Assignment Sample on MCGE 2122 The Business Case: The business of second-hand items 

Firm’s description and description of business problems

Company A, as per the case study deals with selling of second hand products in an online platform. This platform is further being hosted on a specific website called WWW.R3US3.CO.UK1 (Case Study). This is mainly present within IOS alongside Android application. However, from the case study can also be observed that Company A is not very popular among the customers. This is considered to be one of the greatest issues faced by the company as low popularity among customers tends to affect the company on its sales and revenue within the market. It is because, as per Wrålsen et al. (2021), low popularity creates low awareness among customers that further impacts demands and sales within the market. This reflects low position of the company within the market that further states high quality of the products with low prices and low exposure within the market. Other than that, low profitability is another issue faced by the company in the current scenario. It is because each of the transactions that occur through the online website, a small percentage of the product’s price is acquired by the company.

For instance, in the current scenario it can be observed that 0.2 % as of 2019 is acquired by Company A through the online transaction (Case Study). It is only considered to be the primary source of income for Company A. Other issues that are being faced by the company can be observed through the financial performance within its market. Among the seven companies that operate within this segment, the company is in the third position as of 2020. It is because, as of 2020 the revenue of Company A reflects £ 29,411,418.24 while the revenue of company B, C, D, E, F and G reflects £ 11,676,433.85, £ 19,379,477.56, £ 32,703,226.38, £ 27,014,125.26, £ 41,187,985.05 and £ 1,991,473.84 respectively (Case Study).

In addition to this, from the figure above it can also be observed that revenue of Company A as of 2019 depicts an amount of £ 28,737,001.61 that further seems to be lower than 2018 then reflects an amount of £ 29,238,105.35 (Case Study). However, as per the figure above it can be observed that the revenue of Company A as of 2020 seems to be increasing through a slight margin reflecting an amount of £ 29,411,418.24. On the other hand, as of 2018 sales seems to be decreasing from 2017 reflecting sales of 194,901 in 2018 and 201,781 in 2017 respectively. Furthermore, units sold in 2019 reflecting an amount of 185,859 also seems to be lower from 2018 (Case Study). However as of 2020 the company seems to be increasing its sales by a slight margin reflecting an amount of 187,122. Nonetheless, the current needs of the company depicts high quality products with high exposure within the market followed by skilled labour to satisfy customers within the market. Henceforth, the company seems to be facing issues in managing its sales and revenue within the market and can be assumed that by the end of 2022 the company can expect a growth in its price and revenue.

The strategy of consultancy

Type of consultancy model

The business model of Company A is considered to be fairly simple as per the case study. According to Ertz et al. (2019), a simple business model helps in proper understanding of the customer alongside employees within the company. It further deals with proper operations and helps in accomplishment of targeted goals. For instance, the customers of Company A who are having the desire of selling something or even customers who want to buy something from the company should be properly registered within the platform in terms of buying or selling. As per the illustration of Bagnoli et al. (2019), proper registration within a website helps in identifying authentic buyers or sellers within the website. It limits the scope of any type of fraudulent activities and protects the resources of the company. However, the company ensures to provide premium services to all its sellers and also deals with low expensive shipments alongside low insurance on the products that are being sold. Other than that, the company also deals with the policy of free return within 30 days of purchase through its website.

However, based on the issues faced by the company and its operation it can be suggested that the Process business consultancy can be adopted by Company A. According to Moratis et al. (2018), Process consultancy business model deals with the notion of improving ways of operations, employee management, technological operations, resources management and others. In addition to this, this model of consultancy is based on outcomes. On the other hand, as per Aysolmaz et al. (2018), process consultancy business model also helps in analysing day to day operations that further helps in the creation of short term alongside long term goals within the business domain. Besides, this model also helps in meeting the needs of the client quantitative results and data backed outcomes. Nonetheless, as argued by Weking et al. (2020), this model requires high skilled employees that possess high capability to manage and execute high end operations. Henceforth, it can be stated that adopting this process consultancy planning Company A can be highly beneficial in managing its business operations and increasing the value of its products and services though it requires high management and proper infrastructure.

Resources

Proper information regarding history of the company alongside past records and current records is highly required in order to carry out the consultancy work through the Process business consultancy model. In this respect, the balance sheet of the company plays an important role as it helps in analysing the financial performance of the company in the past years. As opined by Müller and Däschle (2018), analysing financial performance helps in identifying position of the company in the market alongside the current activities within the domain. It also helps in understanding the efficiencies and non-efficiencies within a business and further proposes proper strategy that can be effective in improving profit and revenue margin within a market. In addition to this, infrastructure access of the company is also required for improving the operations of the company through process business consultancy model. Paiola and Gebauer (2020) stated that through proper analysis of infrastructure the consultants can be effective in understanding the way of operations.

