measuring the success of the new business by examining how fast assets are transferred into cash (Marcinko & Hetico, 2014).

Efficiency or activity ratios represent about how a firm competently uses its assets or valuable resources such as property and inventory while performing different operational functions. In this case, inventory turnover ratio will be used for assessing the success of the new business, as this develops purchase intention of the customers and inventory management (Marcinko & Hetico, 2014).

Profitability ratios display the overall managerial efficiency and the economic viability of an organization operating in any industry. To measure the performance of the new business in the technology industry, one of the profitability ratios i.e. net profit margins can be considered. This particular ratio will support in measuring the earnings of business after paying taxes in relation to product sales. Apart from this, another profitability ratio i.e. Return on Assets (ROA) will also be taken into concern for evaluating the success of the new business in technology industry. ROA provides an understanding to the firms regarding their capability in managing resources or assets towards earning huge profits (Marcinko & Hetico, 2014).

Critical Risk Assessment and Milestones Schedule

• Preferred Timing and Objectives of the Business Plan

The aim of the business plan is to introduce and develop a new tech startup business in the markets of the US. The below depicted objectives have been framed in the form of milestones for attaining the stated aim within a predetermined schedule.

• To conduct self-assessment of the business
• To define the business prospect in the technology industry
• To evaluate business strategies for achieving predetermined targets
• To identify business risks and adopt strategies to mitigate these risks
• To review and modify the business plan
• To confirm the decision of proceeding with the business plan

Critical decisions and dates about the business plan have been portrayed below in the form of tabular illustration.

Table 3: Critical Decisions and Dates

• Contingency Plans for Dealing Any Issue

Certain contingency plans need to be adopted and executed for dealing with any issue, which may arise during the conduct of the new business. For instance, the new business may adopt the contingency plan of addressing all the critical operational functions to minimize significant loss. Early identification of risks is the other plan, which must be adopted to ensure long-term sustainability of business. A new business, in its initiation phase, may face several issues including defining vision and finding suitable opportunity to prosper in the technological industry as well as assessing the market condition. To deal with these issues, the new business may adopt the contingency plan of maintaining equilibrium amid over-preparation and adequate response to the problems. This plan is expected to support the new business in responding quickly to any crisis and risk (Lasher, 2010).

While designing and adopting the contingency plans, the new business should remember that in the early stages, its main objective is to maintain and control overall operational functions. Therefore, to accomplish this objective, it is suggested that the new business should keep the contingency plans simple and easy to mitigate the issues effectively (Lasher, 2010).

Strategic Leadership and Entrepreneurship Analysis

• Sphere of Influence

The main spheres of influence in the new tech startup business can be the time taken to establish the new business and utilization of available resources. These spheres impose substantial impact on the implementation of the business plan by measuring the growth and success after adopting contingency plans for dealing with several issues.

• Bias

Individuals often become overconfident while making their own estimates (Copur, 2015). It is in this situation that own biases are experienced, which restrict in dealing with any uncertainty. Therefore, own biases are driven by the factors including extreme focus on making personal decisions and excessive dependence over intuitions. For the new tech startup business, biases may emerge while addressing and mitigating only selected issues such as cash reduction at the initial phase instead of solving other problems.

• Anticipated Hurdles

The hurdles of unknown markets and their potentiality, cash reduction, powerful competition and discouragement in making future investments are anticipated to emerge while establishing the new tech startup business. These hurdles may affect the financial viability and the endurance of the new business.

• Demonstration of Leadership Styles

Strategic and team leadership styles will be demonstrated while establishing the new startup tech business. In this business, the strategic leadership will be displayed as stressing on the competitive nature of organization and outperforming the market competitors (Thompson & Martin, 2010). On the other hand, the style of team leadership will be reflected in the new business as changing a group to a team and forming a collaborative culture within the organization (Olson, 2014). These leadership styles have the capability of strengthening the present business position by enabling the employees to perform activities mutually (Olson, 2014; Thompson & Martin, 2010).

The new business may fall short in following the team and strategic leadership styles due to inadequate knowledge of the leaders or the managers about these styles. In this situation, an in-depth idea must be gained about the stated leadership styles prior to establishing a new business.

• Strengths and Weaknesses of the Business

Ability to outperform the competitors by offering high quality tech products to the customers will be one of the strengths of the new tech startup business. The weaknesses of this new business can be difficulty in assessing market opportunities initially and chances of facing risks during the conduct of business operations.

• Procedures of Impacting and Influencing Others to Deliver Expected Results

The business can influence others and the organization by generating future market prospects. This impact and influence may deliver the expected results i.e. long-term survival and feasibility of the new business by raising product sales and increasing the satisfaction level of the customers. Moreover, alignment of the operational procedures with the predetermined organizational targets another process through which the business can influence others and deliver expected results.