It can also be effective to understand the process adopted by the company alongside the efficiencies and non-efficiencies within the process. Other than that, skills of employees are another main resource that needs to be accessed by the team of consultants. It is because, as per Fischer et al. (2020), improper skills of employees can lead to irrelevancies within any operations. This further can lead to low satisfactions of the customers within the market and creates low value of the products and services. In this respect, human resources includes a senior manager for managing all the operations and three assistant managers who will assist the senior manager in reviewing the operations of the company and manage the operations are required. Along with that, physical resources, balance sheet of the company, cost analysis process overview and skills review of the employee is also required in the current scenario.

Timeline

Four different meetings were scheduled for the clients. The first meeting was at the start of the consultancy work that further deals with the variables, objectives and the work to be done in the company. The next two meetings was at an interval of three to four months that discussed the objectives of the project alongside the current status of the project. Lastly, the final meeting was held before the completion of the whole work that further involved operations of the company and the results that have been derived from the whole journey. However, relative costs of the engagement have been listed below.

Table 1: Relative costs for engagement

Scopes and targets

The current engagement of consultants within Company A mainly consists of certain scopes and targets that have been listed below.

• The first scope of the company includes increasing profit margin within the market. This includes the targets of identifying areas that can be improved within the company. This further can be achieved through the analysis of the annual records of the company, balance sheets, cost analysis and others (Wirtz and Daiser, 2018). Besides this can also be obtained through proper management of the operations.
• Secondly, this consultancy services also have the scope of improving the strategy of marketing for the coming years. This mainly targets the improvement of market share alongside attracting potential customers within the domain (James, 2018). It also includes offering proper services that increase the position of the company within the market.
• Thirdly, the company is also having the scope of improving employee skills within the domain for implementing the process consultancy model within the domain. It is because, as per Lee et al. (2019), this consultancy model also aims at improving the assets of the company that further can be beneficial in managing its future resources. This mainly targets development of skills and infrastructure within an organisational domain.

Deliverables

Based on the process of production and analysis of annual records of Company A, it can be stated that certain areas within the company need to be managed and optimised properly. This can be achieving through the analysis of the balance sheet and process analysis further comparing it to the areas of improvement and benchmarks (Attaran and Woods, 2019). It is because, setting of proper benchmarks alongside areas that need to be improved can serve as milestones for employees. These indicators can further be effective for the employees alongside the clients to achieve targeted goals and get desired profit margins (Nieuwenhuis et al. 2018). On the other hand, a proper marketing strategy is also required in order to improve the company’s awareness among the customers. It is because based on the case study it can be observed that there is less awareness among the customers regarding the products and services sold that further lowered the profit margin and sales of the company within the market (Snihur and Wiklund, 2019). In this respect a marketing department with proper design of marketing strategy can be effective for the company in order to improve its operations and achieve targeted goals.

Risks

Risks are considered to be the most important part within any operation as it creates barriers for the accomplishment of targeted goals (Hein et al. 2019). In the current engagement, there are high chances of certain risks to be faced that further can disturb the outcome. For instance, if there are a higher number of employees than the customers then there is a risk of a high employee base that further can impact the profit margin of the company (Lafortune et al. 2018). Based on the current business scenario it can be stated that the risk of cost outrun can be faced by the company alongside human capital expenses, improper skills of the employees, improper management of the operations, relationship of different departments and others. Additionally, technical risk can also be faced by the company alongside low time and improper marketing strategy (Ibatova et al. 2018). In addition to this, risk of employee engagement is also likely to be faced in the implementation of the process model of business consultancy. Henceforth, the stated risk can impact the business operations of Company A.

Conclusion

From the current study it can be concluded that Company A is highly convenient to acquire Company G. It is because from the revenue margin of Company A, it can be observed that currently the company is facing a downfall in its profit margin that is impacting its operations within the market. On the other hand, it can also be seen that Company G is growing rapidly as compared to Company A because Company G has been set up recently and is successful in acquiring a good profit margin. In addition to this, the solution that has been created by Company G is highly effective in attracting most of the University students. In this respect it can be stated that if Company A acquires company G then it will be highly beneficial for Company A. In addition to this, two meetings will be held for the current scenario. The first meeting will be highly focused on the aspects of marketing plans and strategies to gain more profit within the domain. This will be assuming certain outcome and impact of the actions within the organisation, organisational inefficiencies and will be analysing the production process and balance sheet of the company. On the other hand, the second meeting will be based on report development that will be presented to the board regarding the process of consultancy current possessed by the company. This meeting will aim at updating management, providing feedback, implementing improvements and staff engagements. Henceforth, the stated consultancy plan will be highly beneficial for Company A in the current scenario.

Self-reflection

This module has helped me understand the importance of consultancy plans within a business. In addition to these, this module has also been helpful for me in understanding the importance of marketing strategy and proper management of operations within a business. Other than that, through this module I have been highly favourable with different risks, variables and targets that are adopted by companies to accomplish targeted goals. Other than that, the most significant lessons that have been gained by me through this model include the consistency models. Apart from this, I have also learnt two primary models of consultancy. This includes expert consulting and process consulting. This module has also helped me to know that expert consultancy is considered to be a model that helps in augmented growth.

It is mainly used by the legal community in order to gain access to the best professionals that further can help with proper knowledge of business problems and seek proper growth. Besides, this module also helped me to gain different knowledge about process consultancy models. Through this module I learned that process consultation is highly focused on basic assumptions and helps in solving problems effectively. This consultation is mainly based on a proper foundation that focuses on consultation and helping others by building proper relationships. As I was involved in the marketing department, therefore, I gained a lot of experience regarding marketing strategy and management of the marketing team.

I learn how to collaborate with different people in the marketing team in order to execute a marketing strategy properly. Other than that, I also faced the challenges of communication with other members that lead to misunderstanding and conflicts within us. In addition to this, this experience helped me to polish my skills and helped me to improve the skills of communication, collaboration and conflict management. Besides, as I was in a marketing team, therefore I was also provided with the responsibility of taking decisions at several points of time. In this respect I can say that the skill of decision making has also been improved through this model. Henceforth, the knowledge and experience that has been gained by me through this model will be highly effective for my future operations.

Reference list

Attaran, M. and Woods, J., 2019. Cloud computing technology: improving small business performance using the Internet. Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, 31(6), pp.495-519.

Aysolmaz, B., Leopold, H., Reijers, H.A. and Demirörs, O., 2018. A semi-automated approach for generating natural language requirements documents based on business process models. Information and Software Technology, 93, pp.14-29.

Bagnoli, C., Dal Mas, F. and Massaro, M., 2019. The 4th industrial revolution: Business models and evidence from the field. International Journal of E-Services and Mobile Applications (IJESMA), 11(3), pp.34-47.

Ertz, M., Leblanc-Proulx, S., Sarigöllü, E. and Morin, V., 2019. Made to break? A taxonomy of business models on product lifetime extension. Journal of Cleaner Production, 234, pp.867-880.

Fischer, M., Imgrund, F., Janiesch, C. and Winkelmann, A., 2020. Strategy archetypes for digital transformation: Defining meta objectives using business process management. Information & Management, 57(5), p.103262.

Hein, A., Weking, J., Schreieck, M., Wiesche, M., Böhm, M. and Krcmar, H., 2019. Value co-creation practices in business-to-business platform ecosystems. Electronic Markets, 29(3), pp.503-518.

Ibatova, A., Kuzmenko, V. and Klychova, G., 2018. Key performance indicators of management consulting. Management Science Letters, 8(5), pp.475-482.

James, S., 2018. The structural-informational power of business: Credibility, signalling and the UK banking reform process. Journal of European Public Policy, 25(11), pp.1629-1647.

Lafortune, J., Riutort, J. and Tessada, J., 2018. Role models or individual consulting: The impact of personalizing micro-entrepreneurship training. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(4), pp.222-45.

Lee, J., Suh, T., Roy, D. and Baucus, M., 2019. Emerging technology and business model innovation: the case of artificial intelligence. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 5(3), p.44.

Moratis, L., Melissen, F. and Idowu, S.O., 2018. Sustainable Business Models. Principles, Promise, and Practice. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Müller, J.M. and Däschle, S., 2018. Business model innovation of industry 4.0 solution providers towards customer process innovation. Processes, 6(12), p.260.

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Wrålsen, B., Prieto-Sandoval, V., Mejia-Villa, A., O’Born, R., Hellström, M. and Faessler, B., 2021. Circular business models for lithium-ion batteries-Stakeholders, barriers, and drivers. Journal of Cleaner Production, 317, p.128393.

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